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I started playing Higurashi now that all the parts have been released, and I'm still in part 1, not really knowing what to expect since I haven't played anything like this before. The set up section before anything bad happens was well done enough that it almost made me sad that it was all going to have to go horribly wrong. I made it up to the mochi part with the needle, and Keiichi's freaking out and trying to rationalize things the next morning. It really is creepy as hell when Reena in particular turns into a totally different person. The main thing that drove me to post is that holy gently caress is the sound of cicadas driving me crazy. It wasn't that bad at first, so maybe it got turned up as the tension started rising, idk. Given the name of the thing, I guess I'd better either get used to it or turn my volume way down.
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May 29, 2020 15:04
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No Wave posted:It's loud but I grew up around cicadas so I was used to it (they really are loud as balls in real life, or at least were 20 years ago). We have them here too, and they drive me loving crazy, so I come by the irritation here naturally. Good advice--I'll check back after I finish 4 then.
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May 29, 2020 15:22
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gently caress it  . I'm partway through part 2 of Higurashi now, and while my theories up to this point are basically summed up by ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (which makes me wonder if I'm doing this wrong and if I should be thinking about things more given how much black bar discussion I've seen but not read for Umineko in here) and the character review in the extras of the first game pretty much summed up the different possibilities at this point, here are a couple general thoughts: I was pretty much 100% sure Shion wasn't Mion from the start, basically just because having Keiichi be wrong seemd more interesting than having him be right, but I was wavering a bit before the reveal, because Rena also being so wrong about that was a little more surprising. Overall, going back to silly slice of life stuff immediately after the gruesome ending of part 1 was pretty jarring, and the contrast really works. This one might be slightly more over the top with the whacky hijinks but tbf smoke was coming out of Rena's head in the first one too, so it's not like this was ever fully serious. The festival is coming up though, so the sense of dread that the days of laughter and fun are coming to an end is setting in.Oh, btw, I mostly skipped over my thoughts on part 1 since I've already moved on, but Creepy Rena is creepy as gently caress. Also I really don't trust Ooishi Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 16:43 on May 30, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 16:39
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Higurashi part 2 continued: Made it through the festival, and nowhere has the contrast between the silly parts and the horror parts been more stark. The part where they're competing to get customers to buy stuff from different stalls is funny and absurd (Mion making an idiot of herself by talking about eating goldfish made me laugh), but then the warehouse scene where Takano is explaining what all the torture devices are for and talking about cannibalism and everything was arguably the most gruesome part of the series yet, especially since it just kept going and going while she was having the time of her life talking about it. Sorry the whole post is basically a black bar, but I want to be pretty careful not to ruin it for any latecomers like myself. Not really sure what there is to talk about that doesn't give something away. One thing I'm wondering (but I'm not not really asking) is how the parts relate to each other. Like they seem to just be different routes I guess, but it's not fully clear to me since no choices are involved if Keiichi is just stumbling into different circumstances or if people's personalities are different at times or if some characters (like Shion) don't even exist in every part. I'm sure there's going to be some fuckery where one appears to be the other at some point(s) though, so maybe she even had an active role in part 1 at some point that I'm being a colossal idiot for missing, idk Edit: Nearing the end of part 2, and while it's probably crazy to interrupt the climax to post about it, something's blowing my mind. The surprise to me about the conversation at Mion's house so far is that she's talking so much about Japanese war crimes. I really really don't expect to see them mentioned in such gruesome detail in Japanese media, even if it is a horror game. Actual ending thoughts: Keiichi, you dumbass. Oh, he survived. Keiichi, you dumbass. Oh, he survived. Then the hospital and welp, I guess it can't be helped. Still not really sure how these parts fit together. Rena seemed to be the one who was possessed in the first game, while it was Mion in the second. Takano apparently was too though? idk it's pretty confusing. The twist that Rika had the syringe with her when she went to Mion's house was pretty awesome though. She obviously wasn't a sweet and helpless victim. This might be stupid, but I can't help wondering if Mion and Shion are actually triplets or something, because it feels like there's still a bullet left to be fired somewhere in their relationship. I think I'll take a little break before I jump into 3. Even knowing I still have Umineko to read at some point after this, tearing through it all in one giant binge feels wasteful. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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May 30, 2020 23:14
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Started Higurashi 3 earlier than anticipated just to take my mind off stressful things a bit. This one has Satoko on the cover, so my thought going in was that it probably wasn't going to be my favorite, since she's been my least favorite member of the club so far. As usual, the jump back into silly fun times at the beginning of these things is jarring after the endings of the preceding parts, but in a way where the contrast makes it more meaningful--you want to enjoy the good times while they last. Satoko still isn't my favorite character in the group, but I thought her coming over with Rika to cook and be sisterly was likable enough. Keiichi thinking poo poo like how he wants to see her smile forever might be harmless, but feels like the game's trying to have it both ways with him both being a surrogate brother and also using the same kind of language you see in romantic content in this genre, which the game also kind of lampshades by other club members teasing him spending time with her while his parents were out of town and how he raised all the flags (one of them even talks about it being an eroge, but I don't remember the specific quote). I laughed at the meta joke, but the situation is still weird. Anyway, things are getting tense again, though not in direct relation to the festival (yet?) since everyone's just worried about Satoko being treated badly by her uncle. So far it's been the least engaging start to the 'poo poo gets real' portion of these games for me, but even if the opening told me this is the shortest part, I assume there's still a decent amount of time for things to get more interesting. Update: Okay yeah so far I'm actively bored by this poo poo with Satoko's uncle. I'm sure there will be payoff when people start dying, but so far it's so repetitive and slow and mundane that it's kind of painful. Think I'll give it a rest for tonight and try again when I'm feeling less cranky. Update 2: Things did in fact get a bit more interesting when Keiichi started plotting to murder Satoko's uncle. It didn't come as a surprise, but it's still shocking in a way to be in this character's head as he pretty quickly decides to and then carries out a murder. Messing with the lighting a few times still leaves open the possibility that possession is real and happening to him this time, or he could just be an unstable person and that's where some of the paranoia in part 1 came from. The parallels of Keiichi with Satoshi from part 1 (where Rena noted that Satoshi'd started walking around with a bat before he disappeared) have paid off nicely here, even if Satoshi's ultimate fate still isn't clear. I'd still say this is my least favorite of the three parts I've read so far (I haven't quite finished this one yet, but I'll be surprised if that changes), but the resentment I was feeling about the repetitive 'we have to do something but we're powerless but we have to do something' conservations about child abuse have faded now that the stuff that was leading to happened. Plus I really really liked the first two parts, so falling short of them isn't the end of the world. Final Update for Part 3: Holy gently caress, that escalated quickly. I really liked the weirdness where everyone was telling Keiichi he'd done things from the other two games (though he made the choice not to go with Shion, opposite of part 2), and the body disappearing and Satoko saying her uncle was still around. It's like he stepped into a parallel universe, though I guess the soil had still been disturbed, the bat was still missing, the uncle wasn't home when Keiichi went over, and it's theoretically possible that the club members were trying to give Keiichi an alibi by talking about what he did at the festival (though Satoko choosing to boil herself in a bath still seems unlikely). Keiichi really isn't a very good murderer since he seems to confess at the drop of a hat, but I guess at that point he was just trying to maintain his sanity more than preserve his life. Speaking of him being a dumbass though, turning his back on Satoko by the bridge was definitely another "wtf are you doing idiot?" moment like leaving his house to see Mion at the end of part 2. Then holy poo poo everyone loving died!! I still don't know if I can raise this one up to the same level as 1 and 2 just because there was some tedium along the way, but that was the craziest ending by far. The cast review saying that the next part would have Shion as the new main character is pretty exciting too--I'd been wondering if there would be a POV shift for a while now, and I think getting a new POV will help with relieving some of the tedium I was feeling in the middle parts of this one. I guess Ryukishi07 hadn't finalized the structure of Higurashi at this point though since it referred to the first three as the first half and the next one as the start of the investigation arc? I'm not looking stuff up, but I'm pretty sure the first four are the Question Arcs and the next four are the Answer Arcs, but maybe it's not that clearcut idk. In short, I'm super excited to see where things are going, and any misgivings I had about a potential downturn in this one were pretty thoroughly alleviated. As with last time, I think I'd like to take a breather before jumping into the next one, but with my life being super stressful atm, this insane horror series seems to somehow offer stress relief, so I may jump back in sooner than planned again. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Jun 7, 2020 |
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Jun 5, 2020 03:30
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Okay, thanks for the heads up. I'll probably read it this week then, and take the pause after the one.
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Jun 7, 2020 21:06
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StrixNebulosa posted:Umineko's steam release translating Romance of the Three Kingdoms as "Record of the Three Kingdoms" is interesting to me. And then it casually references it and spoils the ending, which is hilarious. I'd actually be a bit mad if I hadn't beaten Dynasty Warriors 7 last year That's a different historical text covering the same time period.
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Jun 9, 2020 00:54
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I finished Higurashi Part 4, and this time I mean it when I say I'll take a break for a bit before jumping into the rest. It helps my determination that the game actually encourages doing so as well, to pause and think about how everything fits together. I'm really tempted to reread at least some of part 1 now that I have more perspective, but I'm not jumping immediately into that either, even if I end up doing it. Rika knowing who was going to die the whole time is nuts, especially since she knows the cause of death, and that Sakoto's aunt is/would be abusive (I don't know if she would have had the opportunity to even show that she was abusive before Sakoto's parents died?), which seems like that would be more information than she'd know just from finding a list or overhearing a conversation somewhere. The game has consistently tried to leave the door open for a humans-only interpretation, but I'm really struggling to see how that could work at this point, even if that itself makes me suspicious and feeling like I must be missing something. I guess we know the village wasn't wiped out just because Rika died though, since she also died in part 2 but nothing similar seems to have happened. The suggestion that people could have been behind it was interesting, though I don't know who'd have motive in that part but not the others. When Ooishi was talking about the people who died before the incident, I couldn't help noticing that his subordinate was mentioned but Satoko's uncle wasn't. I guess that could possibly mean Keiichi killed him instead? He seemed to recognize the uncle's face though, and there's still the problem of the body missing when the police tried to dig it up anyway, so I don't know about any of this. One reason I'm curious to reread part 1 is that it feels like part 3 is the closest to a "canonical" ending right now since that's the one discussed at the end of part 4, and I want to see how reconcilable 1 is with 3 since I don't remember Rika dying in 1 but I'm not sure if Keiichi just didn't survive long enough to see her get killed. Also Rena's behavior in 1 seemed massively different from her behavior in 2, but then 3 showed glimpses of raged out Rena and the cast party said the personalities are the same in every part, so I'm wondering what it is that leads to her diverging behavior. The game stepping in to encourage me to think about all of this stuff before proceeding makes me feel like I should have more concrete ideas about what's going on by now, but it still feels pretty loving mysterious to me. Hopefully the mysteries are still just super elusive and the fun is meant to be in speculating, not in figuring stuff out, so I'm not the odd moron out who feels clueless.
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Jun 9, 2020 01:59
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Thanks for the responses Re: Higurashi speculation (especially the reassurance that I'm not a moron, haha). I'll definitely post up some more thoughts before I start 5, and if they're all completely wrong we can laugh about it together when I finish.
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Jun 9, 2020 16:18
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I'm getting ready to jump back in to Higurashi, and I'm finding that trying to figure out what actually happened is harder a month later than it would have been at the time, since a lot of details have escaped me now, especially about the first game. I had some thoughts I meant to write up a few weeks ago, but I never got around to it and now I don't remember all of what I meant to say then either. Oh well, I didn't expect to figure it all out anyway. Here are some quick thoughts, but I'm mostly going into the answer arc looking for answers instead of looking for confirmation that I have them: I'm suspicious about that actually being Mion at the end of game 2. She makes a big point of saying I Mion Sonozaki am guilty of blah blah, and offers to take off her shirt to show her tattoo, but since Keiichi and Rena took her word for it, I'm thinking that was a bluff and it was Shion. The inability to tell them apart was such a big part of that installment in particular, so I feel like it had to be a bigger deal than just a phone call here and there. I don't remember the details of what happened in the torture room well enough to know if it all lines up with what everyone was saying there, but I'm going with my gut on this one. I still don't know why Keiichi wasn't just killed in the torture room though, or what was going on after that, particularly in the hospital where Keiichi at least believed he was being attacked again in a place where you'd think he'd be safe. For game 3 my crazy theory is that some segment of the Japanese government might have been behind destroying the village for getting in the way of the dam project and causing so many problems, just because the curse explanation seems too easy. Ooshi still being alive in the latter part of part 4 suggests it wasn't Keiichi wishing everyone dead that did it, unless he has some kind of immunity as an agent of Oyashiro or something. The interviewer dying the way Keiichi suggested is still weird and hard to explain, unless someone heard the interview and arranged it to help with the coverup? I guess I think Keiichi probably killed the wrong guy given what happened with Satoko (and the missing cop), and his classmates were probably being weird about him being at the festival because they were trying to cover for him but did a really lovely job of conveying that to him since he was losing his mind to paranoia (which calls his sanity into question in the other installments as well). Game 1 is honestly the most opaque of the three big mysteries to me, and I feel like rereading it would probably be useful, but I'm moving ahead anyway. The only reason I can think of for people turning on Keiichi is that he was talking to Ooishi and lying about it, but in a super tight knit village that's hostile to outsiders anyway, maybe that's sufficient. It still feels like his friends could have just leveled with him instead of hinting mysteriously in ways that freaked him out and made him turn to Ooishi even more, but as in part 3 I guess if they communicated effectively it would short circuit the story. I do question Keiichi's sanity, but I still think there probably was something supernatural going on between Rena's episode at the school in the other city and Keiichi's apparent hallucinations. A big question I still have is if Shion was active in this episode in a way that might be apparent with a reread. Hopefully I got at least something right there and don't just look like a moron. I guess I'll find out soon enough! Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Jul 10, 2020 |
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Jul 10, 2020 13:22
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Finished Higurashi 5, and drat, that one had some pretty gruesome parts. I'm pretty sure the narrative cut away before Keiichi actually tore out his throat in part 1, so Rika doing so as "Shion" watches is probably the most detailed explanation of gore in this series so far. "Shion" torturing Sakoto was pretty hosed up too. There are still other gruesome deaths to explain, notably including Rika's in part 3, so I guess I can "look forward to"/brace for that. It was interesting to see Satoshi since the parallels between him and Keiichi had been mentioned so much. I didn't think he was really the most interesting character, but I guess he was mostly there for Shion to project onto. It might be a little blasphemous to say, but sometimes I still feel like this series is a bit too wordy--I love the length of it, but some of the inner dialogue can be pretty repetitive at times. The revelation that the neither the hag nor Mion are the evil masterminds behind everything was huge (even if I maybe should have thought more about that possibility since I already assumed Shion was the villain of part 2), so it should be interesting to find out who's really behind all this poo poo. Or it would have been, but: I was going to write more, but I accidentally just spoiled something really big Takano being the primary villainwhen I was trying to look up a character name I never remember the photographer's name, so I'm pretty annoyed about that. It takes some of the fun out of speculating about things now, so I'll probably have less to say until I finish the series now.
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Jul 12, 2020 15:06
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Yeah I feel pretty dumb. I knew I was playing with fire, but I still didn't expect to get burned quite that badly. It's not going to ruin the whole thing and her face on the art for part 8 was already a hint in that direction I guess, on top of her cartoonishly evil demeanor, but it's still disappointing . With Umineko and Ciconia I guess I'll write down a list of characters or something so that doesn't happen again.
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Jul 12, 2020 17:32
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Thanks all, I'm reassured by the responses that the spoiler shouldn't really be the end of the world in terms of enjoying the experience. One thing I'm hoping to see at some point in the last three installments which wouldn't be affected by that is a temporary return to the slice of life silliness. I think the first two (and the third to a lesser extent, though it ended sooner) really benefitted from the contrast. Obviously there's still been a progression of horror in every installment where things will start out more mundane for a while, but the brief glimpse of Shion imagining herself at the school at the end of 5 reminded me of what's been missing with the core group's interactions.
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Jul 12, 2020 20:16
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Higurashi 6: I'm not finished yet, but holy poo poo this is really good. I got the return to the happy fun times at the beginning that I was hoping for, and it really did make a big difference imo. The fakeout when Rena killed Rina where it seemed like this might be the echo of part 3 before she also killed Teppei was good too. I was kind of wondering if this would just be its own thing since the opening scene with the beginning of Rena's confession felt new, but I was pretty sure some of the dialogue seemed familiar, so it was cool to find out it was both an echo of 1 and also new since it was Rena going crazy now instead of Keiichi. I just got to the part where Keiichi woke up and remembered the events of part 1, which was maybe the best moment in the series so far and provides the first hint that there might be some possibility of a happy ending somewhere in all of this. I won't be raging pissed if there are only bad endings, but even if the hope just exists to be crushed it makes the remainder of the series way more interesting than if 4-8 just existed to explain the tragedies of 1-3 Just finished, and yeah that was my favorite installment yet. One thing that never got resolved from 1 is why Keiichi ended up tearing his throat out if Mion didn't have a syringe. It still seems kind of absurd that he'd completely imagine a needle in the food they brought him earlier too just from normal paranoia, and the way that he, Satoshi and Shion all heard footsteps (though Rena didn't for some reason) also suggests there's still a supernatural influence here beyond "just" a repeating tragic timeline that Rika's lived through hundreds of times. It's now clear that the village was destroyed in 1/6, in addition to 3, but there's still at least a slight mystery around whether Shion's actions short circuited whatever happens there in 2/5 given that Rika dies in a different way and nothing happens immediately. I don't remember how many days were meant to have passed between the festival and when Ooishi visited Keiichi in the hospita in 2, so maybe that does make it clear that it didn't happen and I wasn't paying close enough attention, idk. One final note I have is that I miss the cast party wrap-ups that the first half of the series had, because the developer commentaries in the last two haven't been nearly as interesting. I don't hate them, the cast parties felt like a lighthearted treat at the end after all the misery. Maybe it felt redundant to keep teasing the mysteries after some of them have already been answered, but I feel like there's still a fair amount of mystery left in this series so far. I guess hinting around them might be too blatant now though Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jul 16, 2020 |
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Jul 15, 2020 18:06
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I finished Higurashi 7, and like 6, I really enjoyed it. I think I agree with the poster who said those parts were their favorite. It's pretty funny that the only one who seems to have defeated Takano so far is Shion, and it's due to Takano's meddling that she goes nuts in the first place. That seems to disprove the queen theory of the disease too, since the whole village didn't lose their minds in a day or two after Rika's death, so now I'm wondering if Takano actually believes that part, or if she just came up with that theory as a convenient excuse to murder the village. Speaking of, I thought it was pretty interesting that the material Takano used to fuel Rena's paranoia in 6 was so close to the truth this time, given that the theories she presented in previous episodes was designed to mislead the reader as much as the protagonists. I knew that Takano was the villain after running into a spoiler last week, so I'm relieved the cards are on the table in that regard before the final part. Maybe the plot of this one would have been a little more surprising without knowing that ahead of time, but it was plenty enjoyable anyway, and this part was hinting pretty strongly at her villainy even before the official reveal anyway. In general, if I had one complaint about this installment, it's that I felt like I was a step or two ahead of the characters at every turn, from knowing Keiichi would need to convince the hag in order to help Satoko to wanting to shout at Rika to take the advice everyone else was getting that she needed to trust her friends if she wanted anything to change. It still felt rewarding when the characters got to where they needed to get though, and Keiichi threatening to bash in Oryou's head if she refused to nod so Mion would be the new head of the house and could nod in her place was one of my favorite lines of dialogue in the series. I liked the interplay between Hanyuu and Rika because it felt like it applied to readers of the series as well. Believing this episode was going to have a happy ending was inevitably going to lead to disappointment given that it wasn't the final installment, but without any hope at all that this might lead somewhere other than the tragedies that have unfolded so far, I think the series would be a lot less compelling in its back half, and there would be a lot less reason to engage on an emotional level. A cynical reader may have just decided to disengage and wait to see what happens without really caring like Hanyuu suggests, but I think it's more rewarding to remain invested, even if the good end never materializes. On that note, I'm glad Keiichi didn't just magically remember everything in this episode after having the realization in 6, though I'm also glad he and Rena showed signs that there was some bleed through anyway. Having them suddenly remember everything would have felt like cheating, but seeing some kind of progression was nice. I'm pretty excited but also kind of sad to be so close to the end of the series now. I want to see how it ends, but I also don't want it to be over. Hopefully some of the stuff that was made after the conclusion of the series is worth reading too, so I can still revisit this world in the future since I think Mangagamer's still going to be translating that stuff? Obviously I'm avoiding even finding out the premise of any of it for now in case it spoils the ending.
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Jul 18, 2020 02:12
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I finished Higurashi 8, and I think it might be my least favorite part of the series. That isn't to say it's bad, but I don't think it reaches the heights of the rest of it. I'm kind of exhausted from binge reading so hard atm, but here are some initial thoughts while it's fresh: I know they were heavily featured in 6 and 7, so maybe that should excuse this, but Keiichi and Rena basically feeling like afterthoughts in this one seems like a huge mistake to me. Keiichi was presented as the protagonist of the series even from Rika's perspective, so for him to barely matter in the resolution felt like a cop out. I get that the actions of everyone else were clearly influenced by his actions in previous episodes (even the Sonozakis were clearly behaving in a way that showed the influence of his arguments in 7), but running out of things for him to do in the finale is really weird. The same holds true for Rena too--Mion got to be the heroic general, Satoko's traps were half the story, and even Shion got things to do (even if she mostly just ate poo poo), but Keiichi and Rena were just sort of there. Rika was more passive this time too, other than when she offered herself up at the Sonozaki residence and during the final miracle. I got a little tired of reading au au au au, but I was fine with Hanyuu taking a more prominent role (even if her role in motivating people may have taken away from Keiichi's role). I really thought she was going to be the sacrifice at the end to let them all achieve happiness, but it was nice that she got her happy ending after an even longer time waiting than Rika. Speaking of the happy ending though, the idea that everything was resolved without any loss of life on either side just didn't work for me. I think any happy ending was going to risk feeling a little sappy and untrue to the rest of the series, but this version was pretty cartoonish. There were always silly cartoon elements to the series of course, but outside of Takano's tragic backstory, the tonal shift was pretty jarring to me. Satoko's traps went from a minor nuisance to something that could defeat a company of men, and Mion (while always presented as skilled) easily defeating Okonogi made Akasaka feel kind of superfluous as the martial arts badass who defeated him earlier, even if Akasaka was off doing other stuff by that point in the story. Complaints aside, while I think the ending we got was cheesier than I would have preferred, I'm glad it wasn't just another setup for misery. I was prepared for the rug to be pulled out at the last second, but that didn't happen. The characters and audience had seen enough misery, so something good happening felt right even if it also felt too easy. At least Satoshi didn't magically wake up and immediately join them, and everyone didn't make common cause with Takano and Teppei at the end like Ryukishi07 discussed in the creator comments. While Hinamiza Syndrome was offered as a potential excuse for her actions, I feel like there was at least some ambiguity there to suggest it was a convenient scapegoat. She never seemed to really be suffering from the hallucinations or paranoia of terminal patients at least, so I think she was still at a stage where she still had significant responsibility for her actions either way. While this wasn't my favorite part, I loved the series as a whole, and I don't feel like this one cheapened the overall experience or anything. I really hope I'm able to convince a friend to read Umineko with me, so I can speculate alongside someone instead of just writing a bunch of stuff for people who've already read it to laugh about as I fumble in the dark.
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Jul 19, 2020 19:23
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That's a fair point about Mion never being the focus. Even Rika was kind of disparaging her as possibly being too weak to be the crucial person in any world, so finding a way to make up for that made sense. And Satoko's most prominent role was as a victim previously, so giving her a chance to shine made sense too. I still think Keiichi could have at least used a scene or two where he gets everyone fired up for the battle (while still leaving the strategy to Mion) instead of just swinging a bat around in Satoko's wake. Like I said, I know he and Rena did influence what happened through their efforts in the previous two worlds, but I think all the screen time the adults got took away from the club members so that the ones who didn't stand out basically felt like they just stopped mattering entirely. Speaking of shortchanged characters, I think Ooishi got shortchanged a bit too. Yeah, he had a cool moment standing up to that corrupt cop, but the Sonozakis were the ones who had the power move there, and Ooishi completely disappeared from the narrative after that. Having him make peace with them after realizing how wrong he'd been all along was a nice character moment, but for an installment that focused so heavily on the adults, he was sidelined pretty hard. The determination of the characters not to settle for anything less than a fully happy ending was made pretty clear, so it wasn't a total fairytale ending out of nowhere that conflicted with everything that came before, and I prefer them getting their happiness to a downer ending that would drown them and the audience in misery, but I do still feel like things came together too easily regardless. I don't know what specifically I would have wanted to change to make things feel harder won except for maybe Irie to sacrifice himself for their cause. Obviously the idea that anyone needs to be sacrificed to resolve any sin is something that was philosophically rejected by the creator, so maybe I'm just more vengeful than he is and that's what my issue with this stems from, but holy poo poo did Irie seem to get off easy for his part in everything. Even if he and Tomitake had just been arrested, it would have given more gravity to the whole thing. I guess there's a cynical element where you can view the lack of consequence as part of the systemic corruption where the higher ups in Tokyo are the ones erasing the incident from memory, but the willingness of everyone else to pretend nothing ever happened and just move on felt weird too. Anyway, like I said before, the fact that I didn't enjoy this as much as some previous installments doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. I think the greatness of 6 and 7 in particular just created expectations that were hard to live up to, as did having to create a satisfying narrative to conclude the series once all the important mysteries had already been resolved. Maybe saving a major twist for later could have helped. I think the fragments took away from the story a bit too, by explaining any unresolved questions anyone might have outside of the actual narrative, and making something like Satoshi's survival and return to the narrative completely unsurprising. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Jul 19, 2020 |
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Jul 19, 2020 20:52
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I doubt I'll ever reread the whole thing, just because of how insanely long it is, but I do think I'll watch the anime after a while just to revisit the world and see what the experience is like without all the mystery. I'll definitely look into some of the supplementary arcs too, though I haven't decided how far down that rabbit hole I want to go--I might wait for the ones coming to Steam to show up there, though I'm impatient to see what's going on in Saikoroshi now. I'm very much looking forward to Umikeno and Ciconia, but I'll be taking a significant break first, both because I'm not ready to invest in something this big again right away, and because I want to see if I can recruit anyone to read them with. Plus I'm a chronic hoarder, so the thought of finishing them all and then having nothing left to look forward to bothers me.
Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Jul 19, 2020 |
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Jul 19, 2020 21:18
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Gaius Marius posted:Even their highly acclaimed games had absolute trash stories, it's crazy how much further ahead Japanese games are in terms of narrative quality. Japan is unchallenged when it comes to stories about high schoolers in love or getting murdered.
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Jul 27, 2020 14:52
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Games like the ones Bioware makes do have elements that resemble VNs, but the majority of the play experience is still going to be actual gameplay, even if the dialogue and choices are a huge part of what they were sold as, while the majority of the experience of a VN is going to be passively reading/watching like a book or a movie even if the association with gameplay might create a connection with the protagonist (where there's a sense that you're playing as that character) in a way that rarely exists so strongly in those other media. There are VNs that reach out to be more like games, like Danganronpa and Zero Escape, and there are games that reach out from the other direction like the Persona series, so yeah there is a spectrum. Everyone can draw the line at a different place, and I don't have a hard and fast rule myself on when a VN stops being a game, but I do think kinetic novels fall outside it for sure.
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Jul 30, 2020 00:49
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I just finished reading Taraimawashi-hen for Higurashi, and while it wasn't super interesting after having read the rest of the series other than as an opportunity to revisit the feel of the earlier arcs (which I don't mean as a knock, just that there's not a lot to say about it), and I thought the twist that it was a second arc situation happening was obvious pretty quickly, the sudden cut to the ending with Mion in the hospital was still a bit of a gut punch. I'm looking forward to reading the next arc so I can read the part of the final TIPS that said not to read it until after that. I kind of wonder if this arc is something that would be best read before part 5, though that might make the twist there too blatant even if the hints were already there in 2. One thing that was a little novel for me personally is that I didn't patch any of the Steam versions of the core arcs, so this is the first time I was hearing voices for any of the characters. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Jul 31, 2020 |
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Jul 31, 2020 18:08
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Here's the flowchart I'm using to try to avoid spoiling anything from Rei or Hou, which I guess I'm waiting on Mangagamer to put out for Steam:
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Jul 31, 2020 19:45
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MegaZeroX posted:Huh, Tsukitoshi used to be placed after chapter 3. I think the new location is a better place for it, personally. I just finished it, and honestly I feel like it shouldn't be read until at least finishing 6 or 7, and maybe even 8. Most people probably aren't searching for supplemental arcs until finishing the core story anyway, so I don't imagine it comes up much, the scene after the Disaster where the people are shooting Rena and the cop is too big a hint about the Disaster being manmade imo. Rika's dialogue is pretty suggestive about her Groundhog Day thing too, though obviously I can't say at this point how virgin eyes would see it. I do think reading this before 6 would make Keiichi being able to break through Rena's madness even more satisfying than it already was, but it doesn't seem worth the rest to me, especially since 6 was already plenty awesome as it was (and reading this first would take away from seeing Rena go crazy for the first time there too anyway). As with Taraimawashi, I don't have much to say about this one except that it was loving grim. I wouldn't say it's the arc that depressed me the most or anything, since at this point the repitition and lack of mystery takes away from the emotional impact, but Keiichi and Rena murdering Mion while she kept apologizing over and over was still pretty brutal. So far these arcs feel like the inessential side content they are, but I'd still say they were good enough to be worth reading. I'm still hoping some of the future ones break through to feel a bit more like their own thing instead of reflections on what came before though. Edit: Remembered to read the TIPS that said not to read it until after Tsukotoshi, and yeah, Mion dying of "heart failure" immediately after saying the disaster was fake is another reason I think after 5 is too early. Edit 2: Okay I know I'm overthinking the reading order thing, but I guess it's kind of a tradeoff either way. You can either approach the core 8 as the sacred text that nothing else should interfere with and then feel like these two arcs are mostly filler that allow you to dip back into a world without mystery, or you can try to integrate them earlier when they'd be more meaningful and risk making some mysteries too easy before the answers are spelled out. I'd lean toward the former, but someone who's entering the Answer arcs feeling like they have no idea at all what's going on and thinking some more hints might be nice might enjoy these before reading 5-8? Like I said before though, I think most people will end up doing 1-8 first by default whether it's the ideal route for them or not. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Aug 1, 2020 |
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Aug 1, 2020 00:48
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I decided to start reading more of the console arcs for Higurashi now that Miotsukushi Ura's translation is finished, and I'm currently reading through Yoigoshi. I don't have a whole lot to say about it that's super plot relevant to the series as a whole other than Rika magically popping up in the future to help Mion (who I assume is actually Shion) do something having to do with the sword that was mentioned in part 8 I guess?, but as its own story I think it's interesting enough so far. There's one element that made me kind of uncomfortable though, which I've seen in other Japanese media when the people plan to kill themselves together. Even if it basically leads to grave robbing here, and the only character whose thoughts we're privy to deciding to bail on it, it's still presented in a kind of romantic light I feel with the nice weather and cheerful "see you on the other side" dialogue. Not that I've never seen suicide romanticized in American media, but I do feel like it's more common in Japanese media, and idk I find it both kind of compelling because it makes me feel something and also alarmed because it makes me feel something (though to be clear, that feeling isn't going to make me self harm or anything). Honestly it's not even a topic I'm super comfortable posting about here, but if anyone sees that and feels bad, at least it's a fair warning not to read the story. I don't know if I'll have more to say about this one later or not yet, but I'll check in with my thoughts on the more plot heavy console arcs when I get to them either way. Edit: Okay, I think there's also some culture shock and/or values changing over time (this originally released in 2004) over the way an abuse survivor is being presented as a monster for killing her abuser. Obviously the original story took the stance that killing Teppei was a super bad idea too, so it's not like I think it's wrong to suggest murder probably wasn't the best answer, it just feels like she's being blamed for enduring the abuse in the first place too, and the weird post-mortem thing where her abuser is like btw all you had to do was communicate and we both could have been happy is the cherry on top. The reversal right at the end where he apologizes for turning her into a murderer and says she deserves a happy life with someone else and btw he actually had accepted a new job that would have fixed all their problems just turns him into a loving martyr. I probably sound angrier than I actually am--I'm not trying to cancel Ryukishi07 or anything--it's just really jarring.Still enjoying the story overall, but it has the most 'uh....' reactions from me of any installment for sure. Edit 2: So the first issue got addressed with one of the suicides telling Otobe she wishes she hadn't killed herself and the other two wishing him the best with his life, so that's something. The whole talking to dead people thing still feels pretty out of place with the rest of the series though, right? I know Miotsukushi was written by someone else, so does anyone know if Ryukishi07 wrote this one or not? It feels pretty different from the other episodes. ( Final Edit: Hahaha, I guessed about Miyuki being Akasaka's daughter, but the part about her not having a boyfriend...because she had a husband was a mean joke. Poor Arakawa! My last thought on Towada turning herself in is that I'm more or less okay with that, since I think even a lot of abuse advocates would be like yeah that was clearly premeditated murder and not motivated solely by being in fear (plus she'd already confessed to a cop...), I just wish the deck hadn't been stacked so hard to make her wrong not just morally from a murder is not the answer standpoint but also in terms of the circumstances of the relationship. As for the talking to the dead thing, I guess that was Mion doing that? Still feels weird to me. The post-credits scene where Akasaka's wife got not-dead was cool, even if I don't really get why one of the bad timelines would get repaired like that. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Oct 11, 2020 |
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Oct 10, 2020 22:47
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I read Someutsushi from the Higurashi console arcs today, and the main thought I had was wondering how it would have read if I'd read it as an actual Question Arc before I read the main series Answer Arcs. There's not much mystery to what's happening or why since I did finish the whole main series, which obviously makes this less interesting, but I wonder if some of what happened here would have made the solutions to the main arc too obvious or if it just seems so since I know them already. In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing how the future installments tie in with the alternate ending to the series, and I appreciated that this felt more like a "real" Higurashi arc than Yoigoshi did.
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Oct 12, 2020 01:48
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Mangagamer hasn't mentioned Rei in a long time, but until they say otherwise everyone's still assuming they're working on it since their initial announcement at the start of all this did cover it. I'm pretty impatient to play Saikoroshi, both because people have said it quietly links Higurashi to Umineko (so I'm waiting for Saikoroshi to come out to play Umineko),and because people say it addresses some issues I had with Matsuribayashi. I started Kageboushi, but I'm making slow progress because I also started Danganronpa 2. In retrospect, I probably should have picked another time to get back into the Danganronpa series, because it really suffers in comparison to even the weaker Higurashi arcs imo, both in terms of humor (I'm not sure Danganronpa has ever made me legitimately laugh out loud, while Higurashi has multiple times) and obviously mystery/drama. That isn't to say twists in Danganronpa can't be interesting--there just isn't the same weight to any of it, despite the stakes involved. Of course the biggest difference in that Danganronpa actually has gameplay instead of just being a passive experience, but tbh I feel like a lot of the "gameplay" in Danganronpa can feel kind of tedious. I have a lot of distractions around me atm though, so I'll get back to Higurashi when I have the ability to focus a bit more.
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Oct 13, 2020 23:14
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I still have the rest of the console arcs to burn through, plus whatever games come out this fall that end up catching my interest, so I don't think waiting on Umineko is a huge burden so far. If there isn't any news in the earlyish part of next year I'll probably just go for it though.
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Oct 13, 2020 23:38
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I finished the main story in Danganronpa 2 today, and my primary takeaway, more than whether it was good or bad, is that it's basically more of the same. I know for a lot of people that's exactly what they wanted, but between playing the first game and 999 early this year, and the main arcs of Higurashi in between, I guess I'm feeling kind of jaded to the point where it didn't leave a particularly strong impression one way or the other. Obviously it's my own fault if I'm burning out on death games specifically or horror vns more generally, so I'm not blaming the game for all of that. I do wish it had differentiated itself from the original more, though I'm sure there are people who loved it the way it was and would have been annoyed if it had felt really different. I guess it's a tiny spoiler that the games are so similar given the initial premise in the prologue, but the Monokuma/death game reveal is both super early and super obvious, so I don't feel too bad about it. My actual spoiler thought is that the part between where the virtual reality stuff starts creeping in and the last trial is the part that stood out as its own thing the most, so I liked the presentation of the world getting increasingly hosed up in the school, even if the school segment itself was a super perfunctory lore dump. Back to repetition though, the boss being Junko again was probably the most boring choice possible, and I'm saying that as someone who likes her goofy mannerisms and everything. Oh, and fat Byakuya just being some weird copycat we never got to know beyond 'yeah that wasn't the real Byakuya' was a huge copout. I don't think I'll play Ultimate Despair Girls, but I can see myself watching 3. I'll probably get around to playing v3 someday too, but I think it's going to have to be at least a year from now, and not right after playing Umineko or anything so it has a chance to be judged on its own merits instead of in the shadow of something deeper/more serious.
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Oct 15, 2020 23:29
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Okay yeah maybe I won't watch the anime then, that sounds bad. I guess the main thing I was a little curious to see was what Junko and Mukuro were like in it, but it's probably not worth wasting a bunch of time watching a bad show to find out, especially if part of what makes it bad is characters having no depth. FWIW, I know saying it didn't leave a huge impression seems like a kind of negative review of 2, but I still binged through the game super fast, so obviously something was propelling me through it--I was genuinely interested in seeing what would happen and what interesting twists would show up in trials and all that. If I can get that and maybe feel some more novelty from it after taking more of a break for v3, I'll be happy. Played the what if light novel thing in 2 and hey there's some of my curiosity about Mukuro sated after all, that's convenient. I'm a sucker for what if stories, so this was kind of fun and didn't overstay its welcome. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Oct 16, 2020 |
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Oct 15, 2020 23:49
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No Wave posted:@Sinteres, given your criticism of 2 I think you'll be the kind of person who ends up liking V3. I had similar feelings about 2 except I loved Nagito and chapters 4+5 in general. The more I hear about it being divisive the more interesting it sounds to me, so I'm pretty optimistic. I still definitely need a break from horror VN for a while first though, so I don't feel so desensitized to the whole thing.
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Oct 16, 2020 18:33
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Back to Higurashi, I finished Kageboushi today, and I think Tomoe's death made me more emotional than any of the other deaths in the series, which was a real surprise for me since I wouldn't have guessed these console arcs would have that much of an impact given that they tend to be regarded as non-essential. I thought the game was being a bit gratuitous with the gruesome murders followed by Chisato's misery porn backstory, but holy poo poo did that pay off with the rooftop scene. Like I guess Chisato being able to reach Natsumi kind of takes away from the uniqueness of Keiichi being able to reach Rena in part 6 (also, probably not coincidentally, on a rooftop), but taking away from the uniqueness of the original protagonists is always a risk with expanding a story universe. The fairytale wedding at the end did feel super out of place though--I just don't think Toudou was enough of a character for it to feel earned. They were just high school crushes and she had a super unhealthy obsession with him that drove her to murder but hey love conquers all! Oh well, the meat of the thing was still great. So yeah, despite already knowing the answers to the broader mystery of the series as a whole, making this arc redundant to some extent, I thought this one was still really good, and imo justifies reading at least the advanced story sequence of the console arcs, though I do think the standalone ones were pretty non-essential. That said, while the flow chart says Kageboushi can be read after part 5 of the main story, I think reading it before some of the other parts would be a bad idea.
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Oct 17, 2020 18:44
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Higurashi Tokihogushi thoughts: This one was a bit slower and probably suffered a bit for having already given Natsumi a happy resolution in the previous installment (necessary since the disaster the led to her terminal symptoms won't happen in this timeline), though her scenes here were still highlights, but had an amazing payoff at the end with Minoe meeting Hanyu in the fragments world, so I'm satisfied and really looking forward to reading Miotsukushi to see if it can top Matsuribayashi, which I thought was one of the weaker arcs in the series. On the advice of the mod creator who ported the console arcs, I guess I'll start with Ura after I do the connecting fragments. I finished connecting fragments, and I felt like most weren't really big revelations this time, whereas I felt like the connecting fragments section of Matsuribayashi was still clarifying some things (maybe because I'm dumb), but there were a few that stood out. The one from a timeline where Shion killed Rika and disproved the queen theory so Hakano went crazy and killed Keiichi was cool, since it finally made her both being wrong about that and affected by Hinamizawa Syndrome explicit. The end fragment being an epilogue to Yoigoshi was unexpected, and I guess retroactively makes that story more worth reading in a way that's hard to convey to people who haven't already read it. Oh well. Seeing Minoe so regretful about solving the mystery too late to do any good (so late that she'd resolved to help cover it up!) was effective, so now I'm excited to see her get one last chance to make things right thanks to Hanyu. I think I enjoy reading these more on weekends when I have fewer distractions, so the plan is to wait until next weekend to start Miotsukushi, but it's possible my resolve will crack before then. On a related note, I know it's silly to be mourning before it's even over, but I'm a little sad that I'm approaching the end of available content for Higurashi now. Even just the original arcs were this enormous thing in front of me at one point, and now I've been through substantially more content than that, and it's going to be kind of a bummer when I'm caught up with what's out there. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Oct 18, 2020 |
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Oct 18, 2020 18:23
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Did anybody know about this game Iwaihime coming out on Friday? Apparently it was written by Ryukishi07. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1372300/Iwaihime/
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Oct 19, 2020 16:28
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I haven't finished it yet, and unless this wraps up quickly I think there's still a long way to go, but here are my thoughts on Miotsukushi Ura for Higurashi so far: The opening animation was awesome, and definitely made me hyped to play (this half of) this alternate ending to the series. Little Miyuki dunking on her parents and calling Tomoe an old lady was hilarious. Chisato's over the top declaration of love for Natsumi was also hilarious, and had big Keiichi talking to that baseball player about pervert poo poo energy. I know some people are pretty much just here for the murders and mystery and don't like the slice of life stuff as much, but I'm here for a story that can make me laugh before it makes me really sad. Some of both the school stuff and the police stuff felt pretty loving familiar and worn by this point though. Like how many times is Tomoe going to grudgingly accept her sister's creepy marriage? At least there was some comedy there too when Tomoe yells at the old man for telling her to write the last minute wedding invitations. One thing that felt a bit off is the way that Natsumi's demon came alive overnight, without the need for the disaster to take place, despite the deck seemingly being stacked in her favor this time. I get that the story tried to present it as her successes in fitting in and succeeding actually pushing her closer to despair as she relied more heavily on her ultimately harmful medicine to do those things, but it felt pretty contrived to me how being happy, (relatively) confident in herself, and having a better relationship with her friends and super-mentor turned out to actually be more dangerous than the alternative, or at least an accelerant. It's true that nobody actually died this time from her madness, but it required both Tomoe's physical intervention and flashbacks to another world, so basically a miracle. Maybe it's okay to feel like Natsumi's second redemption is anticlimactic since it's not actually the climax this time around, but it's definitely something we've already seen before, and her teen drama just isn't as compelling a trigger as most of the other motivations in this series, even with the medicine (and her sadsack backstory) being a contributing factor. All of that said, the payoff when everything started clicking together and Tomoe makes the connection with the medicine after the very effective scenes with Rena was awesome. Rena's grief at the cemetery was probably one of the saddest moments of the series, and the reader knowing Ozaki was dead during the whole drive there only made it more effective imo, because the anticipation of Rena finding out just builds the sadness. I don't think I had this impression in the earlier arcs, so I don't know if she got different animations this time or if it's just something I couldn't unsee once it occurred to me, but Tomoe's face looks like South Park animation to me when her eyes are closed and her mouth is moving. Edit: Adding more thoughts as I go: Tsukada not being a villain was a twist that got me. I guess he was such an obvious villain going back all the way to the first time he was introduced that I should have suspected it, but I fell for it anyway. The conversation suffered from some classic Higurashi overwriting though, and on that note, I also never want to read another conversation between cops where they discuss revenge vs justice. I appreciate the absurd length of this series, and think the good parts hit harder because of all the time setting things up, but sometimes I still have a pretty strong 'okay I get the point, let's move the gently caress on already' reaction to some of this stuff. I played some more, and yeah, I feel like this has fallen into a pretty deep lull. This series is at its best when it's about personal comedies and personal tragedies, and I think the investigation and political stuff just isn't really working for me this time, especially when characters like Tsukada start monologuing about their dead wives. Not having any cutaways to a character like Natsumi to mix it up at this point isn't helping either. Maybe I'm just in an impatient mood today, or maybe I should revise my opinion of the original ending upward now that I see that actually addressing the bigger picture of the people behind Takano can be kind of boring. I'm still expecting it to pick up again for the resolution, but I'm alt tabbing out a lot here in the meantime. At least I still have Omote to look forward to, and I think going back to those characters will be refreshing after this long arc that moved beyond them. Finished, and I'm realizing this review is way too long and self-indulgent, so apologies for that. Mixed feelings about cheering on a shitload of cops aside (though they're apparently police who aren't allowed to use guns even against armed criminals???), the moment when the whole station rallies behind Tomoe was loving awesome, and attacking a plane with a car was cool. The traitor detective also having a tragic backstory both tied to and representing a dark image of the Minai sisters' own backstory was more than a bit on the nose though, and the chief being both Tomoe's surrogate father and future brother in law is still super loving creepy. Despite those criticisms, the ending was still way better than everything after Rena left though. As for the epilogue, holy poo poo, Madoka explicitly thinks of the chief's hand as being old but reminding her of her father's hand, jfc. Ghost Nagisa was a little cheesy, but it was a nice moment I guess. Natsumi just getting an off-hand reference at the end instead of being part of the story again feels like a huge demotion for that character, but I guess she already got her happy ending (more or less) in Kageboushi's epilogue. tl;dr, I think this had both some of the best parts and some of the worst parts of the advanced story arcs, so I have pretty mixed feelings about it. Next weekend I'll read Miotsukushi Omote and see if I feel that one sticks the landing any better as an alternative to Matsuribayashi. One thing working in its favor is that I'm looking forward to getting back to Hinamizawa after spending so much time with characters outside it now. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Oct 25, 2020 |
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Oct 24, 2020 18:48
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The short version is that the console arcs were never announced as part of Mangagamer's plans, so 07th mod went ahead and translated most of them, with just a couple left now. Mangagamer initially announced that they'd be doing the Rei (and I think Hou) arcs after the finished the main 8, so 07th is waiting to see if that's still the plan before they take that on too.
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Oct 26, 2020 02:23
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Ryukishi's apparently writing a new kinetic novel for Key called Project Looper, which seems like a good fit. There's supposed to be an update of some sort on Ciconia on November 8th too, so hopefully it's good news. Between all that and the new Higurashi anime (which seems aimed at people who've finished the original series since things are different, if you haven't heard), he seems to be keeping pretty busy.
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Oct 26, 2020 14:39
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Warning people off of a game by the author of the most frequently discussed VNs in the thread if it does venture into uncomfortable territory seems pretty reasonable to me. I definitely have less interest in it now.
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Oct 29, 2020 17:12
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Okay I finished Higurashi Miotsukushi Omote, and here are my thoughts: Going back to slice of life nonsense in Hinamizawa was great. Among other things, the relatively serious/dull tone of Ura made going back to fun characters being silly more refreshing. The "misunderstanding" where the whole village showed up because they thought Mion was going to marry Keiichi was hilarious, especially with Shion egging it on, and I loved watching Mion turn into a stuttering wreck. Maybe the post-ending stuff in Rei already dealt with Keiichi and Rena and I just haven't seen that yet (I did take the ending of Matsuribayashi where it's mentioned that Mion will be graduating soon to possibly be leading in that direction), but it's still surprising that Higurashi "went there" with a relationship arc after all this time just hinting around it. In terms of the main plot, I think the biggest improvement from the original ending is just that there's so much more character service here, where it checks back in and improves on everyone's character development (except Rena, who had the big tearjerker scene in Ura that had more emotional impact than anything in this one imo, and RIka, who's a bit of a special case here) instead of just wrapping up the plot while taking that growth from previous installments for granted. I was a little concerned that Ura was going to make everything just sort of fall into place and feel anticlimactic, but Takano's madness kept her a threat long past the point where a rational enemy would have given up (even if the Mountain Dogs continuing to follow her makes no sense at all). Speaking of Ura, Natsumi and Tomoe's cameos were nice, and Natsumi's in particular gave her a bit of an epilogue that Ura failed to give her. I was pretty disappointed when it devolved back into the same shounen nonsense near the end as the original ending, with the trap stuff (some of which I think may have been literally copy/pasted over) and Keiichi and Rika dodging bullets with their fighting spirit, but that seems to have been the stuff that was most directly in both versions of this ending, so I guess Ryukishi feels pretty strongly about it. The elephant in the room is the occultation of Rika Furude by the coward Hanyuu. It's my understanding that this was something that changed even between the PS2 version of Miotsukushi and the split version here in Omote, and I feel like if Hanyuu had sacrificed herself to give Rika this opportunity (and unlock people's memories with the messages and everything) to start with instead of sacrificing herself at the end to save Takano of all people (and on that note, this story working to redeem her and Tomitake and Irie still feels wrong to me--like even without Takano's madness, Irie was basically doing Nazi experiment poo poo when he vivisected the murderer in the first year, and for the others the bio-weapon poo poo was always part of the plan even if it wasn't originally meant to be deployed against the village). Getting more of Hanyuu's perspective on how she feels about Rika and the guilt she has for forcing her to relive this nightmare over and over was nice, but Rika being a passive observer stuck outside most of the finale was a weird choice. All in all, I still have some of the same issues I had with the original ending, but I think this one still blows the other one away in terms of characterization, so it's a full upgrade for me. Probably the only advantage I see in Matsuribayashi is that it can be read without the Advanced Story Arc and that the Rika situation isn't as weird. Otherwise I might even be inclined to suggest people skip straight to this ending after Minagoroshi instead of planning to read both. It's a weird feeling finally being caught up on translated material for this loving enormous story. I'm still looking forward to reading more stuff as it's translated, but I'm also relieved to have a natural stopping point here while I wait. The new anime is doing a pretty good job of scratching that itch in the meantime too.
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Oct 30, 2020 14:56
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That's true, losing the connecting fragments would be a huge loss, and Takano's backstory so yeah it really isn't an adequate replacement and I was wrong to think of it in those terms given that fact. Maybe right after 1-7 some of the added characterization might feel more repetitive than it did to me after the detour through the advanced story arcs, but I don't think it's fully redundant since I think it continues to build on what came before and break new ground. I think Mion in particular needed the additional time to shine, since even the arcs most about her were more about her sister. I know the original ending did try to highlight her more with beating up Okonogi and everything, but it's not the same. I think Satoko getting a moment to accept her past and move beyond it that doesn't involve being a martyr while Shion's torturing her to death or just allowing herself to be saved from Teppei is a clear improvement on her arc too.
Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Nov 1, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 15:21
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I'm going to have to so many VNs to read when the Chaos Head Noah translation is finally done.
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Nov 2, 2020 17:42
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