Introduction
Meet Keiichi, a normal kid who transferred to the small town of Hinamizawa in 1983 with his mother and father. Hinamizawa, with a population of 2,000 is like most small towns: quiet, tight-knit, and just a little foreboding. Like David Lynch in his TV series "Twin Peaks," Higurashi explores the ups and downs of life in small towns--with a healthy suspicion towards the smiles and pleasantries of the townspeople. Although an outsider, Keiichi Maebara quickly gets used to attending a single class with students from different grade levels, hanging out with his friends after school, and being kills every four episodes. What does the history of Hinamizawa have to do with Keiichi's new friends? And what's so special about Keiichi in the first place?
First Impressions
So far, I've only seen the first eight episodes. I watched about six with the boyfriend and the last two by myself after he went to sleep. I first heard about Higurashi from my younger sister, who claimed it was at times deceiving and disturbing. Deciding to decide these things for myself, I begin my journey into Higurashi via YouTube. I was surprised to see that Higurashi didn't waste any time intriguing and startling its audience. In the first few seconds of the first episode, the main character is frantically hitting a dead girl's body repeatedly with a metal baseball bat. And then the deception begins.
My boyfriend is not an anime fan, so when I tried to get him to watch Higurashi with me (since I spend so much time watching his shitty 1950's Sci-Fi/Horror B-movies), he was skeptical. The characters' huge, wet eyes and big hair didn't make a good case for horror. But the
more episodes I played, the more intrigued he became, realizing that the series is creepy for that very reason. It sets the audience up for the typical, annoying harem anime in the style of shows like Tenchi Muyo or Love Hina, and then gives every character some suspicious, seemingly supernatural alterior motives for befriending the beloved Keiichi. You'd think he was the only teenage boy in town.I really didn't think I would be scared by this show, but once I could hear the boyfriend snoring at the other side of the room, I knew I was left to my own devices. Go ahead. Watch Higurashi on your own. It's surprisingly good at sending chills right down your spine. Just like that feeling you get when you walk into an empty basement or attic, no faint electric buzzing or distant traffic noises to give you comfort of the outside world. Your isolation sends you into a mild panic, your heart skipping a few beats and the sound of your breathing suddenly audible. Trying not to give into the fear, you don't turn around when you hear a creak at the door.
That is what Higurashi does to you.
So, what the hell is Higurashi no Naku Koro ni all about? Well, I don't know. After eight episodes I do know that it shifts between what seem to be different dimensions, or different versions of mysterious deaths that follow the Cotton Drifting Festival. (If you'v ever read the Clue mystery series, it's similar to that; each few episodes is a different scenario surrounding the same concept and involvinf the same characters.) Each year, someone is killed and someone else disappears. The people of the village think these occurrences are to appease their resident demon Oyashiro; but one detective believes the deaths and disappearances have something to do with Keiichi's cute new friends.
||Spoilers||
In the fourth episode, after being harassed by Rena and Mion for the first three for getting involved with a detective investigating the murders surrounding the Cotton Drifting Festival, Keiichi is injected with a mystery substance that causes him to black out. When we see Keiichi again, he's beating the already-dead bodies of the young women. He writes a final note, and tapes it to the back of a clock for someone to find. He gets to a payphone to call Detective Oishi, claiming he is being chased by the demon Oyashiro and refusing to turn around to look at him. But before Detective Oishi can get a patrol car out to him, Keiichi is dead. He apparently clawed at his own neck until he reached an artery.
The next four episodes involve a crush. Mion's crush for Keiichi. The audience finds out a lot of strange things about Keiichi's green-haired friend. For one thing, we find out that Mion has a twin sister names Shion who lives in a different house, in a different part of town. Even the rest of Mion's friends have never heard of nor seen her before. We are also reminded of the Yakuza connection of Mion's family. It seems they played a major roll in trying to keep the city from literally going under water when developers tried to replace Hinamizawa with a river. As the older sister, Mion is next in line to be the head of the family. Although it seemed that this (in addition to the twins' crush on Keiichi) would be the cause of Shion's strange behavior, it's actually Mion who hates her younger sister, keeping her captive in the basement of her house where all sorts of ancestral torture tools are stored.
The cause of Mion's hatred for Shion is not completely explained, but Mion claims she has the demon of Oyashiro in her soul, and must kill. In the first four episodes, I assumed that both Rena and Mion were possessed by Oyashiro for some reason, but in the proceeding four episodes, Rena helped Keiichi solve part of the mystery. What has not yet been explained, is why Keiichi should be involved in any of this. Why does Keiichi have to die? Because he gets too close to the mysterious deaths of yesteyear? Because he's an outsider?
Detective Oishi's role is the mystery is also a little suspicious.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higurashi_no_Naku_Koro_ni
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=6134
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/higurashi/when-they-cry/gn-1
