Even for a show as dark and violent as Higurashi, this week’s ep was pretty out there.  It was towards a purpose obviously, as this outing had a very specific goal to accomplish in narrative terms and not much time to do it.  But damn, there were certainly no punches pulled here.  There reaches a certain point where anime violence is so grotesque that it becomes sort of comical, and I think this episode reached it for me by the end (something I only remember happening once or twice in all the earlier incarnations of Higurashi).

There was a lot of stuff here which I have absolutely no recollection of from those earlier incarnations, which leads me to believe it’s attached to some other part of the Higurashi universe like the original VNs or manga/novels – that or totally original of course.

• The whole mahjong thing was new to me, and did a good job suggesting this was going to be a very different sort of ep than it ended up being.
• The only “Tsubamegaeshi” I was aware of was a famous sword move, but Google-sensei tells me it actually is a mahjong thing too.  Who knew (certainly not me).
• Akasaka is obviously someone emotionally significant for Rika, but I don’t recall him playing a particularly significant role in earlier versions of the anime.
• Akasaka being the one to betray Rika thanks to L5 (one down, four to go) was a real blow to her psyche (a recurring theme this week).
• Sonozaki-san and Kimeyoshi were almost routine compared to what came before and after.
• Keiichi’s L5 cycle was especially ugly and brutal.  One of the most disturbing (and then unintentionally – ? – comic) of the entire franchise.
• I know we’ve seen St. Lucia Academy before – Shion goes there – but if I’m not mistaken I think this was the first anime reference to Rika also attending at some juncture in some reality.

The whole point of this exercise, internally and externally, was to break down Rika’s state of mind.  And these encounters were so effective at doing so that it suggests a guiding hand, someone toying with her – perhaps the other looper Hanyu hinted at last week.  Hinamizawa Syndrome wasn’t even bothering with the festival here, just randomly showing up to hit Rika where it really hurt.  With only one of her promised 5 rolls of the dice left, next week definitionally has to be a more substantial loop, and seems likely to take us closer to what’s really going on in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou.