So that whole 30+ episodes thing?  It does turn out to be true, but it’s taking a little different form than first reported.  Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou is actually a split cour (of sorts) with the sequel airing in July – though that run with be called “Sotsu”.  I don’t know if it will be two cours like Gou or (more likely) one, but it may not be such a bad thing.  Higurashi is pretty intense to run for three straight seasons, which it’s never done – I think a break is beneficial even if the last few eps weren’t the torrent of existential abuse some of the earlier ones were.

We certainly go into that final season knowing more than we did even one week ago.  And the most important thing resolved this week is that Satoko is indeed a full-on sociopath at this point.  If there’s going to be a redemption arc for her it’s going to be a hard sell, because she’s proved herself to be a pretty craven and vile human being in the end.  Some traumatized VN fans are trying to pass it off as her being a full-on L5 Hinamizawa Syndrome case, but I call BS on that – this is all her.  She’s not doing this under the influence of HS, she’s doing it because she’s a bad seed.

As someone who never especially liked Satoko as a character or a person, none of this especially bothers me – I admit I never saw her as the straight-out final boss she appears to be, but it doesn’t strike me as out of character.  At the risk of sounding a little pretentious (if I tried to get insurance against that risk the premiums would be more than my salary) I think Satoko’s new arc can be seen as a kind of Buddhist parable (which is much in-character for Higurashi).  Possessiveness is at the heart of so many sufferings in Buddhism – not merely materialism, but to those we love.  It’s only through the release of this impulse that one can attain enlightenment under Buddhist teachings, and Satoko basically represents the antithesis of that.

So effectively we have Satoko as a living “hungry ghost” (one of the most terrifying elements of Buddhist folklore).  And indeed she is a sort of ghost in this scenario, living a timeless existence forever at a remove from the plane all of her associates live on.  It’s ironic that her existence (thanks to Featherine Eua) can have a net positive effect on those around her.  It’s reformed both Teppei and Takano, who have both been pretty awful people in every previous arc of the series.  A better person than Satoko might see this is a noble purpose in being a looper, but she sees it – and them – only as a tool to facilitate her obsession.

In the end Satoko is interested only in one thing, and one person.  Whatever she has to do and whoever she has to destroy to win is, in her own metaphor, just the raw material for the stock.  And H173, which she obtains after Takano betrays her bosses and declines to use on Tomitake-san. H173 gives Satoko the ability to exert a tragedy wherever and upon whoever she likes, doing so as she sees fit to create a reality where Rika belongs to her.  She rationalizes all this by declaring to Eua that all those other realities don’t exist – they’re illusions, the only true reality being the one she creates from the raw materials those tragedies give her.  And I think we can assume she’s responsible for all of the tragedies in Gou’s earlier arcs.

Satokowashi-hen certainly didn’t make me like Satoko, but it did make her more interesting to me than in any earlier Higurashi storylines.  I certainly think the next cour is fraught with potential pitfalls for the character and the story as a whole, but as a standing entity I think Gou worked quite well.  It didn’t merely rehash earlier Higurashi storylines with minor tweaks – it took things in some genuinely new directions both stylistically and materially.  I could have done without the orgy of torture porn in the middle that almost made me drop the series, but apart from that I’m quite satisfied with this refresh of the franchise – more so, it seems, than most veterans of the VN are.  We’ll see how we both feel after Sotsu gets its turn.