I quite like Higurashi no Naku Koro ni as a franchise.  Some incarnations have certainly been better than others and at its best, I would never say it was a masterpiece – but I like it.  Still, it’s always been so over-the-top in terms of horrible things happening that they (for me at least) lack a certain emotional impact.  And I don’t think that’s totally unintentional – like many horror stories I think this one is supposed to be fun on some level.

The odd thing is that what’s happening now, mundane as it is, is more viscerally disturbing to me than all that other grandiloquent grandstanding.  We’re just watching an endless stream of petty meanness for its own sake – someone taking great pleasure in using other people’s affection for her as a weapon to cause them pain.  What’s happening with Teppei is wrong on a much more real level than all the Hinamizawa Syndrome silliness, for example.  This is just a screw-up who found the decency inside himself and is trying to make amends being used as a tool.  And making light of that really feels wrong on a different level than most Higurashi atrocities do (because it is so mundane).

There is a certain macabre interest in watching all this play out – in the idea that the entire Satoko-CWS arc was a complete fabrication on her part.  I see where Ryukishi07 would have had a lot of fun writing Tatariakashi-hen, because it’s like he’s trolling the audience and even himself in a sense.  But the problem is that in order for this arc and indeed for Sotsu to exist, Satoko has to be completely over-the-top evil.  And frankly, that’s really boring from a character standpoint.  The red eyes, the scary music, the maniacal laughter – yes, we do get it.

In point of fact the most interesting part of this ep was probably Eua-sama remarking on all this, because in showing that Ryukishi is effectively acknowledging the flaw in this whole concept.  But as interesting as that is, it doesn’t really tell us anything about how he intends to address it.  What’s the endgame here?  If the goal was to make me hate Satoko he’s certainly accomplished that (though since I was never a fan it admittedly wasn’t that hard).  But then what?  A redemption is going to be an impossible sell.  Rika revenge arc?  That would be a hard sell for different reasons.  This whole premise has been an interesting experiment, but I don’t see any way of ending it that would really justify its existence in the first place.