All in all this latest incarnation of Higurashi (bucketing Gou and Sotsu in together) has taken the franchise in some interesting directions.  It’s certainly stumbled this cour, as rehashing events in these answer arcs seems pretty pointless.  But yes, there have been some twists.  Nothing to compare to Houjou Teppei being the single biggest reason why Sotsu is still watchable and not only that, becoming probably its most sympathetic character.  I certainly wouldn’t have placed a bet on that going in.

Indeed, I would say that this episode was quite compelling at times, and that’s all down to Teppei.  Say what you want about Ryukishi and his penchant for yanking characters around, but Teppei’s repentance seems to be totally genuine.  Not only is he trying to make amends to Satoko, but he’s actually owning his past sins.  Realistic or not for a total lowlife like him to reform like this (I mean it does happen in rare cases), for me at least it’s far more impactful than most Higurashi twists because it’s so grounded in reality.  There’s no magic, no conspiracy involved here – just a loser trying to do better in a very halting and clumsy manner.

The thing is, it almost seemed for a moment there as if Satoko was feeling a whisker of remorse for the way she’s grinding Teppei in her mill.  There were more than a few viewers who took her fit at school to be genuine but I never doubted it was an act (and not all that good of one either, though good enough in the moment).  But I’m sure she doubted Teppei’s sincerity at the very least, as most in her position would, and she’s being forced to confront the fact that he’s being genuine.  And he is her only relative to boot.  She’s awful, evil – but if there’s any scrap of decency left in her, she’d sure as hell feel guilty over what she’s doing to her uncle.

Teppei’s transformation has complicated things for her if nothing else.  Burning the house down trying to stir fry and possibly killing Satoko in the process would scupper her whole operation, for starters.  And then getting Ooishi-san involved (which was the truest measure of Teppei’s sincerity) forced her to improvise.  Ooishi is no fool – left to his own devices he might have seen through Satoko’s machinations pretty easily.  So she knocks the two of them out (I guess she was keeping mickey ingredients handy for such an emergency) and infects Ooishi-san with HS.  And we know how that ends up.

The reverse engineered explanation for what’s going to happen is apparently that Ooishi decides to set up Teppei as the next curse victim, thus allowing Ooishi to catch the real culprits in the act.  That, of course, will go disastrously wrong – much to Eua’s amusement.  And speaking of her, maybe I misread the situation but it struck me that there was someone in the “room” with Eua, and that it wasn’t Satoko (who she was observing).  When she says “our” does she just mean Satoko and herself – or is there another being involved here?  If so I have my suspicions about who it might be..

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