I think we’ve reached the dumpster fire stage at this point with Sotsu. In truth we probably reached it a good while ago. But the morbid curiosity keeps me coming back, and even modestly entertained a good chunk of the time. Part of it is seeing Higurashi turned on its head in the fashion its happening here, albeit quite clumsily. Mostly though it’s just seeing how far Ryukishi is going to take this clusterfuck, which is already way out past where the power lines stop.
One thing I find totally hilarious is how Tatariakashi-hen pretty much blows up everything that happened in Tataridamashi-hen. The entire spectacle with Keiichi and the CWS was a farce – they got the whole damn thing all wrong. And the ending of that arc was a misdirection too, as it’s pretty clear things between Teppei and K1 didn’t play out the way Keiichi says they did. Presumably it was Satoko who hit K1 with the bat – who else could it have been, really – and he unreliable narrator-ed the rest of it.
It’s interesting to me that Teppei – Teppei of all people – became not just the most compelling character in Gou–Sotsu but probably the most sympathetic. It just goes to show the power of a redemption story. This dude has done a shitload of terrible things, and the series is full of characters who’ve basically never done anything wrong. But it’s Teppei’s past – the fragility and sheer unlikeliness of his current existence – that gives his arc more dramatic traction and realism that any of them. He transcended being a caricature and became a character in a way most of this cast never has.
That, I think, is why it was Teppei who drove Satoko over the edge and not all the terrible things she was doing to her supposed friends. Teppei’s stubborn refusal to betray her – or himself – was a repudiation of everything this version of Satoko is living for. I can’t say I’m crazy about the whole plot device of splitting Satoko into two halves – call them her witch self and her human self. If that’s used as a crutch to get her to a redemption arc she hasn’t earned (“blame it all on the witch!”) I’ll be pretty pissed off. Even if it’s not, the whole thing is kind of lazy and dumb.
Satoko, is, in effect, the archetypical Buddhist hungry ghost. She was corrupted by something which seems positive – her love for Rika – because exactly what Buddhist teaching warns us will happen, happened. That is, it turned possessive – which is why attachment for anything in the physical world (even other people) is seen as an obstacle to enlightenment. So she’s doomed to return to the mortal realm over and over, living a cycle of violence and pain, and causing trauma to all those she left behind. I can’t say I’m rooting for her to reach Nirvana, but it should at least be interesting to see how Ryukishi tries to write his way out of this.
