It’s a new route for Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou, and that means a return to slice-of-life and comedy. Even after all these years the transitions between the bloody arc finales and the subsequent intro episodes have never stopped feeling awkward to me. But that’s how this works, given that Higurashi is not only a VN adaptation but a time loop as well, more or less. And the seeds for the horrors to come are always planted in these innocuous openers.
Again we’re talking about a theoretically new chapter in “Tataridamashi-hen”, the usual pattern for Gou. But it seems to be following the rough outline of “Tatarigoroshi-hen”, the Satoko-centric arc in the old anime. I don’t remember most of the details but I do recall it aired somewhere around this time in the chronology. While there are already some things that are different from what I remember (like Shion showing up this early), the spine of the arc appears to be similar. Which is to say, Satoko has had it pretty rough.
Satoko was never my favorite character in Higurashi – a little of her goes a long way, which is probably why “Tataridamashi-hen” wasn’t one of my favorite arcs. The essence of her story revolves around her older brother Satoshi, about whom the agreed-upon fiction is that he ran away from home after the death of their parents during the Wataganashi Festival. But the real truth is that he fulfilled the “disappeared” part of the curse. As if all this isn’t bad enough for Satoko she also has an abusive (in more ways than one this time, it seems) uncle named Teppei, who turns up like a bad penny at the end of the episode.
Satoko seeing Keiichi as a surrogate Nii-Nii is a natural enough development I suppose, though there’s never enough build-up to it to give it real emotional heft. That’s coming, to be sure. Also involved in the story for the first time in the reboot is Dr. Irie, who we meet as the coach of the little league Hinamizawa Fighters (who Satoko seems to play for without a uniform). Everyone will have figured out by now that nothing and no one in Hinamizawa are as they seem, but we’ll get to the other stuff with Irie in good time. For now he’s just a creepy doofus who first says he wants to marry Satoko and then says he wants to adopt her.
