I don’t have much of an idea what just happened, and even less idea what’s going to happen next.  That’s kind of a fun place to be with Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou, but sometimes it’s nice for stuff to make sense too.  I guess if anything this franchise in anime form comes down to striking that balance.

• Oonishi’s behavior was odd throughout this arc (even for him), but if we’re to take the ending (Rena’s version of it) at face value, that was quite a left field development.
• Especially given his threat to Keiichi about “making enemies” it doesn’t make sense to me he’d do what Rena said he did.
• Uncle Ken – I forgot he existed.
• Is it me, or do both Ma and Grandma Sonozaki have the hots for K1?
• Could there be a bigger tragedy flag in Higurashi than someone saying “we won”?

So what the hell did happen?  We have a number of things that seem disputable to me:

• Was Teppei really at the Hojou house, or was that part of a Hinamizawa Syndrome delusion by Keiichi?
• If things really happened the way Rena said, why did she see Satoko killed?
• Did Satoko invite Keiichi back to her house as a trap, and the whole Teppei thing never happened (this seems the least unlikely scenario to me, though still not totally logical).
• In that vein, was the seemingly gratuitous Satoko shower scene included to show that there were no visible signs that Teppei was abusing her?
• If Teppei really was there, how did he get away?  Did the police release him, on Ooishi’s instigation?  Did he escape when Ooishi flipped out (if he did)?

In any event, we have another arc where K1 survives but wakes up with head injuries, making his recollections suspect.  This seems to be part of a trend (as is the fact that I haven’t had a comment on a Higurashi post since November!).  Now things could get really weird, as the next arc is called “Nekodamashi-hen”.  This is the first time a Gou arc isn’t riffing on the name of an original one, which implies that it will also be the first not to take an existing plotline and tweak it but instead give us a completely new one.  I certainly don’t remember there being any cat-centric arcs in the original version, anyway.