Where do we start. We don’t exactly remember how we found it but we think everything changed when we accidentally stumble upon an anime called Elfen Lied in 2008-ish. From there we started watch Top Gore/Deaths in anime videos and of course Higurashi was there.We then followed that up with search for Higurashi gore and we believe the top or first clip we saw was the one of Shion killing Satoko in their family’s underground torture area. If not it would have been the scene of Rika being drugged by Shion and killing her via knife to the neck.
We want to say this was sparked by temporarily waning interest in watching slice-of-life-y type of animes like Lucky Star, Haruhi, Ranma, etc. On the other hand, animes like Maburaho & Majikano bucked that trend as their tones were geared more toward teenagers. However we wanted to watch something with actual depth and boy did we get it.
After jumping in and watching the first arc also known as Onikakushi-hen, we remember being like “the main characters are dead, how can there be 20 or so more episodes?” We got hooked not even knowing we won’t get the answer until the next season.
As
we went on and binged the entire series, there were only more questions, questions that would have more clarity in another medium that we’ll discuss later on. After finishing the original we discover Kai, Rei and eventually Umineko and you better believe we watched those.
As our high schooler friends will tell you, this is when we were at peak “otaku4lyfe”, so we’d often search for ways to access the original Japanese site of our favorite animes. So when we found this site called oyashirosama.com, we made it our homepage as it kept us up to date of things we could never buy and would have to wait to be translated if ever. It’s still our homepage to this day despite not being updated in years. In recent years, we’d also go on to follow higurashianime.com as well as Ryukishi07 main site though we check that one very infrequently nowadays.
It was a whole other story when we learnt of the live action movies. We were honestly surprised it got the live action treatment but Higurashi really pop off in Japan a few years prior. While the movie did a great service to many of the themes in the anime, we recall watching them and remember being kinda a purist/elitist saying things like:
Why aren’t they wearing colored wigs styled after the characters?
Even if we let that slide, you could have at least afford to replicate their outfits from the anime.
Aw, “X” scene would have been cool to see, why did they do it? It doesn’t seem that hard.
Ultimately, we enjoyed them for what they were. Also if it wasn’t clear this is where we tried to seem edgy at school by watching gory and/or depressing anime like Corpse Party, Bokurano, Kannazuki no Miko and the aforementioned Umineko.
Now time for our biggest regret regarding that other “medium ” we were talking about. Not following the Visual Novel that had been translated at the time. So much of the story can only be experienced in those and the myriad of side games. Many characters that would appear in more definitive sequels like Hou were characters we should have known about had we read and followed their stories years prior.
Granted they were mostly untranslated at the time but there were some translations in the works. At this point, we were still learning kana so going the untranslated route was out of the question. Not to mention we were only making enough money via yard cutting to support our Wii/DS addiction. Funny enough, thanks to sites like Gendou, we had access to a lot of the games/VN’s OST and we fell in love with most of what we found there. Some of our favorites being Ienai Kotoba, All Alone, Super Scription of Data, Sono Saki Ni Aru, Dareka No Egao No Tame Ni & Dear you Destructive. Naturally we really loved both the OPs/EDs of both Ni & Kai. We also fell in love with fan-created songs like “Oyashiro-sama Hates Me, Too” & “Oyashiro’s Curse“. We have compiled a more thorough list below. While compiling songs, we became overwhelmed with nostalgia for the simpler days of the later 2000’s and being free of all responsibilities outside of school and chores. Music truly is powerful.
Touching Higurashi OST
![S.A.G.A. ~Rinne no Hate ni~ [English Subbed]](https://i0.wp.com/img.youtube.com/vi/IsnYFknBfxU/maxresdefault.jpg?w=650)
Well that would change as we would go on to attend A-kon at the Sheraton in 2009 and not only founds some Higurashi cosplayers but also the Season 1 DVD which we wish we didn’t buy there since they were marked up to $20 a disc. Cut us a break, it was one of our first Kons and we guess we were running on raw emotion or adrenaline. Along with the picture below we thought we also had a picture of a Rena cosplayer from a most likely different A-kon but can’t locate it. It will be added if found.
From time to time since graduating high school in 2010, we’d revisit the original anime with the most memorable being watching the first movie on Youtube with our Japanese host mother back in 2015-16. There was a live action TV drama we heard about back in 2016 but we’ve been unable to find it anywhere let alone subbed despite our adept net-sleuthing skills. One Day…
As time went on we did the smart thing and didn’t buy any of the translated VN’s by the likes of MagnaGamer etc. Reason, well anyone familiar with the series knows how much time you have to sink into the arcs to fully grasp some of the other overarching plot points. Something we wouldn’t mind tackling but don’t have the same free time like we had back in high school. Ah how it’s all come full circle.
Not only that we were also into Umineko; which if we recall is around 100 hours long; which is still quite a distance from Higurashi in its entirety. We mean, look at that chart, in a few years, it will spiderweb even more. On second thought, even with all we had going on in high school, there’s no way we’d be able to tackle both series in their entirety. It’s a pipe dream but we hope to sit down and get through not only the entirety of Higurashi & Umineko but even Ciconia and Higanbana no Saku Yori Ni.
Now in 2018, we went to Japan for a third time and bought Higurashi Hou in Japanese literally a day or two prior to returning to America. This was to both aid in our Japanese; which had gotten rusty; and to have a hard copy of the game on Switch; though in retrospect, we love to have found the Collecter’s Edition like how we did with our Umineko Switch port in 2021.
While it contains more arcs from other games in a more complete package, our comprehension isn’t that strong and fans have actually translated quite a bit of those arcs in patch form so yeah…
Also this goes doubly for Umineko which we need to get back to. That series is a whole nother can of worms. e.e
As 2021 rolled around there were two big releases; the first was a more complete Umineko VN released on the Switch in Japanese and the second was the premiere of Higurashi Gou which we enjoy for what is was.
As of writing this, Sotsu has recently started airing but we think we’ll hold off and binge it like what we did with Gou. With that, this post in complete and if we have any more to add in reflection in a few years or a decade or two. We will simply make a part 2 and link the two articles. Thank you for all the great memories Higurashi and Ryukishi07, as of today its been 13 years since we discovered you. Here’s hoping the series keep going strong and evermore perplexing.
Post watching Sotsu reflection: Those we finished the series months ago, we’re updated this post with how we felt about Sotsu. Sotsu was kinda half-in-half, the first half did the usual explain how Satoko knew about the trick present for her birthday and the dynamic between Rika/Hanyuu and Satoko/Eua. The second half however felt kinda a mess between both party exhibiting supernatural abilities outside of the own loopers naturally have and the weird torture scene of Hanyuu and age-regression of Eua. The final scene redeemed it for the most part as the 2 friends go there separate ways despite holding on to some amount of their looper abilities. We’re writing this on May 30th, 2022 as we are updating older pages using additional editing tools we didn’t have when we first wrote this article so our memory is kinda fuzzy on the series but this is how we remember it.
Higurashi is in our Top 5 NostalgiAnime alongside Maburaho and a few others we may get around to later.
