In my eyes, the absolute worst part of Sotsu was the false equivalence it made at the end between Rika's and Satoko's flaws. Sure, Rika had been selfish in the way she treated Satoko at St. Lucia, but Satoko straight-up murdered their friends multiple times and physically and psychologically tortured Rika to force her to stay with her -- after she had personally witnessed her century of pain and torment. And yet the show doesn't have Rika totally devastated or furious or with Satoko for that. They just fight each other DBZ style shouting about studying and shit. Then at the end, Satoko never even apologizes for all the evil shit she did. She never even shows any signs of remorse. All of the other characters were reduced to pawns whose lives are apparently totally disposable. It was absolutely galling and I hated it. It spat in the face of everything I loved about the original.

Sotsu really let me down... it took everything I loved in Higurashi and just stomped on it, I just hate it.

My biggest problem is that Satoko's motivation isn't credible. She resents the fact that she's incapable of keeping up with the pace in Rika's desired school, so she flips out and decides to spend however many thousands of years it takes to break Rika emotionally. Apart from moral considerations it would simply be _easier_ to spend a fraction of that time studying to the point where she could become the top student in the entire school if she so wished. Torturing her best friend doesn't even _benefit_ her.

SOTSU wouldn’t have been so bad if they had done these 3 points: 1. Completely redone/new scenes giving more context with extra information that helps expand the story as a whole. Basically give us a bunch of new scenes like they did in episodes 1-2 or SOTSU. 2. Added a new plot point that not even Satoko could have caught onto. I’m talking about the club members remembering the events of every tragic/traumatic fragment that had happened between each and every character. Rena could have been the first that this could have happened to since she was the first one to be injected. She could have observed everything that happened in arc 2 and subtly convince herself that after each arc this is actually for real and Satoko must be stopped. The gun scene could have made Mion remember getting shot and even Rena for witnessing it. A better way of going about episode 17 was for them to all approach Rika when she comes out of her shrine and tell her everything that happened. Then they could all work on a plan to make her show her true self and work on avoid tragedy while getting answers as to why.

What angered me the most is that they basically portrayed Satoko and ESPECIALLY Rika as characters who learnt literally nothing from Kai. At one point, Satoko and Rika fight over St Lucia, and Keiichi and Rena approach them, asking if they want help in sorting it out. Rika rejects them and says something along the lines of "I don't think you really can help". It made me so angry because it just felt like everything Rika learnt about being all together to make a miracle happen went completely to waste.

I'm glad someone else believes connecting Higurashi to Umineko makes them both worse. It felt to me like this story only existed to fit his need to turn Satoko into Vier or Lambda or whoever else. In the process he completely failed to tell a story that actually said anything about the character of Satoko at all.

My least favorite part was how satoko was literally let off the hook for treating her friends like shit and literally TORTURING Rika. It angered me so much how her character just got redeemed so fast without any retribution. It wasn’t earned at all, if anything, it just made me hate satoko’s character. And it’s sad because she was one of my favorites in the original 2006 version.

Honestly, from the moment where Satoko had seen Rika’s 100 years of suffering and was just like “yeah, Imma use this against her”, Satoko just kinda lost me. Like, from the moment her role was revealed I was wondering “what will her reaction be to Rika’s suffering” and the series really just slapped me in the face. You’d think seeing Rika and the rest of their friends suffer for that long would bring some kind of emotions from Satoko, who SHOULD care for them just as much, but nah she’s just gonna use it all against Rika with no conflicting feelings or anything.

I initially though that satoko after seeing rika's fragments started to believe that rika was only using her friends to try to escape her curse and then leave hinamizawa. Then satoko feeling betrayed started torturing rika. I was expecting some type of more profound explanation to justify satoko's motive. But in the end it was only "I HaTe sTUdYinG". Truly disappointing.

Rika tries reaching out over and over again, Satoko rejects it spitefully because it isn't good enough, and then she makes that Rika's problem. As if Rika needed to grovel and beg her to hang out. Bro, if your friend is making absolutely ALL the effort in the relationship and you're making 0 effort and being a massive burden, of course they're going to ditch you. This whole premise was so unreasonable, and it ruined Satoko for me entirely. She used to just be a cute kid, now she's actively the worst. She crossed the moral event horizon by miles and she ain't coming back around for me.

Honestly after a while with gou I started to get bored with this for the repetitiveness and distance between each episode. Which was sad because the og anime was very compelling and had me hooked. Also nice job ! ! ! The video editing was fantastic and there was really good points in it.

I remember in the show they made a big point to say that with every new timeline, people would start to remember more so I thought that, you know, the entire gang would end up remembering what happened and that thought only grew when I saw them in the sotsu opening. But like- they didn’t. It was mainly just a device used to have Teppei be nice to Satoko.

This version of Higurashi was actually my first iteration of the series and your points pretty much hit the mark as to how I felt watching it for the first time. The only real thing that kept me going for sotsu was just that ending clip from gou but I still ended up skipping a lot of points in the episodes since they just kinda dragged on. The big dragon ball fight sequence after all of it just felt so lackluster too after all of that buildup. I ended up just looking up a lot of stuff after the series ended since there were so many points that didn’t really make sense to me on my first watch. You’ve got a great video here man and I hope it gets more traction in the future

The worst thing for me is that THEY JUST SHOW SATOSHI FOR 10 SECONDS STRAIGHT

Two big problems I had with it: 1.) What made Higurashi interesting to me not just the horror, but the mystery of what was going on. Even with the answer arcs, not everything was solved until the very end where we learn about syndrome and all. But with a sequel, almost all that was gone. We knew everyone and what was going on. The only thing we didn't know was who this mysterious new culprit was, but even then it didn't feel that different. All the "new" timelines were just treading old ground but switched a couple things here and there, it wasn't that interesting. And TBH, after learning that Satako was the culprit, I just skipped ahead. It was honestly stupid and dumb, especially for the second reason I hated the 2020 version. 2.) Death essentially lost all it's meaning. All the murder and death didn't mean much anymore, and that's because Satako treated it that way. "Oh, I can just go back in time, it doesn't matter if I kill my friends over and over again!" I honestly HATED Satako by the end of the show! She was just a fucking BITCH! She went WAY beyond any kind of redemption for to be likeable and I wish she actually did die for real! The same can be said for Rika, but not as heavy, she's just a fucking idiot! Like girl, your friend with a crazy psychopath who doesn't give a shit about anyone, the last thing you need is to convince her to study for fucking school!

This was a very satisfying video to watch. My overall take on Gou/Sotsu was watching a dumpster fire emerging from the most toxic friendship in all of anime. Rika wants to escape Hinamizawa, makes perfect sense. She wants Satoko to come along, and gets her to do so by promising to be there every step of the way. For almost no discernable reason, Rika totally abandons Satoko, allowing her dearest friend to wallow in despair. Characterization is already WAY off. Why insist on taking Satoko along if you know it won't suit her, and you've seen it making her miserable? To be fair, Rika never sees how bad that school is with students who don't perform. It's more like a prison, and I wonder if Rika would really want to pursue her future at a school that would hurt her friend so. When we see this play out the first time, it seems the next logical step would be for Rika to experience this moment again and see where she went wrong. In the end, she would realize her happiness isn't compatible with Satoko, and the two would put some healthy distance in their relationship. I'm not sure if Satoko would accept this very easily, but without Hinamizawa Syndrome to screw with them, I'm sure they could properly communicate. Either way, that whole "friends don't have to always be together" message was the inevitable conclusion, and we could see it the moment that conflict was introduced. Having Satoko gain powers and cause all of Gou's events, spanning an entire series of repeat content, only prolonged that obvious conclusion, bringing up all sorts of lore and questions that conflict was never designed to resolve. It's made a mess out of Higurashi, calling into question exactly what kind of story it actually is. It started as a suspenseful horror based on pleasant, happy people committing horrible atrocities. It complicated that by introducing time loops and magical stuff. I honestly think it's a miracle they were able to mediate those two aspects as well as they did. I remember being originally turned off by Kai because it didn't at all resemble the creepy factor present in the Deen adaptation, and that contrast was why. I don't think my younger self would have ever imagined that kind of paranoid horror would somehow evolve into a shounen battle between gods/witches. Despite really enjoying the dark elements of Higurashi, I don't personally have any interest in Umineko. It looks like a totally different kind of story, and I don't like the idea of trying to tie it into Higurashi's narrative more than a fun reference or cosmetic resemblance. There's something to be said about these reboots/remakes that, rather than capturing and polishing what the original did, actually try and subvert the original through metacommentary. Almost nothing is free from that these days, and I would have preferred Gou just be a clean remake, or better yet, a side arc focused around the redemption of certain characters like Teppei. Exploring Rika's future also could have been done on its own without dragging everyone back into the base Hinamizawa story. You're absolutely right in that this show failed in part because it tried to cater to new and old audiences in the exact same work.

I never thought that when they cry series would become such a confusing uncertainty cluster fuck. Fate does better with re-using characters at this point

I was pissed that the sword amounted to nothing in the end.

I have never heard of Ciconia and I wont be getting into it. However, the way that I see Umineko and Higurashi is that Umineko is THE over-world universe. A overwatching universe of Witches that take human stories and turn them into games. Example: you could say the story of Higurashi is real, or at least some of the events, and so the witches decide to watch and make games of these events. The events that happen in Umineko are the way that they play with these events. Meeting the most powerful beings and how they toy with the human world for amusement. Umineko even goes as far as to say how determined humans who die end up in the magic world. Fredrika Bernkastle being the biggest example of this. She is Feathrines understudy, after winning her game at Higurashi, Umineko even says as much that Fredrika earned her place after beating the game as the pawn Rika. Rika at the end of the day, could have been the human form of the now powerful witch Fredrika who in her "ascension" left her "humanity" behind so she could take on the role of a witch. Featherine, the witch of theatregoing. She is the most powerful (that we know of). In both universes, be it Higu or Umi when she got involved the story was reaching it's climax because she was wrapping up the story. Umineko had the closed door mystery for 5 volumes (im going off the manga here) but come the 7th volume when Featherine appears and the story drastically shifts into Featherine pretty much asking the viewer to think back and walk with her as she tells you the answers. Same as Higurashi through the form of Hanyuu. Hanyuu has 0 involvement until Kai and when Hanyuu becomes involved the story starts to progress and roll into the climax until finally, Hanyuu decides "this was a fun game, I will let it end now". Hanyuu is the pawn of Featherine, and as a gift Featherine allowed Rika to win. Back to Umineko, by the end of it, Featherine had her answers and she was amused by the struggles of Beatrice, Battler and her subordinates which (A PERSONAL POINT ON MY BEHALF I ADMIT) Is a respect to Featherine. And this is why the new pawn of Featherine just falls flat. Hanyuu was a charming, moe magical shrine maiden who assisted Rika to overcome fate. Featherine is a highly respected and feared witch who isn't like the other witches. She has composure and elegance in her motives unlike the other witches who are just "i kill for fun, torture porn is great" The new one, who I don't even know her name, is just... there. She gives Satako the powers and then just watches with her "ohohoho" demeanor. She actively gets herself involved in a way that doesn't even make sense for Featherine... and then she gets her disk smashed as an umineko reference.... BUT WE ALREADY GOT THAT FROM HANYUU BACK IN KAI WHEN TAKANO SHOT HER HORN. And now because of this, we have a copy paste featherine and Hanyuu... which just makes you wonder who Hanyuu actually is. Because the new one is 100% featherine, or her definitive pawn.

Sotsu was just a 13 episodes remake of Gou, aired 6 months ago. They had to waste time on the dance and same recycled scenes. There was no additional content in onidamashi. And the next 2 arc contains large amount of remakes of Gou. They also end on the same cliffhanger and we never get to see Satoko running away from older Mion, Shion, Rena, and Keiichi. Gou wasted first three arcs on boring remakes of 2006. Sotsu is even worse with 13/15 of show remaking 2020 anime. Everything was rushed and unexplained in last 2 episodes and we got everyone living happily ever after end. Somehow satoshi wakes up from blackmagic? This is worse ending to a terrible cheap non canonical version of higurashi. I can't believe how they messed up their writing after they produced more interesting promotional poster and opening scene of sotsu. The only logical explanation is they cut most of new contents. Passione clearly doesn't understand the concept of answer arcs. They are not meant to be boring remakes and reanimations. Deen could have easily repeat Onikakushi, repeat the same scene in watandamashi and add nothing else, and add Takano's evil laugh on every single answer arcs.

This actually was my first intro to the series xD I was so confused, so after the first arc I went through the og series but still kind of ruined the twist with Rika, but I still freaking loved every second of the og series and consider it a masterpiece

I hadn't consumed any When They Cry media until last month, shortly after watching your Raging Loop video (and immediately noticing all the points of inspiration from Higurashi). Watching your video now, and learning that the author was happy to have newcomers was a big surprise! Not just for new people to start from Gou and Sotsu, but new fans at all. By the end of Sotsu the message seemed to be to "let the past go and move on", and that the author wanted to forget about Higurashi by salting the earth as he walked away. It felt like he was fed up of fans obsessed with the murders, and decided to show how trivial the details were by saying "anyone could be a murderer, it doesn't matter, who cares, the virus infected everyone". Or fans being obsessed with Rika, and the past, by portraying them as Satako - and subsequently having Satako basically ruin every interesting mystery by poking her thumb in it. At the very end, going from a magical showdown to just leaving on a train and then having Satako just snap herself out of existence as well, felt so on the nose. Just like the author is saying "here, they're all gone now and nobody left will ever remember the time loops ever again, please stop obsessing about it forever please leave me alone about Higurashi now." That's the impression that I got anyway (again, having never seen anything else before), but I guess that can't really be the case given how, apparently, obsessed the author is about his own characters reoccurring. Thanks for all the videos!

I watched this when it aired without having seen the original. The entire time I thought I was watching a remake and I was so confused the entire time. Nothing made sense. To me I needed the backstory/recap from Satako's perspective for the second season. It still left me confused, but slightly less so. Now that I've seen some video essays on the series I know I need to watch the originals. I just wish they hadn't lied about this new series being a remake. I seriously wasted a lot of time and I've been a bit screwed out of experiencing major plot points for the first time that I'll already know about when I watch the original. :\ Major bummer since I'm a serious watch order nut. To answer your question as to why I stuck with the entire show as a first time Higurashi viewer, it was because I thought this was a faithful remake and I wasn't googling to verify that was the case. As I watched I kept thinking to myself that the never ending questions and confusion I had were normal and that everyone experienced this the first time watching and that there would be a lot of explanation at the end. To me, Eua/Featherine made next to no sense to me. I thought, like everything else that was confusing as fuck about the show, she would be explained better. I thought her horn chipping would maybe mean that she would somehow become like Hanyu, or maybe through some time loop thing, she is Hanyu and this is the moment she chips her horn, lose a lot of her power, and then go back to the past to become the existence known as Hanyu.

This is an excellent video, people have called me crazy for pointing out the obvious flaws of this story and how it retroactively made some of the points of the original story (as well as its subsequent spiritual successor) weaker by simply not understanding of them I would've expected this from a fanfiction author who clearly is injecting his own theories and hypothesis into the canon of multiple franchise that should absolutely stay the fuck away from each others but not from Ryukishi07 himself which makes the whole ordeal feel cheap and dare I'd say "corporate" since there really isn't a reason for this story to exist on a conceptual level, especially when like you said a similar story has been told in the past and done better (Saikoroshi-hen alone fixed most of the issues I had with the way the original series concluded) I think Ryukishi needs to stop thinking that throwing the term "miracles" and "certainty" at everything will somehow make it meaningful if the man cannot provide proper substance behind them, it was a problem in the original Higurashi and has been a problem in the entire when they cry series if you ask me. Now I hope the manga version will be able to correct the mistake of this new entry but to me, it definitely soured my appreciations not only of Higurashi but the franchise as a whole as well as breaking my trust in Ryukishi's plan for the future of the franchise

Can’t argue with any of these criticisms tbqh. Somehow I still managed to get some enjoyment out of Goutsu. Somehow I will still spend close to $100 dollars on the Blu-ray’s. Somehow I now find myself ordering Japanese language Higurashi music and drama CD’s. And keychains with best girl Erika. Somebody send help please(or a well done Umineko adaptation).

still healing from this depression, thank you for speaking out truth

Ngl the ending is kinda satisfying but yet felt disappointed at the same time...

In my opinion in Sotsu maybe the reason why Rika-chan might be listing off the club rules is because she's trying to find reasons to not kill Satoko.

Honestly, when I binged Gou, I didn't see it as something bad. I was genuinely hooked because it showed characters that weren't known to murder, and it really fascinated me (Espeically Mion, because she's my favorite character and it was really jarring to see her fall to paranoia) as well as psychological torture given to Rika (The gut scene with Satako, though extremely gruesome is honestly one of my favorite scenes for the pure drama alone because it was Satoko, her best friend, the one who was constantly on her side and was partially aware of things in the original and tried to protect Rika) however, when Sotsu came out and explained it all, it was Mion in Shion's old arc from before, just locking Keiichi in a cage to keep him safe. I found myself watching the show but not really interested, especially when Rika and Satoko had their dbz light fight and it was just a basic thing about communication that got resolved in the final episode. There really was some good points, recontextualizing the characters, the ending, for some plot beats (Such as Satoshi waking up and I was waiting for the ending to mention it besides him just waking up because Shion and Satoko would've just. Ahh!) and the bond between Eua-Hanyuu, but it was never explained. With how the Sotsu opening was, seeing Satako being pulled up and showing the club with a grin lining up, I was thinking the characters would, essentially, remember what Satako has done for them and do something, as they helped her from the pit of erasure, but are in dark lighting and grinning at her--it is really ominous and malevolent every time I see it. But now everything seems to fall flat. I'm showing a friend Higurashi, we're almost done with Kai and at first I was ready to show him Gou, because the narrative was interesting to get hooked on to from moving back and seeing the last half of Gou move towards Satoko's reasonings, there was potential. However, the moment Sotsu dropped the ball, I've been very hesitant because it left such a bad taste in my mouth. There was so much potential in it, but it was squandered the more the show went on as well.

You know what would be good? After the gun cliffhanger, the next episode starts with the new loop. Everyone including Rika and Satoko is friendly. Now the mystery begins. What does Rika know? What does Satoko know? What are they planning, why is Satoko doing it. Friendly episode after that would create great uncanny atmosphere. You know Rika and Satoko know about each other, yet they appear friendly and make you question things and anticipate the next massacre

It failed at everything. There is 0% soul of the first season or Kai. Felt like Ryukishi just forced this season to promote Umineko and get more cash from merch. You can tell he made up this whole story few years ago while writing Cicionia and none of it was planned from the start.

i remember that interview when R07 and two girls from the cast laughed because of "¿why didn't satoko just study?" then it was her actual stupid motivation. -the mirror world was never explained -vier and the umineko stuff never explained -EUA chiquita was cute but no one pointed out how the stick was cut in half looking exactly like the one featherine uses in umineko -EUA staff was the one used by YUE in "when the fireflies glow" , also never explained -tomato explained where satoko takes the gun from but the anime just shows the gun appearing out of nowhere with the worst example being the part where she kills teppei , she crouches and the guns appears in the hand. My only hope is tomato not fucking up meguri , i have seen certain arc being better done in manga form like mion confession , the last part of onidamashi , the neko part with akasaka. Just knowing that the prision part is not gonna happen fills me with joy

So I found out the outro song is called Scissorhands, but the song list doesn't include which version of Scissorhands it belongs to.

I think another example where this character gimmick thing is working is with Fairy Tails and Edens zero (even trough I haven’t finished both series) both have similar characters and even names like Happy but they are both not supposed to connect to each other since they both take place in their own universe and it allows the viewer to enjoy the series even if u have no idea about the other series.

Love the usage of tatami galaxy music, and it is great to hear a lot of my thoughts on Sotsu in a video essay format.

Great video man keep up !!! It's a pleasure to watch

Very well said, thank you for this! You articulate everything I feel so succinctly~

Awesome analysis!

The connection part is arguably the worst, and Ryukishi should be ashamed for handling it the way he did. If he truly wanted to connect it the way that would attract more viewers to his "MCU", should have gone all the way, with no half-measures and Hollywood-style happy endings for EVERYONE, especially since nobody mattered except the main totally-not-lesbian(tm) couple. The treatment of Eua is the worst offender. Being the most powerful creature in the universe, she could have been the exposition new fans needed for Umineko, given her history with 🔥🏰. And what does Ryukishi have her do? Laugh at, repeated in their entirety, scenes from Gou, saying how much everything entertains her, over and over, only to be turned into a loli by Auauaqua, because Ryukishi is a pedo, that can't go 2 EPISODES without doing weird shit like this! Not to mention how much I DESPISE Hanyuu's miracle speech. "Miracles are something you have to wo-" shut up, you didn't work for this! You literally had the stupid sword fall into your hand from the fucking sky! This is the level of luck that has Dream and Nagito Komaeda contemplating their lives, and sends every mathematician into clinical depression as to how unlikely this is. I had higher hopes for Sotsu, but they wasted our time with reused scenes way too much, not adding anything to the context. 70% of the air time wasted on a whole lot of nothing. I am reluctant to even check Ciconia with all this in mind, fearing that this is what R07's writing has truly become.

You remind me of the nostalgic Twin Peaks fans that wanted to believe it was about "Cooper's odyssey", despite the fact that Lynch himself set it to be centered around Laura Palmer.

Fantastic video. I completely agree. I love this franchise but this…. This was not a good run. Gou and Sotsu added nothing in the end, only detracting from the Higurashi narrative. What they do add is more obvious links to Ryukishi07’s other works, but… is that enough to undermine his first? Especially when he can’t even commit to it?

I think it's confident to say that Higurashi Kai was a great ending to the series. The fact Rika struggles so hard just to live beyond May 31st only to fail and die for hundreds of years on replay, losing hope each time till Keiichi convinces her that "Fate isn't written in stone" and miracles can happen and finally able to live beyond the fated dreadful day is great. Satako being a villian and her uncle being humanized just does not sit well. Satako from Kai obviously cared deeply about Rika. This gets completely twisted in the new 2020 series. Takano playing the villian was to good. First time watching, the shock on my face when I realized that she was behind Rikas suffering pissed me. Never have I felt more angry towards a character before in my life. Takano played her role very well. There was always something mysterious about Takano the moment she appeared on screen. Behind those icey cold blank stares she gives, there lies a cunning deceptive witch. Willing to manipulate her way to the top. The fight between Rika & Takano is a deep rooted conflict. From Takano's condescending perspective she foolishly believed nothing can stop her will from collapsing. However little does she know who she's going against. Unlike Takano, Rika had the power to change destiny, her failures and Takano past successes, in the end led to her (Rikas) success and Rika was finally able to live last May 31st.

Gj man, this video had to took a lot of time and you really went all in and summ it up perfectly in my eyes and the edit was very good your channel deserve more praise for a guy with 320 subs your edit is spectacular.

27:06 Good luck that Ryukishi07 makes a concise story of the When They Cry universe alone.

very good points, also brownie point for using Metropolis ost, shocked you didn't mention Osamu Tezuka, consider his star system is a staple

At the end of the day Sotsu and Gou are just a complete waste of potential for me. I felt that nothing new or insightful was added to the Higurashi sequels.

I started higurashi with gou and sotsu, so I am here to answer the question of what kept me going when I was watching sotsu. Nothing kept me going. Even as a newcomer at that time, the first 13 episodes of sotsu were so boring that whenever a scene basically replayed in sotsu that I had already seen in gou, I would just skip over it until I got to a part I hadn’t already seen before

This was very well put together, and I especially agree with the disbelief at the 'an entry point for new watchers' comment being a really bad take and the sheer mess of that final build up. Also just... leaving Shion out of a Satoko centric story is such a waste.

The only thing better about this project is the first episode of gou, which is the only "remake" to come out.

Wow, now this was a good video essay! Love the way it’s split into sections and has focus. It’s not that I hate the characters, whoever made this anime created a toxic coded mess that has a few life lessons~ First: If you have learning disabilities, then give up on yourself. Not even centuries of time looping can help you. You’re going to fail your tests forever, but still ‘good at making traps’. As if that has nothing to do with learning. Second: Embrace your toxic friends. If they’re super clingy and killed you a few times, then even better. Forgiveness is for those who say sorry after killing you (or not, since Satoko never sincerely apologised for killing her). For those who mention the alternate personality, shut it. She killed her before the alternate personality was introduced, a few of her friends too. Don’t mention Umineko to me, I give zero care to references that don’t work if you haven’t read them. Just the source material should be enough. Any of the other toxic messages can be seen by anyone who refutes these two points. Probably sympathisers of Satoko, who is a fictional entity with flawed foundations. I’m just disappointed because she could be better as a villain. There’s no redemption here.

Awesome video

As a literal newcomer to this series when this came out, I cannot praise them enough for how they did Gou. Not only was the clumsy exposition INSANELY helpful when deciding to check out the original, EVERY HIGURASHI FAN EXPLAINING EVERY SINGLE MINUTE DETAIL IN THEIR RAGE RANTS WAS A GODSEND.

your editing (both writing and video) is so good! This video both convinced me not to waste my time with this new series but also gave me concise and entertaining info about it. Thank you!

Im really hopinh the manga will be better. i heard Jun will be different to sotsu

With how much higurashi is repeating now it’s like WE’RE going through the time loop.

I love the pause before you said they were friends.

SOTSU was so bad that it singlehandedly ruined the reputation of its predecessor (GOU). I never thought that I would have to lower the rating of a previous season because of how shit the following season was, it disappointed me to such degree that it just hurt

Everything, soutsu messed everything up.

The worst part is that Ryukishi shoehorned Eua and "Lambda" into Sotsu to butcher Satoko's character into a cliche one-dimensional villain. The Umineko fans are even more obnoxious about it. Me every week: "Wtf this butchers Satoko's growth and everything she stood for in Kai" Umineko fans every week: "Feathureen and Lambduh reference yaaaas" I don't give a shit about Umineko or how it relates to Higurashi. Gtfo of here, we talking about Higurashi.

the only good thing about Sotsu is highschool Satoko's design

This was an amazing analysis. The transitions using the other anime felt a little excessive but other than that this was a great watch.

Man I had such high hopes for this series. Especially after the first few episodes catching me off guard. I remember making a day out of it, cooking myself the same meal every thursday, etc. But then it burned me.

I look forward to your next video.

I stoped watching sotsu around ep 2-3, then saw the og series, wanted more, then came back to sotsu and finished it

They should've adapted higurashi jun instead of sotsu

Only 7? Doing the Lords work here, thank you, you could tell about *everything*, but I understand, what this video would be not so suitable in december.

Sotsu is likely prologue of new When they Cry arc that serves as interlude between Higurashi and Umineko, it references events mentioned in Umineko like the remote past that had little to no meaning for most of Sotsu narrative such as the moment Featherine got her memory device damaged and had both her looks and personality changed, this event is referenced in Umineko and has no meaning in context of Sotsu but clearly is preparation for next entry for When they Cry series, it also highlights endless entities that will play bigger roles in the next arcs like Witch Satoko and WItch Rika, next arc will probably develop them as inhuman entities and give them propper names. The only hidden meaning in exposing such past from Umineko event is to imply that Featherine(EUA/Hanyuu) is the entity behind every single tragedy in Higurashi game board, Umineko manga already implied that as it presents Featherine as old Rika old master while showing Hanyuu shape as her past form and stating she was the gamemaster of the gameboard that birthed Bern arguably Higurashi board, also R07 is well known for splinting characters into several others and make them fight each other as means to expose internal conflict and development, judging from last R07 interview EUA vs Hanyuu was probably a farce.

So as a newcomer to this series myself, I have an interesting story. I basically just heard about this franchise through the grapevine, by chance - not through any marketing or adverts or anything official of the sort. When I went to search for it, Sotsu came up first. I ended up watching the first four episodes (I was aware of the genre, so the more confusing elements I simply chalked up to establishing mystery at first). Of course, by the time the first arc is closing in episode four, enough had piled up that I had alarm bells going off in my head that I was missing something that it was clearly assumed I should know by this point. Another cursory search and I found Gou, from the year before, and thought "Ah, I should start HERE." This time I picked up much faster that I was still missing something that should be established already, and found the OG anime run from 2006. I finished the first Gou arc anyway, mostly because I this point I realized it was basically showing me things from another perspective, then went and watched through the first series. All this to say, up front, that your flaw #3 was more or less spot on for me. But I WILL say this (oh, uh, spoilers I guess): watching the first arc from Rena's POV first was actually really interesting - I understood her motivations and decent, even though they were absolutely insane. And the scene where Keiichi lets Rena in, KNOWING what her intent was (for a nice dose of dramatic irony) while Rika smiles from afar and says she knew he could do it (which, at the time, only referred to their previous conversation, to my mind), and intercutting THAT with brief clips of Rena stabbing Keiichi was FAR more haunting and disturbing than getting the full context of the scene in Gou. It absolutely twisted my gut, because it felt so jarring. Watching it again in Gou wasn't nearly as bad, and not just because I knew it was coming. Speaking of Gou, knowing what Rena had been up to gave me some insight, and though she never did anything OUTWARDLY suspicious from Keiichi's POV, it was interesting to watch those scene again knowing what had occurred already (Oh, she's already committed a murder here. Oh, she was hiding a body. Oh, THAT'S what he was talking to the detective about, she WAS just super paranoid). So when I watched the OG run immediately after, I more immediately trusted Keiichi's POV, and his mounting paranoia seemed to be...justified? I was insanely confused when, at the end of the arc, there was no mention of a syringe in the police report, intrigued by who tore the note, and despite the introduction I had in the newest runs, confused about the nature of this demon, who had almost no presence in the episodes I watched. It was...an interesting way to experience a "time loop" story, particularly because of how it's structured, none of the episodes I watched gave too much away.

Thanks so much for this vid. Man, Sotsu and half of Gou was so disappointing. And then Sotsu had to retroactively make the good parts of Gou boring. Sometimes I think about ways to use those bits of story to make a more interesting tale in general. Like, for example, dropping the whole "fake remake" thing. Imagine how much fun the series could of been if the loops had been wildly different straight from the start. (the manga had a short bit where K1's mom got the syndrome. Imagine a fully fleshed out loop of the lead up and results of THAT.) Also, speaking of horrible story/ direction choices. ALMOST 15 MINUTES of the gut-ripping scene. TWICE. I remember hating the scene but thinking, "hey! There must be a narrative reason it's taking so long and is so horrible!" Then Sotsu comes along and NOPE. ............sigh. Also, the second opening, being a banger and having all this imagery that hinted at interesting things to come but then never doing anything with it. Agh. It's frustrating.

Satoko’s evil motivation could’ve made so much more sense, even killing her friends, if she had officially went stage five of Hinamizawa syndrome. She’s even confirmed to have the syndrome but they said in Sotsu, at least in one fragment. Then…she was cured…for no reason…

I heard there's a new manga coming with different answer arcs for sotsu

I watched so much of Sotsu, it being my entry point, because my friend told me how much of a fan she was of the original series. I was so lost, so often, but took that as its intent. I think I had enough right before the DBZ fights, but I just was getting fed up with so many cliffhangers, no answers, and re-treading the same grounds

I suspect Ryu doesn't know how to connect the series together or wrote himself into a corner. I think he might even be using fan theories and ideas that might eventually conflict with each other. He is no longer interested in writing a story with a good message but rather keeping things a mystery for eternity the forever cat box. Gou/Sotsu was so much wasted potential. The club members remembering would of been huge or seeing more after Satoko's murder suicide in front of the club members. A hard connection to the other WTC stories, an existential crisis for the characters. Nothing really made sense, Satoko was turned into an evil heartless monster that cared more about her abusive uncle then Keiichi of all people. Her motive was stupid, her not caring about Rika's suffering was stupid, Rika wasn't all that bright ether, foreshadowing that went no where. What happened Ryu? The fan theories were better.

Adding jigoku shoujo ost brooo you got this!!

Another problem that annoyed me was that Satoko is effectively an eternal entity so who cares if you struggle with High School education the first time around, do it again, and again, and again. She'll eventually know the work inside out and she'll be able to get top marks. Or just cheat. Once you know the questions in the exams just prep for them and muck around the rest of the time. Like seriously the curriculum is the biggest threat to an eternal entities desires?

10/10 video. How the series could have been good : - remove the question/answer arcs system entirely. - remove the 17 firsts episodes of gou, and start directly with the st lucia arc, and focus entirely on the relation between satoko and rika and how satoko becomes insane with time. - remove the umineko/ciconia references - no dragon ball scenes - no akio watanabe, even if I love its chara design, it doesn't fit higurashi. - keep the musics, they are pretty good. - don't say it's a remake or a starting point for newcomers and clearly say it's a sequel. - remove the censoring. - explain how satoko manages to sting mion in the ass without her noticinging it. - don't remove the fucking card game moment.

watched higurashi when I was around 10 years old at the behest of a friend i met on a online forum. the show has never left me, and it’s been well over a decade. I think about it all the time. It was just so incredible, the mystery, the answer arcs were just so good I loved how it unraveled its partner episode in such a way that I would always be surprised. Never even knew this new season came out but i’m very glad I didn’t watch this it def would’ve left me very disappointed. The fact it’s a sequel is disturbing considering how much I loved the ending of the original, I almost cried during the 2nd to last arc of season 2 when they failed.

Just to clarify at 13:56, that's not a swastika, it's manji. The lines point counter-clockwise, which is opposite of the swastika. If you already knew that, mb. Just wanted to point that out though.

To be honest, I guess your points are valid but I really enjoyed Setsu anyway as it kept me really entertained and excited.

Finally someone said it. Sotsu was actually terrible and that ending was a slap in the face to all long time fans.

I was really happy with the ending of SOTSU. The scene where Rika and Satoko part ways at the train station was the compromise that I had hoped they would come to. While Im not a dedicated fan like a lot of other people who've come to this from the VL, I can't help but feel as if some of the flaws mentioned seem more like a reflection of fatigue from a long-time fan. However, you're right about some things. Like as a newbie to Higurashi, I genuinely didn't understand why Mion had a gun. Like she just is suddenly straped at the festival, it was really funny. Its also never explained clearly, its just hinted at by Ōishi in a single line claiming that there is some kind of yakuza connection.

Tbh. I wish that they added in all of Rena’s backstory because in the manga, it was kinda gut-wrenching and really sad but perfect for her character in my opinion. They only went up to when she got expelled from her school and nothing after that / inbetween

Well put matey. As an OG fan growing up w/ Higurashi in my golden years (Oh blessed 20's come back to me) there is no comparison between the original series and the painful adaptation or "continuance" that the Author thought even people new to the franchise could enjoy. For that, I was deeply saddened. It's not like I wanted it to fail, but I also know when a series ends on a good note you should let sleeping dogs lie, let a classic remain as such the more time passes. We can look at Cowboy Bebop, Code Geass, and so much more as fine examples who didn't trample upon their original success. I thought the Cowboy Bebop movie was a fun and interesting callback to a favorite space crew whereas the Code Geass movie to me was an example of why you DON'T milk a series that ended perfectly. Long story short, there is too much I could write about what I hated about the newer adaptation/series, and one of the most irritating parts of the series as a whole wasn't the pathetic fist fight Naruto wannabe ending to solve their problems, but the fact that Satoko experienced 100 years worth of what Rika went through in the endless hell forced upon her. The writer chose to take a very poor route as opposed to her best friend empathising with her having gained the very same "power", but instead lets go full on Amurica' and shoot fate in the face until you get what YOU want. In the OG series the whole class rallied for a long arc to save Satoko from her abusive Uncle, but in the end the writer seemed to forget what they even put into their very own characters/series. End of the day, I hate it when great Anime decides they need to do something like this to a classic. Higurashi wasn't the only one - Many fans, myself included, had been dying to see a continuation to "The Devil is a Part Timer" but in the end it was a similar story, something that was better off left untouched if what we were given was their idea of a good sequel a decade later. Essay over xD

The gore is excesive lmao

The problem with The new Higurashi: It isn't a Horror, Mystery, It's Thriller, Supernatural

You know Lambda hadn’t even finished reading Higurashi during the events of Umineko, so it doesn’t even make sense in the meta-narrative.

I hope this video gets a continuation when Meguri manga ends, as it remakes Sotsu by doing everything right.

Well the sword was used. Not by Satoko or Rika but by Hanyuu. Apparently during her fight with Eua she erases all the worlds that share and Satoko slaughtered. I don't know if sword is actually used for it tho. I wish it was conveyed better because fragment shards blowing up didn't clue me in. A reddit comment pointing it out did!

The gun cliff hanger was fitting because that's what happened to Higurashi.

I had a unique first experience watching Higurashi because I watched it all completely backwards since I didn’t know where to start even though I researched it, I found it in the reverse order to actually be very fun. I was constantly questioning things and wondering when it would get answered when it was actually already answered, and I was supposed to be questioning it long before, I wonder if any other Hashi fans has done what I incidentally did because I love the new anime I love the old anime

good video (i dont remember most of higurashi because it was like 14-15 years ago since i watched it lol) but about your last point about those "connections" i mean its similar to the souls-born franchise (elden ring included) there are so many possible connections (apart from patches and the moonlight greatsword) like for example that the world in bloodborne is the new painted world that was painted in the ashes dlc in dark souls 3 etc. even tho miyazaki explicitly said they are their own universes, it might still be possible they are connected (except sekiro) so i dont think its always a bad thing, to let the viewers/ players come up with their own headcanon in terms of stuff like this, but like i said i dont know shit about this new higurashi stuff and havent watched it in ages so i might miss something. just wanted to say that this point really reminded me of souls-borne lol

Satoko: *Has the patience to do time loop to try ten thousands of numerical code to open a briefcase Also Satoko: *WaAaA, sTuDyInG iS hArD!?! i'Ll jUsT kIlL mY fRiEnDs tO bE tOgEtHeR wItH tHeM!?!?!?*

tbh the part where the series completely and Truly lost me was Satoko not seeming to have cared at ALL when shown what Rika went through to escape from the timeloop I do think it could've been interesting, as you pointed out, with Rika and Satoko's contrasting ideals but to have her just, completely gloss over what Rika went through and then proceeded to torture her more? it left such a foul taste in my mouth that, honestly I'd rather just forget Gou and Sotsu even happened personally I wish it could've been better, and yea the openings, endings and visuals in general are really nice !!

After recently finishing Umineko, I don't see the point in even trying to explicitly connect the universes. In fact, I think doing so retroactively ruins the endings of both Umineko and Higurashi. I think the "actor" explanation is perfect in it's vagueness. We don't need explicit answers, we can come up with explanations ourselves.

Who do so many ppl online hate on gou and sostu… i liked the new series alot

The worst thing for me has been said in the comments numerous times. Rena was a witness at one point, but it was like none of the friends mattered or added to the story. It was the same stuff over and over, including Rika's dance. The match between Hanyuu and Eua was bleh, and the ending was disappointing..

7:50 Which does mirror the series.

Gou had potential of making the answer arcs like super interesting but 70% of Sotsu was just using the same footage from gou with little bits of new content Idk wat happened

Kyon, danwa....

The remake was my entry point into the series and for me, what kept me going was a few things: •I liked the characters, horror and story enough that I wanted more. Even after all the complaints, even if these are the worst versions of those things; to me, coming in fresh-faced and knowing nothing, it was all still incredibly interesting. •I thought the show was just that big-brained that all the things I didn't understand would be explained in a rewarding way in a future episode. •In a more minor way, I initially blamed myself for being a little lost. There was a stretch of episodes I put on while re-arranging my living room and my mind does tend to wander if I try to purely *watch* something without doing something else, so I figured it was my problem. This is just my experience and I respect opposing opinions/experiences but, even though this show was not the best entry point, there are elements that are still *good enough* to convince me to get all the Higurashi and Umineko VNs (I'm planning on getting Ciconia when I've got the money). The end was still a let down though.