Higurashi no Naku Koro ni - 20 - OMG Rika!
I was fearing that this episode would be rather dull, and indeed, everything I predicted happens. We’ve got Shion phoning Keiichi. Then she holds a long, though pointless interrogation with the village elder after which she indeed threatens Rika. During this episode, not a lot of things happened, and the things that did happen were very stretched. When you combine this with the fact that I practically predicted everything which would happen, and the interrogation with the village chief was not only pointless, but featured Shion in her usual emo-mode about Satoshi, and it indeed makes the episode rather dull.
Except for one point!
Rika was amazing during this episode! She really is my favourite character of this anime, and with a good reason. First of all, when Shion threatens her, she claims that entering the shrine doesn’t necessarily mean death. People are kept away from it because of the torture-devices. That’s a different reaction than you’d expect when you take the council members of the previous episode into account. Rika also claims that she can hear Oyashiro-sama’s voice in her head.
Then the awesome thing: Shion never phoned Rika in the first place. Shion decided to use Rika as a means of finding out whether she really was connected to Oyashiro-sama. Rika then noticed that Shion was under influence of the disease. That’s why she came to the Sonozaki-residence. She pretended that she needed some soya, though in fact, she attempted to cure her with the syringe, in the same way Mion and Rena did in the first arc, and Irie in the third arc.
As this method has never worked, it also doesn’t here. Shion then injects the liquid in Rika, and she doesn’t look too good afterwards. She then grabs a knife, when she hears that Shion plans to torture her. Then, she decides to kill herself, to prevent her from being tortured and interrogated. Even though we saw that scene before at the second arc, it still remained so sad for her.
This indeed proves the theory that the syringe is meant to cure the paranoid actions of certain persons. Whether this is a disease or normal paranoia, it still remains unclear, though it isn’t as simple that there’s just a demon inside Shion’s body, as you need more than just a syringe in order to remove a demon. I think Rika was suffering from the nasty side-effects of this medicine. I can imagine that the feeling it gives isn’t pretty. She then begins to have the same delusions as the disease, though I think that that’s supposed to be temporarily. It’s long enough, though to make her conclude that she knows something that nobody else should know, and if Shion just tortures her before she kills her, she’d better put herself out of her misery immediately.
I think that Takano is our major suspect here, like Cos mentioned. She was supposed to be dead, even before the Watanagashi started, so she’s definitely hiding something. Irie, seems to be the one who has developed the antidote. Mion, Rena and Rika seem to have discovered this, and secretly told him that they’d help him.
I’m also wondering why the creators decided to make this episode so incredibly slow. It means that the next episode will have incredibly high pacing. After all, so many things still have to happen. Shion has to torture Mion, kill Satoko, go emo when Keiichi’s on the ladder, phone Keiichi, explain to Keiichi and Rena, take Keiichi to the underground prison, throw a rock on Keiichi, attempt to torture Keiichi, shock Keiichi, flee and kill herself. Still, I’m interested, as each of the arc’s endings revealed some kind of major plot twist. That also has to happen.
Overall, Rika was awesome, but apart from her, this episode was rather dull. Especially Shion and her endless whining about Satoshi.