So, basically because in Higurashi, every single detail counts, and the subs come out at bullet speed anyway, I’m going to continue to follow this series subbed instead of raw. And boy, does it deliver! Only Mononoke will probably be able to stand a chance of beating this series for the title of the best show of the summer-season.

So, basically, the current arc is the aftermath of the sixth arc, and meant to give the final clues, before the eighth arc will reveal everything. It does this by means of the hints that were given in the game, and translated in the AnimeSuki forums. I only read a few of the hints back when the series aired, so it’s going to be great to see them all lined up.

And the creators couldn’t have chosen a better and more awesome setting for this arc: 30 years in the future, with as main characters Oishi, Akasaka and a grown-up Rena!! I’m also really curious as to how long this arc will be, and what will be its climax?

Anyway, let’s start with the new OP, as it reveals quite a bit of information. It’s sad, instead of chaotic like the one for the first season. There are two things that immediately catch your mind: a strange girl, and the huge focus on Rika. Keep an eye out for this mysterious girl, because (having read one or two hints about her), something tells me that she’s playing a huge central role in this series. I’m also really glad to see that it seems like Rika will become the main character of the second season, when compared to Keiichi in the first one. Especially considering she’s my favourite character.

The episode starts with Akisaka with a guy who once was in charge of overseeing Hinamizawa, meeting up with Oishi in the bus stop that we all know so well. Hinamizawa is in ruins, and the disaster indeed happened after episode 26. Akisaka recaps a few things that happened in the fourth arc, after which he introduces Sawada (at least, I think he’s spelled that way. The fansubber refused to translate his name). Sawada now works for the self defence-force after he left Hinamizawa, and he used to be an underclassman of Akisaka when they were in college.

The fansubber also for some reason translated “Onigafuchi” to “Onigahuchi”, but I’ll keep with Onigafuchi in my future entries. It’s probably a translation-error anyways. In Onigafuchi, which has now been covered in concrete, and the ruins of the hospital Akisaka tells about his theories, backed up by online bloggers (this probably is the first time an anime referred to bloggers in any way ^^;). It basically starts out with a summary of the information we already knew at the sixth arc, when Rena received Takano’s scrapbooks.

His conclusion, in any case, is something we’ve been expecting all along: gas never erupted from the march in the first place. According to various people, it’s useless to seal up a gas leak with concrete. According to him, the three great families got in trouble when the original virus began to decline, so they tried to remake it. This failed, and it either killed the entire village, or it made the villagers kill themselves. The alien-part has to be fake, of course.

It also seems that the Self Defence Force knew somehow what was going on. They put up fences around the Onigafuchi-march, and frequently took blood-samples from their members for investigation. The question remains: if they knew, why didn’t they do something about it?

They then go towards the olds school-building, in order to meet with another familiar face: Rena. Oishi then starts asking her a few questions, since he’s the only one that met her before. It really seems that she suffered serious traumas after the disasters in Hinamizawa (by the way, I’d love to find out how both she and Keiichi in the third arc decided to live the rest of their lives).

Oishi then comes with some more facts: after we saw Rika claim that she finally wanted to become serious against the person that played the “endless game of June” with her, Irie committed suicide with poison, she again got killed and at dawn, the disaster took place. Rena was also hospitalized for a long time afterwards. Oishi also has the theory that she was brainwashed when she was there.

Rena then talks of one of the hints that I vaguely read once. Remember when Rena was hiding in the bus? Rika in “Oyashiro-mode” then visited Rena, in an attempt to save her. When Rena, however, became scared of her and yelled at her, Rika claimed that she had no more interest in the village, and that she wanted to move on to another one. This makes Akisaka remember the time he was with Rika as well.

Okay, so let’s combine these facts a bit. The fact does remain that it’s a bit too coincidental that Rena picked the exact evening to carry out her plan, right before the disaster occurred. This seems to suggest that someone was able to control the disaster, which suggests that information was about to become known that was not meant to come out.

Still, if that’s the case, then why was Rena the only one to survive? I can imagine that Keiichi would have survived in the third arc. He was unconscious and away from everyone, which means that he wasn’t exposed to the virus in any way. For Rena, though, this is different.

My theory is that Rena was one of the first people to be infected. Because of that, she also was one of the first to stand a chance of being cured. Notice the syringe Rika is holding in the flashback? Rika actually wanted to cure her, but Rena refused. Instead, Keiichi managed to cure her, in the same reason that Rena tried to cure Keiichi with in the first arc. It was only then that Rika realized that the virus could also be cured in a different way. Unfortunately, the realized this too late and got killed before she could take action. This suggests why the eighth arc is going to reveal everything: it’s because Rika will finally get serious.

I also assume that Rika was the one who cured Rena back in the first arc, in an attempt to get her to save Keiichi, but this failed, and after this she kept quiet for a long while, until Shion went crazy in the fifth arc. I also finally realize why Rika was able to predict her death so accurately: she already had lived the same timeline over and over again. Of course she’d get a bit sick of the same things happening again and again.

Going back to the disaster of Hinamizawa, I think that is the time that a certain someone awakened the virus in the entire population of Hinamizawa, and they began to kill each other. The reason Keiichi went crazy in the first arc was because of the weapon Rena showed him (probably under light influence of the virus, after which Rika probably came to her), which awakened the virus too early. The same can probably be said for Satoko when Keiichi petted her in the third arc, Shion losing her fingernails in the fifth arc and Rena getting Takano’s scrapbooks in the sixth arc.

The question remains: what does Rika’s little friend have to do with this? And where does Takano fit in this story? Why did Irie commit suicide? And are there possibly two Rikas?