Higurashi no Naku Koro ni - 29
I’m not too happy to see that the fansubbers released this episode on a Saturday. While it’s nice to see that Higurashi is still getting out fast, Saturday remains my busiest day of the week, with five series that have to be blogged, and I have no intention to increase that number to six. Especially considering the time it takes to create an average Higurashi-entry. So if future releases of Higurashi will be coming out on Saturday, expect my entry of it to appear on Sunday.
Anyway, about the episode: I think it’s clear now that this is the slowest arc so far. This episode focused yet again on random games, while some scenes featured Rika’s despair of getting killed again. I’m afraid to say it, but I fear that this is going to be one of the lesser arcs of the series, because it hasn’t been written by the original writers and it can’t give too much away, or else it’ll ruin the next arc as well.
While the previous episode looked a lot like the first episode of the fifth arc, this episode looked a lot like the first episode of the third arc. I do hope that the next episode will focus on the Watanagashi, instead of going to the toy-store we saw in the second arc.
There was only one piece of new information, so I won’t bother with a summary. But at least we now know that Rika’s partner is some kind of spirit. I’m not sure whether this girl was the same one that we see in the OP, but she seems to inhabit the same body as Rika.
I do hope that the rest of the arc will be more exciting than this episode. It would, for example, be the perfect chance to show Keiichi’s past, which was left out in the sixth arc according to the people from Animesuki. I’d love to see such a tragedy in animated form.
I’m glad you’re blogging this, I’ve seen the whole series, and I was very confused at parts, but with your summaries I’m beginning to understand, it was hard to watch this series at times. Thanks for blogging, I always check out your blog to see what’s coming up and things like that. :)
Comment by Bee — July 22, 2007 @ 21:04
Ah, interesting–so this arc is original to the anime and not to the game. I based so much of my current speculation on what’s going with Rika in this arc; I wonder if it’s really as significant as I was surmising, then.
Comment by Mike — July 22, 2007 @ 21:58
Bee: thanks for the compliment. :) I’ll be sure to post good explanations when the plot starts moving.
Mike: Yeah, if I had to guess, then the 13 episodes were too little to fit in the final two arcs, while 24 were too many, so a third arc had to be added to fill up the time that was left over. The arc after this is said to explain everything, so that is when the fun should really begin.
Comment by psgels — July 23, 2007 @ 0:10