It took me a while before I found out that a new fansub group called Ni-paa~ released this episode on Animesuki. I’ve been so used to the fact that Tokyo Toshokan lists all available fansubs that I didn’t realize that there are sometimes exceptions. I never understood what was so great about this Ni-paa~, by the way. It’s just a random word to sound cute, same with the “Uguu~” and all other variations. The only phrase I’ve found that actually worked was Akazukin’s Zukkyun, because it actually had a deep meaning in her backstory.

Anyway, about the episode: I loved it. This is exactly the kind of Higurashi that I originally fell in love with, and finally this anime picks up its mystery-roots again, and it starts introducing and answering questions again. I originally thought that Rika was to be proven wrong, by some kind of miraculous act from Satoko, but that turned out completely wrong. I originally thought that this would be a Rika-arc, but guess what: Satoko is the actual main character. Rika plays the part of the vital character, while Oishi is the main side-character in this arc.

Rika’s going to have to wait till the next arc to be proven wrong. After a long recap of the previous episode, she realizes that her murderers are about to kill her, so she hides Satoko from them. The murderers turn out to be the guys in uniform, the people working under the Sonozaki-family, but now under the control of the real killer. They were after something in her stomach. Satoko runs into her after everything is over, though she didn’t wait long enough for the killers to go away, so they notice her. They start to chase her, until the bridge, from which she falls, just like Keiichi in the third arc.

And yes, this in fact means that she survived the Hinamizawa-disaster. To make things even better, she doesn’t lose her consciousness after falling, and wanders into Hinamizawa, just after the great disaster took place, and people are busy to collect the bodies. Satoko then wanders to the school, in which the entire population of the village seems to have been dumped. They all look like they’ve been brutally murdered from the inside, or that they were in the middle of awakening from the disease at the point of death.

Satoko then goes into a mental shock, and gets taken to the hospital in a nearby town. Oishi (who happened to be away at the time of the disaster) then goes to visit her, and quickly sees that she doesn’t respond to anybody. He tells her something interesting, though. Rena’s hat was found, bloodied, quite a distance away from Hinamizawa.

Oishi suspects that Satoko knows some key elements to this mystery, though he leaves her alone. However, when he mentions Rika’s name, she reacts for a split second. The nurse says that this is just a subconscious reaction, and that she didn’t really awaken or anything. She looks worried, though. Especially a close-up of her hints at her significance in this scene.

Oishi then returns to the police station, where he talks with a colleague about another one of his colleagues who disappeared. I suspect that that’s the guy who got shot at the previous episode. When he hears that the guy was about to do stuff relating Furude Rika, Oishi suddenly remembers that Satoko and Rika lived in the same house. He then realizes that Satoko didn’t turn out the way she did because of the Hinamizawa-disaster, but because of the things that happened to Rika. Okay, this isn’t exactly right, but this does make him go back to the hospital.

He’s too late, though. The nurse seemed to work for the killer as well, and the killer’s henchmen have started to appear in the hospital. Satoko actually awakens, and imagines Rena, running away from the same henchmen, and getting killed, with her hat being the only thing that remains. She gets killed before Oishi reaches her, though. Probably via an overdose of medicine. The episode ends with Oishi screaming because of this loss.

The most interesting thing in this episode for me was definitely Rena escaping, because it ruthlessly shattered the theory I’ve been having that Rena was able to survive in the sixth arc because her disease was rendered useless. This arc suggests that the sixth arc wasn’t the only one in which she received Takano’s scrapbooks. We’ve never seen her much in this episode, but we just don’t know what happened to her, and she may have been doing quite some interesting things while the attention was focused on other characters. In fact, this could have happened in the second, third and fifth arc as well, simply because we don’t get any information about what happened to the individual victims. The big question is now, why did Rena survive?

Now the following is just a theory, but could it be that Rena knew quite a bit about what was going on in the different arcs? What if the sixth arc was the only exception for this, whn she was too much distracted by her disease which awakened too early? She managed to survive back then because her disease was indeed already cured, but what if she just saw all of her friends going berserk and dying, right before her eyes? I can imagine that this would cause an even bigger trauma than with Satoko in this episode, and that she quite simply forgot all about it, which is why the killer let her live: she didn’t pose a threat anymore.

The next episode should really start the second season off, where the final two arcs will be told in nineteen episodes. Unfortunately, I’ve already been spoiled about the identity of the real killer and the role of Rika’s companion, but there remain enough questions that still need to be answered, especially the whats, hows and whys of everything. Arc 8 should deal with the whats and hows, while arc 9 (in the anime, not the game) should deal with the hows, if I recall correctly.

Overall, I do like the past arc. Not only did it introduce some new questions, and answered others, it was a good build-up to the next arc. We now know a bit of what’s going on inside Rika’s head, and that she’s pretty much in despair, and that she doesn’t want to do anything. Let’s see if she still thinks that way in the next one. :)

Awesome. This episode was much better than the previous one, somehow. Probably because Isaac and Miria provided for a bit of nice comedy. The current episode is way more focused than the first one, and it basically tells the story of what happened on the Flying pussyfoot, as the previous episode suggested that a lot happened there. People were murdered and thrown off the train, ad lots of things were going on.

First of all, Isaac and Miria, who were sortof central in this episode. You could probably classify them as “unlucky bystanders”, because they were just invited by Ennis after they hadn’t seen each other for more than a year. The two of them spent their time mining in an abandoned mine, somewhere in California. After they got Ennis’s letter, they rob a few banks, and they’re off to New York.

Jacuzzi and Nice also had a lot of screen-time in this episode. They’re with two accomplices, and Jaccuzi needs to do something I haven’t exactly understood what, though. I like the relationship between Nice and Jacuzzi, by the way. I’m not sure how the two of them met each other, but she’s helping him getting a bit more social to others. Isaac and Miria are of course perfect for that. I wonder though, how the barman he was sitting next to knew who he was…

We also meet the girl we saw Cheslaw with in the OP. Her name is Merry, and her mother is called Nathalie Williams. They bump into Jacuzzi at one point, and they looked really cute together. ^^; The question remains, though: why didn’t we see them exit the train together? But then again, that might have something to do with Cheslaw’s head being blown off. An interesting point is that we saw him enter the train with a man who refused to show his face. Could that be the same individual whose silhouette we saw in the previous episode?

The thing is that lots of mafia-like thugs were on that train, and something went terribly wrong, as the first episode seemed to suggest. There are two main parties, one lead by Ladd, and one where Chane seems to be working for. Both parties have people working undercover as the train staff (one of them killed one of his colleagues at the end of the episode), and they’re both after something. What that something is, however, I couldn’t understand, due to my limited Japanese.

Then there’s also the mysterious woman. In this episode, we see her enter the train. In the previous episode, we saw her exit the train. What she did in between remains a mystery.

I really wonder what’s going to happen next in this series, as it’s shaping up to be quite an interesting mystery-series. We know that a lot is still going to happen. Isaac is going to get his ear stabbed, How did someone like him turn immortal? Was it because of something that happened on the Flying Pussyfoot? And there are still those matters with the Gandor family, and the other two mafia-families. Dallas Genoard seems to have been the one to cause troubles with one of these two, after they killed his older brother and father. And where does Firo fit in all of this? How is he related to the story, besides being an old friend of Luck?

Still, I’m glad. The amount of questions I have after this episode is considerably smaller than the amount of questions I had after the first one. I have high hopes for this series now, as it seems quite plausible right now that every character is going to get enough development and background. The only things that annoy me about this series are the mafia-guys. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re so incredibly difficult to understand. But then again, that makes it even more fun to try and figure out what they’re up to. ^_^

About the only thing that I was afraid of for this series was that there wouldn’t be enough ideas for a fully fledged series. With this episode, these fears also got shattered. Umibouzu is one of the arcs that take up three episodes, and this episode spends most of its time fleshing out the different involved characters. How? By showing for each of them their biggest fear, with the help of illusions. I must say, it’s a brilliant idea, and with this show, it works extremely well.

The owner of the ship is up first, and his biggest fear is seeing his beloved goldfish die. Quite the interesting fellow. He himself thinks that it’s losing all his money that’s his biggest fear.

Next up, the samurai. According to himself, he has no fears, though Umibouzu shows him that he’s being haunted by the countless numbers of people whom he slaughtered.

At this point, people are really starting to take Umibouzu (who appeared in the form of a strange fish with a Shamisen and the voice of Norio Wakamoto) seriously, since the owner went into OTL-position, and the samurai fainted. Our lovely servant from Bake Neko, however, is up next, though she can’t really describe her biggest fears. She originally thinks that she fears not being able to get into a great relationship the most, but Umibouzu shows her that she fears being unable to give proper birth. The medicine seller manages to bring her back to her senses by convincing her that everything is an illusion, and nothing has changed in reality.

The bard has quite a strange fear. Manju. Apparently, they make him vomit. ^^;

The medicine seller knows quite well what his fears are: a world without a Katachi, Makoto and Kotowari. In other words, void. It’s quite logical as his biggest weapon wouldn’t work, and the beginning of the episode already hinted that his life is linked to his sword somehow.

Then the episode starts focusing at the real story of the arc when it’s the monk’s turn. His biggest fear is the priest. He may be his devoted master, but he’s been acting strange ever since they went on board of the ship. It also seems that the priest was the one who changed the course of the ship, and not Umibouzu, like I first thought.

The priest seems to be the centre of this mystery, and he involved everyone in his problems. 50 years ago, something strange happened on that very sea. Umibouzu then uses strange ropes of fish to pull up a huge round chamber from within the tank of the ship. Inside seems to be a human, who’s rumoured to have been in there for fifty years!

I’m sure as hell anticipating the next episode, as something tells me that something really disturbing happened fifty years ago.