Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai

Information of Anime

In a small village called Hinamizawa, death happens every fixed day of June.  This has started since a fight from the villagers against constructing a big dam in the village.  Since the project was removed, a chain of death occurred.

In the summer of 1983, Maebara Keiichi moves into the village.  Making friends with Rena Ryuuguu, Satoko Houjou, Mion Sonozaki, & Rika Furude, he lives a simple peaceful life in the village.  Together, they form a club where they play a lot of games.  However, Keiichi would later stumble upon the dark history of Hinamizawa on its past dam construction project.  As he learns more about its past, Keiichi starts to doubt about his friends.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai is the continuation of the first season, Higurashi no Naku Kori ni.  More stories are revealed about the village of Hinamizawa & it's past dam construction project.  Plus, the mystery of Oyashirosama is further discussed.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

Like the first season, the anime breaks the show into arcs.  And those arcs seem like short stories as they are broken down into chapters.  The show focuses more on Oyashirosama & the origins of it.  Unlike the first season, the show is more focused on Rika Furude instead of Maebara Keiichi.  All the mysteries about the first season is actually found here as Rika is a being that travels from different worlds with a spiritual being named Hanyuu that is connected to her by senses.  They have seen all the incidents of the Hinamizawa killings as all the worlds go into the same circle with slightly different paths leading to the same tragedy.  However, they don't know who kills Rika every time.  Because they found Keiichi managed to found out the different worlds in one of the worlds they visited, Rika puts her faith into him in helping her break this endless killing circle.  Soon, every one of her friend pitches in & Rika's belief in fate being unbroken is stopped as many events that were supposed to happen were turned.  However, some were not & created some new killings after the festival.  Giving her faith & trust to her friends, Rika explains to them the truth behind the village.  She tells them about the Hinamizawa Syndrome & how Oyashirosama came about.  They come close to avoid fate which only leads them to their deaths after finding out that Takano is the mastermind.  The group plans to try again in the next world with Hanyuu believing that fate can be turned around.

Before going to the next round for the group, the show shifts to the past where Takano is a child.  It explains how she got involved in the Hinamizawa Syndrome & why she became involved.  It shows her being abused as a child & how she wanted to carry out the research on this syndrome.  It would end with Hanyuu refusing to accept Takano's coin offering at the shrine as Hanyuu warns her that her plans will be crushed by an opposing will.  From here, the show continues to show more about the past before the arrival of Keiichi.  These include past backgrounds with some of the characters & their relationship with others.  As Keiichi finally arrives as the outsider key to help break fate, Hanyuu now plays an important role to fuel up a miracle as she maintains a physical body that people can now see.  However, her powers to Rika is now her last as the current world is where they get only one more chance to break fate.

In the final world/arc, more people are joining in to defeat Takano & her team as Rika manages to get some of the members from there to change sides & have the police involved.  Also, Mamoru Akasaka comes back to save Riku this time.  He was also the one that convinced the police to help her.  Knowing most of the events from the past, Takano's plans are countered heavily with Rika winning big time.  However, the plan to start Operation Termination at the village is still in effect as Rika & her team tries to avoid it.  Takano's team surrenders & admits defeat while Takano doesn't & escapes from her arrest.  But she gets caught & sent to the Irie clinic instead of back to Tokyo as she starts to show signs of the Hinamizawa Syndrome.

The shows ends with Riku able to go past June 30, 1983.  After the credit roll, we see an adult Rika giving a warning to a young child Takano that prevents her from losing her parents.

My Personal Review

Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Kai continues on where the first season left off.  Although it's presented the same way as before, the show isn't too dark as the first season.  It's not really gruesome as before.  Watching the first season is a must to understand what is going on, despite how the show presents all the arcs at the beginning with most of the same information being reprocessed to the viewers again.

Animation

Same as the first season.  The character designs are different from the doujin game.  They aren't loli-sized as the game & they are quite tall due to long & thin legs & arms.  The big heads don't seem to balance with the thin limbs.  Also, they seem to be cuter than the games.  I didn't like the game design ones as they were a bit chubby & short.  Also, I didn't like the face designs from the game.  But the clothing designs remain the same.  Although drawings are more cuter than the game, the designs tend to change a lot.  It's almost like kid designs when the characters start making weird faces or go into some sort of SD mode.  Overall, the drawings are really simple & quite flat.  It's like the studio didn't spend a lot of money on the animation department.  However, I would like to think of it as the studio spending more money on story writing.  But, the drawing style is a bit different as some of the characters take some new forms.

The backgrounds are as simple as well.  However, there are some areas that as well detailed.  But most of them are in the dark scenes & they really help get you into that chilling atmosphere.  Also, the areas outside of town seem to be more nicer than the buildings in town.  I assume more work is put into the outdoor nature stuff instead.

The colours are quite dull & boring.  In fact, it's pretty flat.  This holds true mainly for the characters.  It makes them look one dimensional.  The choice of colours almost makes it look like a kid's show from the 80s.  However, it seems the studio made the right choice as the setting is set in 1983.  For the backgrounds, the colours are much better.  But in comparison of the first season, the colours are a bit brighter & the lines are a bit bolder & thicker.

The animation movements are funny at times.  It's not really natural.  Most of the time, you get silly animation movements like blown up faces or legs running in a circle.  It only starts looking natural when the dark killing scenes appear.  However, they don't seem to look flowing.  It's as if the animation is missing some frames or the distance isn't calculated properly in terms of the laws of physics.

Sound

The sound effects are really on the realistic side with some horror effects.  But most of the time, it's on the silly & cute side.  Not much distortion or fuzzy parts.

The seiyuus for this show is a pretty good cast & are the same ones from the first season.  However, their voices aren't projected & mixed into the show properly like the previous season.  There are many cases where the voices would overpower the background music & sound effects.  Also, the volume level on the voices isn't stable.  It can get loud & suddenly soft for some reason.  It happens a lot with Keiichi's voice.  Also, they sometimes have this closed room studio effect where the voices really sound mono.  For some reason, it sounds fake.

The music is pretty good as they set the mood well.  There are quite a lot of dark music in this show as well as silly ones.  However, it would be better if the producers set the volume right.  You can either barely heard it or the volume goes out of scale.  The opening & ending theme songs are a bit of a letdown for me.  It's not as powerful & dark.  It's seems to be a bit more joyful & lighter.

Story

The show uses the same format as the first season did.  However, the ending scenes aren't shown at the start of the arcs anymore.  Most like to keep it a secret.  But I do miss them as it created some suspense on how it would lead to that point.  Unlike the first season, I found this one to have more comedy than the first.  Plus, touches a bit on the adult sexual jokes.  Also, some of the arcs/chapters are longer than four episodes now.  I started to think there were no new chapters in this season with the exception of the aftermath & second one, Massacre chapter.  However, this season was used to answer a lot of questions that were in the first season.

Instead of focusing on the dam construction, the show heavily touches the Oyashirosama topic & the village wipeout.  In the first episode, it gives the viewers the theory behind it with the village not destroyed & everyone all aged.  Technically, you could call it the show's conclusion to the whole series.  Whether or not it touches it again or go deeper is another matter.  As for the characters itself, the Sonozaki twins are now together instead of separate as they go to the same school.

A problem with the show is some of the endings of the arcs once again.  Because the arc occur in different worlds or universes, it creates massive confusion to some viewers that can't connect or follow the arcs correctly.  However, the show is determine to tie up everything about the mystery of Oyashirosama in the end with Rika's view which should wrap up the whole series.  In fact, the show hints about the world being resetted as Rika & other try to save their village again.  But the answer behind everything is revealed in the halfway point of the show.  Plus, the revealing of Takano's past adds a lot to the story.  As the show gets deeper, a lot of action & suspense is poured in which makes you sit at the edge of your seat.

About the halfway point after the ending credits, we have Dark Rika's corner which is pretty funny as we see a bitched up Riku commenting the show or answer fan letters with a bad ass attitude.  Although it lightens the mood a bit in comedy, one shouldn't get lost from the show's actual theme.

As for the ending, it covered up a lot of things & made the series easy to understand.  However, I felt the cure to the Hinamizawa Syndrome is not complete.  Plus, Satoko's hasn't been fully concluded.  Although a lot of the mysteries are covered, there are a few left that's not unfinished such as what will happen to the Hinamizawa village from that point on.

Overall Conclusion

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai is probably one of the best anime shows to come out this year & probably something we story/plot hungry fans are looking for once again.  The story is broken down to a number of chapters with many alternative scenarios that provides clues to put the whole puzzle together.  However, it follows the same pattern by using different arcs from different worlds to connect everything together.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai gets an eight out of ten from me. The story is very well written as it's broken down into chapters with that put the pieces together later on.  Problem with the show is how the animation is too much on the plain side.  Plus, first time viewers to the series may get lost in the show as it moves to new chapters like how the first season was going.  However, this season makes the series much easier to understand.  With the third season announced, it would be interesting to see what that season will cover & complete what the first season somewhat left out.

Last updated on January 15, 2008