English Dub Review: Higurashi – When They Cry: Sotsu “God-Entertaining Chapter, Part 3”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With her plan outed, Satako kills herself and Rika, proceeding to beat her up and kill her over and over across multiple different timelines, eventually culminating in a big ridiculous magic DBZ battle with the sword that can kill loopers. Also, Hanyuu escapes her binds and tries to fight Eua.

OUR TAKE

This has, without a shadow of a doubt, got to be rock bottom for this show, heck for this franchise. What started as a spooky and intricate mystery centering on the creepy paranoia in a small rural village and expanded into a battle to beat countless deaths to determine the killer…has devolved into two girls, former best friends, gaining magical girl priestess costumes and flying around with glowy energy powers, now fighting over a giant sword to kill each other over and over again. That is, on its face, totally freaking bonkers and the kind of bizarreness that some come to anime for in general, but it’s also preceded by those same two girls violently and horrifically and savagely beating each other into bloody chunks, all while one rants and raves about how she just doesn’t like to study, and that justifies the fact that she has deliberately drudged up her friend’s worst trauma and kept her locked in it basically out of spite and deluded self-righteousness. A character who, prior to these two seasons, was someone who faced a lot of separate hardship and suffering that she nobly overcame, but apparently learned nothing from that and instead resorted to all this.

And yet. The story seems to be framing this conflict as one of equal moral standing between Rika and Satako, letting them spout off their accounts of what happened with equal time and giving Satako just as many solid hits in on Rika, probably more. But this is simply not a matter with two understandable but complicated viewpoints that are both right and wrong for different reasons. This is actually a very simple, black and white, open and shut matter, with one person in the right and the other absolutely in the wrong. I’m not sure if I’ve put too fine a point on this, but Satako deliberately trapped Rika back in the time loop that she spent a collective century trying to get out, tortured her and all of their friends and loved ones to keep her stuck, wounded and murdered her over and over again, manipulated others to fulfill her delusion…need I go on? Does this story need to go on? Does this franchise need to go on? I think the answer to all of those questions is a very hard no. But sadly, there is one more episode left, and while it’s not as bad as this, it’s still pretty far down.