on the satoko phone call situation in minagoroshi
recently on this platform, i've taken notice on how people have also found discomfort in the phone call scene in minagoroshi. it was a feeling i felt too while reading minagoroshi, and i wanted to give my own two cents on the situation.
i think a rewording from rika was definitely necessary. she was being unnecessarily cruel to satoko while trying to motivate her, which is even noted by the narrator ("Rika's words were suddenly toned with malice, penetrating Satoko's heart the moment she thought she was saved."). but i think the point of that was to show how immature rika really was, paralleling shion's own words, albeit a lot less obviously selfish. something that rika takes pride in this whole arc is about how she believes she knows satoko better than anyone else, even herself. and considering the messages of saikoroshi and this arc as well, i believe that this immature belief is meant to be refuted. because even though rika is a century-old witch, she still only has the amount of life experience that a middle schooler does. she's still young, and she doesn't truly know how much her words can hurt satoko.
the way that satoko's beliefs are referred to as an "atonement for her sin" by so many characters in the series is problematic, but the biggest factor to consider beforehand is that most of the time, the characters are referring to how satoko views her own situation herself. she views her own situation as "a way to atone for her sins," and she even admits to genuinely believing this in meakashi as well as not refuting rika when confronted about her beliefs during the phone call scene. i fully believe that at the very least most of the characters that refer to satoko's situation as "atonement for her sins" are only speaking on her terms, and the characters who do mean it, particularly rena in tsumihoroboshi and shion, only refer to it in such a hurtful way because of their mental states. especially since both rena and shion have their own sins when it comes to satoshi, with rena's sin being her fueling satoshi's paranoia with her religious psychosis, and shion's being self explanatory. their harshness towards satoko when it comes to that is a projection of their own self-hatred for being unable to prevent and even worsening satoshi's situation.
and about the danger that satoko poses for herself by listening to the advice from her friends, i feel like we only need to look back onto tatarigoroshi for what happens when satoko doesn't reach out. even when saved before teppei pushes her over the brink, her mental state is already so bad that she starts inflicting harm onto herself in place of teppei, a painful irony considering how she believed she needed to endure pain if she wanted to be saved. the point of higurashi is that these kinds of risks are worth taking, and that change is needed to prevent a stagnant sadness. along with that, higurashi is also about how trying to change everything by yourself will end up fruitless, and that the risks that are taken by trusting people are worth it, a theme heavily present within every arc of higurashi.
despite rika's selfish and painfully hurtful words, i don't think that she was trying to victim-blame satoko. if she was, she would be affirming satoko's self-harming behavior, encouraging what satoko said while she was being tortured by shion in meakashi, saying that she deserves to be suffering to atone for satoshi. but rika is also trying to speak on satoko's terms. she's trying to show her that the only way to truly be happy is if she reaches out and believes in her friends. it just happens that rika believed that she also needed to speak on satoko's level, if that makes sense. she needed to convince satoko that she had to reach out to her friends, even if it meant she had to appeal to satoko's guilt. and again, we need to keep in mind that rika is only truly as mature as satoko is. these are flawed characters, and children at that. they aren't always going to use the perfect words to convey how they feel, and they're both learning what it means to truly be friends with someone.
with ryukishi07's experience as a civil servant, i have no doubt that he knew what he was writing during this scene. he likely has experience with child abuse victims with a complex who needed that complex to be fulfilled if they were to believe that they needed to reach out. and even though the situation of minagoroshi is highly idealistic, there is a heavy level of sad realism that can be found in its story. and even with that idealism, the message that ryukishi wanted to tell us through these characters can be found. that the things that seem like miracles can be made simply by taking the risk of reaching out, and that what we perceive as an unchangeable destiny, a fate set in stone, can be torn through as simply as wet paper. whether or not you believe the message is realistic is up to the reader, but i heavily believe in the meaning that ryukishi had behind it.
i can definitely see why people would be uncomfortable with the way ryukishi decided to present satoko's abuse like this, and i completely empathize with the people who found discomfort in his portrayal of abuse. but i believe that there was a meaning to the words he chose, a reason to why he wrote his story this way.
