#himatsubushi

[rena-not-necessarily-daily]

(cover art for the original pc version of himatsubushi-hen. illustration by ryukishi07)

[typhonist]

I'm back with my full readthrough of Higurashi! We're starting Himatsubushi today, and I'm gonna go a bit longer than usual.

Starting at 4:pm UTC-8! Hope you stop by!

Watch this video on Twitch Live

Reminder: I know and love this series. My friends in chat do not. They are going in blind. No spoilers.

[whentheycry-problems]

alright! here we go! "Time Killing" so either we're gonna be chilling and having fun the whole time, or someone's gonna die on a precise schedule or via time travel paradoxes or something. idk how you kill someone with time. maybe they die of old age? so far these chapter titles have all referring to concepts we've already seen within the story.

Onikakushi - demoning away: kidnapping, vanishing, possibly the sacrifices to appease Oyashiro-sama

Watanagashi - both the beginning-of-summer festival, and the ancient torture ritual that it's based on.

Tatarigoroshi - I don't think this one was explicitly mentioned in the story, but 'curse killing' definitely refers to the murders that are done in the name of Oyashiro-sama's curse.

Himatsubushi - the only thing I can think of related to both time and killing is the fact that they're killing people once a year. I don't know what to make of both "I now entrust you with all the mysteries" AND "Conjecture is impossible" surely if I have all the mysteries it should be possible to start solving things. Though, I guess mysteries aren't the same thing as answers. Also, I can't imagine what "you have the right to reject this story" could mean. Does that mean it's... potentially not really canon? or just that it'll be so weird it'll ruin all my theories.

[kotodama-catalogue]

[myamo]

Yukari Yakumo by Himatsubushi

[saccharinescorpion]

this TIP that’s just Akasaka talking with his wife Yukie is so short but so cute

[lizz-revs]

Higurashi When They Cry - Himatsubushi

As you might have guessed, this is a sound novel as well. Look up my Reviews for the First Part, Second Part and Third Part of the Series, if you want to know, what this game is about, as I will not repeat, what I wrote before.

Story

This time we read about the past of Hinamizawa, the dam construction riots and the abduction of the grandson of a governmental official. The story is told by a police officer named Akasaka Mamoru, who arrives at the village in order to find the missing grandson and ultimately solve the case, whether the culprits are the Sonozaki family. While he is searching for the grandson, he meets Rika Furude in Hinamizama and develops a close friendship with her. She actually warns him at the beginning of the game to return back to his homeplace in Tokyo and give up on the search of the grandson, but he doesn’t listen to her. So, the ending is rather… not very good.

New Characters

Mamoru Akasaka

Akasaka is the protagonist of this chapter. He is a police officer from Tokyo and has a pregnant wife, who is currently staying in the hospital. Akasaka is a very devoted to his work and a fighter for justice. He is very diligent and refuses to give up and go back home until he has rescued the child. However, this is more than stupid in this scenario.

Kuraudo Ooishi

While he was a reoccurring side character in the previous chapters as well, he is more of a main character in this one. Since Akasaka doesn’t know his way in Hinamizawa, Ooishi acts like a mentor to him and teaches him, how to behave. Ultimately, we can also see that Ooishi wants the best for the village, since he is devastated at the end of the chapter and is as obsessed as Akasaka to find out the truth about what happened in Hinamizawa.

My opinion

I think it is very refreshing that the protagonist and the story-telling changes. While Keiichi was a high school boy going through puberty, Akasaka is an adult, who is very much in love with his wife and wants their daughter to be cute like Rika.

Actually, he is even more or less a fanboy of Rika, but he treats her with a fatherly attention and far better than her own family. So, while there are traits that make Keiichi and Akasaka seem similar, they are behaving differently and Akasaka has a lot more freedom in his actions than Keiichi because he is an adult (plus a police officer). While this is a positive aspect on its own, Akasaka proves in this chapter that even, if you have a freedom of choice, there is still a way to choose the worst possible ending.

However, since this chapter was shorter and more informative about the past than the previous chapters, it was very quick to read and gave many insights, which led to my current theory about what is happening in Hinamizawa.

(you can read about it here – SPOILER ALERT)

I think you should definitely read this chapter, if you want to decide on a theory as well, because now the story is told in the perspective of the “enemies of Hinamizawa” and therefore, you might finally have valuable reasons towards the human culprit theory instead of the demon culprit one.

Well, that’s that, I think you’ll miss out, if you don’t read it. This chapter deserves a 9.5/10 since it is good, but still really can’t compete with the previous one.

[fanbun]