I have several questions but I will spend most of this post trying to answer just one.
If a new rule allows Rika and Satoko to transfer to the same new fragment after dying, did she really keep track of which Rika since that was made only after the Chandelier death?
Is Gou Rika Matsuribayashi Rika? Or Chandelier Rika? If the Rika she gets in her happy ending isn't her actual original Rika, could this be the cost Eua might have vaguely warned about and not actually the loops bleeding into people's memories?
Is Satoko a piece of Lambdadelta along with Vier/LD3105/Mitsuyo and Eua a piece of Featherine's? And not actually Lambdatoko? Or is Ryukishi just trolling with having Eua babble nonsense (Thinking Emoji)
Where/when will the Logic Error occur?
I used to believe the error was in the original series going off the VERY VAGUE statement about the beginning and end being connected. Never has there ever been a perfectly airtight idea of what the real Logic Error is though, and the new mechanics shown by Gou really makes my brain hurt.
Are Hanyuu and Eua the same person? Are Eua and FEATHERINE the same person?
I continue to have hope Hanyuu doesn't get retconned into being a Big Bad Evil Demon Lady named Eua, despite mounting implications that suggest otherwise. I had originally been led to believe Hanyuu was a piece that was left to roam the game board by her Game Master: given that she's been part of the Hinamizawa world for 1k years I wondered for a bit if she was a Witch that somehow lost her memory. Kotohogushi is a bit dubious on the canonicity so I have to remind myself the translation about Hanyuu coming from a line of 'alien' like people transferring their consciousness from another dimension with a grain of salt.
But Eua looks so much like Featherine I've been rewatching her scenes lately and thinking... this line I really keep thinking about:
What did Eua mean by this? She phrases it like there is someone/something of a higher power than even herself.
In terms of ranking, Lambda described Aurora higher than Voyagers/Witches. She was one step below THE Creator (supposedly there is a typo where there is actually just One Creator and Aurora is merely a Witch with a comparable power to a creator but idk Japanese so cant verify this).
From the way she worded things, she isn't talking to Satoko exclusively: she's talking about Vier, LD3105, and Mitsuyo. Referencing that it took hundreds of millions of loops for Eua and Satoko to meet 'once more'. Surely this can't mean Rika's looping merely referring to Hanyuu and Satoko; that sort of looping sounds beyond 100 years' worth.
Could it be that Eua is a self-aware god piece referring to all the various Expies in the WTCverse as being the same person at the heart of things? Possibly... but let's remember that Featherine lost her memory when her device was damaged; Lambda described it as one severe enough to alter her memory, appearance, and personality. It happened once, and Featherine would likely be extremely guarded against letting it happen again. How it happened is one more mystery.
Back to Eua: when Satoko asks her to 'alter' the rules of the game, and she acts like it's no biggie, then this carries heavy implications of being the Game Master/Territory Lord. If she was merely a piece, no amount of self-awareness would make her capable of altering the actual rules on a whim would it?
There's also this line she spoke to Satoko in episode 18ish: "The horn that granted the cat power was damaged, but mine is not."
Note that she says horn singular. Not plural. She doesn't say "mine are not" and confirms Rika was given the looping ability by something external. Yet she doesn't assign it a name (Hanyuu), just refers to it as an object. Which might be a hint as to how Featherine might create piece Witches: her device might be a way of transferring loop power with more permanence that gets around a 'sponsorship' which can be withdrawn at the Witch's discretion.
Also recall that when Satoko touches the Oyashiro statue (whose arm is intact but has a hollow head), it shatters on the upper part and only one horn falls out onto the floor. Not a horseshoe shaped device like Featherine's. It's also black, while Eua's is all white. Yet Hanyuu's horns are still with one chunk missing and colored black. Eua also mentions she isn't supposed to even have a name, in fact, her meeting with Satoko seems almost by 'chance' (she speaks like Satoko summoned her to the fragment in this manner). Hanyuu's full real name is given in a chapter that is dubiously semi-canon, so Ryukishi might elect to leave it out of Gou, but her husband Riku Furude gave her the nickname 'Hanyuu'. (Which still contains the character for Feather)
These observations are making me consider the possibility that Hanyuu and Eua are separate personas of a singular entity: The smooth horn belongs to Eua while the broken one belongs to Hanyuu. Black and White; a contrast between the kind demon mother who feels Rika's pain and lived on the gameboard & the demon who relishes in tormenting humans, too above to be part of the gameboard herself.
So, that leads us to the million dollar question: who is the entity if we put both horns together? Do we get Featherine Augustus Aurora? Or the Oyashiro living in this reverse-world Hinamizawa and hiding inside the actual statue? (Seriously is there a corpse in there? Wtf)
Or are these two halves of a GM making a tug of war for control over the Higurashi Catbox via their loopers? Now THAT is a mindblower if true.
We got our answer that Takano forfeited her villain role before Gou actually began so that may explain why the legend of Oyashiro is told deceptively 'wrong', but how does one account for the unbroken statue with a removeable head... could we potentially get a fragment in Sotsu where Satoko doesn't break the arm off it as a child and thus it affects all the loops afterwards? Hmm.
Either way we haven't actually caught up to GOU chronologically speaking, so until Sotsu comes out, there's no way to tell for sure if Eua and Hanyuu are one and the same or if they are actually two halves of a whole. But I will be a happy camper if this crackpot theory turns out to be right. Usually I'm wrong though. Lol
But now I'll definitely see about cooking up a diagram or something if we can actually make a branching map of the different Rikas to figure out which one is Gou Rika.
