Third day (a shorter one)
Progress: Higurashi Arc 1, End of Chapter 3.5
I read a lot less today. (Blame March Comes in Like a Lion if you must, but then go ahead and read it because it is the best piece of media I’ve ever consumed.) I’ve made decent progress overall these past 3 days, but have not read enough to have any real chance of finishing the whole story, I have decided to content myself with a more relaxed pace from here on out. I will just get at least as far as the end of the Questions Arc in this readathon, and then once the daily posts end, I will continue with bonus updates for each Chapter as I finish them. This will all be a matter of my whims of course, if I hit a good stride I may well get well beyond that with the two daily posts remaining. And it isn’t like the holiday season is over once those posts are finished, New Years is just around the corner.
I will say that my drop in reading time was not due to a drop in quality. Chapter 3 made for an interesting shift in focus that was more in line with the interesting developments in Chapter 2 rather than the comparatively lacklustre quality of Chapter 1. However, at least so far, it seems like Chapter 2 is going to keep the title of reigning champion of good writing.
That said, the lack of an overabundance of new content to chew on gives me a chance to get into something that has been on my mind over the whole course of Higurashi’s “runtime”. Let’s talk about irony poisoning, moe, and antiquated genre norms. Worry not, we’ll get into the nitty gritty of Chapter 3 afterwards.
The part where I whine about my own preferences
Back when I first read something approximating the first subchapter of Higurashi, several years back, I had heeded the advice of purists that the original art was the best way to experience the story. I don’t agree with them, but now that I’ve read it for myself with the updated console art, I finally understand why they felt the way they felt. Higurashi is at its worst when the reader is conscious of the parts that are just a little bit too anime, and the updated art is sometimes an unwelcome reminder of that fact.
While reading through Chapter 3, I noticed the hotkey which was bound in my modified copy of the game to switch between various art styles at will. Upon trying it, I noticed that while the old art may seem just as cutesy and moe as the updated console art on first inspection, that isn’t strictly true. The original art is just a little too haphazard to communicate any real sense of moe, instead emphasising the indie, unpolishing nature of Higurashi. However, the real distinction is in the scenes of horror and madness.
The updated art, for all its strengths, is just a touch incongruent with the script. The subtle indifference and cruelty of Rena’s face when she displays her loyalty to Oyashiro-sama is presented in a distinctly generic “anime yandere” look, with the kind of exaggerated eyes to match. In the original art, the rage and danger is communicated just as well, with expressions that feel much more authentic to both the design and real people.
So, if I don’t actually advocate using the original designs (they’re ugly as sin in most respects after all — distractingly so), why bring this all up? It is because, not so long ago, something like yandere eyes would not have bothered me in the least. While I would have preferred originality, I wasn’t so picky as to be distracted by the choice to use a safe piece of shorthand. Indeed, given that I have completed VNs as absolutely brimming with yandere eyes as School Days, I should be the last person with any right to complain about something like this.
The point is that the anime-isms in Higurashi annoy me now more than they really should. And not just because I’ve grown tired of anime tropes in general or anything. It is just that from the vantage point of late 2020, there’s something frustratingly outdated about things which should be entirely inoffensive. Furthermore, there’s something about this mildly irrational hang-up which fascinates me. Why should I feel distracted by the fact that old media feels more congruent to its own age rather than my own modern sensibilities? And why do I apply this modernistic bias so selectively and unconsciously?
Media lineages are a constant march further and further into cynicism by their very nature. Each generation of creators will grow increasingly self-aware about the contrivances and shorthand which is endemic to their own medium and genre. With this self-awareness comes an inevitable degree of cynicism and irony in any choice to make use of these conventions.
So, by way of an example close to my own heart: The trend to set crimes in locked rooms gives way to the conscious trope of locked room crimes; then gives way to the deliberate choice to subvert the audience’s expectations of crimes always being in locked rooms; then gives way to mockery and parody of the convention of locked room crimes; then gives way to locked room crimes mostly being used as an ironic or metatextual choice rather than an authentic trope of the genre.
By this slow moving process of transforming subconscious trends within media into consciously deployed tropes, irony becomes non-optional. This, I believe, is the second to why the perfectly satisfactory use of anime tropes in Higurashi, and especially the use of moe character traits, comes off as so grating. And this is why I think there’s something to be said for the original art. It is inferior to most respects, but its sheer bizarreness stands outside of this lineage which pushes forever towards the perfectly ironic moe bishoujo. There’s nothing cynical or overdone about the way characters emote or look in that art style, simply because there’s nothing quite like it.
No longer being an outsider
Chapter 3 is not a wholesale break with what has come before by any stretch of the imagination, but it does make a pretty decent departure from the status quo. From early on into the story, we are no longer an outsider who is suddenly thrust into the dangers of this world from the night of the Watanagashi onwards. Instead, by coming to know Satoko, whose family is so deeply tied up in the previous years’ mysterious deaths, we are now in the thick of it from quite early on.
Higurashi is now hitting a comfortable stride where it can freely make use of our knowledge of prior Chapters to quickly give us tasty new pieces of information to sit on without relying on lengthy exposition or massive tone shifts. The cold open of this arc with the discovery of the corpse of the lover of Satoko’s uncle, a corpse which has clearly been through the ancient Watanagashi torture ritual, instantly intensifies the already building sense of intrigue that follows us through every action in this story.
These are all refreshing choices. Starting this route felt less like a sudden break in the action, as was the case (temporarily) with the shift from Chapter 1 to 2, and more like an interesting new story to jump right into.
Although there are things to be said about the implications of Satoko’s family clearly still being targets of someone who would make use of the Watanagashi, and the story moving more and more directly in the path of the mysteries of the past, I will save those for tomorrow. I suspect there will be a lot more to be said at the end of this Chapter, and I will keep this post shorter in line with my shorter reading session.
I will leave with this little nugget of thought, which I hope will be resolved by tomorrow’s post. The situation with the dam, which led to so many of these terrifying incidents, clearly had deeper implications than are being let on. Why was there a meaningful, powerful group of villagers willing to let the dam go ahead? And why does supporting the dam warrant such severe punishment, years later? I hungrily await more enticing clues tomorrow.
