Reviewing all of Higurashi: When They Cry
Instead of new posts for each finished chapter of Higurashi, you will have to make do with this single long review to sum things up. However, I have started Umineko, which was always set to be the highlight of this journey, so expect lots of coverage of that.
Although it is nothing compared to those first four or so days where I blitzed through the Question Arcs, getting through this lengthy visual novel in less than a month has been a mad rush. At the end of the day, it is not correct to think of Higurashi as a single game. Leaving aside the question of serialisation, this is past the length of just being another dating sim.
Like many other very long visual novels, Higurashi is best thought of as a long series of novels rather than a single experience. Indeed, when novelised, this story took sixteen novels to be adapted. Adding sixteen completed novels to my Goodreads annual Reading Challenge within the first month would certainly get the year off to a wild start.
To sum up before we even begin: Higurashi was perhaps one of the most uneven “high quality” literary experiences of my life. Over the course of its very substantial runtime, Higurashi managed to include both beautiful moments of inspired storytelling as well as amateurish mistakes which fly in the face of the common decency of an author. In that sense, Higurashi is a tragically missed opportunity for a good story to have become a great story.
But, on its own, this is not a major problem. Plenty of long series have been remembered fondly for their best parts, with their lesser entries consigned to oblivion. Especially in the genre of mystery. I think we all know how absurd it would be to reduce the mastery of The Murder on the Orient Express by tying it down to the legacy of the whole Hercule Poirot continuity. By adopting this partitioned mindset, I can easily put forward a rather positive review of Higurashi.
Higurashi: When They Cry is an enjoyable series of mystery visual novels. Although it has some weaker entries, its groundbreakingly modern sense of mystery conventions and a few standout arcs push the series towards greatness. However, it would be misleading to put forward such an optimistic review as a complete summary of the Higurashi experience.
Unlike the prior example of Christie’s Poirot novels, Higurashi is only an episodic mystery story in the most superficial sense. Although many arcs have their own particular mysteries to unravel, the central thrust of Higurashi is still a single sprawling narrative that encompasses everything from the first chapter to the last. Therefore, it is dishonest to discuss the Higurashi experience without encompassing Higurashi in its entirety. And in that sense, it is mired by various incongruencies that mean it just does not quite hold up.
By the end of the story, we have seen many of our characters triumph and fail in many unique and interesting ways. However, if we were to ask what we have learned about the world by watching these people grow, I am afraid the answer would be disappointingly second rate. The time loop mechanic minimises much of the individual growth we have witnessed, the thematic payoffs Higurashi offered in its climax were limited, and the knowledge we gained about the world of When They Cry was just plain boring.
It is disappointing to say as much, because there is a lot to like here. The way so many genres are threaded together leads to an atmosphere you cannot quite get anywhere else, and some of the characters are genuinely compelling in the right circumstances. And so, while I do not regret reading through Higurashi, I would be reticent to recommend it to most others just on account of its extreme length.
Although, many of the same things could be said about most visual novels, a medium filled with works that are famously long. So perhaps I should cut Ryukishi07 a little bit of slack. This was his debut work, after all. But, it is still unfortunate precisely because a judicious editor could easily turn Higurashi into a truly groundbreaking experience. With some much needed cutting of content and associated rewrites, we’d be left with a much better final product as well as more of the already plentiful optional content for those who want it. A crying shame that so much of this fluff is compulsory reading.
Then who was Mion? Redux
AKA The Best Part
If I were pressed to offer the most valuable part of Higurashi, the bits that are worth reading for those not terribly interested in the overall story, it would not take me long to come up with an answer. Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen stand head and shoulders above the rest of Higurashi. If I were to award the whole series a 7/10, these two doublet arcs would be doing a lot of the heavy lifting by earning a 9/10 themselves. They show the best that Higurashi has to offer, whether on the mystery front or in terms of straight up emotionally engaging storytelling.
As I addressed back when I first read Watanagashi-hen, the characters in Higurashi are not so multifaceted that they can readily steal the show. However, Ryukishi07 seems to understand how to best put these characters in circumstances that bring out their strengths, and make them compelling regardless. However, one such exception to this rule is Shion Sonozaki.
In a story filled with personalities derived from archetypes (even with clever twists on them), Shion is a shining beacon of individuality. After spending so much time in the childish school community which forms of the emotional core of Higurashi, it was a breath of fresh to air to leave it for a police perspective in Himatsubushi-hen. Meakashi-hen takes this a step further by taking the story into Shion’s head, a perspective adjacent to the school group, but still just outside of it. Shion is exactly the right narrator to expand the scope of the story.
Meakashi-hen has us unravelling the mysteries of Hinamizawa from an outsiders perspective, but also someone deeply connected to the Three Families, a key faction within the story. Shion’s lifestyle has a peculiar charisma to it, as her direct family members as well as her closest confident are members of the yakuza. Indeed, even from the early hours of Meakashi-hen, the eventual role of Shion in Matsuribayashi-hen as Kasai’s spotter when he uses a sniper rifle feels like a natural extension of the eccentricities we have come to know.
However, even as she is defined by her individuality, she is distressed by her ties to the unchanging, universal history of the village. The irony of having the character who most defines her own sense of self be the one who is most controlled by the history of the village is instantly compelling. On the surface, Shion knows exactly who she wants to be, but deep down she knows it is all a lie brought on by the confused identities of her sister and herself.
It is not just a single compelling character that carries Meakashi-hen either. The arc intersects with the emotional heart of Higurashi like no other does. Satoshi is as much of a central character of this chapter as Shion is, and this is where all of the setup on the Houjou family finally comes together into tangible payoffs. And many other central participants in this story are given a fresh assessment from this new perspective. An outsider’s look at Keiichi and Rena is an essential building block for the first thematic climax of Higurashi, which comes later in Tsumihoroboshi-hen.
Indeed, even as the final chapters drop the ball in terms of theming, Meakashi-hen knocks it out of the park. The two core themes of Higurashi are “you must be willing to trust others and forgive others in order to prevent tragedy and create a miracle”, and “the other side must also reach out their hand, otherwise trust and forgiveness cannot create a miracle”. Meakashi-hen is the first arc where we can see tragedies from both the perspective of a witness and a perpetrator. Satoshi and Shion’s stories create rhymes and echoes which illuminate these themes without the slightest philosophical exposition.
And how ‘bout that mystery, eh? I do understand why there is some confusion about how exactly to categorise Ryukishi07’s work, which seems to veer wildly across genre lines with little regard for convention. However, Higurashi is a mystery at heart. Our characters have found themselves captive in a game that they cannot grasp the rules of, and until they understand the mysteries laid out before them, they cannot have the happy ending they seek.
However, this mystery is a fairly broad one that encompasses all of the various arcs of Higurashi. So, it is a little surprising just how satisfying and complete a mystery story is told in the mirrored Watangashi-hen and Meakashi-hen narratives on their own. Some may misinterpret the genius of the identity swap in Watanagashi-hen as merely one of many body swaps, a commonplace trope in mystery novels. But in its attention to subtle details, Watanagashi-hen is the first sign of the better novel Higurashi could have been.
When dealing with twins in a mystery novel, there are three possible outcomes, a trinity of tricks to explain all possible results: Firstly, the body swap, where the twins swap places at some point and thereby trick the audience. (Typically this is done in the creation of an alibi.) Secondly, the artificial twin, where the notion of twins is an illusion from the start, and they are in fact a single person taking on two separate identities. And lastly, the anti-trick, where the fact that there is a pair of twins does not factor into a trick at all, contrary to expectations.
These categories are broad enough to encompass basically all usage of twins, but also specific enough to generally be mutually exclusive. It is impossible to swap places with a twin that does not exist, and the anti-trick solution is inherently contradictory with all others. However, the genius of Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen’s use of twins is that it crafts its own ruleset out of the assumptions of all three of these tricks, and slowly develops them over the course of both arcs.
Firstly, the introduction of Shion is interpreted as an artificial twin case by Keiichi. If the audience falls for Keiichi’s faulty assumption, they will be tripped up by the revelation that there was no such illusion, and it was a case of anti-trick twins. However, within this first trick is hidden the devilish secondary trick of hiding foreshadowing of Mion’s insecurities in the unstated use of the body swap twins in cases such as when Mion brings Keiichi a meal in disguise after school.
These twists and turns alone would make for some meaty tricks to chew on by the end of Watanagashi-hen. However, a further layer of trickery is revealed in the epilogue and clarified in Meakashi-hen, which sets Higurashi apart from almost any other twin trick in the books. If the audience learns from the body swap in the first half of Watanagashi-hen that they should use their thematic understanding of Mion as a Rosetta Stone in order to untangle any further body swaps, they will satisfy themselves by spotting “Mion” as the true culprit of Watanagashi-hen. However, by solving the locked-room of the epilogue, the attentive audience will realise that this body swap was false, nothing but an illusion set up by Shion. And in doing so, they’ll recognise the truth even in the backstory sections of Meakashi-hen. This completely flips Meakashi-hen on its head. You are now longer nervous about Shion becoming a victim to the events you’ve already witnessed in Watanagashi-hen. Instead, you are anticipating the horror of taking on the perspective of Shion as the culprit of these crimes, and must recognise the darker side to her relationship with Satoshi before it even manifests.
Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen achieve a unique synergy which is never truly replicated elsewhere in Higurashi, and thereby achieve the perfect incarnation of what Higurashi wanted to be. Solving the mysteries heighten the impact of the horrific events taking place, and also push forward the emotional and thematic sides of the narrative in parallel. It is an impressive dance. Too bad the rest of the arcs aren’t this good.
Structure: rhyme and reason
Of course, Meakashi-hen is not the only time that Higurashi manages to come together as a whole, even if it is the best example of this. The other time the Answer Arcs deliver of the promises made in the Question Arcs is in Tsumihoroboshi-hen. This arc does not reach for the perfection of Meakashi-hen, but it does deliver the first major climax of all of the themes and story threads that have been established in the five prior arcs, and it is the kind of glorious climax that I could only wish would have been lived up to later.
Due to the mechanics of the time loop, Higurashi does not link its various arcs together into a single flowing narrative for the most part. Instead, it relies on the various echoing similarities of its arcs to teach the audience the rules of its puzzle box, and therefore aims for a sort of cosmic satisfaction when its characters manage to achieve progress despite their fate. As George Lucas would say; it is like poetry, it rhymes.
Onikakushi-hen on its own is a deeply flawed story, lacking any proper development of internal logic and progression. However, the echoes of Onikakushi-hen metamorphose into a beautiful story of empathy throughout Tsumihoroboshi-hen. Keiichi is able to recognise the truth of Onikakushi-hen not through unravelling the various red herrings and clues within his memories, but by seeing Rena’s struggle with isolation and recognising his own insecurities.
And even without much explicit prodding, we the audience are able to see the various rhymes within the arcs of Higurashi, and recognise the tragedy within them. Due to Meakashi-hen, we know the truth of Satoshi’s failed struggle to save Sakoto. And through Tsukihoroboshi-hen, we learn exactly what it means to overcome those mistakes, which Keiichi himself had repeated in Tatarigoroshi-hen.
There are many flaws in Higurashi when analysed as a whole: Many contrivances, many failed attempts at foreshadowing, and an overarching plot which fails to satisfy. However, in the little moments that build on each other from arc to arc, pushing towards moments of overcoming which echo prior failures, and grant us deeper understanding of those tragedies, Higurashi shows its unique strength. These are perhaps the biggest reasons why Higurashi is worth reading even as it constantly falters.
Whodunit vs. Whydunit
AKA The Worst Part
Miyo Takano is not the worst character in Higurashi. She is actually reasonably well developed, and contributes to many of the best moments of the series. However, her role in the wider narrative is woefully handled in so many basic ways. Her function as a villain is ultimately cheap and problematic to the entire structure of Higurashi.
While there are problems with the overarching narrative of Higurashi, its basic skeleton holds together. There are a series of mysterious murders every year called Oyashiro-sama’s curse. If one can solve the Oyashiro-sama’s curse murder of Jirou Tomitake in June 1983, one will uncover the culprit behind these incidents, and therefore take the first step in uncovering the secrets of the whole village.
However, beyond vague generalisations about who is killing who, the actual mystery behind the why is kept almost entirely free of foreshadowing. Ryukishi07 himself recognises this, and pokes fun at the convenience of having a situation where one could make up any explanation they wanted for the motives of the culprits throughout Matsuribayashi-hen.
This stylistic preference seems to stem from Ryukishi07’s fascination with the tension between “complete” mysteries and the ambiguities of reality. He seems to want to explore the way that honkaku mystery structures allow for shocking revelations, but believes that only henkaku mysteries are capable of not frustrating the audience with the conveniences of fiction. The result is that he feels that leading the audience towards the motives of the culprit is too obvious for the kind of mystery he wants to write. There is one problem with this mentality: It leads to lazy, bad writing.
As a consequence of Ryukishi07’s decision to separate out the facts from the motives, he’s left with an inescapable problem. Firstly, the audience already feels cheated by having such crucial hints hidden from them. The best that can be done is that the audience must receive an explanation that does not seem arbitrary and conforms with all that has come before. However, with Higurashi’s structure, there is only one way to deliver this outcome without giving the audience the answers beforehand. The result is a stretch of miserable backstory filler that utterly grinds any and all tension and momentum in the story to a halt. Following the exciting climax at the end of Minagoroshi-hen, Matsuribayashi-hen opens with around 5-6 hours of various kinds of backstory, most of which is backfilled exposition of the motives for Miyo Takano. It is a miserable display of unforgivably flawed writing.
It is a product of fundamental confusion regarding what makes a good mystery story. Ryukishi07 seems far more interested in the long scenes of exposition that explain the vast plot he has hidden from the audience throughout the story, and much less interest in actually building satisfying payoffs for prior foreshadowing. What makes a mystery revelation satisfying is not that it is a complex explanation which illuminates the reason for every clue, it is that the explanation connects all of the information the audience already knew in such a way that the audience cannot understand how the explanation was kept from them even with so much information in the open.
Subjective perspectives and mystery conventions
The exposition dumps of Matsuribayashi-hen are perhaps the most painful example of the consequences of the missteps of Higurashi, but salient examples of how it gets into such a mess are present even in Onikakushi-hen. Ryukishi07 is always chasing the uniquely realistic subjective perspective on a mystery, where clues do not fall neatly in order, but instead in a messy jumble relative to the role of our perspective character. However, the result ended up being a disappointing need for repeated explanations, backfilled exposition, and dissatisfying withholding of information.
Whenever we enter the head of someone infected by Hinamizawa Syndrome, the paranoia and delusions inherent to the disease lead to a fundamental problem from the perspective of the audience. While we can easily accept the flaws of a subjective perspective in other stories, the delusions of Higurashi behave in a particularly problematic manner. There exists no way to definitively prove which delusions reflect real phenomena perceived unreliably and which delusions are entirely fabricated.
For example, the swallowed sewing needle and Mion’s syringe of Onikakushi-hen that Keiichi encounters are delusional interpretations of real events. While it is difficult, the audience is given sufficient tools to piece together the objective set of events that occurred, and therefore see through the delusion. However, we can only prove that such a line of reasoning is valid in a post hoc manner. It is not until the revelation of the true events of Onikakushi-hen via Tsumihoroboshi-hen that we can definitively conclude that these events were an alteration of reality rather than an outright fabrication. In other words, critical clues have been hidden in a devil’s proof — proving a negative, which is impossible.
Many other such occurrences are encountered through Higurashi. And not merely in the realm of delusions. The evidence laid out in support of the role of Hanyuu is reliant on several dubious leaps of logic. And much of the information withheld by Rika due our subjective placement outside of her perspective for the vast majority of events obscures many mysteries that are not actually mysteries. In Kusutani Tasuku’s narrative essay “There is a Narrative Trick in this Story”, a narrative trick is partially explained as a means by which the author can break the cardinal rule of “never lie to the audience” by way of subjectivity. The entirety of Rika and Hanyuu’s role in the story of Higurashi is a prime of example of exactly how this can go too far.
Let’s abstractly say that with two particular facts one was able to superficially foreshadow the existence of Hanyuu within Questions Arc: If Fact A was Rika’s insistence that Oyashiro-sama literally exists, and Fact B was the supernatural powers of Rika Furude, one could mark the deduction that Hanyuu exists as “deduction A-B”. One might also posit deduction B-C, that “Oyashiro-sama has granted Rika special powers”, as a combination of Fact B with a separate Fact C. And finally one may reach deduction C-D that “Rika has special control of the explanation for the curse of Oyashiro-sama”. However, this line of reasoning from A-B to C-D is in fact a trick. While C-D may be a plausible guess, even in Questions Arc, its actual proof lies in facts C and D, which were backfilled in Answers Arc. Through this sleight of hand, Higurashi hides many leaps in logic as a result of its faulty use of subjective foreshadowing.
The paralogic of paranormalcy
The fundamental problem with the mysterious backstory of Rika is not merely that it is presented subjectively, it is that supernatural or impossible events are always in tension with the logic of mystery writing. There have been many experiments in combining mystery with the abnormal and bizarre, and some have been successful. However, there is always an inescapable breakdown in the logic of a crime that is reliant on means that contradict what is possible in reality. There is a basic implausibility in asking the audience to accept clues that gods or demons exist when they do not exist in reality. If the audience breaks down such a barrier and allows themselves to assume that impossible things are possible in such a story, it does not stop there. The entire ruleset of mystery breaks down into anarchy, and only careful explanation of the rules of the setting can restore order. It is one of the most difficult tightropes to walk in all of fiction, and Higurashi does not really succeed.
At the end of the day, where this all breaks down is Hinamizawa Syndrome. Hinamizawa Syndrome crashes straight through the barrier between the impossible and the possible, and mires Higurashi in the stench of impossibility and anarchy. Once Hinamizawa Syndrome is introduced, through predominantly backfilled justifications, the audience can no longer trust Higurashi to stick to things which seemed possible according to the rules already set by the story. And if anything is possible, nothing is provable. Any contradictory piece of evidence can be dismissed as a delusion caused by the syndrome, and any implausible theory can be justified under the logic that since this world isn’t reality it might just be possible in such a setting — whether it is exaggerated reactionary fascist cabals or private WMD research.
This is something that Ryukishi07 recognises in self-awareness during Tsumihoroboshi-hen: Hinamizawa Syndrome is just one of many “impossible” explanations that fit the established facts, and the audience has no way to prove or disprove its existence. This is a serious problem for the story not just as a matter of mystery structure, but as a basic matter of credibility. Hinamizawa Syndrome is, in a phrase, absurd and pseudoscientific. From its introduction onwards, Higurashi’s escalation towards an unbelievably over the top action drama conclusion in the end of Matsuribayashi-hen is an unavoidable consequence of its inability to establish rules it can stick to.
Even at a thematic level, the “miracle” that our characters work towards throughout the many arcs until the climax of Matsuribayashi-hen is undercut by the knowledge that over the course of this story, there have been many times that the impossible has been permitted to be possible. Even the time travel premise pushes on this unfortunate contradiction. Can we really believe that Takano’s defeat was the product of such grand growth on the part of Rika and the others when such blatantly absurd magical powers are allowed in this story?
This is not a lethal predicament on its own, but the tragic failing of Higurashi is how many of its problems stack on top of one another, producing an even worse outcome. The ill defined motives of the masterminds behind the incidents pushes many of the explanations of the setting into expository backstory segments, the subjectivity of the story structure produces misconceptions which require even more exposition, and the paranormalcy of the setting fills these backfilled explanations with justifications for the various impossible events of the story, making the whole affair feel more half-arsed and doubtful the further along you get. And what should be the exciting climax of the story just becomes a chore in explaining away plot holes and incongruencies which have been building up arc to arc.
So, on the whole, I hope Umineko went through better editing. Otherwise I’m going to be whining about Ryukishi07 even more in the future.
