Higurashi: When They Cry - Sotsu - Reviews

SPOILERS AHEAD 

"I expected nothing from the world, because expectations lead to disappointment." A direct quote from the final episode of Sotsu that sums up my experience with this entire series perfectly. My God, I shouldn't have watched this season out of my house because I was so close to punching a nearby kid. That's how angry and frustrated I am.

Sotsu is basically Gou but through Satoko's perspective!! It's the same retracing, recapping, reusing and recycling of the first season that just ended last winter !!! It's the same exact conflict. Rika and Satoko are still fighting each other to literal bloody death because Rika wants to go abroad to a girl's boarding school with Satoko and Satoko wants to stay in Hinamizawa with Rika. But both of them are too selfish and stubborn to give in so they live and kill each other over and over. Their "conflict" is resolved in the final episode when their friends gave them a generic heartful speech about "Friends don't have to stick with each other all the time. They don't have to do everything together." NO DUH SHERLOCK !!! I'm sure I and 99. %  of the viewers came to that conclusion before the first season ended. THAT'S YOUR CONFLICT??!! THAT'S YOUR RETELLING Of HIGURASHI??!!! I just love that the final epic battle is given to us via Dragon Ball Z and Saint Seya because that fits Higurashi so well !!! This very basic conflict would fit better in maybe 4 episodes NOT 41 EPISODES!!! IT'S BORING, DRAINING AND FRUSTRATING !!!!

Audio, voice acting and music are fine, I even like the opening and closing with the visuals. I still dislike the animation and character designs especially when they don't change the facial structure of the characters' faces when they're older or younger it really annoys me. Main characters other than Rika and Satoko have less presence, relevance and development than Gou (especially the case with Shion). Hanyuu has more screen time but is about as useful as she was in Gou. Rika and Satoko have time looped and lived longer years than the collected audience but they still act like what you expect from 2 tantrum throwing 5 year olds with knives!! They made up and compromised but they're still gonna fight and kill each other and repeat ??!! What the HELL !!! Rika and Satoko's relationship here is beyond toxic! Beyond abusive! Why are they still friends after all they've done to each other??!!

What's the point of the this adaption? What's the intention? Who's it for?! It fails as a remake and a sequel!! All I've got out of this adaption is that I'll never look at Rika and Satoko's friendship the same way.  Higurashi's heart and strength comes from the characters' friendships, why taint that if you have nothing new or good to give us ??!! Why ruin what's been established without evolving the story?!

Stick with the visual novels, original anime and mangas. Don't bother with this version unless you want to see little girls kill each other in gore galore.

Utter trash. Final episode made me genuinely angry. Don't waste your time by starting this, it is mostly recap and the thought processes of the characters, their motivations and ultimately what they think is a reasonable thing to do or to forgive someone else for doing is so idiotic I felt like I gradually became dumber as a watched it. Truly an insult to anyone who stuck around for this long.

For the most part, I can say that this is better than Gou, but it is still with its issues. The first being that since we now know the killer, their motives, and the twists, it almost feels like a chore to rewatch the same arcs, albeit with slight alterations to recontextualize them. It doesn't help matters where one arc I had in mind would have still ended up in the same results. 

The animation is still good, but it kind of feels like a waste to see them being reused for the sole purpose of adding context to them. If anything, I saw a lot of the scenes coming after seeing the events of Gou play out with a few genuine surprises that caught me off guard. But I do like the visuals of the opening theme and the ending theme which again resembles a watercolor painting of Rika and Satoko just living their best lives together.

Once more, the characters were placed to the wayside since the show is really more about the conflict between Rika and Satoko. And even then, I'm just getting bored with that as the driving theme. 

I did like the OP and ED themes, though.

It's all recaps, no development, no use of characters.

• Horrid ending with no closure and no feeling except bitterness.
• There are only two characters and the rest are furniture.

First, Let me make this clear: this story is NOT THE SAME AS THE GOU ARK. It is instead a REWRITING of the ark FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE in order TO ALLOW space/A NEW MARGIN FOR CREATIVITY so that a certain desired ending could be achieved. THERE IS NEW CONTENT. If you watch it through, the story does actually have an ending. (They still left a small tail opening that they could grab if they ever possibly wanted to create a new series though, with rika and satokos final words to eachother) this story is an interesting TWIST OF THE higurashi gou STORY. It rewrote the reasons for all the events that happened.

I feel like most people are mad at this story because  its visual and story have a lot of repetitive content from the last series and they think this is purely a retelling. they do not seem to realize that this reuses parts of the original story and new perspectives to make new light of the events in order to lead to a conclusion. If they had done this from the start, the thrill of gou would be taken away because it would have been less of a mystery and more confusing. Within being a second part, the story creates it's own thrill because we already comprehend it and know where its heading but yet we do not. it is hard to understand unless you have seen gou but the people who have seen gou then go to watch this got very tripped up and annoyed because they expected new content but the first episodes are exactly the same as the first series just from a different perspective.

I believe that the producers should have added a few more unique scenes in the first 12 episodes, especially in the beginning, instead of just using like 100% the same film and only changing the story.

the show started with Renas perspective of how Keiichi was acting and why she attacked him in particular. This gives you A DEEPER VIEW of how the Syndrome doesn't actually control the person completely in a zombie-like possessive manner as previous stories have lead us to think. The disease actually magnifies paranoia and madness which clouds people's judgment and they act rashly because of the symptomatic itching. Their actions are based on their will and awareness of justice (such as with detective Ooishis syndrome,  which is also shown in 1st person). The story EXPLORES THE FEUD between Satoko and Rika (which actually starts earlier in the story than originally known) and also shows 2 things: how their actions impacted the negative results in the arcs and why the victims of the parasites attacked who they did. This may be confusing to some people because the narrator switches every arc and is different from the original narrator.

Although the story is slightly self explanatory, this series only explores the overviews of the arcs and does not include a lot of the deeper necessary story details (like all the family backgrounds, such as issues with siblings like satoko and her brother, mion and shion, and other character stories are cut short) that "when they cry" or "Higurashi: when they cry GOU" do. I believe this is definitely done in order not to repeat the whole gou since sotsu is not meant to be a standalone series but a part 2 since it adds more detail to finish the story. Watching one of the other series first is extremely beneficial to understanding the story. This series unlocks the next step/deeper meanings of the series by revealing the perpetrators that manipulated the series.

One thing interesting that I noticed is that everyone wore a circle necklace at the end of the last episode. Take that information how you will but I think that this is an interesting piece of symbolism that is tucked away at the end. The story ended the circle of deadly loops (for now...who knows if they'll make a new series) and expressed the circle of friendship, even when ...umm.. people have to walk different directions. (Not gonna explain anything more about that last comment or I may spoil something)

If you are mad at the repetitive content, think about how the original would have been too confusing (or on the other hand boring) if it had included this content as well.

If you are seeking a CONCLUSION to the Higurashi GOU story, I definitely recommend watching this series as it wraps the story up well.