Man Ryukishi has disappointed me hard. Where do I begin? I’ll first talk about the fact that he spoiled new fans the whole franchise of Higurashi. Why did he think false advertising was such a good idea? He really spoiled the hell out of newcomers the whole mystery of the OG series and stated that it was newcomer friendly. WHAT PART OF IT WAS NEWCOMER FRIENDLY?? This was a whole sequel and should’ve been advertised as that in the beginning. He spoiled with no warning whatsoever.
#Spoiler Warning for the Whole Show
Now onto the show. I'm not going to cover the main things because the other reviewers pretty much covers what I thought. This is going to be more focused on the inconsistencies, conveniences, and minor flaws. This sequel is filled with plot holes, plot devices, and plot conveniences. It has poorly written characters and a poorly written story. It's also filled with unnecessary episodes that isn't relevant to the second cour. What was the actual point of episode 23 and the first 14 episodes? They didn't even explain the first few arcs or showing what Satoko and Rika were doing in those arcs (I know that Sotsu is going to be the answer arc but I’m reviewing how it is now).Wait actually nevermind about Satoko, I have a general idea what she was doing but RIKA? I gotta talk about her.
#Poor use of characters
Another problem I have are the poor use of characters. They are badly written. In the first 3 arcs, Rika did nothing in any of those loops. She didn't get suspicious of anyone and didn't do anything to prevent it. She just kept spamming the word ‘fate’ to Keiichi without actually doing anything about it. She just let it play out every single time. You would think Rika would do something because her perfect world was ruined. She didn't investigate either even though in episode 2 she said that she knows who's the culprit. According to her, it was Takano. You would think she would at least investigate Takano but she didn't from what we saw. There was no mention of what were her results of her investigation at all. We also didn't get a big reaction of her when she saw Hinamizawa again. I wanted to see her break down after she once thought it was all over and got dragged back to the place she wanted to move away the most. Also the rest of the cast wasn't too special since they stopped being relevant in the 2nd cour.
#Abusing their Archetypes
Don't get me started on the fact that Passione likes to abuse the hell of their archetypes every single minute. You know how much information they could've put in instead of doing all that?
#The Snapping
That snapping plot device is such an asspull. They can go to another world by just snapping? What the hell is the point of dying if you could just snap. They really introduced this snapping mechanism out of nowhere and it wasn't even stated in the previous seasons. I bet they introduced that mechanism to look "cool" which it doesn’t. For some reason, Satoko can activate her traps at will by the snap of her fingers. Which happened in the episode where she killed Rika for the first time in St. Lucia. In episode 24, Satoko was trying to get the right combination for the number pad to get the H173 syndrome liquids and then every time she got the combination wrong she just snapped and BOOM she changed into a different world to try again without even having to die. That is taking plot convenience to the next level. Someone told me that the animators were lazy to animate her deaths. I understand that they didn't want to go to the trouble to do all that but why was she also snapping when she was playing the matching card game? She would snap and a card would flip over. I don't understand why she would snap in that situation. If it was because she's switching worlds, there was no need to do all that in a card game.
#Another Plot Convenience
Then here's the other major plot convenience. Your telling me in each world it was the exact same circumstances?? Takano literally left the box on the table every single time. You would think she would at least change the positions cause her memories might be affected or she would have different circumstances each time.
#The Horror Aspect
There's also another big issue and that's the psychological/horror element of the show. My god just fire the director that's directing those moments of the show cause they're not scary at all. If anything it's funny because of the facial expressions that the characters be making. An example of that would be when Akasaka was under the influence of the syndrome and kidnapped Rika. That was one of the funniest moments of the show for me. An example would be the famous usoda scene from Rena, they literally try too hard to be scary. It didn’t even feel natural either. They made the audio separate for the usoda line and the VA screamed at the top of her lungs which made it feel so unnatural. The camera also panned up to her face with the typical white sidelines added. Compare that to Studio Deens version. You can see the difference between the scary and eerie factor. Deen's was more natural and didn't interrupt the flow. It was also better executed. Three words to sum up the scare department for Passione is “Trying Too Hard.” There other moments that those words apply to but I'm not going to list every single one of them.
#Other problems
The art style also ruins the tone and atmosphere. Specifically, It’s bright colors and it's ~~half-baked monogatari~~ character designs. When they go crazy it doesn't hit as hard as Deen's version. Also what was the point of the Mion/Shion arc? They built up all this and made it so anticlimactic. Mion locked up Keiichi in the cell and everything else happened off screen. Bro what? All the other arcs didn’t happen that way. The first few arcs were literally pointless and were half-baked remakes of the spectacular arcs in the OG series. It showed barely any relevance to the 2nd cour of the show.
#The Good Parts
Even after all that, I still liked the opening and endings. I didn't expect it to be that good but they blew my expectations. Another thing I liked was the Satoko plotwist being the culprit of it all ~~Not a big fan of her reasoning tho~~ because she could have quite a connection with this new character that might be introduced in Sotsu. I feel like they can build something grand and make the payoff worth it in Sotsu so I'll be looking forward to it.
#Conclusion
Overall, there’s too many problems and inconsistencies in the show but I don’t feel like listing every single one of them. But you get my point right? It has weak direction and execution and some flaws in its writing. The show is not terrible like Mirai Nikki level but it's not the best. I would call it slightly above mid. Hopefully in Sotsu it will explain most of these plot holes and inconsistencies. Until then I'll review it as is.
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