FULL SPOILERS AHEAD!

‘Cuz what’s a review without the juice?!

Higurashi Gou is a travesty, and it doesn’t take a genius to posit that much.

From plastic doll character designs to poor plotting, Gou’s got it all, if “It All” means a recipe for disaster, as Studio Passione (Citrus, Rokka Braves Of Six Flowers, Bang Dream! Second Season) takes Studio Deen’s (Samurai X, Fruits Basket, Full Moon) original material and mashes it together for a bad case of sequelitis. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of reasons for more Higurashi: When They Cry to exist! Author Ryukishi07 has written loads of material for it, and the original visual novel is crammed with so much detail it’s impossible to get it all onto the big screen. Given that, and the time looping nature of the show, it implies infinite possibilities! However, there seems little point in telling a story like Higurashi Gou.

A remake or a retelling? Gou never makes it clear. Hell, even the characters aren’t aware! Even when Rika’s told she’s begun looping again, and it’s made clear this takes place after the original victory (whoops, spoilers!) of the Higurashi series, plot threads after plot threads are recycled with little variation other than a) who is killed b) with what and c) where, like a bad game of Clue. Never are there any mysteries to be solved, events to prevent, character elements, arcs or growth embedded within each loop, eventually culminating in every decision of every character counting towards ultimate success, no, God for-bid! Instead, we’re given loose plot retreads (Keiichi and Rena’s curmugeoning relationship, Mion and Shion’s reveal as twin sisters, Satoko’s abuse, et al) and characters summarizing their reason for existence (Akasaka’s entire history with Rika is given a handful of throwaway lines in a mahjong parlor) with small adjustments here and there, like an abomination, poorly crushed and created haphazardly. Don’t get me wrong! I’d love to not compare the two and let each stand on its own! However, Gou itself begs on hands and knees for the comparison! From flashbacks and recreations of scenes of said plot retreads to entire arcs lifted and plopped back down into the story, interspersed with scenes of gore gore gore, what’s the gore-be-damned point in all this?! Let that be reiterated twice over when Rika finds herself in a world victorious once more, all problems solved, and freed once again by no particular solution! How did this happen? Why? Who cares! Off to boarding school you go with your best friend Satoko, and oh, to the rest of you Higurashi characters - Bye, bye now!

Shocking!

Gou doesn’t realize, and pardon the expression here, where it wants to go(u) until the last five episodes of its runtime. ‘Til then, it spends its time waffling about to and fro, refusing to iterate or reiterate in an amorphous blobby mess of a show before glorping down in front of you as you stare at it with furrowed appalled eyes. Until, finally, it seems like someone made up their minds! They got sick of the Xavier’s Institute For Gifted Youngsters, thank GOD! Predictably, Satoko becomes the looper instead of Rika. After they and as an ultimate revenge for Rika’s newfound Mean Girl routine, Satoko vows to never let ReRika George become a member of high society. How so? By making her live with the regret? No, pshaw, of course not! We’re gonna have Satoko experience everything Rika did and more, and flame this vendetta of Rika’s want for another life. How dare her, no, how dare!

Was it really that serious? Not at all!

Maybe it wouldn’t be a problem, or, it wouldn’t feel like such a big issue, if it wasn’t for Gou justifying its own existence in merely the last TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT OF THE RUNTIME! Please, keep in mind! No matter how much people say how intricately it was plotted from the start, Higurashi Gou was a retelling for a whopping C-grade, 75% of its runtime. No, no, let me not be so optimistic…Even then, Gou would still contain its overwrought dialogue, lengthy monologues, and unnecessary explanations. There’s just some messes too big to fix.

My absolute favorite part of it all, and for certain I’m being sardonic because this is my LEAST favorite part of it all, was how every step of the way Gou holds your hand like this is your first anime. Oh, is this time travel? Oh yeah, they’re looping. Let me put you in a cosmic void and tell you you’re looping…Just so you get it! Something’s supposed to be scary? Let me shake the camera around, add a Instagram film grain filter to everything, and CRANK up that gore to two-hundred-nine percent! That’ll express proper tonality, yeah? People can remember past timelines now? Oh yeah, that’s called “miracles”, and the more you loop, the more people remember! Make sense? Do you get it? Did you not just see it happen on screen before you, the images showing you how it is, letting you infer that that was the case? We were able to figure these out via context clues in the original! AM I STUPID?! There was enough loops and enough time within said loops and story progressions that unraveled which revealed to us the intricate process with how said loops functioned! How the horrible events unfold! How they can be prevented! The characters realizing to do the same! Nahhhh, I think we’re just gonna tell you how we did it, and then take forever to do so! How’d you like THEM apples?!

This is just on a fundamental writing level, too, let alone the rest! Production? Abhorrent! The neon hair? Stains! The backgrounds? Fine, but stained themselves with the character models which look like they should be from a different show! The girls look fine, but the boys, oh, God, the BOYS! Whoever was here never learned how to draw these fuckers!

LOOK AT THE BACKGROUNDS! Whatever happened to my peaceful, watercolored Hinamizawa? Oh, the sunsets so digital I could cut them with an Apple Pen! The colors so saturated, I could die of Red Dye 40!

The night scenes were unwatchable! I am not exaggerating, it is impossible to watch them because they’re drenched in such thick smog all visual action cannot be identified! Did we think this through?! For a SECOND?! Oh, Jesus!

SOMEONE, SAVE ME!

OH GOD, THERE’S MORE?!