I really hope Ryu won't go for Satoko's redemption. She doesn't deserve it, no matter the reason. I am really curious how this series will sit with OG Higurashi fans when all is said and done.
I think that's how a witch ending will be used in a way. She will get a "redemption" of sorts, but outside of a human context, since just letting Satoko close her eyes and pretend she didn't do any of this stuff while getting to live a normal life in a final fragment would be a completely bizarre ending.
It's going to be 6-7 weeks before we go back to main plot, isn't it.
This is gonna be just one big glorified Lambda/Bern origin story.
That mechanic was indeed part of the infodump last season, so yep. Basically no new information.
Have you read Umineko? Golden butterflies are a recurring motif for the magic in Umineko. Lore-wise, they're a symbol of the Golden Witch Beatrice, and for the audience they signify that what's being shown is unreliable narration. It'd make absolutely zero sense for them to have anything to do with Higurashi, ever... But even still, for just a second, I legitimately thought the show might go there anyway, sense be damned. Just shows how little respect I have for Gou/Sotsu's writing at this point, I guess.
Wholeheartedly agree with all this. The more great fanfiction I read over the years, the less I like to describe sucky canon stuff as feeling "fanfiction-y", but Gou/Sotsu really does hit all the same notes as a specific subset of bad fanfiction -- where all the elements are there, but they don't carry the meaning they used to; they're only there because they were there before, so they have to be there again. Clumsy pastiche that imitates without knowing why the things they're imitating were effective in the first place.
I guess you watched the Umineko anime, because that thing was a horrible, horrible mistake, the VN is a complete masterpiece, you should give it a go. It really goes places and catches you off guard when you least expect it, all the way to the end. But yeah, the origin of Bern and Lambda is related to Higurashi, that was almost plainly stated in the VNs.
Nah, I enjoyed the anime....
After the last one? Hopefully not after the torture we had to endure last time, we did get an additional episode of the VN, but I believe it's not translated yet because the team is focused in translating Ciconia.
Regarding Bern,
Well to be fair it was not entirely their fault as the anime covers only the question arc of the VN and at the time there was no answer arc and the creator didn't give them any clues to avoid possible spoiler leaks.
You didn't miss it, Hanyuu losing her physical form is never addressed in the mainline canon. In the ending of Matsuribayashi, we're shown scenes from a few months after Endless June, and in those scenes Hanyuu still exists in her physical body and is looking forward to living a happy life. However, in Saikoroshi, which seems to take place late in the summer of 1983 (ie, after Endless June but earlier than the Matsuribayashi epilogue), she's back to being a ghost without any explanation. Then finally in Gou, she's disappeared completely, no longer existing in Hinamizawa at all even in new fragments (which ought to have their own Hanyuu, even if it isn't the one that fragment-hopped through Endless June). Gou has a couple of lines that vaguely imply she "ran out of power" or whatever at some point between 1983 and 1987, but that would still be a retcon of Matsuribayashi -- running out of power already came up there, and the result was only that they couldn't loop anymore, not that Hanyuu would disappear.
"Always" is a strong word, given that the manga isn't the original version. Plus, it's rather overstating it to say that any Higurashi characters "straight up appear" in it. The characters themselves absolutely don't; vague, silhouette-y images of them appear in the background as visual aids while the actual Umineko characters talk about Umineko things. (Umineko things that reference Higurashi, but still, ultimately Umineko things).
Rika and Hanyuu actually straight up have a small cameo in the Umineko manga(Episode 3 specifically), with no shadowing or anything. It's a comedic scene, but it's a visual adaptation of a comment from the Umineko VN, not an extra page or something.
Battler references it as a novel, Lambda references "Higurashi" as a videogame she hadn't finished yet, so those references aren't even internally consistent within Umineko itself. I see those closer to when Keiichi suddenly references the PS3 and X-Box 360 even though Higurashi takes place in the 80s. Within Higurashi itself, Higurashi is the name of a book written by Akasaka and Ooishi after the GHD.
07th-expansion.fandom.com
The logic error talk was the very scene I was thinking of. I guess it's not as shadowy as I remember, but still, I don't think I described it too poorly -- this is Uminekos talking Umineko to each other, with Higurashi imagery just serving as a visual aid. It's not like Rika herself is actually in the scene.I mean
I admit I forgot completely about this page! It's been a while. This one's definitely more on-the-nose (especially Hanyuu), but eh. It's a gag. As you say, references in gags barely count; start taking gag scenes seriously, and K1's fourth wall breaks are the least of your problems. Taking gag scenes seriously is what leads to Gou episode 20, and nobody wants that!Rika and Hanyuu actually straight up have a small cameo in the Umineko manga(Episode 3 specifically), with no shadowing or anything. It's a comedic scene, but it's a visual adaptation of a comment from the Umineko VN, not an extra page or something.
Personally, I think it helps explaining why Bern has this complex relationship with Lambda rather than outright hating her.
Personally, I think it helps explaining why Bern has this complex relationship with Lambda rather than outright hating her.
Lambda is introduced as the one who tortured Bern in a labyrinth of despair until Bern awakened as a witch. It all being this very personal experience between Rika and Satoko just gives it much more meaning than an ancient witch randomly torturing a girl that had nothing to do with her - and then the girl
bonds with the witch afterwards.
It also explains why Bern hardly seems to blame Lambda for that specifically and seems to focus her grudge on Featherine. Truthfully, I think it's impossible R07 planned this from the start, considering how any direct Satoko hints in Umineko only appear by episodes 7/8, and Memoirs of Lambda, which was written around episode 3/4 to show she definitely wasn't Takano, something R07 mentioned in interviews at the time too, just makes any connection to Satoko odder.
However, many of the early lines about Bern's backstory just work much better with the set up seen in Gou, like Bern's reference to how someone troublesome taking a liking to Battler was similar to what happened to her when she was human, or how she could understand Lambda in their game, but can't understand Beatrice, or the times where Lambda references some kind of betrayal from Bernkastel in the past.
Maybe the basic idea always was something vaguely Gou-like but Lambda was initially supposed to be an OC rather than Satoko.
Higurashi Mei had the basic plot by R07 (although not the actual script), and right in the beginning it introduces the idea that people from Hinamizawa (blood of the horns) have stronger auras and natural ability to manipulate fragments than normal humans (this is mainly used to make Akasaka's daughter weaker than the other two main characters, in spite of being older, more experienced and a trained fighter). So, yeah, Hinamizawa being a witch factory of sorts seems to be almost official.
There was a recent Newtype interview with Ryukishi where he basically confirmed Eua isn't doing anything unknown behind the scenes. However, he goes on to say she did pick a girl during puberty at the time she was most vulnerable emotionally and pushed her in a way she knew would cause a tragedy. So, everything goes back to her. There obviously will be some conflict, but by the end Rika most likely won't hold everything against her.
No, I believe it was probably supposed to be a flashback. It's bookended with the same white transitions as the scene where Satoko practices with the airsoft gun, and that scene has to be a flashback. (Presumably to one of the loops we saw little of in Gou 22; those are the only ones it could be, since we're limited to loops that go past 1983. Even though it makes little to no sense for her to do gun training at that point... Making it yet another case of her not being driven mad by the hundred years of fragments she watched. She was doing long-term murder planning within her first ten loops.)
