I finally worked up the courage to finish Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
Posted by: Owen S in Anime, Review, tags: Fantasy, High school, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, HorrorI’d watched till episode 13 last September, by which point Triad decided to take three months to work on episode 14, which made me decide to wait till they’d finished subbing all of it. It was then licensed around March or April, which set me off searching for the remaining 5 episodes, and as the Spring season came all thought of watching it flew out the window till Saturday afternoon.
The lesson here? Don’t rely on Triad for anything (I mean, just look at StrikerS), unless it’s an obscure, non-moe series like Bokurano that no one else wants to sub, which means you’ve got to rely on them anyway. I digress. Higurashi was a mixed bag, although I loved it more than anything, and I’m really looking forward to the next season. Bring on Summer.
I didn’t know what to think of the good doctor, and if he was inserted for lolicon relief, or if he truly was irreplaceable as a character. I mean, the whole “Satoko is mine when she grows up” was more creepy than funny, right? right?
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, or When The Cicadas Cry, was a first in that it was a horror series done properly. I won’t say “one of the best” because there’s really nothing to compare it to unless you’re thinking of stuff like Uzumaki, Goth, or MPD Psycho, but those were manga, and horror in a “that’s really disgusting”, macabre kind of way rather than a “this is creeping me out”, terrifying kind of way.
Good horror doesn’t need gratuitous displays of gore and internal organs to do the trick. Granted Higurashi had gouts of blood everywhere, but I found a morbid hilarity in how, for instance, Shion would stab Satoko 5 times in the arm and then you’d have a close-up shot revealing barely stained clothes and a wound resembling a long papercut. Apparently it’s okay to illustrate a lot of blood in the act itself, not on the victim, but that’s Japan for you.
It took me a long time to get around to watching the other half of Higurashi because, to be frank, I was a chicken who couldn’t watch it at night, which is my normal anime viewing time. The first three arcs up till episode 13 had been terrifying, and that was around midday, after lunch (I learned the hard way not to eat while watching it), where the sun would still be shining.
I couldn’t conceive the idea of watching it after midnight. Higurashi’s horror worked for me because it had good atmosphere, and a well-crafted tension build-up comparable to two of the best horror authors I’ve read, H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King.
A quick note here for those not familiar with either author: Lovecraft’s style, despite being a lot of purple prose, works because it’s the type of horror so terrifying you can’t really describe it. His stories thrive on the descriptions of the monsters being deliberately vague because the reader’s imagination automatically fills in the blanks — it’s scary without him even having to elaborate on it due to the set-up beforehand.
King, on the other hand, probably needs less of an introduction. His writing is impeccable, tight prose, and his style’s more of the conventional variety, which means it won’t work for everyone, but when it does, it manages do so pretty well.
That doesn’t mean that if you don’t read horror fiction or dig at least one of the two authors you won’t like Higurashi. I mentioned the both of them because they make for a compelling read and tickle the imagination unlike any other — despite having a foot in both Lovecraft and King camps, Higurashi made for excellent horror.
It’s pretty hard to describe what it was about Higurashi exactly that frightened me so much. The music contributed a significant amount, no doubt about that — from the stellar OP which set the mood for the rest of the show and the Engrish-y ED that conveyed the desperation of the characters, to the bone-chilling OST itself, everything fit to a T, bar the somewhat-horrid animation and contorted facial expressions which jarred occasionally.
Dividing the story into eight arcs, comprising of four Question and four Answer arcs respectively, was a nice touch too (a Question arc corresponding to an Answer arc, no natural continuity between the eight or the order in which the Questions/Answers were aired).
I liked how it lent variety to the otherwise well-worn path most horror stuff take — having a multiple-reality thing going allowed for room to kill off the main cast only to have them alive and kicking by the next arc, which meant a lot of best friends killing each other. Having the main character dead by episode 04 was a welcome change from the norm.
Being non-linear in its presentation also made for disjointed storytelling which worked. If the makers of Higurashi had chosen to explain things in a conventional manner it would’ve made for something dull; its magic lies in how it explores multiple points of view through a different character, showing more than telling each time.
Only annoyance I had with it was, like lolikit said a long time ago, was how they had to fool flood the viewer with scenes of school life during the first episode of practically every arc. There are ways to go about that, I didn’t really like how it was as if the writers made them seem silly on purpose so that they could go all berserker and hardcore halfway into a Question arc, for instance. But that’s just an issue of taste.
The pacing dipped towards the end of the two answer arcs, and that was the only part I found lacking through it all. Rena’s murder cum answer arc lacked the gripping intensity that was Mion/Shion’s and Keichi’s respective arcs (the former, of course, outclassing the latter), and better editing could’ve probably saved this.
Oh, and WinD’s subs also really sucked. Triad had been using DVD raws thanks to their slow processing time, and a jump from Triad’s readable fonts and accurate translations to WinD’s horrid raws and ugly fonts wasn’t exactly forgiving. Also, highlighting certain words in the subtitles in red was lame; it would be like the equivalent of translating a book into English and then having the translator italicising and underlining words he thought needed attention.
P.S. I thought I’d mention this as a footnote — the house lights tripped during my writing this, and I was listening to the Higurashi OST. Oddly enough the PC remained on, although I switched it off immediately and spent the next half-hour in darkness sitting in a corner with my cellphone light activated, trying not to think of things. Not fun.
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May 29th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Dude, WinDFS is awesome. I forget if it was episode one or two, but they translated “nandesutte?” to “W T F ! ! ?”
Immortal.
May 29th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Immortal like mass naked child events immortal.
May 29th, 2007 at 2:43 am
Nandesutte?
May 29th, 2007 at 4:52 am
Lovecraft is a god of horror writing. Some of the best stuff I’ve ever read. Oh, right, Higurashi. I never actually finished the series, just saw the first eight episodes, but I never really found it scary. Though, this is from a guy who gets his kicks from seeing little girls mutilate each other. The alternate worlds were unique, but handled in a way that just felt boring to me. After the first two, there was really no more suspense to me. The mystery itself was pretty laughable to me, and the shock factor had already worn off, so I gave up.