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Jun 11 2006

Categories: anime, episodic review, higurashi
Tagged: higurashi

15 Comments »

The killer lolis get rebooted… again! K1 has exactly 100 minutes of screentime before yet another hideous death at the hands of the Killer Loli SOS Brigade. What’s different this time? K1’s still clueless, Rena’s still emotionally unstable, and Shion’s glorious melonpan return.

I always seemed to like the first and last episodes of a new arc… mainly because they’re generally lighter in explaination and heavier on more important concepts such as melonpan and emo facial distortions. What will the new Tatari Goroshi-hen arc bring? Will K1 survive? What the hell is really going on?

The teaser before the episode begins has some random old couple finding a dead body that looks like Satoko having gone through the killer loli wash cycle… first, the intestines were leaking out (Rika), the body looks like it was hit by a bat (K1), and the hand had a nail through each joint (Mion). Gruesome. While my eye stops twitching, let me reset the Emo Tracker.

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The arc begins as K1 enters his kitchen and discovers an assortment of horrible torture devices designed to inflict maximum pain.

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Actually, his parents ditched him, and he needs to fend for himself. From what I’ve seen in the previous two arcs, I wouldn’t trust K1 with changing my oil let alone leave him alone with sharp objects and fire. Like mutants (with Jean Gray as class 5), there’s different types of emo facial distortion: emo facial distortion because you’re hungry? Class 1. Tracker inches up.

(Again, we don’t know where we’ve rebooted to. They need to toss in a 24-like time scale for this series so I know, “Ah, hour 6!” Will we see any Shion this arc? Did K1 give Mion the Shinku doll? I need to know these things.)

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Luckily, K1 is saved by Satoko and Rika before he can burn his house down. If the dude doesn’t even know that his house was on fire, with the giant flame and all, no wonder he’s been chopped up twice by the Killer Loli SOS Brigade already.

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Best line so far… Kira Yamato: “So I really did almost burn down the house.”

Satoko: “Yes, you dipshit.”

Rika: “If Satoko and I didn’t come along [to scout for easy killer loli enterence paths], the flames would be going “bou bou,” and the fire trucks would be going “woo woo” right now.

Rika’s so cute! No wonder Rena wanted to kidnap her. Still, “bou bou” and “woo woo” doesn’t top Haruhi’s “I am a healthy girl” rant.

(Still, I have to say it… “There’s killer lolis! Killer lolis in ‘da house!”)

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K1 thanks them for saving his life. Isn’t this like thanking the IRS for taxing you?

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Not wanting K1 to kill himself before they do, Satoko and Rika offer to cook him dinner. They’re very cute in this sequence… lots of topside. Very long. Good in the open field. Extremely ball-friendly.

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Just love Rikanese. First “bou bou” now “nii nii” to indicate Satoko’s older brother, Satoshi. Uh oh. Rika explains that K1 reminds them of Satoshi, who ran away, and it was Satoko’s idea for the two of them to come stake out his place tonight. Meanwhile, I’m putting together a petition to get Rika on as the thirteenth sister for Sister Princess 3. She’ll call Wataru “nii nii” as she hunts down all the other sisters vying for his attention. Can you imagine seeing Karen with fear overcoming her as Rika approaches her with her disembowment tools? “You were getting too close to nii nii.” It can’t miss!

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Satoko holds her wink for a record 23 seconds as K1 goes on about how great the food tastes. Satoko is winking, of course, because she knows he hasn’t found the nail that she hidden in his rice yet. They continue talking about Satoshi a bit, and I’m losing interest. All the scene needs is a 17 year old, chain smoking lesbian, and we have Ichigo Mashimaro. (Mmmm… can’t the people who did the Nanoha version of Haruhi‘s opening do a Higurashi version of Strawberry Complete? Only each time as the puppets go down, one less pops back up… I can hear it in my head… fura fura ichigo-tachi ga…)

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Good times. Everyone’s happy. Enjoy them… won’t last long. K1, typical guy… thinking with this stomach.

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So cute! I can’t tell if Rika is giving Satoko a backhanded compliment with her, “Even the canned sardines are tasty” or if she has watched one too many episodes of The Price Is Right (if it were 1984, then it’s currently Bob Barker’s apex as host of the show, when he was openly sexually harrassing all the Barker Beauties).

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Rika gives K1 a perfect score for tonight “kauch kauch” for making the two of them happy… what is this, Elimidate? Though that’s a way to improve Elimidate… the introduction of Rikanese “wow wow.”

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“Freedom… doozo!”

“Ikimasu!”

The next day, K1 gets a call, and he misinterprets it as a huge fight… I mean, wow, when was the last time you got a “Yo, big fight today, bring your four iron” call? And why would the killer lolis need your help in that regard? Rena and Mion can kick plenty of ass. Anyway, it turns out to be an exhibition baseball game, and since Haruhi couldn’t get enough people for her team, she’s recruited K1 as well as the loli.

Besdies the dumbness of the joke, my Emo Tracker is on life support. Blarg. I should have known better than to use it for a first episode of a new arc.

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K1 needs to practice more with Satoshi’s bat. Or maybe he just needs his injection.

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Yuki reprograms the bat, and the montage of home runs begins! Either that or Satoko is on the BALCO diet. There’s no way the Hinamizawa team could lose. After seeing Mion and Rena on the sidelines, I can only imagine the two of them charging the field and impaling the poor Okinomiya team with various sharp objects if they started winning. Or the Hinamizawa team is just terrified of losing since that would anger Oyashiro-sama. (I’d like to see team Team Oyashiro go up against Team Oharuhi… does that mean that irregardless who wins, the world is doomed?)

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After the game, while everyone is enjoying a BBQ, a local doctor/baseball player, Irie, introducing himself to K1. In an extremely creepy manner, he tells how much he loves Satoko, and that he has once thought about adopting her. Dude’s uber-creepy. He also tells K1 about Satoko’s parent’s death as well as Satoshi being “transferred away.” My attention span is severely tested now.

(Is it realistic that in a sea of men, Mion would get absolutely no attention at all? If it were some minor league game in Grand Rapids, at least a dozen guys with beer bellies and work at an UAW plant would be giving her the “How ya doin’?” line by now.)

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Winking Shion returns! I’m attentive now. She makes a great remark saying how Irie would train Satoko to become his meido. I like that train of thought! Though make sure she doesn’t have any pet alligators or Oyashiro-samas first. In any case, somehow Shion is the manager of the Hinamizawa team… though she didn’t go to the game. I still think Shion needs a Tokyo Jupiter-class tattoo as well as moving platform that hoists her into the scene everytime she makes an enterence. That’ll be p-e-r-f-e-c-t.

And Shion doesn’t even say “Hi” to Mion. Ouch. Irie remarks that Shion should start coming to games like old times and cheer them on. So even Irie thinks K1 has more than a passing resemblence to Satoshi, and I’m thinking that maybe there’s something going on with Shion and Satoshi that we don’t know of yet. Juicy! Though I don’t remember if Satoshi came up at all during the Watanagashi arc… then again, I can barely remember what I had for lunch. Ah, yes, a double double with animal style fries. Mmm.

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*melts*

In the eternal Shion vs Mion battle, this round goes to Shion.

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So K1 is alone with a hawt chix0r (who wants to play), with a romantic sunset in the background. In other words, he’s going to mess things up. He brings up Satoshi to Shion…

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… who tells him never to bring it up again. Class 2 emo facial distortion… seen much better from you, Shion. After tossing out so many pantheon level emo facial distortions the first third of this series, do the animators have enough juice left to keep it up for the reminder of the anime? What could possibly top Rena back in 4 or Mion back in 7/8? Are they going to have Rika spin her head around 360 degrees one of these days? At least the Emo Tracker is moving.

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K1 blows his golden opportunity with Shion, and she exits. Seeing Shion again has pretty much been my highlight of an otherwise uneventual episode. If Rika didn’t go “nii nii” earlier, I’d be browsing eBay right now.

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K1’s consolation prize is that he gets to walk home with Mion and Rena. They make small talk, and everything is going well until K1 brings up Satoshi transferring away.

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Rena gets jumpy and defensive over Satoshi. She explains that Satoshi was a victim of Oyashiro-sama’s curse, and that they shouldn’t take this lightly.

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Mion disagrees with Rena and insists that there’s evidence that Satoshi did run away, like how he had a secret account that got emptied when he left and how someone saw him at the train station.

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Rena, not backing down, tosses up a class 3 emo facial distortion. Why only class 3 desite the wonderous throbbing pupils? Her vocals are waaaaaay too calm for such a beautifully animated emo facial contortion. She tells about how she and Satoshi once upset Oyashiro-sama by forsaking the town, but she apologized. Satoshi did not. Instead, the darkness eventually consumed him.

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Emo Rena 4tw. This is what was missing from the Watanagashi arc. People comment on how the Watanagashi arc isn’t as great as the first Higurashi arc, but I think it’s the repitition factor. Yes, crappy photographer is going to die, again, yes, K1 is going to do something stupid that seals his fate, etc. It’s turning into Law and Order: Loli Demon Revenge Unit, only instead of having one episode per formulaic story, it’s four.

Yet I enjoyed Watanagashi for Shion’s epic melonpan. It’s another added versatility for a series… it can entertain me with killer lolis, melonpan, harem-like elments, or an intriguing plot. The series is at its best when it can mesh them. Conversely, the series is at its worst when it opts for explaination sequences rather than K1 butchering sequences. Every scene with Oishi is just painful because that’s screentime that could be used for the killer lolis having their breakdowns… do I need to be told, yet again, that Tomitake has been found dead by the river?

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Mion slaps Rena to snap her out of her emo facial contortion, which guarantees that Mion will be joining Shion in that underground cave this arc. I’m wondering if Mion stopped her because she doesn’t want to drag K1 into the mess or because she wants to cover up the situation. Rena goes on ahead, and K1 and Mion have some alone time together. She explains that Rena was (and maybe still is) cursed by Oyashiro-sama, and that they shouldn’t bring up Satoshi ever again. I kept hoping that Mion would break out her “wak-ta-ku-shi” voice, but she doesn’t.

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Pretty bland episode compared to its forerunners. Maybe I’m expecting too much from the series now… the first two arcs were just too awesome. Also knowing that there’s no happy end for the characters kinda dampens my mood a bit… I have to see K1 gutted and filleted probably four more times. If there’s an anime that could use an eventually happy ending, it’s this one. I’m rooting for that happy K1/Mion/Shion threesome with Rika going, “woo woo” in the background. They deserve it.