Higurashi: When They Cry - Anime of the Week

Well, I guess there’s not gonna be a better time for this.

So in October 2021, I watched the entire Higurashi anime in one big marathon (or should I say, scaaare-a-thon), up to the then-immediately-recently-concluded Sotsu. I ended up really, really liking Gou and Sotsu, particularly the ending, to an extent that was explosive and shocking relative to the dire things I’d been hearing. So much so that I then dedicated months to justifying my feelings in what ended up being an epic-length two-part defense post for the sequels. I’ve gone back over this post and I’m still really proud of it as a piece of writing, especially Part 2, talking about the ending. I think I successfully articulated what I found to be genuinely meaningful and resonant within that story, without coming off overly defensive or contrarian, and the ultimate thesis statement about how we should let new fans of a work experience it with fresh new eyes is one of the points on media I’m proudest to have put out there.

In any case, it’s good I ended up getting that out when I did, because just a few months later, a YouTuber named Bess put out a six-hour video completely disassembling Gou and Sotsu, down to the atoms of their bones. I checked it out of morbid curiosity, and… it’s one of the greatest pieces of art criticism and analysis I’ve ever experienced. It devastated me, affected me so deeply it flared me up to basically write an entire second essay in one afternoon, which I never posted in any capacity.

I’ll probably never get this out otherwise since it’s just been sitting dormant in a Google Doc for like half a year, so here’s me working through the aftermath of finishing that video (which, for the record, I cannot recommend enough, it is probably the best YouTube video of 2022 and what I consider the new gold standard for negative media analysis as a whole);

It was… difficult, challenging, gut-shredding, overwhelming to get through at points. But I’m glad I went through with it. It is the kindest, warmest, fairest, most loving and tender evisceration of a hated piece of media I’ve ever seen, one which by all rights should feel brutal and tearing but doesn’t hurt or rage for a second. It rips this thing’s guts out with the tender caressing hand of a lover. She gives every ounce of positivity and credit to this story that she can, never gunning for unilateral condemnation. And it still utterly destroyed me.

I was a belligerent asshole in how I defended Sotsu in CDF in the immediate aftermath. I was. I turned my nose up pretty ostentatiously at Higurashi fans who had much more authority to criticize the reboot than I as a newcomer had to defend it, to what extent “authority” exists in this context. And it was absolutely pigheadedly full of shit of me to act like the actual longtime fans were somehow the ones who “just didn’t get it” somehow.

When I first started writing my big defense post on the reboot, the tone started out very similar. It was… petty and spiteful and authoritative in a way it had absolutely no business being.

But, as the writing process went along, I recognized this as a problem, and I ultimately reworked the entire framing of the post from what it was in its earlier drafts; I decided I wanted my post not to be a work of sheer self-absorbed contrarianism, but instead the start of a conversation. And reading the responses that engaged with that post back was the breaking of the shell that gave me the empathy with the negative viewpoint that eventually allowed me the fortitude to click on this postmortem and listen to and intake and accept its points in full.

I still have many the same positive feelings towards Gou and Sotsu I imbued those posts with, even if many more cracks are visible to me now. I still think the conceit is fantastic. I still love the last two episodes. I still think Sotsu’s ultimate subversion of the lesson Rika supposedly learns after Satoko tortured her in Gou is a stroke of brilliance. But I actually get it now. I get the negative reception. Perhaps, that’s part of why it was especially important of me to decide to make the thesis statement of those posts a plea for open-mindedness in how one might form an opinion around a contentious work. The lesson I’ve ultimately learned from this entire experience has been to afford that same charity in reverse.

It’s entirely possible that, years down the line, after I’ve read the original visual novels and the full Meguri manga, I’ll look back on Sotsu and all of my positive feelings for it and all the ways it impressed me on first blush will cease to be and I’ll renounce my having ever defended it. That’s a possibility I’m fully prepared for, and I accept it whole-heartedly. Or maybe that won’t happen, maybe I’ll still find that value in it and my like of these stories can peacefully coexist. I’d be happy with that too.

Either way, my experience with this story has been something very eye-opening and illuminating. It’s made me finally sit down and start to reckon with and interrogate my relationship with art and media, and specifically my relationship with gore and violence in art and media, in a way that is long, long overdue. It’s helped me to unlearn and mature past certain toxic media attitudes and habits that were imbued in me as a young teenager. It’s helped me become a better appreciator of art and, in some ways, even a bit of a better person. It’s been… a ride, and one that is by no means over. It’s a dialogue that will have to continue for as long as I am someone who engages with art; so, probably for the rest of my life. And I’m okay with that. It’s only taught me that there’s so much more to learn and understand, and that’s a zen I can only achieve by reaching for it and being perpetually willing to exert and engage. And I acknowledge that I still have a long way to go, I currently primarily watch anime for god’s sake.

It’s made me truly understand that true value is not to be found in the pursuit of validation, but instead in the pursuit of understanding. I’m so profoundly much happier and closer to zen for having thought and engaged and listened than I would have been mindlessly and breathlessly leafing for positive opinions to reaffirm my own. If I’d shut my eyes and ears to any negativity that might hurt my feelings by proxy of a thing I enjoyed, not only would I have not experienced such an astonishingly excellent and breathtakingly beautiful piece of writing and analysis as this video, I would lack the new perspective, the window into the author’s life, and the newfound insight, the newfound understandings it gave me.

The fact that I was willing to go out there proves that I have grown. This is what it means, at least in part, to engage with fiction like an adult. And it’s infinitely more rewarding than being stuck in my ways. For as hard as it’s been sometimes, all this has been a deeply worthwhile experience, and I hope to carry the lessons it’s taught me with me well into my future.

It ultimately reads as all too serendipitous to me now that a story about a girl who had a lonely, hollow and regretful teenage school years and became stunted and twisted as a result, desiring to do those years over again in ruthless and violent pursuit of a “perfect” timeline, is what finally put me face to face with so much of the baggage left over from my own lonely, hollow and regretful high school years I’ve long fantasized about overwriting. Seeing Satoko as something of a kindred spirit in that way is a big reason why I found myself able to have so much empathy for her in this story where many others didn’t, a large part in allowing me to connect with and defend this story in the first place, and my engagement with the dialogue surrounding that very story putting me in this position… it feels downright poetic. Art is crazy, man. Life is crazy.

I may yet have more to say about this video and some of its specific points, but I need… time to myself first. In the meantime, vid’s a masterpiece, one of the most truly worthwhile watches on YouTube in a while, whether you’re a Gou/Sotsu hater, defender, or anywhere in between I can’t recommend it enough.

Oh, and big ups for the I Believe What You Said respect.

I do want to emphasize past-me’s final point there: big fucking ups for the I Believe What You Said respect.