Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum

Before I get into this review I want to say a word about fan-subs, that is to say anime that is subtitled and distributed by a non-profit group. I’ve been rocking out the fan-subs quite a bit lately, due partly to the economic crunch but also because I’ve been looking for something different. It’s easier to get more obscure and new releases faster than waiting for a company to translate, dub, and print a series. That said, I do not encourage fan-subs as a form of piracy. However, I’ve found that a lot of fan-sub groups put in enough time and effort that their releases are often the same or (usually) better quality than the official DVDs. There’s also the additional issues of translation problems and censorship, but I’ll ignore those for now as they aren’t relevant and they really piss me off. I bring fan-subbing up now because I just finished watching the official DVDs for Higurashi and there were typos; not just one or two across all twenty-six episodes, but there were several per DVD. While it may seem like nitpicking, it really pisses me off because these people make a living subtitling these things. Proofread your damn stuff. I know this may sound hypocritical if you’ve read my reviews and kept an eye out for typos and such, but I write these in a tense, foaming-at-the-mouth state and only have a small amount of time to proofread them. I also don’t get paid. It pulls me right out of a show when I mentally need to add words in or fix grammatical errors. On top of that, most DVDs still use the basic yellow text for subtitles, and while that’s a nice neutral mostly visible most of the time method of doing, I always get the impression of a series being stamped out for us to view. If I’m paying thirty bucks a DVD, I expect more care to be taken than that. Fan-subs, depending on the group, can have custom fonts or at least unique and fitting font and color choices that really add to the experience instead of just sit next to it. I’m not saying we should stop buying anime or start paying the fan-subbers (they do so well because they care, once money gets involved suddenly it becomes work), I’m just saying that we can and should expect better quality product. Although the point for this series is a little moot as the late, great Geneon was responsible for bringing Higurashi stateside. Seriously, though, just ask me about Elfen Lied some time and I’ll give you such an earful. Maybe I should send an email to some of the publishers. *coughfunimationcough* Anyway, onto the review.

This week we’ll be looking at the violent loli parade that is Higurashi, or When They Cry, or Higurashi no Naku Koroni, or whatever the hell you want to call it. Higurashi is a story set in 1983 in a little mountain village by the name of Hinamizawa and follows the games club of the local all-ages schoolhouse. Keiichi, recently transferred in from the city, has been happily adjusting to life in the country with his new all female super cute loli for every taste friends when he learns of a murder five years prior. When Keiichi asks his friends about the event in jest he ends up with more questions than he can handle. Suffice it to say there is more to Hinamizawa than meets the eye.

A word or two about the structure of the series: Higurashi is a horror series, plain and simple. It’s violent, mysterious, and twisted to a degree I’ve not encountered since I first saw Elfen Lied years ago. While I am all gung-ho for walking into a show without any idea what’s coming, I got blindsided by Elfen Lied at a very fragile point in my life and even a word before hand would have probably saved me some trauma. I only mention this on the off chance that some person somewhere is saved some hardship even if it is at the cost of some of the element of surprise. That said, I will try and keep the spoilers to a minimum as this series totally needs it. Although considering the opening scene involves somebody getting beaten to death with a baseball bat I feel there are a few liberties to be taken.

I think I’ll mix it up a bit and start with the animation this week. I may have mentioned about Keiichi being surrounded by cute girls, and I can’t emphasize that enough. The characters in this show are so damn cute you’ll be squealing right up until the blood starts splattering. Rena is particularly cute and the creators of the show used that to its full advantage, giving her cute mannerisms and even the occasional little floating rainclouds and whatnot. The characters are all a little more deformed in the cutesy fashion (skinny with big heads) than in your usual anime and the drawing style is occasionally a bit, but that’s just the show’s style. I actually can’t think of anything I’d change about the style, especially since the art director countered the cuteness with an amazing sense of applied lighting, deep shadows, and a keen awareness of warm and cool colors. There are moments when the series turns eerie and you won’t even realize why (it’s actually a combination of the art and music for some of those moments but you won’t catch it unless you are looking for it). Overall, the animation is really fluid and they didn’t take the cheap route for anything. The violence is graphic and bloody without Gantz’s over-the-top levels of detail and excessive everything. I’d also like to say that they use the perfect shades of red for blood. As I mentioned in a previous review, a great anime occurs when animation, music and story all blend seamlessly to create a memorable and profound experience for the viewer: I’ve not mentioned that in a while but Higurashi definitely makes a play at the trifecta.

The music in Higurashi is exactly what you’d expect from a horror series: eerie and quiet. Yet another series where silence is used wonderfully well, the music actually flits between happy lounge muzak, scary pulse-pounding horror, and quiet incidental music that really builds a lot of tension. Fortunately, proper care was taken so that the transitions in the music are well timed. Most of the sounds used in the show are taken from the anime sounds greatest hits, but the squishy violent parts have a thud behind them that is very satisfying. Actually, a lot of the music and sounds are very generic, but there’s this underlying sense of parody for the lighter parts that keeps it from being clichéd and the unsettling parts are still unsettling. The opening, though, is fan-fricking-tastic; the song is great and the visuals are both stunning and creepy enough to set up the series perfectly; admittedly, though, it got a little old by the last episode but it’s been a while since I watched a show this long with intent to review. The ending is mid-range, doing it’s job by giving us something to listen to if we want to watch the credits but not good enough to make us want to watch them. Just the same, it’s not a soundtrack I would buy or would want to seeing as it’s all cheesy lounge-music and generic scary bits. While the music itself isn’t groundbreaking, the implementation of it is done so well it makes up for the lack of originality. Some of my favorite parts of the series are still the quietest moments when the story speaks for itself and even the animation sits on the side.

I have to admit, I was pretty engrossed in the story from the start of Higurashi. The opening scene where we see Keiichi with the baseball bat, blood splattering, and two dead girls in the middle of the night was probably one of the most sudden and interesting ways to pull me into a series. The fact that the rest of the first episode is normal save for an eerie last couple of minutes really adds to that, too. As far as content goes, it reminds me a lot of Sky Crawlers thematically, but is far more accessible and the added horror element really brings out a lot of intentionally unsaid theme. When I say horror, Higurashi is not one of those scary monster or ghost series. Well, not directly, anyways. See, we’re actually told the roughly the same story a few different times from different perspectives or with different characters and events; each telling bringing a new, fresh look to the tale while somehow being related either directly or indirectly. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a series where the main characters died so many times. Anyway, the real horror comes from the a combination of characters turning to violence and sometimes insanity paired with the inherent creepy factor of cute young girls: all of which the story drives towards with a sense of foreboding so strong when you go back to your life away from watching anime you’ll expect something really bad to happen just from dropping a pencil. It’s dark outside right now and there’s a quiet little voice telling me if I leave a curse will catch up with me and I’ll claw my own throat out. One of my favorite creative points about this series is how they characterize the characters in all of the stories: they use a blend of common stereotypes and music to tell us who these characters are, with the music subtly changing as the shit hits the fan; even better, though, is that the characters act differently from story to story, which keeps it both fresh and really makes the characters more interesting to see how they act differently or the same in certain scenarios. Since all of the main characters range from early elementary to high school, none of them act with a terrible amount of wisdom so watching them try and cope is like watching the crash of the Hindenburg. There is an overarching plot, but it’s kind of throwaway as it only makes an appearance in the last episode and is gone over so briefly that it didn’t do a lot to give me any sense of closure to the whole thing beyond what the end of the last story arc would have had anyways. Overall, the story is really compelling and the characters are genuinely interesting (especially Shion, holy crap that Shion is something else in one of the stories). The basic elements of horror are there and the pacing is spot on throughout. The different tellings of the story of Hinamizawa build on each other really well to give the entire series a sense of depth and saves us some of the silly repetition that would have otherwise bogged everything down. The story is strong, but there are a few points where things are a little flat and the sheer crescendo building horror wouldn’t be apparent without the music and art proudly putting it on display.

Higurashi is definitely an example of the sum of the parts being greater than the whole: the art style is rich but occasionally a little schizophrenic, the music is generic, and the story, though interesting, falls a little flat in the end; however, when the three are combined we get a series that I can’t help but describe with the phrase ‘fucking awesome.’ The characters really drive the series, especially as the occasional descent into madness is both compelling and believable when it’s a rational occurrence. Actually, one of the things I like about this series is that it makes sense in its own twisted way throughout; even the supernatural elements follow a certain logical progression. The violence is so jarring and terrible that it’s both disturbing and satisfying in ways I should probably seek therapy over. This series also has a high re-watching value because it builds a lot and the ending has ramifications for the series as a whole that make it substantially different the second time through. If I were the type to give awards, this series would win ‘harem done right’ and ‘acceptable use of loli characters.’ The underage factor of all the characters does so much to add to the horror and the underlying attraction between some of the girls and Keiichi really does a lot to turn the concepts of their heads. Now that I think about it, Higurashi is pretty much the definition of turning something on its head: from the way the series starts to its blending of light humor and disturbing horror, I can’t help but feel this series was progressive in several ways. Not radically genre-defining progressive like Kaiba, but definitely enough to make you think about harem and loli anime series a little differently. I suppose any series that has what would be the traditional love interest coming at you with a meat cleaver after four episodes into a story arc would have to be pretty different.

EDIT: You know, I finally put my finger on what added so much to this series: tragedy. All of the horror branches out from the tragedy of things going so terribly wrong. This series is right up there with Air on tragic level, especially during the second run through when you know more about what’s going on. See, it’s one thing for characters to go insane and start hacking bits off of other characters, it’s entirely different when they totally aren’t supposed to do so. How did I miss that when I was writing this review? I guess that’s the price I pay for just hammering these out all willy-nilly. Anyway, I guess any series that starts off with a scene where the protagonist is beating the now dead bodies of the two most prominent romantic interests with a baseball bat is playing the tragically wrong trump card from the go.

~Whim (with a big thanks to Jacob for loaning me this series)

PS – I actually avoid dubs at all costs these days because of what they did to the music track for Castle in the Sky; way to piss all over the original director’s intent guys.
PS2 – Yes, only one review again this week. Sorry, but I’m making a website for these and my other artistic endeavors so I’ve been a bit preoccupied. I’ve got a good number of new things ready to be watched, so once I get the site up we’ll be back to a high volume. Also, I will be putting in a little more oomph and planning for these reviews as believe it or not, I can actually do better than these rushed run-throughs. (see the edit about tragedy at the end of the review proper.)
PS3 – Having started a second run through the series there are a lot of things that build towards the ending that weren’t obvious the first time, which is good and all for the second viewing, but that still doesn’t help the fact that it came off so damn flat the first time through. Actually, the series is a totally different beast the second time through; how interesting…
PS4 – Turns out there are two sequels and a live action special of Higurashi. I think I know what torrents I might be firing up next.