Fridge / Higurashi: When They Cry

Fridge Logic for Higurashi: When They Cry.

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Original Series

Fridge Brilliance

• Higurashi Kai's theme song, Naraku no Hana, is typically translated as Flower of Hell. Which, I suppose, works nicely enough since Naraku is a Japanese word for hell. However, for this troper, Fridge Logic kicked in once he actually read what Naraku actually is in Japanese mythology. Essentially, it's a place where you are doomed to constantly repeat your sins forever. A pretty apt symbol of what seems to be the fate of the inhabitants of Hinamizawa, until they break the loop.
  • The troper above probably misunderstood the whole point of Naraku. Which is that suffereing in Naraku while maybe very long, it is NOT forever. Once you have figured out where your mistake is and managed to change your ways/went through enough punishment for your sins, you are free to go. That is significant difference between Naraku and Christian Hell.
• Why is it that sometimes Keiichi will say something with no quotation marks in the VN and then have everyone reply like he said it out loud? Because he did. He says almost everything he's thinking out loud. It's a running gag that this happens a lot and people will often answer that it's plainly seen on his face, even when it makes no sense because what they replied with is very specific and quite clearly a direct response to what he said "mentally". Keiichi doesn't realize it, so to him, he's not speaking, and thus? No quotations.
• Even to the most blatantly unobservant viewer, Onikakushi-hen in the visual novel is filled to the brim with absolutely brilliant details that can clue you in to him being hallucinating everything. Constant back and forths from Keiichi's constant questioning of his own insanity to him completely embracing he can trust no one, his comments on how he feels sick or ill, the lack of comments from his mother on the sewing needle despite her commenting on how he smeared food on the walls... He even off-handedly mentions that if his mother heard him talking about how Rena wanted to kill him, she would drag him to a psychiatrist in the blink of an eye.
• In the flashback of Curse-Killing that about Keiichi's thinking brilliance, there's an extremely important detail that in fact reveals most of the story. Keiichi is said to have difficulties imagining a cube open on all his sides... but ask him to draw a dice cut open, and he'll do it immediately. The metaphor of the die roll is one of the most recurring ones in the Solution arcs, and indeed, Keiichi can take that dice and tear it apart like no one's business. There's even an arc named Dice-killing.
• It's mentioned extremely early on that Rika has a lot of skills. Naturally, she's had a very long time to develop them.
  • An exceedingly subtle example: Those creepy vocals in the main theme? Hanyuu's Verbal Tic.
  • Her skill with a mop sounds impractical and made up on the spot... until one looks at how much she's practiced the Mochi hammer and the Watanagashi ritual tool, both of which are similar to a mop or a polearm.
• Shion hearing random thuds in the forbidden storehouse? Just her going insane? Or her hearing Hanyuu throw a tantrum over Takano's eschewed views on Oyashiro-sama?
  • But that wasn't in the same arc was it? Because Rika let Takano and Tomitake into the shrine later in Kai. Shion wasn't there when Hanyuu threw her tantrum.
    • But she can clearly go where ever she wants, as seen later. She very well could have been in there.
    • This is made clear in the original sound novels, where Shion hears Hanyuu for the whole arc (although what she hears is just explained 2 arcs later). It's also explained that Hanyuu likes to hang there anyway.
  • This is even more brilliant for further analysis: Onikakushi-hen was given from Keiichi's (slipping into insanity) point of view, leaving the viewers wondering how accurate was the story, while here in Watanagashi-hen we're given Keiichi's (normal and sane) point of view again, allowing us to observe Shion, and establishing that while still behaving very normally on the surface, she's already on her way towards level 5. In fact, in that very same scene we see her "normal surface" breaking for the first time.
• The first time I watched the final episode of Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni Kai, Takano's final bullet missing Hanyuu seemed like a straight up Deus ex Machina. Only when I watched the season for a second time did I realize it was a beautiful Ironic Echo of the scene in a previous episode where Takano challenged God to kill her, and a subsequent lightning bolt missed. This made the finale feel a lot more well-planned. -Xelloss08

  • Add the scene where Takano throws the coin at the donation box, and Hanyuu herself tosses it back at her.

  • Frankly, this actually is an Ass Pull in the anime. Hanyuu never mentions that she has the power to stop time. This is how she dodged the bullet.
  • Well, if someone can reverse time, then you would think they would also be able to stop it. Also, from the camera view you can tell that the bullet didn't change direction at all but it still missed. Not very hard to work out if you quickly look twice.
  • I always thought it tied into their will. Their will to live make the miracle of the bullet 'bending' happen. Which goes to show you that their will matched Takano's will. Which was the reason they kept failing in the first place - Takano's will to prove the other Takano's theory was stronger than Rika's will.
  • Related to Higurashi: When They Cry, Takano Miyo's Image Song. I might just be thinking too much (in my standards), but it suddenly hit me why the verse has such a strange structure: Though Miyo's name originally was Miyoko, she changed it to Miyo (3-4) because of Hifumi (1-2-3). So, during the song verse, even though the compasses have a 4/4 beat, the verses themselves are structured as "3 compass - 4 compass - 3 compass - 4 compass" and so on, instead of a 7/8 beat as I had thought at first! -Flav 10 PM
  • Another Higurashi one: Rena mentions Keiichi is acting just like Satoshi did, fueling his paranoia that the Satoshi also saw his "Transfer" coming, in fact Satoshi's bat swinging pratice and sudden antisocial behaviour was his preparations for killing his Aunt.
    • This, plus Rena's own experience with moving away from Hinamizawa, is probably the reason why she seems to be forgiving instead of confused or similar at the end of Onikakushi when Keiichi kills her and Mion.
  • Onikakushi-hen is all seen from Keiichi's point of view while he is succumbing to Hinamizawa syndrome, which is why we never see anyone looking demonic with cat-pupils in any other arcs.
  • The way that Mion and Rena reply to Keiichi with "The manager is the manager" when Keiichi asks them who the "manager" is makes a lot more sense when you realize that they have no idea Keiichi is lying about baseball. If he were really a part of the team, he'd know who the manager was. That's why they're laughing. There's nothing malicious about it; Keiichi is just horribly misconstructing everything through paranoia and poor communication skills fueled by said paranoia.
  • Then there's the way that they knew that he had eaten lunch with Oishii, the cafe' is owned by Mion's family. They were probably asking his sincere opinion on what he had for lunch, and why he made such a ruckus with some old man they didn't know. They probably didn't know any other detail, suggesting that Shion wasn't at the restaurant at that time, and they only heard through third parties.
  • Far before we learn of Hanyuu, Rika tells Shion (pretending to be Mion) that Oyashiro will forgive people who go into the shrine if they're sorry. Shion sarcastically asks if Oyashiro told her this him/herself, Rika says "yes". Many arcs later we learn Oyashiro aka Hanyuu has been there talking to Rika this whole time, Rika wasn't kidding.
• Watanagashi-hen; visual novel. A bit of a funny example, but as Keiichi is wondering about Shion's and Ooishi's comments on Mion and who Mion really is while they're on their way to where Rika and Satoko live, he looks at Mion's back as she's riding the bike in front of him. The narration states that Mion's back has no answers. The irony is that "Scrapbook XI" soon brings up the fact that Mion, being the heir of Sonozaki clan, probably has a demon tatooed somewhere on her back. And that is not Mion that Keiichi is looking at, it's Shion. So, it did have answers after all!
• The memetic phrase "That's a lie!". I realized two things; first, the fact that it makes a lot of sense as one of the series' Arc Words, because it represent the first step- a small distrust and suspicion in your friends- into the Hinamizawa Syndrome-fueled paranoia and insanity that repeatedly gets ahold of the main characters in the early arcs. But it's doesn't have to be explicitly said that way- and then I realized; in Onikakushi-hen, though through different wording, the one who first accused Rena of lying was Keiichi, who was somewhat paranoid then but still distrustful of Rena, and afraid that she was hiding something from him. It's then, a short time after Rena denies lying again, the paranoia really settles and he starts hallucinating that she's Cute and Psycho. Brilliant! It's subtle, and somehow works both as a hint and a piece of Foreshadowing.
  • The very first dialogue between Keiichi and Rena. Keiichi pranks Rena, and when he reveals he was just kidding, the phrase he uses is "I was just lying". It helps that in Japanese "uso da" can also mean "I was just kidding/it was just a joke".
• In Japanese onomatopoeia, the noises that higurashi ("evening cicadas") make is rendered as "kanakanakana." Intentional or not, the resemblence to Rena's Verbal Tic was enough to make me smile a bit.
  • It's the same with Rika's "mii" tic.
  • It's intentional, and is even semi-parodied at the start of Tsumiboroshi-hen, when Keiichi and Rena are thinking of the punishment game for the other three, Rena' laugh is "kanakanakanakanakana".
• The title is a play on the Japanese word for murderer, hitogoroshi. "When the murderers weep."
• Miyo Takano spelled her own plan's doom when she dropped the '-ko' from her name. You have to switch gears when you're playing with the the readings of the numbers, but if you include her '-ko', her name is essentially '345'. Hifumi was '123', as he did the first three steps of the research. By dropping her first name's '-ko', Takano essentially foreshadowed her own plan's eventual failure by not getting a 'fifth part' done.
• The covers for the manga, at least the background colors. This is more of a visual thing, a way to tell the reader subconsciously about what to expect in the arc. During the "question arcs", the covers were completely black, as though enshrouded in shadow. When the "answer arcs" came around, the backgrounds became white, as though light shone on it.
• Higurashi no Naku Koro ni's first ending theme song was done in Gratuitous Engrish, so for those that don't understand that language understanding the lyrics might be kind of hard. Look at the words, now think of the Obfuscating Stupidity of Rika Furude, I'll be back here while your mind is blown. -GX Next
  • Despite being a woman singing, I aways assumed it was meant to represent Keiichi's thoughts, not Rika's. He is the main character of season one, after all.
    • It works for ALL the main characters on their respective arcs, because it makes sense to Rika and Keiichi, but I first thought it was from Tsumihoroboshi-hen's Rena's perspective. Namely, they all think they know the truth and that everyone in Hinamizawa will end up dying. They all think they are the Only Sane Man.
• We hear about Shion dislike of canned meat in Meakashi-hen, at first you might think that that scare story she was told as a kid actually had some grounding from Mion's speech at the end of Watanagashi-hen, then you find out that it was Shion all along and the part about the canned meat was just some of the bullshit she made up.
  • Actually, Shion's bodyguard, Kasai, was the one who told her about the canned meat being made from human flesh.
• Massacre Chapter. Not only does everybody die, as the title implies, on-screen and also brutally; but this is also the first time where every single question about what's going on behind the scenes, except some mostly secondary details, are answered in full and without pulling punches. It's also a massacre of fan theories, red herrings and epileptic trees.
• The ending of Onikakushi, when Mion and Rena "assault" Keiichi. That exact event has happened twice before in the same episode, once on Keiichi and once on Tomitake.
• Takano's moment of supreme cuteness in Massacre. Making Takano look cute and adorable basically moments before revealing that she's the villain. Good one!
  • Also, the realization that Takano goes into Cute Mode when heading in a shed full of centuries-old torture tools. Whackjob much?
• Some wonder the point of giving Takano a horrible backstory, then adding Hinamizawa Syndrome on top of it. But let's look closer. Her problem was always the Hinamizawa Syndrome, even though it was just an unhealthy, unjustified, paranoid - naturally - obsession with it. Even if she never had the Syndrome proper, she had just about every single symptom, and has had them most of her life.
• Throughout the first arc, oni are mentioned. Oni were known to wield clubs. Now, what was Keiichi's usual weapon? A baseball bat.
  • Onis were also blamed for any sort of bad luck or misfortune that happened, traditionally. (More modernly their version of a ghost, I forget the name it might be 'Jin' though, is blamed instead. But the genius still stands.)
• Remember what Takano kept saying about her will? Yes, 'zettai'. And what other certain witch from another game liked to exclaim that? Yes, it's as you think.
• One of the possible reasons why Shion and the manager weren't introduced in the first episode. To show that if you were using one of the rules of Knox Decalogue to show that the manager and Shion were not the culprits for the conspiracy in the first episode. Though many other laws of the decalogue are broken.
  • Actually, no laws were broken. Takano was introduced early into both the arcs in question and the overarching story meaning that her being the one manipulating events to drive the band insane and being the overall mastermind of the events is allowed under Knox's 1st. The very first clue we get regarding who is the identity of the Big Bad comes in the 2nd novel regarding fake death (which is allowed). D34 driving people paranoid is yet another clue that shows up in the 5th and 6th novel. The vans show up again in the 6th novel, which combined with D34 and the fake death is what allows the reader to figure out that the Big Bad is Takano as early as the 6th novel. Since Oryou was introduced more than a third way into the story, Knox's 1st rules her out as a culprit. Shion as the culprit in the second novel is allowed under Knox's 1st (story arc as opposed to overarching story). Knox's 10th is very important and is followed in that arc. More modern interpretations of Knox's 2nd only forbid the supernatural/preternatural from being involved in the crime (namely as the culprit), meaning that you can use Knox's 2nd to ascertain that Oyashiro's Curse is a Red Herring. Knox's third is irrelevant. A parasite is allowed under Knox's 4th and in fact we are duly prepared for it since the 6th novel foreshadows this solution. How Hinimizawa Syndrome works is a simple corruption of brain chemistry. Knox's 5th is irrelevant. Mere intuition is not used so that accounts for Knox's 6th. Keiichi does NOT have the detective's authority in the 1st novel. The only main character that comes close to having such is Rena in the 2nd novel, so Knox's 7th is accounted for. The Ground Hog Day Loop and Rena's solutions in the 2nd novel account for Knox's 8th. Others are allowed to interpret things as they see fit, so that accounts for Knox's 9th.
• In Saikoroshi-hen, Rika is trapped in a world where nothing violent ever happened in Hinamizawa. Because of this, The Dam Project gets finished, and everyone has to leave. The only way to fix this is for Rika to kill her own mother, this world's reincarnation of Oyashiro. In the other arcs, the villagers don't want to lose their homes, but more importantly, don't want to invoke the wrath of Oyashiro-sama. Because they don't prevent Hinamizawa's eventual destruction, they do invoke the wrath of the Oyashiro-sama from a different world, Rika, upon her poor sinless Mother.
• Even in Keiichi's perspective of Onikakushi-hen, when he slams the door on Rena's hand, she seems to be crying crying and screaming for real that she was sorry. It seems like she's acting at first but Near the end of Tsumihoroboshi-hen he was succumbing to Hinamizawa syndrome fueled paranoia during that arc. So her real cries were actually the last of his lapses of sanity trying to tell him the truth.
• In Tatorigoroshi-hen, Keiichi becomes worried about Satoko after Rika tells everyone that Satoko is "running a little late," because Satoko's uncle Teppei returned to Hinamizawa and Satoko was forced into his custody. Subsequently, she was locked in the house for three days straight, being forced to care for Teppei, which probably includes sexual favors. Eugh. When Keiichi is lamenting to Rena that their fun days end so abruptly, Rena's response is that she tries to hold onto the precious things that make her happy, because even though it only takes a day to lose it all, if you hold onto it while it's there, you won't have any regrets. She then makes an analogy to prove her point: "If a volcano erupted tomorrow and we all died... And you were the only one left alive... How would you feel then?" Rena says that if that's what were destined to happen, she wouldn't have any regrets because she lived those happy days to the fullest. This all seems very sweet, until you finish the whole series and realize that at the end of Tsumihoroboshi-hen, this is basically exactly what happens to her, as far as she knows. The epilogue in the anime shows Rena alive in 2007, traumatized from losing her friends and everyone she knows to the Great Hinamizawa Disaster. And, since we know that sometimes the characters can remember their actions in past arcs, Rena's analogy holds a lot more impact since she has actually experienced what she is saying.
  • Teppei doesn't rape Satoko, though probably only because he's not a pedophile. It's mentioned in a tip that he thinks her mother was hot, and that it would be great if she was old enough to... enjoy.
• In Meakashi-hen, when Mion calls Shion to let her know that Oryou has found out that Shion escaped from St. Lucia school and is hiding in Okinomiya, Shion is seen casually clipping her fingernails as she's talking. This is an example of some subtle foreshadowing, since Shion is later forced to rip her own fingernails off after Oryou becomes enraged with her later in the arc. Doubles as a Rewatch Bonus!
• Satoko and Shion's names can make up Satoshi, fitting given they are the two main characters that knew Satoshi the most.

Fridge Horror

• Emergency Manual 34 is implemented in every world where Rika is captured and killed by Takano. That means that no matter what happens in the arc, every single person in Hinamizawa during the night Rika dies is killed. Always and without fail. This is most shocking in Tsumihoroboshi-hen, which ends happily, then roll credits... and the same night in which the arc ends Rika and then everyone else is killed.
  • This might also explain how memories get to other worlds. Most of the Five-Man Band in most worlds is dead no matter what. The end of Massacre hints that these ghosts don't quite stand aside to be forgotten, and seem to know about other worlds in some way.
  • To add to the horror it turns out later that that "everyone goes insane after Rika's death" theory is complete bullshit. Which means that not only are all the villagers killed, they are killed for no reason at all.
  • Not exactly always, in any world where Shion goes crazy, Rika is dead for too long for the manual to be enacted, also Keiichi survives in Tatarigoroshi-hen.
• In certain worlds Fredrica goes and prevents Miyo's parents from dying. That means she won't meet Takano, which means after he dies no one will continue his research and nothing will be done to help Hinamizawa Syndrome. The dam will be built, and everyone will move away from Rika, which will cause an instant mass outbreak of Hinamizawa Syndrome. Which in turn causes paranoia, violence, and eventual death for the victim and potentially people around them. Satoko's mom would also keep on divorcing and getting married, and Satoshi might kill his aunt and potentially someone else due to the above spoiler. Keiichi would also not move to the village and ever meet his friends, leaving him in his previous depression.
  • And the worst part? If we assume this is Umineko's Bernkastel it's very likely she intended to do all that.
    • The only problem is that Rika's death does not cause a mass outbreak. In both Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen, the villagers never have an outbreak due to Rika's death, so the mass outbreak seem a little unlikely if they would be forced away from Rika. Not that the pressure of relocation trigger an outbreak.
    • Ironically the dam project might actually end up eliminating Hinamizawa Syndrome entirely. A disease that only exists in a single locality must have a vector that only exists in that single locality, as an airborne or bloodborn pathogen would spread beyond the town. This leaves insect-born, most likely a breed of mosquito that only exists in the swamps found around Hinamizawa. This can be inferred by the way those swamps are paved under in timelines where the town purge occurs. The dam floods the area, inundating the swamps, and destroying the habitat that spawns the disease. Even in the bad-end timelines, at least Hinamizawa Syndrome is gone.
  • Well, there is another possibility: seeing as the murder of the dam foreman always occurs in any universe and the project is always ended after his death, it is still possible that the dam would be halted anyway. In either case, without Miyo's help in the Hinamizawa Syndrome research, Satoko would most likely die after killing her parents, seeing as there would be no cure for her to use. And only Satoshi would be watched over by his aunt and uncle, so he could either live or die at that point. As for Rena, her fate is up in the air, as it is never mentioned whether or not she was cured of her outbreak in the past, so she could very well die. The only safe ones would be the Sonozaki twins, Keiichi, and Rika as they would have little to influence their suspicions of others. So, it's not all bad, but still pretty girm, in this case.
    • It's not actually the murder of the dam foreman that causes the end of the project, it's the negotiations after the kidnapping of the Cabinet Minister's grandson. Since that kidnapping was done by the Tokyo organisation, because of Takano and her research, that makes the above statement invalid.
• The fate of Rena in Watanagashi/Meakashi and similar worlds. not only does Shion kill Rika, Satoko, and wind up the direct cause of Keiichi's death in the hospital, but she does it while pretending to be Mion. Rena is the only one of the group who survives the incident, and the end credits of Meakashi make it clear she's still alive and well many years later, considering the gas disaster doesn't happen in these worlds. Consider Rena's past - she already felt 'cursed' by Oyashiro when she moved away before, so there's nowhere else she can ever live besides in or around Hinamizawa. And yet, now, Hinamizawa is full of painful memories where she lost her precious friends, the ones who healed her pain and made her life finally, truly happy. So Rena continues to live on, never able to truly go far away and experience life elsewhere because of her deadly fear of the curse, so she can never escape the painful memories Hinamizawa must hold for her. And this is a girl who beat the shit out of 3 male students, went around her school breaking windows with a bat, and tried to kill herself BEFORE THIS INCIDENT EVEN OCCURRED. Imagine the effect being a survivor in that situation must have had on her!!
• Houjou Teppei is implied to be a pimp. Now think about what might have ended up happening to Satoko, under his "care", if she had been living in the same house with him through adolescence into adulthood, and tell me you don't want to be sick. —ncfan
  • There are some implications of sexual abuse in the sound novel too..
    • Sexual abuse could partly explains why Satoko reacted so violently to Keiichi's head patting - in fact, she reacted to a man touching her. It's more evident in the sound novels, since the anime put in an explicit explanation (that doesn't make a lot of sense).
    • The VN lays the implication pretty heavily early on, with multiple phrasings on one page to the effect that Teppei would need someone to take care of him in place of his mistress.
    • There is no sexual abuse, though probably only because he's not a pedophile. It's mentioned in a tip that he thinks her mother was hot, and that it would be great if she was old enough to... enjoy.
• Eyes are a big deal in Higurashi, telling you when characters are feeling a certain way and at many points, how they are mentally. In Onikakushi, you can sometimes see Keiichi's own eyes shift similarly to how he imagines he sees the eyes of Rena and Mion, declaring his mental state. And in Tsumihoroboroshi, you can immediately tell that Rena has officially left the red-zone near the end of her fight with Keiichi. Rena closes her eyes when she says she wants the same reward as Keiichi. Then, the moment she says they'll always be together, regardless of who wins their confrontation, her eyes are back to normal. When a character is hesitant, you'll often see their eyes be completely shrouded in shadow, which is the case for Rena during many scenes in that arc, including when Rena is -supposedly- about to swing down her cleaver on Keiichi!
• At the end of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, Frederica Bernkastel is able to prevent the deaths of Miyo Takano's parents so that Miyo may also have a happy ending. However, this means there will be nobody to continue the research for Hinamizawa Syndrome when Dr. Takano dies, which means no Irie Clinic in Hinamizawa, which means no treatment for the Syndrome. As a result, both Satoshi and Satoko are doomed to early deaths due to the syndrome, while Keiichi, who usually has a higher level of the Syndrome in most arcs, is also doomed to die in a similar manner. Possibly also Shion. And God only knows who they'll all take with them while they're in level 5 of the Syndrome (if history repeats itself, Keiichi will probably kill Mion and Rena) before they claw their own throats out.
  • Since everything was caused by Lambdadelta and Bernkastel, it was still all unavoidable, because despite all the little actions the characters took that could change in different universes, they didn't have control in what they were doing. And Onikakushi-hen is much, much more scary when you realize that Keiichi hallucinated everything scary about Mion and Rena. It makes you realize just how freaky Hinamizawa Syndrome is.
    • Fridge Logic also comes in when you watch it for the second time, after watching the whole series and realize that Rena was desperately trying to help Keiichi, and that everything that sounded like threats and weird conspiracies the first time over was just Rena being worried for Keiichi, knowing what he's going through, because she went through it once, and her trying to help him and save him. The whole arc ends up being really sad.
  • The ending of this series is Fridge Horror in itself. Once the the elation you felt after watching Rika finally create a happy world for herself after centuries of trying, you start to think about all those 'failed' worlds. We know that a new world begins when Rika dies in the old one. But we've also seen that the worlds continue to exist after Rika's death. So this one reality where things went well came at the price of thousands and thousands of repeated tragedies, the aftermath of which still exist a thousand times over. And we know from the first episode of Kai that there is a world whereone of the characters survives and is living a life of nothing but regret and anguish. And given that what's true in one world is most likely true of several others... Yes. ENJOY THAT 'HAPPY ENDING' NOW, SUCKERS!
    • What?
    • In short, none of the horrific tragedies that befell the many iterations of Rika's friends were removed. No Cosmic Retcon saved any of their lives or rolled back the survivors' experiences.
    • In this regard the Great Hinamizawa 'Gas Disaster', actually works to soften the blow, yes, most worlds end in tragedy, but all involved are swiftly euthanasied. The exceptions are Watanagashi, Meakashi, and Tatarigoroshi-hen.
• In Onikakushi when you start piecing together what the 'syringe' was and what Mion actually meant by her statement.

Fridge Logic

• Rika and Satoko along with Hanyuu in Matsuribayashi-hen live alone without any adult supervision despite the fact that child services have been a major plot point. I mean I can understand them overlooking Satoko because their afraid of the Sonozaki clan, but Rika is a miko and a very important person in the town plus the fact that she is the queen carrier. One would think that she would have been put in a (decent) orphanage or up for adoption, and for that matter, why didn't Irie just adopt Satoko to pull a Wife Husbandry?
  • Irie talks about wishing he could do that, but child services won't usually let singles adopt kids. Technically, they're under Kimiyoshi's custody. Given how much the three families are allowed to do whatever the heck they want by the government, there's a possible explanation as to why child services aren't getting involved.
  • It's worth noting that the Child Services, in just about any arc you care to mention, are hilariously incompetent, staggeringly bureaucratic, and in Satoko's case, outright malicious. It's very likely that they just didn't care about either of the children, especially if no one in the village would bring it up to them, and why would they? Satoko was a pariah, and Rika was respected enough to not have her will challenged by the towns people.
  • Kids can live alone in Japan, it's just Values Dissonance and the only reason you're suprised is because you're not from the original culture. To them, it's like if you wanted child services to show up because some kids were staying with their grandparents during the summer (Assuming no one was forced to and nothing horrible happened).
  • In one of the Visual Novels, Keiichi asks this question when he realises Satoko and Rika are both orphans and live alone together. It's explained that Rika is technically under Kimiyoshi's custody, but lives alone because he lets her. Satoko was probably allowed to do the same because Rika convinced Kimiyoshi to allow it. Hanyuu is obviously allowed to do whatever the hell she likes; she's Oyashiro-sama (but in the world where she manifests as a human, her case is probably the same as Rika's).
    • It's probable that in Rika's earliest iterations, Kimiyoshi took close care of her, but after a few lifetimes, she started demonstrating an accelerated competency from a young age. By the time of this story, her self-sufficiency was established long before her parents died, and the village looked out for her even then. Kimiyoshi wouldn't need to visit more than occasionally since their social circles bring them across each frequently enough that he could ask how she's living in passing conversation. The village is more divided on Satoko, but they're content to let her be someone elses' problem, without welcoming outside intervention.
• In Tatarigoroshi-hen, how did Satoko push Keichii through the side of a bridge? Even taking into consideration that she is a lot stronger than she looks, there is no way he should have been able to pass between interweaving wires that are put there specifically to prevent people from falling.
  • It's an error in the anime version. The bridge looks different in the manga and sound novels.
• The entire Emergency Manual plan has to be completely unnecessary, as evident from the ending of Meakashi-hen, in which not only does most of the village continue to live (and in faraway locations) without any Hinamizawa Syndrome, but Rena also does. Given that she is explicitly shown in another arc to be infected with Hinamizawa Syndrome and have an outbreak (and when Rika is around), this means that the Queen Carrier's role logically has to be complete nonsense. At best, the Furude family has a genetic immunity to the infection. After Someutsushi-hen and Kageboushi-hen, it's evident that not only was the Emergency Manual unnecessary, it was also completely counter-productive in that it caused outbreaks among the Hinamizawan diaspora population.
  • You're right. The entire plan is useless, but that's kind of the point. As was revealed (I think in Onisarashi-hen) that Hinamizawa Syndrome isn't caused by distance from Rika, but extreme stress/mental turmoil. For instance, Keiichi developed the symptoms in Onikaushi-hen not because he left town for a few days, but because he started to get somewhat paranoid and distrustful on his own first, after he discovers the dam murders/"curse".
  • WE know that, but Takano and Irie would have no memories of that. That, however, doesn't explain why Rika doesn't seem to know.
    • Given the fact that she's dead when she's killed, she wouldn't know that her death doesn't cause a mass level 5 outbreak. The emergancy manual was put into effect because they believed that the death of the queen carrier would be an automatic trigger, not that they thought it was the only cause. Although this does raise another bit of Fridge Logic, If neither the death of the queen carrier or distance from the queen carrier trigger the virus then what's the point of there being one in the first place?
    • The queen carrier is immune to Hinamizawa syndrome, and her blood can be used to make a drug that the suppresses the symptoms it causes.
    • How in the world would giving the host immunity ever prove beneficial to a disease/parasite? I mean, isn't the basic theory of evolution go along the lines: those with useful mutations or favorable traits suited to their environment are able to pass it to the offsprings? A mutation that made the syndrome unable to function properly could occur, but there's no way that something that ruins their chances for survival/infection would be passed on to future generations. Unless I'm over thinking this and your saying it's just that her family has a genetic immunity, in which case that would make perfect sense.
    • The whole 'Queen Carrier' thing is just a theory in the first place. Mostly based i how they are well treated by the locals and are immune to the disease. It is probably just the family that have the genetic immunity and the parasite lived on through other means(in other people). Maybe there are even other immune people and we just never knew.
    • By the way, just how would they go about making a drug to suppress symptoms out of her blood? Stem cells? I don't think that kind of research existed back then.
    • The queen isn't immune in the first place. Rika notes that in a few worlds that the only one who never went berserk was Mion and says that even she herself did it a few times, but was killed instead of successfully killing anyone.
  • Oh heck, if the new version of Miotsukushi-hen is to be believed, it's even worse than we thought - the manual is intentionally counterproductive. The ending of Minai's arc has her stop somebody likely working with Tokyo who was trying to change a shipment of medicines that were going to stop L4-5 hallucinations and such and exchange them with medicines that exacerbate the hallucinations. In other words, to Nomura's faction, the outside cases of widespread Hinamizawa Syndrome are a feature, not a bug, of the manual's execution.
• In Onikakushi hen, Keiichi and the others were playing tag (It was in Onikakushi-hen in the Visual Novel.) To stop Satoko from chasing him, Keiichi asked some girls nearby that if they saw Satoko, tell her "Satoko's parents are at the front gate." Granted, Keiichi didn't know at the time that Satoko was a Self-Made Orphan, but in the Visual Novel (and Anime) This worked and Satoko stopped going after Keiichi. What. The. Hell. ~ Zfish9
  • In the anime, he gets the girls to say the teacher is looking for Satoko.
    • Becomes Fridge Tear Jerker when you realise that Satoko might have actually thought her parents were at the front gate — people in mourning often feel as if their loved ones are about to re-appear from nowhere, and Satoko definitely hasn't had any closure to help her put an end to the grieving process.
    • I'll step in and remind you that Satoko hated her parents and killed them herself.
    • Are you forgetting the whole 'Hinamizawa Syndrome' explanation?
    • And the fact that she repressed those memories?
    • Add to that, that those children likely knew Satoko's parents were dead... It was the second-year curse, after all
• Mion was so proud and thrilled with the way she stood up to the police, up to and beyond civil disobedience, during the dam construction. And yet she could only hem and haw over the systemic difficulties of getting Satoko away from her uncle. I could understand if she was reluctant to even mention the Houjou name around her grandmother, but she didn't even try to come up with solutions that wouldn't necessarily involve her family. One plan that's so simple it doesn't even have to be brilliant: "kidnap" Satoko and "imprison" her at the shrine. She wouldn't even have to try to hide, she could live with Rika as she was accustomed to. As stupid as Teppei is, it's not impossible he could figure it out, but who cares? Would he have the balls to trespass on Furude property? I'm sure he'd love to draw police attention to himself by requesting their help, and they'd immediately get a court warrant to search one of the revered village families' property.
  • On the other hand, that solution isn't likely to be applicable as an illustration to real life situations, which is probably what this arc intended.
  • On the other-other hand, Mion (and the rest of the club) knew pretty well that Satoko's problems can be only partially attributed to her uncle, and the main cause of Satoko's problems is no one else than Satoko herself. So removing her from the uncle (or the uncle from her) won't be a full solution. And in fact, it could pretty much make things worse, and not better.
• When Rena dismembers bodies as casually as cutting meat (or so she tells herself,) she claims housewives occasionally wipe maggots off the meat they serve. This was probably intended to be Fridge Horror, but it's two kinds of Fridge Logic:
  • If meat has been exposed to the temperature for the duration maggots can develop, there's worse problems with it than the maggots. Those maggots may be safer to eat than the meat is.
  • If she has delusions of maggots in her bloodstream, would she be casual about any maggots at all?
• In Minagoroshi, the discussion they had in Tatarigoroshi never came up; that the best possible response they could get from child protection would be far from ideal. Satoko would be taken into protective custody. To where? With whom? When will she be back? Will she come back? Satoko's safety would only be as guaranteed as the foster parents she's left with.
  • Minagoroshi negates the implications of that discussion by addressing the actual problem, that being the lingering animosity the village has for the Hojo family. With that taken care of, Satoko would likely be placed in the care of the Kimiyoshi family. Given that this is the same circumstance Rika lives under, and that the Sonozaki family is on their side this time, there will likely be little resistance to restoring the status quo.
• The secret ending for Matsuribayashi where Takano never loses her parents would logically turn the story into a downer ending, though granted one with few to no deaths. It goes like this: She never meets her grandfather and thus never tries to research Hinamizawa syndrome, thus she never sets up the clinic. The anti dam project group does not have the clinic's backing anymore and thus the village is submerged before Keiichi or Rena ever move in. Hinamizawa residents tend to get deranged outside of the village, though granted this would only happen to some individuals. Even if the dam project is halted, the disease is still there and people like Satoshi would get arrested. One of the group of friends would also probably go crazy since apart from the last two arcs one of them usually snaps.

Gou/Sotsu

Fridge Brilliance

• The Goroawase Number for Satoko is 3105, hence Featherine calling her Anomalous Spinal Cord Specimen LD3105. Like the other names she's called by, it also could also be seen as a reference to 34; the 0 could indicate to subtract the 5 by the 1, leading to 3105 being a play on 34.
• Eua's name. It could be seen as a reference to the most common letters in Featherine's true name, Featherine Augustus Aurora.
• The password on the case for the H173 syringes, 13201234, is a play on Takano and her grandfather's names via Goroawase Number; 34 is Miyo and 123 is Hifumi.
• The lyrics of the first ending song to the original series, "Why or Why Not", are now especially appropriate to what happens in Gou. The song can be seen from the perspective of Rika or Satoko, talking about how they were unfairly blindsided by the sudden tragedies that uprooted them from their happy lives and wondering if they could have prevented this or if they could return to how things used to be, with the final verse being them confronting each other.

Fridge Horror

• We learn in Satokowashi-Han that Satoko's uncle was never actually abusing her, but she took his reappearance and genuine desire to be a loving family member and turned it to her advantage. That advantage? Letting her friends think she was being abused to manipulate their love for her into this big major victory that reforms the entire town and gives Rika her biggest hope spot that the cycle is once again broken. And then she takes it all away with the most unlikely murder yet during the victory celebration. And it works. This is the time loop that makes Rika begin to plan permanent suicide. Satoko is willing to twist any love in her life into suffering to suit her goals.
• Satoko is revealed to have been a Looper since Episode 1 of Gou. Which means that in Episode 16, when Rika is gutted, Satoko wasn't a victim of Hinamizawa Syndrome but in her right mind and considered it a suitable punishment for her friend "abandoning" her.
• At the end of Sotsu, Hanyuu defeats Eua by damaging her memory device and Rika & Satoko learn that they can be apart from each other for a while. Rika and Satoko say their goodbyes while knowing they'll loop forever and that they'll start chasing each other after a while. Seems like a good ending? Unfortunately if you take in account of what Bernkastel and Lambdadelta recalled in Umineko, things are going to get worse. With the fact that Eua who was the game master leaving the game board and the condition of it not being met anymore, Rika/Bernkastel is stuck in a logic error for 1000 years that will mentally break her while having the "Endurance Contest" she had with Lambda which is now implied to be Lambda chasing her throughout the years.