Higurashi no Koro Naku ni Mei is a smartphone game released in 2020 as a part of the Higurashi: When They Cry franchise. Although the game was released as a tie-in to the new season, Higurashi no Koro Naku ni Gou, the game and the season are standalone entries.
Set in 1993, ten years after the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, Kazuho Kimiyoshi returns to her hometown to investigate what truly happened after she receives a letter from her supposedly dead grandfather beckoning her to return to the village. Along the way, she meets Miyuki Akasaka and the mysterious Nao Houtai, and they find themselves sent back a decade in time, days before the deadly disaster.
Tropes in Hinamizawa include:
- Actionized Sequel: The player controls characters in fights against Tsukuyami, mysterious creatures born from Kakera.
- Ascended Extra:
- Akasaka's daughter mentioned in the visual novel of the final Higurashi arc, Matsuribayashi-hen, is one of the protagonists, Miyuki Akasaka. She also made a cameo in a photograph in the 2006 anime.
- Tamurahime no Mikoto, Hanyuu's rival from the Hou-exclusive arc Kamikashimashi-hen (the sequel to Outbreak), serves as the Big Good for the protagonists.
- Bad Future: Mei takes place in a future where the Great Hinamizawa Disaster is not prevented, or in other words, the Game Club kills each other and Takano wins.
- Connected All Along: Nao is Rena's half-sister from her mother's side, born a couple years before the events of Higurashi and thus the Great Hinamizawa Disaster. As a result, Rena never knew about her.
- Kid from the Future: A variation. Nao laments having never met her half-sister Rena before she was killed in the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, but the events of Mei give her that opportunity. When she reveals her true identity to Rena, her elder sister tells her that she's glad to have met her.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Rena and Nao’s mother suffered this. Despite Rena’s father quitting his job and agreeing to move away to Ibaraki in order to help boost her company, she divorces him for another man. Her company eventually went bankrupt and her new husband leaves her and their child. Nao suspects her dad readily dumped them because he’s dating another woman.
- Mythology Gag:
- Kazuho is essentially Higurashi's equivalent of Ange Ushiromiya, having survived the deadly events of the main story that killed her family and investigating what really happened once she's grown older.
- Miyuki Akasaka investigating the aftermath of the Great Hinamizawa Disaster also happened in Nintendo DS port-exclusive arc Yoigoshi-hen, which is about a new cast investigating the abandoned Hinamizawa twenty years after the disaster rather than ten years later like in Mei.
- One of the cards is of Rika in her Angel Mort waitress outfit from the fanservice Kai OVA.
- Remember the New Guy?: The main character, Kazuho Kimiyoshi, is the granddaughter of Kimiyoshi and was in the same class as the Game Club. It had never been previously indicated that Kimiyoshi had grandchildren, and obviously, we've never seen Kazuho as the club's classmate before.
