As with Minagoroshi, I find Matsuribayashi to be a mixed bag, though a mixed bag by Higurashi's standards is still very good. These last two chapters are parrt of what prevent Higurashi from being a masterpiece for me, but ultimately I still love Higurashi just as much as I would if it were a masterpiece. I doubt even the most ardent of Ryukishi's fans would consider his writing perfect, and enjoying his work requires some acceptance of his imperfections. There are few writers who craft their works with this much love for their characters and this much thought in portraying the messiness of human experience, but there is a lot to accept in order to get to the highpoints. Some things will frustrate you, some things might come off unintentionally goofy, sometimes he overexplains and you want him to just move on already, sometimes he kinda cheats the rules of the mystery genre, etc. But while there are some things that genuinely frustrate me, I kinda love all the weird goofy stuff, all the parts where you feel he might not have been completely sure of what he was doing. The epic final chapter of Matsuribayashi is a point where the flaws and qualities have this weird kind of co-existence. On one hand, we could look at Higurashi's climax as a fantasy, a childish solution to a story that can often feel all too real. This is something Ryukishi concedes to in the Staff Room after the chapter:
"In other words, can you see that in the worlds of Higurashi, anything can be overcome when people talk to each other and help one another? Unfortunately that doesn't happen in reality. Helping each other creates friction, and often times, working alone is a lot simpler. However, we always hope that we can connect with other people and understand each other, so that we can face any difficulty. In that sense, this world is a fantasy."
He goes on to talk about his choice to make Takano the 'enemy' of this chapter, and how it suggests that he failed this worldview. He asks "What kind of ending would be the best outcome following the worldview of Higurashi? Perhaps it's something better than the Matsuribayashi chapter...."

From this perspective, the final chapter of Matsuribayashi is a failure because it fails to resolve the incredibly complex character and thematic conflicts in a believable way. It creates a fantasy of friendship and working together as a kind of spiritual power, a literal rule of the universe. It overcomes the highest of stakes and a vicious enemy. These kids are able to defeat a massive government conspiracy through tricks and traps. It feels much closer to reading a Shonen series than anything else up to this point. As Ryukishi himself admits, it partially comes from him not quite knowing how to resolve the story in a way that truly gives justice to its worldview. I think the other flaw here is residue from Chapter 7, which is that Higurashi just gets a lot BIGGER than it needs to be. Again, the draw of the series is really the character writing, and the conflicts are a lot stronger when they're contained between the characters. Tsumihoroboshi's climax is far fetched as well, but it's EMOTIONALLY believable because the conflict between Keiichi and Rena has been developed so perfectly. The whole chapter feels very true to the actual experience of trying to help a friend that's spiralling. The scenario is undoubtably a little silly, but the feelings are real. That feeling isn't really present here, and that's because the stakes of the conflict have sprawled into this massive conspiracy that exists way beyond the characters.

The other issue is Takano as a villain. This is also an issue in Minagoroshi but it's one which is more relevant here. I think Ryukishi writes himself into a corner with Takano's cartoonish levels of evil. The problem is that he ends Minagoroshi on a scene where Takano massacres an entire village while laughing maniacally, and then spends the opening hours of Matsuribayashi begging for our sympathy. My flaw is not with Ryukishi's worldview that even people who appear 'evil' become that way through trauma, and that there is always a possibility for redemption. The problem is that he writes a villain who is not a bad person in a realistic way. She is a bad person on an epic scale. It would be less of an issue if the final scene of Minagoroshi was cut down, or perhaps not even there at all. The opening hours of Masturibayashi overcompensate by aggressively piling on the tragedy. Unfortunately, it feels nowhere near as earned as the tragedy in previous chapters, and part of that is how it feels like Ryukishi is trying to MAKE us sympathise with her. Obviously all stories utilise some kind of emotional manipulation, but it's very different here to how Shion is written in Meakashi. At the end of that chapter, Ryukishi clearly wants us to cry for Shion. He's obviously directing us to feel that sympathy. For some people it didn't work, and Ryukishi acknowledges in the staff room that some readers won't accept it. For me it worked because we spend that entire chapter locked in Shion's head. It's not just that terrible things happened to her, but that those events took an incredible toll on her mindset and mental health, and that toll is really what we see in that chapter. And even though she suffers plenty in Meakashi, we still see what her day to day life is like - it isn't just an endless parade of suffering. Before asking us to cry for her, Ryukishi carefully builds up that mindset and that experience of overwhelming emotional pain. While Takano is given a psychological motive, the opening hours are more about the exposition - we get an explanation of how Takano became Like This, rather than actually feeling what it would be like to be Takano. It definitely feels a lot more forced in that regard, and it's where I find Ryukishi's portrayal of suffering to be overly indulgent (though I've heard the manga is much worse with this). A lot of these issues wouldn't be as bad if the story just had a smaller scale - if Takano were the culprit, but not someone in charge of a conspiracy to massacre an entire village, if her backstory was given more space to breathe instead of being a series of traumatic bullet points.

So with these issues outlined, we could describe Matsuribayashi as something of a failure. It doesn't quite give justice to the worldview and the emotional struggle that we saw in previous chapters. But if Matsuribayashi is a failure, it is a very enjoyable one. Perhaps a high stakes and action packed climax wasn't the right way to end Higurashi, but for what it is I think Ryukishi does it very well. He manages to keep an impressive balancing act of maintaining nonstop tension for around 5 hours, and while the climax is arguably bloated I found it never got tiring to read. And while there is a kind of childishness in its execution, there's also kind of a delight in the silliness of it all. Part of the point of Higurashi is that these are characters who have had their childhoods robbed from them, and the club games are a form of reclaiming that childhood. As I wrote in my Tsumihoroboshi review, this idea is best executed in the climax of that chapter. Matsuribayashi takes things even further, where the club game techniques are part of why these kids manage to win. It's like the story itself becomes akin to a child's imagination. The characters are often having so much fun that it sometimes feels like the stakes aren't even there, that the win is already sealed. At times, it makes the fight feel less like a fight and more like a victory lap. This is arguably worthy of criticism but I do find it really fun, and it adds to the borderline utopian vision of friendship that Ryukishi presents in this chapter. I can't believe entirely in what he presents here, and part of that is that I don't think he does either, but I still like the fantasy.

Much of what Higurashi's fans value about the series is this feeling that it breaks through being a story and becomes way too fucking real. It's not necessarily that the plotline itself is realistic, but that there are moments where Ryukishi captures something that feels so true to traumatic experience that it becomes overwhelming to read. Matsuribayashi has none of that 'realness'. It's pure story, pure fantasy. But what Ryukishi does maintain is a love for the characters, and a joy in just seeing them interact, to find beauty in the silly things that supposedly 'don't matter'. And so even though Ryukishi ultimately failed in some ways, I don't mind. He maintained his love, and I maintained mine.

It took me 2 years to finally get around to this and I did really enjoy it. I was pretty satisfied with all the answers we got and entertained throughout butttttttttt some things can’t be forgiven. Chapter 7: Minagoroshi has an incredible tragic but beautiful ending where despite the battle being lost Rika realises how much she can rely on her friends and watches her killer mutilate her to remember her face. Crazy good stuff but then when we finally get to Rika in this chapter….she simply forgot the entire chapter happened??? It’s not even like this is even relevant to the plot because Hanyu says oh it was her btw and Rikas like aight bet and questions her friends. Previous chapters have also spent a lot of time talking about how vital Keiichi is for break free but in this chapter he’s kinda sidelined and clueless. As far as I’m concerned however my problems get fixed in the alternate ending so I can’t complain that much. Chapter good but dumb