It was Ryukishi's first work, so of course it's a bit rough around the edges. But beneath its tropey silliness is substantial and emotional writing, with a solid message about relying on others that ties it all together. Higurashi is excellent at exploring the intricacies of abusive situations and how people stuck in them react. Even though the abusers themselves are portrayed a bit too one-dimensionally evil for my tastes, the victims' characterization more than makes up for it. Satoko, Satoshi, and Shion are each incredible depictions of the way these different toxic mindsets manifest in people's lives, and the amount of moral complexity that the latter two have makes it consistently a joy to watch their development. Keiichi is quite the engaging protagonist. Usually I feel like a lot of media makes 'average guy' protagonists such blank slates that it prevents interesting characterization, but Keiichi isn't weighed down at all by this problem, standing as his own fully-explored person. Seeing his internal moral debates with himself over the events of Onikakushi and especially Tatarigoroshi is really engaging, particularly in how he applies his own paranoia-filled rationale to the people around him. The story's also surprisingly good at tying this together by exploring the ideological throughline between all of their situations as well as the unique one Rika is in, even if trying to tie so many complex situations together means some things get a bit oversimplified. Ultimately, Higurashi is a story that simply explores a lot of complicated situations in life with a great amount of nuance, somewhat awkwardly but still decently managing to craft a coherent whole out of them. And despite the ways it stumbles, I can't help but respect it.

Reviewed on Sep 24, 2022


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