This review contains spoilers
It didn’t have to be this way.
One of my favourite types of tragedy in fiction is the kind where it’s all so avoidable and pointless, yet nobody realises it until it’s far too late. This kind of tragedy is intentionally frustrating, but when done well it’s absolutely devastating. There’s a wide variety of tragic fiction but for simplicity’s sake I’ll mark a distinction between fatalistic tragedy and character-driven tragedy. The kind I’m talking about is often character-driven, and I find there’s often something more human in a pointless tragedy created by character flaws and misunderstandings. Higurashi’s question arcs feel intensely fatalistic with the recurring events in every chapter, the scene with Rika predicting her future and each arc ending in some kind of tragedy within Hinamizawa no matter how different the specifics are. This is not to say that character-driven tragedy is non-existent in these arcs, but that it is easy to come to the conclusion that the tragedies of these arcs were bound to happen. Meakashi is the first arc where the opposite is completely evident. So much of Meakashi could have been avoided - the arc’s final hours go out of their way to make Shion’s revenge as pointless as it possibly could have been. The move away from fatalistic tragedy is one of the core elements of the answer arcs, and this chapter does excellent work in setting it up.
One of the most impressive things about the chapter is the use of Shion’s narration. Ryukishi very effectively locks you into her head and writes a convincing internal voice, which saves the chapter from some of its more contrived plotting. I find the chapter is the one where it feels most evident that the answer to Watanagashi’s mystery was written first and Ryukishi had to work his way backwards to narratively justify it. As an answer, I don’t find it the most satisfying for multiple reasons - one of which is that there’s something a bit overdone about the twin setup, and the other is that it negates Mion’s development in Watanagashi. Once I figured out where the chapter was going I was really anxious about it, but fortunately, Shion’s PoV is written well enough to make her descent into madness convincing. I really loved the experience of the chapter’s first few hours where her selfishness and cruelty slowly emerge. Her connection to Satoshi initially comes off as a weak plot thread until you realise the romance is meant to be intensely one-sided. Shion latches onto Satoshi because of his outsider status, but she does not make any attempt to truly understand him, which is most evident in her treatment of Satoko.
As I mentioned earlier Shion being the culprit does negate some of Mion’s characterisation in Chapter 2, and my main anxiety about the chapter as I read it would be if it would detract from what I found most powerful about Watanagashi. The core of Watanagashi’s power is Keiichi maintaining his innocent faith in friendship in the face of evil, and Meakashi maintains this core. Shion performs Mion as a comically evil character, and I love seeing how she reacts to Keiichi’s innocence from her perspective - how she gets shocked at how he can still love Mion even if she were this absurdly evil person. This allows her real feelings to emerge from her performance, but unfortunately she never truly lets go of the performance either. It’s another tragedy in the chapter that she never lets things get to the point where Keiichi’s love is directed to her rather than Mion. Shion receives love but is too consumed by hatred to give it to others and most of all to herself - the final scenes are so hard hitting because Shion only realises this once it’s far too late to do either. You get the sense that so much of her behaviour comes from her just giving up on herself, and in the final scenes I cried for her despite her previous actions appearing unforgivable. When she's talking about how she wishes she had never been born and thanking everyone for loving her even though she was "like this" it gets me wishing that everything could have been turned back and that she could have found some peace. And then just as I was thinking that, the vision of her acting as a loving older sister to Satoko appeared as another punch to the gut. I understand why this ending might not land because of how cruel Shion is throughout the rest of the chapter, but it's one of Higurashi's most emotionally impactful scenes to me because of how much it nails the pain of knowing how different things could have been.
One of my favourite types of tragedy in fiction is the kind where it’s all so avoidable and pointless, yet nobody realises it until it’s far too late. This kind of tragedy is intentionally frustrating, but when done well it’s absolutely devastating. There’s a wide variety of tragic fiction but for simplicity’s sake I’ll mark a distinction between fatalistic tragedy and character-driven tragedy. The kind I’m talking about is often character-driven, and I find there’s often something more human in a pointless tragedy created by character flaws and misunderstandings. Higurashi’s question arcs feel intensely fatalistic with the recurring events in every chapter, the scene with Rika predicting her future and each arc ending in some kind of tragedy within Hinamizawa no matter how different the specifics are. This is not to say that character-driven tragedy is non-existent in these arcs, but that it is easy to come to the conclusion that the tragedies of these arcs were bound to happen. Meakashi is the first arc where the opposite is completely evident. So much of Meakashi could have been avoided - the arc’s final hours go out of their way to make Shion’s revenge as pointless as it possibly could have been. The move away from fatalistic tragedy is one of the core elements of the answer arcs, and this chapter does excellent work in setting it up.
One of the most impressive things about the chapter is the use of Shion’s narration. Ryukishi very effectively locks you into her head and writes a convincing internal voice, which saves the chapter from some of its more contrived plotting. I find the chapter is the one where it feels most evident that the answer to Watanagashi’s mystery was written first and Ryukishi had to work his way backwards to narratively justify it. As an answer, I don’t find it the most satisfying for multiple reasons - one of which is that there’s something a bit overdone about the twin setup, and the other is that it negates Mion’s development in Watanagashi. Once I figured out where the chapter was going I was really anxious about it, but fortunately, Shion’s PoV is written well enough to make her descent into madness convincing. I really loved the experience of the chapter’s first few hours where her selfishness and cruelty slowly emerge. Her connection to Satoshi initially comes off as a weak plot thread until you realise the romance is meant to be intensely one-sided. Shion latches onto Satoshi because of his outsider status, but she does not make any attempt to truly understand him, which is most evident in her treatment of Satoko.
As I mentioned earlier Shion being the culprit does negate some of Mion’s characterisation in Chapter 2, and my main anxiety about the chapter as I read it would be if it would detract from what I found most powerful about Watanagashi. The core of Watanagashi’s power is Keiichi maintaining his innocent faith in friendship in the face of evil, and Meakashi maintains this core. Shion performs Mion as a comically evil character, and I love seeing how she reacts to Keiichi’s innocence from her perspective - how she gets shocked at how he can still love Mion even if she were this absurdly evil person. This allows her real feelings to emerge from her performance, but unfortunately she never truly lets go of the performance either. It’s another tragedy in the chapter that she never lets things get to the point where Keiichi’s love is directed to her rather than Mion. Shion receives love but is too consumed by hatred to give it to others and most of all to herself - the final scenes are so hard hitting because Shion only realises this once it’s far too late to do either. You get the sense that so much of her behaviour comes from her just giving up on herself, and in the final scenes I cried for her despite her previous actions appearing unforgivable. When she's talking about how she wishes she had never been born and thanking everyone for loving her even though she was "like this" it gets me wishing that everything could have been turned back and that she could have found some peace. And then just as I was thinking that, the vision of her acting as a loving older sister to Satoko appeared as another punch to the gut. I understand why this ending might not land because of how cruel Shion is throughout the rest of the chapter, but it's one of Higurashi's most emotionally impactful scenes to me because of how much it nails the pain of knowing how different things could have been.