When I was getting to the end, I found myself wondering to myself, "Well... this has completely recontextualized how I felt about things in Watanagashi, particularly the stuff that made me cry a lot. I wonder how those scenes will go this time."
Reader, I still cried a lot. That's Higurashi, baby!
First off, on the production end of things, there's been a pretty sharp uptick in sound and visuals. Well, mostly sound. The new songs are excellent by virtue of a new composer coming on, but I also do think there's a kind of an interesting dimension if you play with Ryukishi's goofy-ass original sprites in that you can actually see how his art improved via the new character portraits. It's still a little janky, but at the same time, there's something about getting to see a creator's skill being refined as you go through a series that makes me happy.
As I intimated before, I really enjoyed the story. As much as it was fun to see things from Akasaka's perspective in chapter 4, it was really cool to get to see things from the perspective of a character we already knew. Shion truly is the queen of Women’s Wrongs and I support her. There were definitely a lot of surprises, I think--somehow I missed learning about what Satoshi's actual character was like after osmosing a lot of information about these games, so I was really surprised to find out that Satoshi... was actually very different in personality from Keiichi. Between everyone drawing comparisons between the two and the fact that he's Satoko's brother, I thought he'd be a total gremlin, but no.
Speaking of things I had preconceptions about, there's a specific character death that I remember from the anime involving a knife that I liked at the time, but man. The VN really just blows that out of the water, huh? I really like Ryukishi's prose in that moment, and I don't think that would be able to shine as much if the localization team didn't do such a great job making it as evocative as it should feel. It was great.
I think my biggest complaint would be that we didn't get a cast party this time, even if I really did enjoy reading Ryukishi's actual message. I wanted to see Keiichi lord his character portrait over everyone. Ah well, perhaps in a future chapter...?
Reader, I still cried a lot. That's Higurashi, baby!
First off, on the production end of things, there's been a pretty sharp uptick in sound and visuals. Well, mostly sound. The new songs are excellent by virtue of a new composer coming on, but I also do think there's a kind of an interesting dimension if you play with Ryukishi's goofy-ass original sprites in that you can actually see how his art improved via the new character portraits. It's still a little janky, but at the same time, there's something about getting to see a creator's skill being refined as you go through a series that makes me happy.
As I intimated before, I really enjoyed the story. As much as it was fun to see things from Akasaka's perspective in chapter 4, it was really cool to get to see things from the perspective of a character we already knew. Shion truly is the queen of Women’s Wrongs and I support her. There were definitely a lot of surprises, I think--somehow I missed learning about what Satoshi's actual character was like after osmosing a lot of information about these games, so I was really surprised to find out that Satoshi... was actually very different in personality from Keiichi. Between everyone drawing comparisons between the two and the fact that he's Satoko's brother, I thought he'd be a total gremlin, but no.
Speaking of things I had preconceptions about, there's a specific character death that I remember from the anime involving a knife that I liked at the time, but man. The VN really just blows that out of the water, huh? I really like Ryukishi's prose in that moment, and I don't think that would be able to shine as much if the localization team didn't do such a great job making it as evocative as it should feel. It was great.
I think my biggest complaint would be that we didn't get a cast party this time, even if I really did enjoy reading Ryukishi's actual message. I wanted to see Keiichi lord his character portrait over everyone. Ah well, perhaps in a future chapter...?