Higurashi Season two, disappointment strikes back

Look, i don't care how good you are with that, you can't beat bullets with a bat, shut up

Higurashi season two

Now last time, I wrote a flowery review, endlessly praising this anime series to the hilt, so here is where I put on my objective pants and start actually bringing out the actual complaints about the show. First off, the title. Fans of the series will note I’m just calling the seasons basically “Season one and Season two” and aren’t using the proper Japanese names. And there is no way I can say this without coming off as a western ethnocentric elitist, so I’m going to just go with my gut and say, that I can’t understand any of the season differences. The words are very similar, and hard to pronounce, especially for me who doesn’t know more than 4 words in Japanese (long days of watching Kurosawai films has taught me the word for moron through), so its hard to difference, especially for the various “story arcs” within the series, each with its own Japanese title. I just wish fans would translate it, so I can tell what part of the story I’m referring too. But western elitists nature aside, lets move on to other criticisms, and by that I mean season two.

Now if your reading this, you either don’t care about spoilers, or have finished season one, so let me put it here, I don’t hate the second season, I was just really disappointed by it. The first season ended wonderfully, and I know this is a cliché, but after a series of multiple homicides the series finally ends with all of the characters learning the power of friendship and how to work together, and the final episode they all walk off, alive and sane. And I liked that ending. It may have been cliché, but at least it fit the theme of the story, and I don’t mind cliché story endings if I feel like the characters earned it and it wasn’t achieved through massive Deus ex Machina. The characters eventually worked together and over came the curse of paranoia. And I liked that, it fit the theme, it came at a hard cost, and it really explored the theme of friendship vs. isolation within the series. And the second season started off well. After an utterly forgettable first episode, the first arch of the season picks up where the last left off, except the group, having overcome their own internal paranoia and infighting, they eventually try to move on to overcome the sinister nature of the town. They make some headway, but it is clear that the town is still nasty, and then….they die. They all die, the whole lot of them, town wins, and the groundhog loop starts again. And I liked that, I mean, just as I fell into the lure of the heroes being undefeatable not that they have found the power of friendship, then they are all brutally slaughtered. And I’m always a fan of the whole cast being massacred, keeps the audience on their toes. And so we are back to the first seasons formula, of various story arcs as where the characters try to fight against the corruption nature of the town. This season is on a more optimistic note however, as the characters, while unable to remember past lives (except for our heroine Rika of course) seem to have overcome their total inability to trust each other, and are acting more functional and loving towards each other, implying the last season wasn’t a complete waste. The next “life” are almost like repeats of season one, except when the characters are placed into these dangerous situations, they learn to trust people and turn towards others rather than go into paranoia and hatred, except that Statoko’s abusive uncle has returned. The next arc is rather interesting, not even really about restoring the town and overcoming evil, but instead dealing with the actually legitimately hard issue of child abuse. And the series actually handles it rather maturely, showing that the Social Services often don’t know when to step in, and how hard it can be for them to determine actual abuse (especially hard in Japan where the standards are different and blaming the victim is ok), an issue made even worst when the victim often refuses to help. Child abuse is a real life problem that is still pretty hard to figure out, and I applaud the show for not having somebody just beat up the uncle and everything solve itself (a method show explicitly to not work in season one). But there way of solving it, while plausible, doesn’t seem to be very helpful, I mean, most abused children don’t have powerful mob dons ready to step in to help them out. Regardless, the problem is solved, everything is wonderful, and then, yet again, it ends horribly and the cycle goes on again.

Now season two had me going, and I was almost willing to place it better than most, when it shot itself in the foot. They explain the town. You know how the town is some weird evil presence, weather it be gods, or haunted presence, or spirits, but something sinister, mysterious and almost beyond mortal understanding. Hell, it could be in part just insanity in the part of some of the characters, trigged by the town, or maybe not even the town at all. Maybe all of the cast are just nuts, and the town is good, constantly time looping everything. But importantly, it isn’t known and that is why its scary. Its like in the shining, nobody actually really knows what’s up with the hotel, or to how much of an extent its effecting Nickleson, except it is a TV show rather than a movie, and can draw it out more. And yet…..they explain it. And not just in a cool way, they explain it less than half way through the series and call it simply a weird scientific illness that effects people’s brains, but can only grow in this climate and blah blah blah. Now, I like realism, but seriously? Scientific plague? There is time looping in this series, why the hell do you need to a weird scientific explanation. Also having the entire village being a weird government conspiracy and a massive scientific experiment, its just tacky. It ruins any sense of suspense or horror, and makes the whole appeal of the series mute. Most importantly, it ruins the sense of guilt. While the various characters who go mad are clearly influenced by something supernatural, all the magic seems to do is take their already existing urges and desires and amplify them to the point where they are willing to kill other people. But the characters still bear some guilt, Shion is a ruthless, jealous bitch with control issues, and her family problems are still just as real. Keichi is still an egotistical selfish brat who thinks himself above everybody, and Rena is an emotionally disturbed nut with a death wish regardless of weather or not the town is haunted. And yet, by making it an illness you remove any sense of guilt or responsibility from the victims. Jack’s madness in The Shinning is the product of the hotel, but the foundations for his abusive nature were laid before he ever came, it just preyed upon the darkness already in him. Part of the appeal of the show was the feeling that the characters were acting this way because of their own sins, and thus the moral at the end of the first season wall all the more fulfilling, recognizing their faults and moving on. If its an illness, then it should be impossible to ever over come it, and even then the whole point of the show seems wasted. The main villain is revealed to be non other than the nurse to the town doctor Takano. Now don’t get me wrong, she was a pretty nifty side character as the intelligent but clearly mentally disturbed detective, but as a main villain she just comes off as uninspiring, pathetic, and childish. While I like he back story (Horary, Japanese militarism) it lacks any feel of humanity and the “FOR SCIENCE” feel to it just lacks any real punch. The only part of the reveal I liked was that the janitors were revealed to be a tactical military unit, and in the first half of the season are just as sinisterly competent as they were early, with some shocking scenes as they ruthlessly purge the local police. But by the last two arcs they lost any sense of competence and are easily beaten by a bunch of kids. Now, the second to last arc almost redeemed itself, even with the silly premise. The heroes, after defeating the secret service, uniting the town, and discovering the mystery of the illness, the main characters are about to defeat the main villain with a friendship speech to defeat all friendship speeches when…they are all killed by a rapid fire gun. Ok, that’s awesome. And after all the suffering the main characters have endured, I would be inclined to forgive most annoyingly cliché happy endings, but the final arc took it to a level of absurdity that was just annoying. Basically, every character in the entire series showed up to fight the bad guys, and…

Maybe I am somewhat ignorant of the working of the secret service in Japan, but seriously, no matter how good of you are with a baseball bat, you can’t just beat elite agents trained agents with guns. I mean, the main characters take out dozens of elite agents, relying on a few police men, some mob hit men, and things picked up around the house. These guys are elite, they are special opts, there is no way you can justify the ease in which they are taken out. I mean, they have access to machine guns and sniper rifles, and yet seem unable to use them. The last few episodes are essentially a wish fulfillment as the main characters just run through every obstacle thrown at them, and we get to watch the main villains yell really loudly going “this can’t be happening” again and again and again. In short, it was just sort of a flop at the end, and honestly, I’d be happy if the second season never happened.

Higurashi

Friendship (because bodies are heavy) 

            Now, I’m going to be the first to admit, I’m not an anime person naturally.  I’m not an anime hater, the people who reject the entire animation genre because of the some of the worst examples, but I an notoriously picky when it comes to anime series (I know I’m using the terms anime and manga interchangeably here, just go with it), because there is a lot about the “genre” that can irritate me, Shonen being the most painful example.  Even series I like, and think are absolutely genius, such as Full Metal Alchemist and Berserk, are still following traditional conventions, so its rare I find a series that is really “different”.  Higurashi came when a friend of mine (you know who you are) recommended to me her favorite series, giving me the impression that it was a cute romantic comedy, something totally girly and uninteresting to a big macho man like me (grrrr).  This is the part where the people who know the show are laughing at my naïve assumptions, but lets back track and explain the premise for like three paragraphs before I then get into details and spoilers.  General warning, this show has minor sexual innuendoes and lots of blood.  

Higurashi is a three season series (with at least one spin off that I know off) with each season having a secondary title, the first season being Higurashi no Naku Kor Ni, and the series is sort of a twisted combination of Silent Hill/The Prisoner/The Shinning, and erm…some girly talking show that I don’t actually know to reference.  Anyways, the basic introduction of the show is in fact a spoiler, so if you really don’t like those things being ruined for you, then take my word that it is more than it appears and go watch it now. But the basic premise of the show is that a young man named Keiichi has moved and come to a small rural Japanese town, and joins the local “gaming club” (made up entirely of girls), which is dedicated to playing various games, with the catch being that you need to win by “Any means possible”, and thus their games quickly become elaborate mind games, as all the sides cheat.  Keiichi quickly gains the acceptance of the club through his own personal charisma, the fact he is a good sport, and his ruthlessness when it comes to the cheating culture of the club. The rest of the club includes Rena, an easy going girl who has a somewhat disturbing fetish with things that are “cute”, the younger Satoko, who is snarky and more of a tomboy, Rika, the youngest and most calm, and the club president, Mion, the eldest girl who is very outgoing and strong willed (inside joke for people who know the series.)  Later members include Shion, Mion’s twin sister, who is more calm and girly (again, inside joke for viewers) and the painfully shy Hanyu.  Now, as you almost certainly have noticed the by now, a bunch of girls with different color hair and various quirky personalities all hanging out with one snarky guy, seem to set this show up to be a romantic comedy, full of embarrassing situations and flirtatious jokes as the girls mess with he main boy’s mind with veiled sexual subtext.  A series that might be fun to watch, and entertaining, but very little in terms of plot and depth beyond just relationships, and not I’m stereotyping.  And, the series kinda is that.  The first episode is pretty much nothing more than romantic comedy, but throughout there are a lot of sinister signs that all is not well.  It’s nothing that is really explicit, but again and again throughout the pilot, there is just feeling of “something’s wrong”.  There are various mentions of various nasty incidence in the villages past, and characters will suddenly start speaking in a monotone and stark acting erratically.  As the episodes go by, the village seems to be part of some sinister conspiracy as the various characters scheme to do something horrible to Keiichi, who eventually takes matter into his own hands and goes on a killing spree with a baseball bat before being murdered.  However, its not quite clear if the town is actually evil, or if Keiichi is just insane. 

After the first arch ends with a massive killing spree, the next episode starts with all of the characters, again alive and well, as if something has happened.  Again in this arch, a different character snaps and goes on a killing spree.  And again, its not clear weather the town is some sort of malicious supernatural force who is working to drive its inhabitants insane, or if the characters are just a bunch of paranoid schizophrenic who’s delusions drive them to violence.  Also, its never clear if the fact that the town keeps “renewing” its self after each massacre is some sort of time loop, a curse, or maybe even another form of insanity in the mind of another character.  In fact, the central theme of the horror is that the audience only has vague hints of what is going on, the only consistency being that the town is some sort of dark cursed place where the people all go mad.  The show simply follows a system of watching the various characters slowly go insane, both by the strange nature of the town, and by there own preexistent problems (Keiichi for example, is naturally selfish and mistrustful, which leads to his paranoia…or people are actually trying to kill him.)  The show was much like the shinning, where the audience ‘knew’ that the place was haunted and messed up and that everything was going to go crazy, but you didn’t quite understand it. The whole show is about the supernatural, this sort of subtle evil that is unleashing the darker side of humanity.

Now the show isn’t fantasy, and so the main focus outside the disturbing mystery, is the characters.  And at first, the anime characters do seem like a series of stereotypes, and they do fulfill there roles in the typical “romantic comedy” relationship, but the nature of the town, plus the fact the various characters are constantly killing each other does mean they get much more depth, and act sort of like subversions.  Keiichi is “Da boy” in the mostly all female teenage cast, but instead of being a nervous dunce, Keiichi, who is by far my favorite character, is a very cynical and humorous man, as well as being hilariously genre savvy about the functions of the type of anime he is in. His imagination and flirtatious nature makes him a sort of comic relief in a good way, and yet even within his personality, we see his character flaws.  While he is intelligent and very charismatic, he is also manipulative and egotistical, as well as suspicious of those around him, and in the character arch’s that revolve around him, these tendency lead to his downwards spiral into insanity, a pattern repeated with the flaws of other characters (Shion’s inferiority complex, Rena’s suppression of her emotions, ect ect).  So the characters work well both as comedy and in drama.  And it says a lot about the series that, in a supernatural scary setting, my favorite moments in the story are when the characters interact normally, with all of the curtsy romantic comedy associated with that (I’m repeating phrases here I realize), but the characters, at least in the first season, really do mesh well together just as a whole, and who ever wrote the dialogue does a very good job of making them seem both funny and somewhat believable….you have to watch it to get what I’m saying…..don’t you judge me. 

Anyways, the interesting thing about the show it that because you see the various “go crazy” scenarios from different character’s viewpoints, the film really does make every single character and situation seem different.  The police chief seems like a kindly old man who is trying to do his job in a disturbing town from Keiichi’s perspective, an outsider who is more sympathetic to the rule of law, but when the story is shown from Mion, a native aristocrat’s view point, finds him to be an intrusive sinister police man who is seems to be an incarnation of the more sinister aspects of the law.  And when shown from Keiichi’s perspective in a different “Time loop”, he then views the chief as a truly sinister .  A very similar approach comes to families within the town, such as the Old grandmother “demon lady” who can come off as a sinister mafia like figure who dominates the lives of her children, or a conservative trying to keep the family together in hard times, and just happens to have no soul.  And the various perspectives leads to the feeling of no character being totally and completely evil, nor simply just stereotypes.  Now people who really hate it (….Lord of Rapture) will argue that even when they are shown from different perspectives, they are still essentially a mix of anime stereotypes, but I feel that, while they are based upon roles, but the quality of the writing, in particular with the dialogue, which is both clever, and humanizing, mostly in the character’s complain about there situation, which makes them feel more human as characters, because honestly, I could feel like making a lot of those sarcastic remarks when stressed.  Again, I don’t’ remember specific examples, as I finished the first season about a 5 months ago, and it too me awhile to watch the second one.  Actually I doe, there is one example, when two characters having an epic climatic fight on the roof, and Keiichi, instead of being dramatic, keeps mocking his foe’s faulty logic, and demands if he wins, his foe has to walk around in a skimpy maids outfit, to which she promptly says she gets the same thing if she wins. 

Basically as I’ve said before I’m not good about positive reviews for TV shows, because its mostly just me glowering, and naming specific examples is much harder, so forgive me when it seems like I’m reaping endless amounts of praise upon it, because most of you have heard it all before. However one thing that struck me about the show was it was…kinda anti Japanese actually.  I mean, I’m use to cultural differences when it comes to Japanese products, mostly in anime promoting values that are actually rather horrifying for Westerns, especially when it comes to subjects like child abuse and sexism (for example, sexual harassment means something very different over there.)  And yet, the series seems at a times almost an attack upon Japanese traditions.  The village takes place in a very traditionalist part of Japan, a small village that still very set in the old ways, which comes off as a kinda disturbing.  Shinto is show as a very dark and pagan force, full of odd rituals and dangerous implications.  The law enforcement, as a whole comes off as somewhat fascist and brutal.  The traditional family structure is shown to be stifling and brutal, as the three families who rule the town are very sinister and remind the viewer of a mafia who dominate a town (I was reminded somewhat of The Wicker Man, with Christopher Lee).  And one of the most fundamental of Japanese values, the idea of the group cohesion and working for the benefit of the group, is shown as very dangerous. One of the major events in the town history is the “Dam War” where the Japanese Government attempted to make a dam in the city, that would lead to the city’s destruction, but everybody who moved would be paid handsomely in response.  The town at first tires to unit in the face of the construction to fight the government, however many of the poorer citizens would like to move, the government compensation money meaning more to them than the town’s historical value.  There willingly to work with the government, lead to them being tormented and persecuted by the rest of the village.  Now, when I said the show is anti Japanese values, that is only limited, it doesn’t glorify the people who side with the government any more than it does the conservatives, but it isn’t just propaganda about how the group how the community is better than the individual. 

But speaking of the moral of the story, this is the big shocker. It’s the power of friendship.  Those who know me know me that I truly hate the way the “Power of Friendship” is used in stories, either it is some sort of vaguely defined crop out, where friendship is some sort of magical power than can review the dead, over come the evil guys magic, stop bullets or some other stupid Deus ex Machina.  Or alternatively it is used as the ethical guideline of the main cast, but this vague “power of friendship” is never explained or used well in context other than some sort of heave handed message.  While I’m not going to say I hate stories that promote friendship, I hate shows that promote friendship just as a platitude without any real thought pup into it, like how you can somehow win friendship by beating people up.  Higurashi however, actually explores what the “power of friendship” means.  In each “Snap and kill everything” time loop thing, it is the various character’s lack of trust that eventually leads them down the path of murderous paranoia.  Its only when the characters learn to work together and trust each other, not just themselves, do they finally prevail….kinda.  And even when the people work together, it isn’t some sort of magical power of friendship that solves everything, its more the group being more effective because they are a team. 

In short, Higurashi has proudly taken its place among my favorite anime.  It is clever, scary, well thought out, with good characters and great dialogue.  The animation is above average, with the exception of the ladder scene with Shion. The actual comedic parts of the story are extremely well done, acting both as good parodies and as a good romantic cutesy sub plot. The mystery of the town is just my favorite kind of horror and suspense ,with a good moral and subtle character development.  All and all, it is a wonderful series everybody should check out. 

Until the second season……yeah, you knew it was too good to be true.  Typically, the plot goes down hill in the second season, which I will address in my next article.  Now its worth noting that season one wasn’t perfect by any means, but I’ll reserve my criticism when I go to season two, next time, because this article is long enough as it is. 

From

EE