Review of Higurashi: When They Cry – Kai

It’s about time I watched Higurashi Kai. I tried watching this on three separate occasions in the span of six years. I’ve been a huge Higurashi fan for a long time now, but I’ve always had trouble getting into this one. After the third attempt I accepted the fact that Higurashi Kai’s first episode kinda sucks. The first episode is a boring slog to get through with the constant talking, and it has this strange white filter that makes the visuals difficult to see. Which reminds me of another anime I don’t like very much, Boogiepop Phantom. Characters will talk for long, long periods oftime with nothing interesting going on in these dark areas, where you can hardly see anything, and you’re expected to pay attention the entire time while details are being spoon-fed to you. This is Higurashi Kai’s first episode in a nutshell. Luckily, the rest of the show isn’t as bad as the first episode, but Higurashi Kai still has plenty of exposition dumps. Episode one is just the worst contender.

Higurashi Kai is the sequel to Higurashi. No shit. This season of Higurashi explains more of the supernatural angle of the previous season. I am grateful that this season exists. The first season of Higurashi doesn’t have a proper conclusion and leaves more questions than answers. At the same time, Higurashi Kai, in my eyes at least, fails at being a proper continuation of the story. I enjoyed some of the first-half, but it didn’t quite feel like Higurashi to me. I like how the show reanimates one of the previous arcs of the original show and gave it a more positive ending. I got it! The perfect description for Higurashi Kai! “It felt less like a horror and more like a longwinded drama where people just happen to get killed.” That’s perfect. Keep that in mind when watching this show. The second-half is the point where I stopped caring about the story, entirely. Rika talks for eons in this show! It’s like watching a talk show where Rika is the only host and she never stops talking. There’s so much exposition. That’s not what Higurashi is known for. If the show wanted to explain something to you, it would do it in the creepiest way possible. And the characters wouldn’t drown you in dialogue. Exposition is okay. It’s important to inform your audience about what’s going on, but talking for such long periods of time will only bore them. Shows like the Monogatari series get past that issue with stunning visuals and engaging conversations. Higurashi Kai greatly fails at doing that. And some people accuse the original Higurashi of just being mindless violence or shock value. What a horrible opinion. The show is about characters losing their minds and becoming extremely paranoid. The show starts off introducing it’s characters, and everything is normal until the Cotton Drifting Festival. Then characters will slowly go insane and start brutally killing each other. Once that happens, the timeline resets and everything goes back to normal, starting with a new arc. I’m paraphrasing a bit to keep this review somewhat short. There’s usually a specific reason why the characters go crazy in each arc. Time resetting and any other supernatural event is explained in Higurashi Kai. Unfortunately, it does a pretty boring job at explaining these things to you.

And finally, the arc lengths. Arcs in Higurashi Kai drag out for way too long. In the original show, all of the arcs were always four to five episodes long. The perfect amount to tell a proper story. In Higurashi Kai, arcs can range from seven to eleven episodes long! I’m guessing that they didn’t want to use the same formula as before, but it doesn’t work well here. None of the arcs need to be that long. And the gore is also toned down in this season. Probably the biggest appeal of Higurashi, and it’s toned down compared to the original. Pretty sad. This season was awfully lame. I’m glad it exists, but I would never watch it again. It does have a halfway decent conclusion, so I’ll give it that. Most of this season was painful to get through. I’m sticking with the original show, from now on. If you're a Higurashi fan and you haven't seen Kai, I would recommend watching it once just to get it out of the way. My scores:

Story: 4/10
Art: 6/10
Sound: 6/10
Character: 4/10 (Not including Rika, it's a 5/10)
Enjoyment: 3/10
Overall: 4/10