Review of Higurashi: When They Cry – Kai

Higurashi definitely had a lot of potential. It started out strong the beginning (including first season), with suspenseful mystery, horror, and character development all being deftly woven together. The main problem I have with Higurashi is the ending of season 2. After slowly unraveling the mystery in a masterful display of storytelling, the anime fails to deliver a satisfying end, a powerful conclusion to the climax. But first let's talk about what Higurashi does well. 1) The use of different arcs and timelines really adds depth to the mystery. It is also done well so that the audience is able tounderstand the different motivations and backstory of each character within the arcs which leads to more character development and holistic view of the plot itself.
2) The dynamics of Keichii's group of friends also help to make the audience more invested in the characters themselves. The characters themselves allow us to feel emotions such as sorrow, happiness, pity, and adoration all the while being encased within the theme of horror.
3) The plot itself is interesting and well thought out. Can't say the same for most mystery/horror genres.

However, the ending was a major disappointment which made me drop what could have been an 8-9 anime to a low 7. This is because
1) Plausibility. Suspense of disbelief is critical to most anime of the horror genre, but it is the sudden change in realistic tendencies this show exhibits that makes it not only unbelievable but also fake. The ending is supplemented by a bunch of lucky coincidences (such as a certain person suddenly showing up), the town suddenly all decides to believe Rika's story even though they never did in the past, and MOST of all, the way Keiichi's group of students was able to take out a whole squad of highly trained elite guards is simply preposterous. The anime put a lot of thought into making things seem reasonable in S1 and beginning of S2 so I don't understand why that needed to change at the very end.
2) Killing. Higurashi spends 1.5 seasons making the viewers absolutely despise certain characters such as the Yanmainu and Takano. In the previous episodes they had no problem showing gruesome depictions of the Yanmainu and Takano killing children and massacring innocent. But all of a sudden towards the ending when the tables flip, none of our good protagonists are allowed to kill the evil hit squad or antagonist. I think the best example of this is when Kasai and Shion are literally holding AK-47s and shooting at a group of unarmed Yamainu yet NO ONE DIES. Or when Kasai decides to spare a bunch of Yamainu and simply knock them out even though he knows they will regain consciousness and try to kill the children.
Or when Asakawa has a golden opportunity to kill the ringleader of the Yamainu but decides to purposefully miss his punch and allow him to escape instead. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me ESPECIALLY when the author was perfectly fine showing the gore and killings of innocents in the previous episodes... To maintain consistency, I think a) Lots if not all of the evil Yanmainu hit squad should have been killed b) Takano should not have had a happy ending.

Consistency is the key. The show itself is not consistent in terms of what should be possible and shouldn't and also fails to be consistent when it comes to 'death' which made the ending exceptionally cringe-worthy -an unfortunate outcome given how promising the anime started out.