Review of Higurashi: When They Cry – Kai
At first, I wasn’t going for Higurashi: When They Cry because I thought it is very edgy and brutal. I rarely watch horror in the first place and I’ve heard a lot of spoils and gore from YouTube, why do I have to watch to confirm again? At last, I thought “Fuck it. Here I come” and that’s my last anime of 2021. What I experienced next can be described in 4 words: I got clickbait, hard. **No major plot spoiled. Might contain minor plots here and there. Watching Higurashi is like solving a jigsaw puzzle. Each arc you get new information about what’s happening, but atthe same time, it creates another question which led to finding another jigsaw piece until you connect every jigsaw piece. With a lot of foreshadowing and hidden details especially from the first season, it become one of the best mystery series I’ve ever watched and it’s not even the aspect most people liked about. Some people say Higurashi Kai is a step down from the first season because they shift from horror to more of a mystery. I wholeheartedly disagree with that statement. I think Higurashi isn’t mainly about horror and gore at first, even first season. A lot of scenes in the first season can escalate to something worse yet they don’t do that. It holds its horror aspect until a breaking point and unfortunately, that’s when it gets people’s attention. Kai has a fair amount of both comedy and horror. The contrast of those two aspects makes you see both sides of the coin. It makes you don’t want them to drive into insanity, even if you know it’s going to happen anyway. You can only hope that they will escape from the inescapable fate.
The downside of Higurashi and it’s quite hard to take is how poorly it aged. The animation of Higurashi is fairly poor and it has a lot of questionable scenes. Some logic of the story doesn't match up to today's standards too. For example, it's hard to think that these 6 kids have been able to defeat an entire squad of weaponed guards. Some scenes use the Deus Ex Machina trope to bypass the impossibility and some cheese the plot holes to make it make sense.
However, these are very small problems of Higurashi compared with the good side it has. The use of sound in Higurashi is incredible, not just the horror aspect but including the VA too. People praised a lot about the horror side so I will compliment the voice acting instead. You can easily tell each main character by just the way they talk. It is unnecessary, but it adds a lot of flavour to the story, really hope more series do that.
The character in Higurashi really surprised me. Despite being a massacre, Higurashi successfully created likeable characters, the main character at least. Every character has its moment, whether happy, sad, desperate or even crazy. They covered a lot of the daily life of each character to the point you could call it a slice of life. This makes you sympathize with the character more when something bad happened. On the other hand, some characters could get on your nerves and do something quite “childish”. It’s annoying, but this isn’t its strongest point in its first place.
Higurashi: When They Cry is a ride. I brushed it as another edgy anime, but I guess I was entirely wrong. It deserved the rating as it is, and I will give a solid 8 out of 10. If you are willing to step out from your comfort taste, whether it’s battle shounen, rom-com, or isekai trash, I can guarantee that this series will not disappoint you.