Higurashi: When They Cry - Gou

kurokam1 Jan 4, 2021

2.7

this review is from the perspective of somebody that watched all 3 seasons plus all the OVA of the original. I have not played the visual novels at all nor have I watched gameplay, so keep that in mind i finally did a full watch of it on April 17th, 2021, and i can now give a full and absolute opinion on it. Everything in bold is notes added from this date onward. The fact that my original negative review of this anime can remain almost completely intact says something of the quality. the original score was a 5/4/5/5.  story: this anime simply does not know what it wants to be. a complete remake of the original or a complete do over, which leaves it in some weird middle ground where it awkwardly combines old elements of the story while throwing in new aspects which seem like they will link to new events but simply end up at the same parts you seen in the original. it combines aspects of both season 1 and 2 which furhter convalutes the story for original series watchers. even though in arcs afterwards it does try for more unique arc endings the anime does not beome a cohesive story in the slightest. And it is still a bunch of lazy throw ins from Higurashi Kai and Rei. It is markedly more violent but its just pointless if it means literally and absolutely nothing in the grand scope of things, where nothing in this anime even trys to connect. Its episodic at some points, genuinely that bad. voice acting is servicable and the music isnt really the usual higurashi standard of absolutely fantastic music. animation: i hate passione. the animation specifically. its not fit at all for a horror anime. they are an ecchi/borderline hentai studio and they should stick to that. the animation isnt low quality its just that the color scheme is just completely unfitting, plus the ecchi moments. now to be fair in higurashi yes there was some ecchi, but it felt cute and not forced at all. whereas with this redo you get jiggly titties.  The ecchi dissapears and as i stated before it gets very very violent, more than the original anime does, however the blood is excessive to point of it being genuinely laughable, and again the character design is too polished for a horror anime. It has no darkness to it. Looks like somebody covered all the characters in Vaseline. charaters: Rika has lost her charm. every character just seemed flat and boring In every "new" arc the anime just simply made the usual victim into a villain of some sort pretty much. So essentially instead of what you got with the first season or the season afterwards where you can build on the protagonists/antagonsists and enjoy them, you get a random short straw drawing of villains that will most likely mutilate Rika then just appear normal in the next arc. Do these villains continue over into new arcs similar to how Miyo Takano does? No, even she doesnt even get a villain arc in despite being THE biggest antagonist of the series. Its laughable. they basically gave the anime to the studio you get when you cant afford a studio.

LaFlame1605xX Jan 10, 2021

8.5

FIRST 14 EPISODES: Very solid continuation of the first two main series so far. Some users seem confused about the repetition of earlier arcs, albeit with noticeable tweaks and differences, that are present in this 2020 series. Episode 14 shows the reason for this. Though Kai didn't need a sequel, Gou creates the perfect scenario for a sequel in a way that is not forced and does not detract from the earlier seasons. I loved the original series for it's ability to balance so many main characters, and yet always create new dynamics and tensions between them with each arc. This series delivers on this point so far, even building on revelations from Kai, such as Hanyuu's character and Keichi's ability to see glimpses of other world lines. This show answers several "what ifs" that fans might want to know, and throws us for loops with certain totally unforseen and novel developments, e.i. our good detective in episode 14. The innovation of this series does not lie in completely original, new plot lines, but rather familiar ones, so that when you think you know how the arc will end the rug is pulled out from under you. I look forward to seeing where the show will go from here, and I'm even getting some steins;gate vibes from the show. 

halfhazard Feb 5, 2022

1

Short and sweet. After ep1 it was promising in that I wasn't as dissapointed as I expected to be. Each episode after that got worse and worse and I dropped this trash after EP4. This anime is a joke compaired to the prequels. Don't bother and pretend the story ends before Gou. The animation is terrible. The music is terrible. The dub is terrible. The fucking constant "AWOO", who decided on that? And then came the censoring. This, combined with surviving getting stabbed xxx amount of times, no. I'm not wasting any more time on this, and you shouldn't either. <menu id="fcltHTML5Menu1" type="context"></menu>