I do not think, that even if I knew how to write a poem, it would make a difference.

So I’ve been sitting on this one for a while but Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai ひぐらしのなく頃に解 ended a while ago, and as I’d been watching it all along I saw the entire thing. To back up just a bit this was not only the sequel, but the conclusion to the series Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. I could bore you with various production and technical details of the series but I’ll trust that if you were interested in such things you’d be able to find the information elsewhere. Instead I will share my profuse thoughts on the work itself.

Actually there’s just one view I really want to express:  it’s a lot more fun to watch endless mysteries than to be presented with a singular answer. The original series was filled with the former and the second series “Kai” was made up of the latter. Previously I even said here that I thought it might have been the best anime series of 2007 but not too much farther than halfway through I started to dislike it. In the end it was still a fair series, it’s somewhat interesting, and it is nice to have some closure. But I had to walk away thinking “that was what was going on?”. If I had to describe the series in one word it would be “anticlimactic”.

As to other notes I preferred the original visual style which was admittedly somewhat primitive. Kai just looked too flat and artificial to me. There is a profusion lately of works where nothing actually happens most of the time and instead characters are just plotting and posturing. Death Note (reading the manga I didn’t bother to watch the anime) degenerated into such a series but it’s common these days. I would say it’s a result of the increasingly stagnant nature of people’s lives. But maybe everyone is just neurotic?

I have to give the series credit for having a good setting and cast. Although not unique by any means, I am reminded of the works of Kenzaburo Oe in particular, they do stand out in the media of anime. Unfortunately this near uniqueness is about to be overshadowed by the rash of popular or at least high profile series that have similar settings, but I noticed it. That said the problem becomes the true premise as it is revealed in the second series “Kai” and the resolution. An impression that comes to me now is that the series started out so relentlessly that the only way to go from there was to relent.

All this said, I would possibly still recommend the entire Higurashi series. It’s really not that the second series Kai is bad, it’s just that my expectations were so high, there was no way they could be met for long. I do think that Kai could have easily been only half the length it was, but that’s how it goes. It is worth noting that there are a variety of different Higurashi series at this point (the originals being short independent PC games) and perhaps they all have different conclusions and slightly different premises, some of which might be more satisfying for me. I do not know. But I’m talking about the anime version anyway.

Then again if you don’t like violence or conspiracies the series probably isn’t for you. If you want to see a bunch of kids get killed over and over then maybe it is. I’m not sure what to say about that. In fact saying that makes me feel a bit bad for watching it. And the more I’m thinking about it the more it occurs to me that the conclusion was borne of guilt which is something else I just wrote about.

Conversely I would say that the theme of the series is karma. In fact if I understand oriental religion at all, it was perhaps in fact a representation, maybe not intentionally, of buddhist doctrine. I think that if I said much more I would spoil the series even though it would probably make me look better. Whether or not everything was intentional with that series from the start or not is something that I can’t speculate on. But either everything was carefully planned out or it just flew together.

Looking over my old entries under the higurashi category http://reuche.wordpress.com/category/higurashi/ I was reminded of the manga series Belmonde Le VisiteuR as I had written some things about it along with Higurashi on an occasion in particular. I had in fact forgotten about this series since I hadn’t noticed anything about it recently. As it turns out the reason for that is that it was apparently canceled after 19 chapters/installments. This does not surprise me. And perhaps later I will try and discover if there was any particular reason for this. The basic premise of the series was “magical french torturer” which I didn’t necessarily have a problem with. What I had a problem with is that it it was serialized in Weekly Shounen Jump which is an anthology for young boys and as far as I know is still the most widely read publication of its type. I don’t know why this series in particular irked me more than the likes of Bleach which is steeped in extreme violence or Death Note which was about being able to kill people by writing their name down but… Something just went off. Then again, I forgot all about it so it’s not like it was something I took that much of an issue with. Well above and beyond the nature of the content (magical and deeply psychological torture), the series was just really bad. Everything was really transparent about it, and at the point I quit reading the main character was about to set off on a quest which is just the most god damned… But it’s over. I for one will not miss it. And I may or may not look into the reasons for its demise. Seeing as it wasn’t any good (the art was fair but pretty nondescript) I think it’s just as likely to be utter lack of popularity as anything else, but whatever.