AUAUAUAUAUAUAUAUAUAUAUAUAUAUAU

Your reading is not bad, and shows good insight. There's no way to really figure out everything in the answer arcs because the amount of clues needed for that is simply not present, so I wonder how you'll take to that when you get there. But, whenever you come back to this thread, I hope you had fun with it!

>said something about guessing that some characters are in cahoots.
'twas ME
i'm surprised you went and read it twice it's already pretty damn long but you clearly got a lotta mileage out of it
interestingly you didn't mention the mountain dogs in any way (at most in the eruption), those guys were one of the things that stood out the most to me when reading and they're hardly acknowledged at all
anyways, there's a reason they're called shmion EVERYONE gets confused about it in and out of universe

>I don't know how they could have possibly figured stuff out
Oh, you have no idea. Umineko had some people with theories that seemed close to the truth and it even leaned into it with the story itself, but Higurashi's stuff is just so far out of left field and many of its story threads are intentionally misleading. I'd be curious to know if Ryukishi even knew the ending before he got to it.
Your thoughts are very similar to me own when I read through it, and perhaps many other people's. I'm trying to think of what my main theory was... I think it was mind control drugs?
Higurashi, though, man, it did a really good job of prodding you in a certain direction of a working theory and then crushing it in the next chapter. In the end I was just shrugging my shoulders and stopped spending time thinking to myself because it was going to be proven wrong in some new weird direction tomorrow.

>There's a lot of fanarts of Rena holding a machete. But no such scene has happened yet.
Oh, you're in for a treat. That scene is what solidified Higurashi as magical to me; a true emotional triumph!
I think it's possible that Keiichi imagined it in her hand in an earlier chapter, but I can't remember.

>>1564
"the supernatural is good, actually" is not something i expect anyone to think of honestly

Oh, and PLEASE READ THE NEXT FOUR CHAPTERS BEFORE JUNE NEXT YEAR!

I read through all of the answer arcs in a sort of mad rush that lasted from the weekend before this to last Friday night. I really did enjoy inhabiting that world. The intensity of a VN experience is so high... it's why I always put off starting one. The next time I return to Higurashi will be either to watch the anime of the first eight arcs or to read Rei and Hou, and I won't be doing that immediately. The eight arcs make a very nicely wrapped-up story and I want to let it stew in my mind for some time. And I've got backlog stuff (Pretty Series and Precure) to watch.

I think I understand the gist of what happened, and it makes all of my theories wrong. Demons absolutely do not exist the way I thought they did. The only things that are definitely supernatural are the time loop setup and Hanyuu. Tomitake and Ooishi were not working together at all. The only thing I got right was suspecting that the manager Irie was involved somehow, which is not a guess that's worth much.

When I learned that the parasite theory was the one that was actually true I was a bit disappointed, I was hoping that the main conspiracy had supernatural elements. But then I came around to it and started thinking it was cool. It's chuuni-cool, you know. All that stuff about factions inside the shadow government and medical research in the secret base and brain-altering diseases and guns.

I was fully taken in by Ooishi's blaming of the Sonozaki family. I fell for the Sonzaki family head policy of always bluffing that they had a hand in whatever event happened over the years. I was treating Ooishi as an impartial observer despite his motivation being to avenge the death of his father figure before his retirement, a very passionate motivation that leads him to be taken in by Miyo's notebooks in VN 6.

Is everyone going to just forget that the Sonozakis have a torture room with implements that are actively maintained? The kids all know they exist in the final VN 8 timeline, and the Sonozaki yakuza use them on people such as Teppei's whore. Also, regarding the cosmology of the setting, all of the timelines have a claim of being real. After Hanyuu and Rika jump back in time from their current timeline to some other timeline (which I can only assume overwrites or merges with the Rika who had been existing in the other timeline), the people in the current timeline continue to exist. So on paper it's a happy ending but there would be any number of other timelines that end in mass murder or at least misery for the kids.

Regarding the author's afterword in VN 8, I'd not be able to meet the author's challenge of coming up with an even better ending that leaves literally everyone better off. Such an ending would require not just that Miyo finds a reason to be happy but that e.g. Teppei and Rina reform into good people (after being pieces of shit to the core their whole lives). There's a foundational moral position the author seems to take, which is about the question of whether it's good to punish bad people. My impression is he says definitely not, both good and bad people deserve to be happy, and on top of that the bad people can't really be blamed for even being bad. That's not my position. I don't think Rena was wrong to kill Teppei and Rina, I wouldn't miss a pair of stupid violent assholes who perform badger game scams. Rena should still be punished to the full extent of the law for it because of the second order effects of allowing acts of vigilantism even if "this time the victim really DID deserve it". So I wouldn't be able to genuinely write such a story.

>>1559
>But, whenever you come back to this thread, I hope you had fun with it!
Lots!

>>1558
Hanyuu's such a moeblob. I'm going to dress her up in socks.

>>1560
>'twas ME
That guy in smugloli's 2020 LN/WN/VN thread made some pretty good guesses. He said e.g. 'To explain this, "God" was the child jumping in the storehouse.' and '"God" is knowingly or unknowingly causing the loops but is not a/the bad guy.' after reading only the first and second VN. That said, he was throwing out a large number of theories so you have to keep in mind this sort of thing. Also from reading that thread I know not to approach Umineko the same way because apparently the solution is something way out of left field. I'll just enjoy the ride when I get to that VN.
>mountain dogs
I forgot to say anything about them when writing that big OP. The van in VN 1 hitting Keiichi is suspicious in retrospect. Why would they have done that, since Keiichi was only suspecting his friends and nowhere near close to uncovering the mountain dogs' place in the scheme. Maybe it's one of the red herrings.

>>1564
>Oh, you're in for a treat. That scene is what solidified Higurashi as magical to me; a true emotional triumph!
In VN 6 with the rooftop fight? I was imagining a woodcutter's axe for all of that, not a big heavy machete. Earlier in the junkyard she uses a lead pipe.
>I think it's possible that Keiichi imagined it in her hand in an earlier chapter, but I can't remember.
That would be VN 1, he comments that Rena's the only person in Hinamizawa that could carry around an axe and not be suspicious-looking. "Oh it's just Rena tehe"

>>1567
>I read through all of the answer arcs in a sort of mad rush that lasted from the weekend before this to last Friday night. I really did enjoy inhabiting that world. The intensity of a VN experience is so high
Nice! Yes, that's the best way to experience them and I can't agree any more with the intensity thing.

>Is everyone going to just forget that the Sonozakis have a torture room with implements that are actively maintained?
I just saw it as a combination of the Japanese "don't rock the boat" thing and the idea of powerful families having a bit more leeway to do whatever they want. You could also interpret it as a misinterpretation since the whole story is about paranoia and seeing things that aren't there. It's not a pitchfork used to tear out intestines, it's just a pitchfork to gather hay. Or something. Or it could be one of those things left as a physical reminder of the family's dark past to avoid repeating those mistakes. There's a lot of ways to excuse it away I think.

>So on paper it's a happy ending but there would be any number of other timelines that end in mass murder or at least misery for the kids.
Yep, lots and lots of misery. If/when you watch Gou/Sotsu this sticks out quite a bit and it's part of the reason people hate it.

>In VN 6 with the rooftop fight?
I don't remember the exact timing, but that was the moment I was thinking of, yes. It was certainly quite an emotional climax and it took so long to reach it. Sadly the anime didn't do it justice, but then there was probably no way it could have unless they gave the whole scene at least two episodes. The anime's SoL stuff is really fantastic, though. I think we could stream Higurashi again next year.
You should watch Higurashi Kira, though, as it's like a huge celebration of them finding their happiness with a bunch of wacky antics.

some more stuff I thought of.
Akasaka's the spitting image of my IRL brother. I thought when I saw him, good thing my brother's alive and well because if he was dead I would not have been emotionally prepared to suddenly see someone who looks so similar.
Akasaka's victorious moment in VN 8, protecting Rika from five mountain dogs while the commander Okonogi hangs back, was over the border of believability but still earned and deserved.

the You song was something I first heard in the Kumikyoku Nico Nico Douga medley (which itself is something I learned about from the Automatic SMW video of it, anyway it's at around 4:30 in). That was a bit of a headfuck, "How did such an old VN reference that nico nico video... oh, it's the other way around!"

The final TIP in VN 8 set up a sequel hook with the mention of the sword with three tips. I assume Rei or Hou will get into it.

>>1572
>the You song
Each main character has their own vocal version of it, by the way. They're very nice and very emotional. Very very beautiful things. Although you may know this already if you know of stuff like the Nico Nico medley since the songs come up once in a while on anime radio stuff and so on. Some guy uploaded them with lyrics on youtube a while back, but they got taken down. Someone else probably uploaded them again, though, I hope. There's like hours of 'You' versions. Rena's is very good at making me cry.

>>1567
>all of the timelines have a claim of being real.
they're not quite timelines, they're fragments/kakera, worlds that exist separately in this infinite sea of them and what hanyuu does is transfer rika from one to another
it's closer to parallel universes and not a literal time loop like those of other stories, rather the fragments that fail are ruined and that's that as you said, gotta move on
they're also everpresent in umineko and you should absolutely read saikoroshi because it's a super important epilogue and this is relevant there as well
>When I learned that the parasite theory was the one that was actually true I was a bit disappointed, I was hoping that the main conspiracy had supernatural elements.
personally, i wasn't a fan of the shadow government twist. it bothered me that the true villain (or at least the source of takano's power) ended up being an outside organization able to whip out a body double with matching teeth to use as bait or gas the entirety of the village
i felt it went against the village-level theories both natural and supernatural, it's still not my favorite twist out there although you still can't change it without changing the entire story
in any case things get exponentially more supernatural in umi, even in retrospect, and gousotsu kind of goes further though it still was a massive unsatisfactory disappointment
>Is everyone going to just forget that the Sonozakis have a torture room with implements that are actively maintained?
they're my friends and that's obviously in the past

umi is workable in that you can still figure out a number of tricks without uncovering the true culprit, and from the looks of it people had actually figured out one of the biggest reveals apparently by EP3 already (the crystalized term appears in /jp/ and /a/ towards late 2009/EP5), but it's going to kick you in the face so no, you can think about it but no need to get too invested

tangential to the above, here's a thread i came across of people recounting their experiences on the two boards, even linking to warosu:
https://forum.rokkenjima.org/t/to-anyone-who-followed-umineko-as-it-released-full-series-spoilers/1954
obviously spoilers in there

sigh