Choices in a Choiceless world

[Rhinestone Cowboy]

Can please we take a moment to appreciate how masterful did Ryuukishi07 twist and turn the absolute nature of the Visual Novel medium? The way the story was structured as a kinetic novel (one without any choice and only one ending) though may seems limited as first, thrived so well with Higurashi's loop. The readers, strapped in this roller coaster of hope and despair, can only watch as the characters they loved so much plunged into their inevitable doom. This amplified the feeling of frustration in the previous chapters of the series. The sadness you felt is coupled by the helplessness. There's nothing you can do. No choice to make, no right word to say at the right time to steer all of them to the good end.

Which is why chapter 6-7 is particularly amazing. Chapter 6 basically mirrored what happened of Chapter 1, just with more Rena killing people. As we realized the true reason behind chapter 1's event, did we expect for the ending to be any difference? That there is hope in this forsaken world we are trapped in? For me, no. I personally accepted defeat at the beginning of the last few chapters, where Rena was consumed by madness. I thought that this will end like Chapter 5. Which is why the ending was a real shocker for me. It was as if Maebara himself giving me the middle finger for expecting the tragic ending. He smashed the wall of the so called "fate" just like that.

Which lead us to this chapter, chapter 7. The theme of the chapter is hope. With faint hope reignited in our heart, we cheered the cast on as they struggled against the grasp of destiny. They fought and fought and fought. We can only cheered them on from the audience seat but we really want to see their happiness.

But at some point, our suspension of disbelief ought to snap. We realized, as we have lived this scene 6 times before, that's things were going too well. Can we really believe that 6 children could fight off a group of highly trained military assassins? The same group of assassins that swiftly disposed of Ooishi just a few scenes earlier? Is this supposed to be Japanese Home Alone?
I just could not believe it. I could not think that the gang can really fight against scary adults like that.

And in the end, they could not. They get murdered by Takano one by one. And we, as a spectator, could do nothing again. It's painful. It's sad. We pitied Rika as her last and best hope was taken away from her.

At that point, I realized

Hankyuu was supposed to be us, the reader.

Like us, Hankyuu was invisible to the world of Higurashi. She can't do nothing to interact with the world, or change the course of events. She couldn't prevent the tragedy from happening to Rika countless times before. As such, she didn't believe in this world. She warned Rika from putting too much hope in this world, because she did not put any in it. She, or we, passively watched as our actors took their falls again and again, and much like us, she can only rewinds time back to the beginning of the Higurashi, without ever changing how it ends. Or so she thinks..

This is the reason why the discussion among the friends at Rika's execution scene was absolutely phenomenal. Ryuukishi07 revealed to us that, while we could not fight against the enemies of Keichii by ourselves, we could have believed. We could have believed in them. If we-Hankyuu- truly believed in Rika and her friends, maybe really they could have fought the Mountain Dogs off. We-Hankyuu- was the seventh soul they needed for a miracle to occur. But we chose not to believe. As such, such miracle did not happen in this world. Even though we were not given a choice on screen, we were given an inexplicit choice in the most subtle manner. And I think, for most of us, we made the wrong choice.

Ryuukishi07 played us like another character in his story. To create a choice where there was not. To break the fourth wall and drag the reader into the narrative world. That's the absolute epitome of visual novel as a medium. And that, in my humble opinion, is the beauty of it all.

[fllthdcrb]

Very nice analysis. Not bad. Not everything you said is correct, but I think almost everything is.

Just one thing: there's no "k" in "Hanyuu". Not sure where you got that. 😁

[Rhinestone Cowboy]

Originally posted by fllthdcrb:

Very nice analysis. Not bad. Not everything you said is correct, but I think almost everything is.

Just one thing: there's no "k" in "Hanyuu". Not sure where you got that. 😁

Admittedly I wrote this in one go right after finish it so I was too excited to notice such silly mistake.

Alas, what do you think of the series and its narrative. I based most of the stuff above from my personal experience playing through the series, so I want to see how others view it.

[fllthdcrb]

Well, I think that Ryukishi07 does a really good job of putting us in the heads of his characters and making us feel for them. Or in some cases, be even more disgusted with them than before (looking at you, Teppei Houjou, you piece of garbage). In some cases, both (thinking of a character, but can't say anything if you haven't seen "Matsuribayashi-hen", the next arc, yet*).

* This series of Steam releases is actually MangaGamer's second localization, the first being released in 2009 to 2010. Many of us who know all of the answer arcs, and don't read Japanese, already know them from those releases. For those who do read Japanese, and don't mind Ryukishi07's rather rough character art (or perhaps are willing to go to the trouble to substitute Alchemist's PS3 art), there are always 07th Expansion's original releases, which also have the nice property that they've already been out for a long time, while MG will be taking years to finish with Hou, of which there are still 7 arcs remaining, and 6 have never been officially localized.

[APepper]

Beatiful and well written analysis