[SERIES SPOLIERS] Is it possible to figure out the 'mystery' in the question arcs?

[PAN]

* You will be spoiled

Having seen the anime and read the manga and sound novels a while ago, I started to go through all the sound novels again starting with this game, trying to pick apart the sentences for the forshadowing and hints.

I've found that you can solve each of the individual incidents just from reading the question arcs:
• You can deduce in Onikakushi that Keiichi goes crazy. Rena's lines are actually pretty friendly and the indicident that triggered Keiichi's killings wasn't meant to mean that he would die how Tomitake would die, but that he would get markers drawn on him like Tomitake.
• You can figure out in Watanagashi-hen that Shion was the murderer and carefully find when she switches places with Mion. Ooishi hints at the end that Mion was killed before stabbing Keiichi, so theres a massive hint Mion isn't Mion.
• You can know Rika knows more than she should know with the predicted killings and the syringe she holds.

So you can figure out the individual murderers. But the hints that i've found it leaves you with to find the overarching culprit are:
• Rika carries a syringe and knows the series of murders
• Gas from the swamp kills everyone after Rika's death.
• Someone goes crazy
• The crazies hear footsteps and stompings
• The Sonozaki's are faking suspicion or actually causing the murders.
• Takano and Tomitake die everytime by a group of people.
• Takano died earlier.


^ From these hints it seems like the most likely thing is that Rika is a reincarnation of Oyashiro-sama and that Oyashiro-sama is a real diety that gets ♥♥♥♥♥♥ at everyone. Their are some hints for people, but they are extremely hard to interpret the who and why. So it seems the curse theory has way more support, even though it kinda implies it wants you to figure out the people who are behind it.

But the actual answer were supposed to find is that Takano wanted the mass murder of the village through a disease thats not mentioned and a code that lets her kill them if the queen carrier Rika dies and that the GHD is a decoy.

Despite the existence of Hanyuu and the time loops, the series is pretty realistic. So its odd that we have to figure that the whole thing comes from a (possibly alien) Hinamisawa parasite and Takano wants to kill everyone. Mind you we have to find this under the idea that Takano 'dies' in every world by someone.

I love this series and the amount that you can dig in and figure stuff out. I love the answers and they make sense once their revealed. But it seems that 07's challenge to solve the mystery is impossible with solely the question arcs.

Did you guys find other hints or have an interpretation that I missed?

[Chaos_Alfa]

I would remove the word "culprit" in the thread title. Even if you don't want to spoil anything culprit implies one entity is responsible instead of a group and that there is a culprit to all the madness in the story.

I would rather replace "culprit" with "mystery" to be on the safe side of unintentional revealing that some potential theories Higurashi new comers can come up with are wrong.

[Telna]

Onikakushi hints at the clinic being larger than expected. In addition, Tatarigoroshi has major hints, especially in Takano's meeting with Keiichi on the night of Watanagashi and with Irie's meeting at the clinic with Keiichi the day after. With those you can easily guess that the clinic's up to something, and combined with everyone's craziness a guess that there's some sort of crazy disease is not far off. The biggest jump I think is catching on that the GHD happens in Onikakushi as well, and I don't think that's really suggested much at all until Himatsubushi when Rika insists that she dies in the fifth year. Everything other than that is absolutely doable with only Onikakushi through Tatarigoroshi, except perhaps the culprit of the curse of the second year.

[Harag]

Wee need a new subforum like the one with the trading card exchange for people who want to talk about the whole series/heavy spoilers.

Any idea how to do it?

[Magusverborum]

I remember the very first time I watched Higurashi that the thing that stuck with me during the first arc was that though the police suspected that drugs caused Tomitake to scratch his own throat out, they could find no traces of drugs in his body. This lead me to theorize that it was something already in his blood (perhaps how heavily concentrated) that caused him to go crazy.

Before you all think I'm trying to sound super smart here I should mention that I had discarded this theory in favour of a conspiracy by the locals before the end of the arc. Which really is the cleverness of the writing, how Ryukishi gives you the answer, then hands you a completely different answer, and then gives you another completely different answer which you debunk but *actually* it was a metaphor for the real answer. Because the villagers couldn't *really* be possessed by demons right?

[CutToSleep]

There are some serious red herrings though. Like one in Tatarigoroshi where anyone who Keiichi wished dead died. That's pretty much when I gave up on human culprit theory as I thought it's too much to be a coincidence. Guess what - it was! (or at least coincidence backed up by slightly unreliable narration).

[Alice]

You have to remember he's an impressionable 15/16-year old boy. I remember being a habitual liar when I was his age, and I'm sure a lot of kids of that age like to exaggerate. And that's on top of the fact that he's one of the least stable of the main cast.

[Yirba]

Originally posted by PAN:

• Gas from the swamp kills everyone after Rika's death.

Except that doesn't happen in Watanagashi-hen... I'm not sure how you're really supposed to figure out that Rika's death is related to the gas.

[CutToSleep]

Originally posted by Yirba:

Originally posted by PAN:

• Gas from the swamp kills everyone after Rika's death.

Except that doesn't happen in Watanagashi-hen... I'm not sure how you're really supposed to figure out that Rika's death is related to the gas.

Gas from the swamp kills everyone when Rika is Watanagashi'd. But to figure out that pattern, you'll have to go as far as chapter 6.

[Proxiehunter]

Originally posted by CutToSleep:

Originally posted by Yirba:

Except that doesn't happen in Watanagashi-hen... I'm not sure how you're really supposed to figure out that Rika's death is related to the gas.

Gas from the swamp kills everyone when Rika is Watanagashi'd. But to figure out that pattern, you'll have to go as far as chapter 6.

No, it doesn't. They're all rounded up and gassed by the nutters working for Tokyo.

[CutToSleep]

Oh, what I meant is "it appears that gas from the swamp kills everyone..." because until the very end of Tsumihoroboshi, the conspiracy isn't really revealed. Basically, when Rika is killed by Shion, the disaster doesn't happen.

[PAN]

Originally posted by Chaos_Alfa:

I would remove the word "culprit" in the thread title. Even if you don't want to spoil anything culprit implies one entity is responsible instead of a group and that there is a culprit to all the madness in the story.

I would rather replace "culprit" with "mystery" to be on the safe side of unintentional revealing that some potential theories Higurashi new comers can come up with are wrong.

Good point, changed it over

[Yirba]

Originally posted by CutToSleep:

Oh, what I meant is "it appears that gas from the swamp kills everyone..." because until the very end of Tsumihoroboshi, the conspiracy isn't really revealed. Basically, when Rika is killed by Shion, the disaster doesn't happen.

Exactly. Which is what happens in Watanagashi-hen. Rika is killed by Shion and so the disaster doesn't happen. But I don't think there's a whole lot of evidence that the GHD is dependent on the identity of Rika's murderer. After all, you only find out about the GHD in Tatarigoroshi-hen, and even then details are scarce.

[Proxiehunter]

Originally posted by Yirba:

Originally posted by CutToSleep:

Oh, what I meant is "it appears that gas from the swamp kills everyone..." because until the very end of Tsumihoroboshi, the conspiracy isn't really revealed. Basically, when Rika is killed by Shion, the disaster doesn't happen.

Exactly. Which is what happens in Watanagashi-hen. Rika is killed by Shion and so the disaster doesn't happen. But I don't think there's a whole lot of evidence that the GHD is dependent on the identity of Rika's murderer. After all, you only find out about the GHD in Tatarigoroshi-hen, and even then details are scarce.

It's not the identity of her murderer that matters at all. When she's killed by Shion her body isn't discovered until it's well after the period that Droopy-tan predicted everyone would go crazy from Hinamizawa syndrome (which is what the gassing of the village is supposed to prevent). It's only when her body is discovered in a timely fashion that the plan goes into effect and the village is killed.

[CutToSleep]

Originally posted by Proxiehunter:

It's not the identity of her murderer that matters at all. When she's killed by Shion her body isn't discovered until it's well after the period that Droopy-tan predicted everyone would go crazy from Hinamizawa syndrome (which is what the gassing of the village is supposed to prevent). It's only when her body is discovered in a timely fashion that the plan goes into effect and the village is killed.

Yeah, but I don't think it can be figured out by that point. All we know is, both in Watanagashi and Meakashi it's shown that enough time has passed after the incidents - meaning the Disaster didn't happen. In Tatrigoroshi, Himatsubushi and Tsumihoroboshi, it definitely happened; in Onikakushi, we don't know for sure. Seems like there should be something common in those chapters that don't have the Disaster. Perhaps, the death of Rika? She's the only one confirmed to die in Tsumihoroboshi before the Disaster (aside from the usual duo). Perhaps her death has something to do with the Disaster? By existing of these facts, that level of reasoning is possible for player.

(Please note that all this time I am talking from a point of view of someone who played up to arc 6, not talking information from Minagoroshi and Matsuribayashi in account as we aquire full answers by that time).

[Yirba]

Originally posted by Proxiehunter:

It's not the identity of her murderer that matters at all. When she's killed by Shion her body isn't discovered until it's well after the period that Droopy-tan predicted everyone would go crazy from Hinamizawa syndrome (which is what the gassing of the village is supposed to prevent). It's only when her body is discovered in a timely fashion that the plan goes into effect and the village is killed.

Regardless, there's no indication of the GHD in the first two chapters so I'm not sure how it's possible to see a correlation between the timing of Rika's death and the GHD happening in just the question arcs alone.