Re-reading the series: Tsumihoroboshi questions and impressions

[a_sa_ro]

Not going to lie, Tsumihoroboshi is one of my favorite arcs. I feel it mostly gets attention for Rena killing Rika and Teppei and trying to make a school explode, for Keiichi's battle against Rena and for being the arc where we finally find out about the time-looping and why Rika is so important. However, there are also beautiful reflections about the nature of mental illness, friendship and trust that I completely adore. Some more thoughts and questions I've had while reading:

• Something I never noticed until this re-read is that Ooishi seems to be having leaking memories from other fragments. I thought that only happened to our gang, but there is a small bit, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, where Ooishi is talking about Tomitake's death and finding his body and he says: "No matter which path I choose to come to this point, Tomitake Jirou always dies". Him having leaking memories also explains why he tries to befriend Mion and her friends instead of being antagonistic towards them or using them as tools. It's awesome how much little tidbits these novels hold that you can gain new insight even after knowing all the story.
  
  
• I have always had confusion about Takano's scrapbooks, because the scrapbook in Watanagashi-hen seems to be much "saner" than the one in Tsumihoroboshi-hen. It was suggested to me in the Watanagashi discussion that Takano just had several scrapbooks and liked giving them away. If anyone has insights on that purpose, it would be really cool to discuss them. Does Takano give her scrapbooks as a way to divert attention from her investigation? Or is it just her being a troll who likes to scare people, so she targets any random person who talks to her (who often happen to be experiencing Hinamizawa Syndrome, like Shion and Rena)?
  
  
• Unlike Onikakushi, where I have a mostly firm idea of what the Yamainu was doing, this arc seems to be more confusing about that. You could say that the Yamainu wasn't actively trying to go after Rena because the scrapbooks weren't really important. If they had been, they would have recovered the scrapbooks in Takano's appartment before the Sonozaki got a hold of them and gave them to the police. Their appearance in the school seems to be legitimate as well, as we could hear from Keiichi. However, the part where they ask Keiichi about Rena seems extremely suspicious to me, and the excuse Okonogi gave was the lamest excuse any agent of a secret organization has ever given. "We saw a girl before but now there was a boy"? Seriously? Lol.
  
  
• Then there's the part with Ohtaka. As we learn in Matsuribayashi, Ohtaka is a very prominent Yamainu spy within the Shishibone police. In that arc, he only appears when the Yamainu asks him to investigate Rika's supposed body, so I'm making the connection that if he appeared in Hinamizawa, even farther away from Okinomiya, it's because the Yamainu mobilized him. However, his plan doesn't really make sense. I'm assuming the Yamainu sent him because they wanted Rika alive so Takano could kill her Watanagashi-style because she is a sucker for that. So why would he be so stupid to tell the special unit to storm the school, when he knows the suspect spread gasoline and has a lighter?
  The other option would be if he wanted to secure the scrapbooks, but that's very unlikely because of the Yamainu not caring about the Sonozaki having the rest of the scrapbooks and because Ooishi already had the ones that Rena had, so he could have just asked Ooishi for them and retreated. Is there any other way to make sense of Ohtaka's actions in the light of the Yamainu? Or am I wrong or was he there on his own volition and the plan was only a result of him being stupid?
  
  
• It's interesting how Ryukishi plants the seeds of truth in Takano's stories, but hides them under ridiculous stories so that the reader dismisses them completely. The most notable example was the parasite theory being hidden within a story of aliens and the Sonozaki conspiracy, but I noticed a smaller one that doesn't make sense unless you read the whole story. In one of the stories Mion tells Keiichi, she tells him "the princess of the underworld fell in love with a young man in the village". The reader dismisses this immediately, but I noticed that this actually corresponds to Hanyuu's story. In Matsuribayashi-hen, Rika says that Hanyuu came from a place Rika wouldn't understand and when she went to visit the villagers, she fell in love with the priest's son, having Ouka as a result. I think this is a very cool detail that most would miss.
  
  
• Tsumihoroboshi answers most of the questions posed in Onikakushi, but there is one question it doesn't answer and that is never visited in later arcs. I'm talking about: what made Rena attack her friends with a bat and then proceed to break all the windows in her class? Ooishi tells Keiichi in Onikakushi that no one testified against Rena and her three friends didn't want to talk about the incident, suggesting they weren't innocent. However, all we get in Tsumihoroboshi is that Rena "did very bad things" and "hurt her friends", so we know she feels guilty about it, but not why she did it.
  
  
• The ending scroll says that the school hostage incident took place on June 25th, but I've counted the dates and they don't seem to add up. Here's what I gathered:
  
  1. June 19: Watanagashi festival.
     
  2. June 20: Ooishi tells Rena about the murders and Rena reads the scrapbooks.
     
  3. June 21: Rena skips school, talks to Keiichi on the side of the road, and then explains to him over the phone the contents of Takano's scrapbooks.
     
  4. June 22: Keiichi clears things up with Mion, Rena goes on the run and explains her theories to Ooishi over the phone, the police and the Sonozaki search for Rena, Rika offers the injection to Rena and she rejects it, Keiichi confronts Rena at the garbage dump and Rena reveals his past.
     
  5. June 23: Keiichi confesses to his friends and remembers the past, the Sonozaki and the police form a truce, Rena apologizes to Keiichi.
     
  6. June 24: Rena takes the school and tries to blow it up if the police doesn't raid all Sonozaki properties, Keiichi stops her plan and confronts her, snapping her out of her delusions.
  This chronology would place the attack to the school on the 24th, even though the ending says it was on the 25th. So am I missing something there? Did I forget an event or the passage of a day? This is the only time when chronologies haven't added up in the whole story, so I'm more inclined to think it's me overlooking something.

Please share your thoughts about this or anything else in the story!

[fllthdcrb]

Originally posted by a_sa_ro:

Something I never noticed until this re-read is that Ooishi seems to be having leaking memories from other fragments. I thought that only happened to our gang, but there is a small bit, blink-and-you'll-miss-it, where Ooishi is talking about Tomitake's death and finding his body and he says: "No matter which path I choose to come to this point, Tomitake Jirou always dies". Him having leaking memories also explains why he tries to befriend Mion and her friends instead of being antagonistic towards them or using them as tools. It's awesome how much little tidbits these novels hold that you can gain new insight even after knowing all the story.

I noticed this the first time, and was confused at first. But after having seen the whole story, I'm fairly certain it's not Ooishi, but the one who is narrating in some places starting in "Minagoroshi-hen", such as in the opening monologue.* Quite possibly all of the places narrated in third person. Notice that the previous passage refers to Ooishi in third person, but this passage is in first person. Plus, it's talking about finding an exit from a metaphorical maze, which doesn't really sound like Ooishi IMO. If he was suddenly experiencing memories of previous worlds, I would expect him to be confused, which doesn't show up here at all. Or if he had experienced it many times, in contrast to Keiichi only experiencing it as of this arc, why is there no hint of it in his behavior? It is a bit odd that this person I'm thinking of would talk about her own situation out of seemingly nowhere and then stop again, but not as odd as Ooishi saying such things, IMO.

* I have a pretty good idea of who it is, but I won't mention the name, even though it appears a few times throughout Higurashi, as it's tied to another work. Also, I'm not really familiar with that work, but it's one of those things that you sometimes hear about nonetheless.

Does Takano give her scrapbooks as a way to divert attention from her investigation? Or is it just her being a troll who likes to scare people, so she targets any random person who talks to her (who often happen to be experiencing Hinamizawa Syndrome, like Shion and Rena)?

It could be some of both, I suppose.

Unlike Onikakushi, where I have a mostly firm idea of what the Yamainu was doing, this arc seems to be more confusing about that. You could say that the Yamainu wasn't actively trying to go after Rena because the scrapbooks weren't really important. If they had been, they would have recovered the scrapbooks in Takano's appartment before the Sonozaki got a hold of them and gave them to the police. Their appearance in the school seems to be legitimate as well, as we could hear from Keiichi. However, the part where they ask Keiichi about Rena seems extremely suspicious to me, and the excuse Okonogi gave was the lamest excuse any agent of a secret organization has ever given. "We saw a girl before but now there was a boy"? Seriously? Lol.

Well, they are working for Takano, who gave her that scrapbook in the first place, so I assume there was some sort of coordinated effort. Maybe they were just keeping an eye on Rena to see what she would do.

I'm assuming the Yamainu sent him because they wanted Rika alive so Takano could kill her Watanagashi-style because she is a sucker for that. So why would he be so stupid to tell the special unit to storm the school, when he knows the suspect spread gasoline and has a lighter?

Because he's just stupid. That's all. He may be acting on the Yamainu's behalf, but that doesn't mean he's one of them. An idiot like him could never have gotten into an elite intelligence unit like the Yamainu. I have to assume they couldn't just get their own members onto the police force and had to bribe existing members (as Ooishi thinks when he hears it was Ohtaka who called). Of course, the Yamainu apparently aren't smart enough to fool Ooishi, as he saw through their act pretty quickly when confronting the ones tampering with the telephone equipment, so finding someone in the police to fool him is probably outside their expertise as well.

It's interesting how Ryukishi plants the seeds of truth in Takano's stories, but hides them under ridiculous stories so that the reader dismisses them completely. The most notable example was the parasite theory being hidden within a story of aliens and the Sonozaki conspiracy,

Indeed. A good way to hide a truth like that is to camouflage it among equally plausible (or implausible) ideas. Or better yet, scatter parts of it, as with the multiple scrapbooks, whose stories are, taken whole, mutually incompatible.

but I noticed a smaller one that doesn't make sense unless you read the whole story. In one of the stories Mion tells Keiichi, she tells him "the princess of the underworld fell in love with a young man in the village". The reader dismisses this immediately, but I noticed that this actually corresponds to Hanyuu's story. In Matsuribayashi-hen, Rika says that Hanyuu came from a place Rika wouldn't understand and when she went to visit the villagers, she fell in love with the priest's son, having Ouka as a result. I think this is a very cool detail that most would miss.

I missed that too. Thanks for pointing it out.

Tsumihoroboshi answers most of the questions posed in Onikakushi, but there is one question it doesn't answer and that is never visited in later arcs. I'm talking about: what made Rena attack her friends with a bat and then proceed to break all the windows in her class? Ooishi tells Keiichi in Onikakushi that no one testified against Rena and her three friends didn't want to talk about the incident, suggesting they weren't innocent. However, all we get in Tsumihoroboshi is that Rena "did very bad things" and "hurt her friends", so we know she feels guilty about it, but not why she did it.

It's not outright stated, so we can't be sure, but there's a vague suggestion in there that they might have assaulted her in some way, maybe even sexually. Or she might have imagined it. Whatever they did, I'm sure it didn't take much to set her off, given her mental state.

The ending scroll says that the school hostage incident took place on June 25th, but I've counted the dates and they don't seem to add up. Here's what I gathered:

1. June 19: Watanagashi festival.
   
2. June 20: Ooishi tells Rena about the murders and Rena reads the scrapbooks.
   
3. June 21: Rena skips school, talks to Keiichi on the side of the road, and then explains to him over the phone the contents of Takano's scrapbooks.
   
4. June 22: Keiichi clears things up with Mion, Rena goes on the run and explains her theories to Ooishi over the phone, the police and the Sonozaki search for Rena, Rika offers the injection to Rena and she rejects it, Keiichi confronts Rena at the garbage dump and Rena reveals his past.
   
5. June 23: Keiichi confesses to his friends and remembers the past, the Sonozaki and the police form a truce, Rena apologizes to Keiichi.
   
6. June 24: Rena takes the school and tries to blow it up if the police doesn't raid all Sonozaki properties, Keiichi stops her plan and confronts her, snapping her out of her delusions.

This chronology would place the attack to the school on the 24th, even though the ending says it was on the 25th. So am I missing something there? Did I forget an event or the passage of a day? This is the only time when chronologies haven't added up in the whole story, so I'm more inclined to think it's me overlooking something.

Is it possible the narrative just skipped a day? I wouldn't be too surprised.

The one thing we can be sure of here is that the festival was on June 19, because that's the third Sunday of June 1983. The 25th at least seems possible, as Japanese schools have some classes on Saturdays. OTOH, it's possible Ryukishi07 just made a mistake here. I noticed a potential mistake of this kind before: in "Matsuribayashi-hen", when Akasaka is remembering about Watanagashi, it says, "If he remembered correctly... it happens on the last Sunday of the month." This is inconsistent with its known date of the 19th in 1983, which is the 3rd Sunday. One could speculate that this is merely Akasaka's own mistake. But if he actually made such a mistake—which never appears to be corrected—it's likely he wouldn't even arrive in Hinamizawa in time to make a difference, especially considering all the preparation necessary to counter the enemy.

(EDIT: Or maybe it's just a mistranslation. Japanese text says, "月末頃の日曜日に", which seems to mean, "on Sunday around the end of the month".)

[velie]

Originally posted by a_sa_ro:

I have always had confusion about Takano's scrapbooks, because the scrapbook in Watanagashi-hen seems to be much "saner" than the one in Tsumihoroboshi-hen. It was suggested to me in the Watanagashi discussion that Takano just had several scrapbooks and liked giving them away. If anyone has insights on that purpose, it would be really cool to discuss them. Does Takano give her scrapbooks as a way to divert attention from her investigation? Or is it just her being a troll who likes to scare people, so she targets any random person who talks to her (who often happen to be experiencing Hinamizawa Syndrome, like Shion and Rena)?

In Miotsukushi-hen, the final arc of the console version, I believe that Takano quite literally states that the scrapbooks were to divert attention by having the person she gave the scrapbook to make a scene and distract everyone. This arc is not canonical though (but has been approved by the author).

[fllthdcrb]

Originally posted by veliedrako:

In Miotsukushi-hen, the final arc of the console version, I believe that Takano quite literally states that the scrapbooks were to divert attention by having the person she gave the scrapbook to make a scene and distract everyone.

A bit of a dangerous game, though. If that's her plan, it backfires in "Watanagashi-hen" and "Meakashi-hen" when her target goes the extra mile and kills Rika, too. Oops.

That is, if that's what she really intends.

[a_sa_ro]

Originally posted by fllthdcrb:

I noticed this the first time, and was confused at first. But after having seen the whole story, I'm fairly certain it's not Ooishi, but the one who is narrating in some places starting in "Minagoroshi-hen", such as in the opening monologue.* Quite possibly all of the places narrated in third person. Notice that the previous passage refers to Ooishi in third person, but this passage is in first person. Plus, it's talking about finding an exit from a metaphorical maze, which doesn't really sound like Ooishi IMO. If he was suddenly experiencing memories of previous worlds, I would expect him to be confused, which doesn't show up here at all. Or if he had experienced it many times, in contrast to Keiichi only experiencing it as of this arc, why is there no hint of it in his behavior? It is a bit odd that this person I'm thinking of would talk about her own situation out of seemingly nowhere and then stop again, but not as odd as Ooishi saying such things, IMO.

* I have a pretty good idea of who it is, but I won't mention the name, even though it appears a few times throughout Higurashi, as it's tied to another work. Also, I'm not really familiar with that work, but it's one of those things that you sometimes hear about nonetheless.

That actually makes a lot more sense that what I was thinking originally. In fact you're right, Ooishi never expresses confusion about thinking that Tomitake always dies, unlike Keiichi when he remembers the Onikakushi world. Thanks for pointing this out!

Well, they are working for Takano, who gave her that scrapbook in the first place, so I assume there was some sort of coordinated effort. Maybe they were just keeping an eye on Rena to see what she would do.

I've just had a new thought: maybe they were keeping tabs on her the same way they were keeping them on Keiichi: the possibility of her having Hinamizawa Syndrome. Maybe Takano told them Rena was an old HS patient and that she had Takano's scrapbooks, so keep an eye on her in case she shows symptoms. But then they weren't able to find her after she ran away from the school.

Because he's just stupid. That's all. He may be acting on the Yamainu's behalf, but that doesn't mean he's one of them. An idiot like him could never have gotten into an elite intelligence unit like the Yamainu. I have to assume they couldn't just get their own members onto the police force and had to bribe existing members (as Ooishi thinks when he hears it was Ohtaka who called). Of course, the Yamainu apparently aren't smart enough to fool Ooishi, as he saw through their act pretty quickly when confronting the ones tampering with the telephone equipment, so finding someone in the police to fool him is probably outside their expertise as well.

Yeah, I agree with you about him being just bribed and not actually a Yamainu member... not only is he too stupid, but in Matsuribayashi-hen he doesn't seem to know that the Yamainu are planning the Great Hinamizawa Disaster. He only seeks Rika's body because the Yamainu tells him to do it, but when Ooishi confronts him about their plan he seems clueless.

I guess I didn't want to believe someone could be so stupid as to do what he wanted to do, so I thought about there being a larger plan. It also could be that more intelligent officers were harder to bribe.

It's not outright stated, so we can't be sure, but there's a vague suggestion in there that they might have assaulted her in some way, maybe even sexually. Or she might have imagined it. Whatever they did, I'm sure it didn't take much to set her off, given her mental state.

The implication that it was some sort of assault makes sense, since they were very unwilling to talk about it later on. I mean, if I had been doing nothing wrong and suddenly a friend of mine had started hitting me with a bat and damaged my eye permanently, forget it, I'm pressing charges. But they decided not to, which is more consistent if they had some responsibility.

Is it possible the narrative just skipped a day? I wouldn't be too surprised.

The one thing we can be sure of here is that the festival was on June 19, because that's the third Sunday of June 1983. The 25th at least seems possible, as Japanese schools have some classes on Saturdays. OTOH, it's possible Ryukishi07 just made a mistake here. I noticed a potential mistake of this kind before: in "Matsuribayashi-hen", when Akasaka is remembering about Watanagashi, it says, "If he remembered correctly... it happens on the last Sunday of the month." This is inconsistent with its known date of the 19th in 1983, which is the 3rd Sunday. One could speculate that this is merely Akasaka's own mistake. But if he actually made such a mistake—which never appears to be corrected—it's likely he wouldn't even arrive in Hinamizawa in time to make a difference, especially considering all the preparation necessary to counter the enemy.

(EDIT: Or maybe it's just a mistranslation. Japanese text says, "月末頃の日曜日に", which seems to mean, "on Sunday around the end of the month".)

I'm going to go with him skipping a day in the narrative because nothing had happened. Seems to make sense, as he has skipped days before.

I hadn't noticed that mistake from Akasaka. Maybe he took "around the end of the month" too literally and, if he did think about Rika, it was too late. But I think he forgot about Rika altogether in some of the arcs, because in Himatsubushi he says that he hadn't thought about Furude Rika until he saw the news about the Hinamizawa Disaster.

[a_sa_ro]

Originally posted by veliedrako:

In Miotsukushi-hen, the final arc of the console version, I believe that Takano quite literally states that the scrapbooks were to divert attention by having the person she gave the scrapbook to make a scene and distract everyone. This arc is not canonical though (but has been approved by the author).

I haven't played the console games, so I didn't know that. It does make sense and if it was approved by Ryukishi, it's most likely what he thinks Takano would do. Thanks for the answer!

Originally posted by fllthdcrb:

A bit of a dangerous game, though. If that's her plan, it backfires in "Watanagashi-hen" and "Meakashi-hen" when her target goes the extra mile and kills Rika, too. Oops.

That is, if that's what she really intends.

Yeah, sound like when she forgot all about easing Rika's mom's mind about the experiments they were making on her, and then it backfired on her when Rika's mom decided to withdraw her from the experiments.

For such a cunning and calculating person, her miscalculations can sure backfire awfully.