For the sake of this post, I will be talking about the manga instead of the anime. I haven't gotten past episode 3 of the anime because, after reading through the manga, the anime feels like a complete joke. The manga managed to make me cry while reading it, because it is that scary but I want to know what's going on. I was just bored during the anime because I knew what was coming and, like I said, it's no where as scary.
The Manga in General
It is impossible for me to talk about this manga without any spoilers, so if you are interested in watching the anime or reading the manga, DO NOT read beyond this point. However, if you have already read it and don't understand it, or you don't plan to read it and you just want to know about the storyline, then please continue.
The entire manga revolves around a few elements:
1. Unknown Mental Illness:
The manga makes use of a fictional mental illness that is actually an exaggeration of an actual disease. The village of Hinamizawa is plagued by an illness known as the Hinamizawa syndrome, which develops only in people who descended from inhabitants of the village. The illness results in paranoia and anxiety, which can force the person to commit strange and violent acts, including suicide. The symptoms of this disease are an amalgamation of real symptoms of real-life disease, including clawing one's throat due to the sensation of insects crawling under their skin. Such a sensation is a real symptom called formication.
One of the main issues of this disease is that it is an unknown disease, discovered by a single scientist, whose death resulted in her adopted daughter pursuing further research undercover. As a result, no one in the village knows about the disease but this woman. In fact, the people in the village believe that the disease is a curse of a demon named Oyashiro-sama, who is also the deity of the village.
Such beliefs and the paranoia they create lead to the worsening of the disease, which progresses in stages. There are altogether 5 stages in the disease:
Level One and Two: Weakest levels; almost all villagers and residents of Hinamizawa are infected, although they are at the lower stages of either L1 or L2. The syndrome does not cause apparent changes until its later stages. This indicates that the entire village is highly unstable and will easily grow hostile from any stress or anxiety, such as the dam project. Some more than others, like Keiichi, are susceptible to simple paranoia and stress, which has been shown to activate the syndrome.
Level Three: Beginning at L3, the mental condition of the patient will start to deteriorate and they become mentally and emotionally unstable.
Level Four: Paranoia and hallucinations start to appear surrounding the onset of L4.
Level Five: Strongest level; this is when people began to hear "Oyashiro-sama's footsteps" and patients are known to start clawing at their own flesh. In some cases, there is a previous psychological motive that serves as a catalyst for the scratching. For example, Ryuuga Rena hallucinated that her wrist and neck were infested by maggots because of a previous belief that her blood from her mother consisted of maggots. This is an example of extreme formication. Formication is when a person suffers from the sensation that insects are crawling under their skin and scratches intensively either remove the imaginary parasite or simply end the pain. It is a real symptom to certain sexually-transmitted diseases. Formication occurs in real life due to excessive use of amphetamines, suggesting the police station's wondering of whether Keiichi used narcotics as a provocative of his suicide in the first arc. There are several mistakes on the characters' views on the formication properties of the syndrome.
2. Question and Answer Arcs
The manga is structured in a question-answer arc format. The entire manga consists of many different arcs, each with about 10 chapters. For a first-time reader, the order may be confusing, but basically, you start with the first question arc, followed by its corresponding answer arc. Each pair of arcs end with multiple deaths and one main murderer.
In the question arc, things are often very confusing. It is mostly written from the murderer's point-of-view and how he/she sees the world as he/she succumbs to the disease that is unknowingly worsening inside them. Extremely paranoia coupled with hallucinations lead the character to commit several killings, in the perception that they are delivering justice or preserving their own lives against a threat. None of the question arcs end pleasantly, as for example, in the first arc, Keiichi, the main male protagonist, hallucinates being followed by Oyashiro-sama and ends up clawing out his own throat.
The answer arc aims to shed light to the horrific experiences in the question arc. They are either written from a third person's point-of-view, or a clearer indication of the disease worsening. Of course, until the last few arcs, you, the reader, isn't even aware of the disease. In fact, I was persuaded that there was actually an Oyashiro-sama.
3. Confusing Order that Slowly Makes Sense
In the end, you are given insight to a certain character's inner thoughts...the most secretive and suspicious character of the series. She isn't suspicious in the sense of hostility, but it's just weird. Each pair of arcs start from the same moment, each following a different murderer as he/she goes mad. However, this particular character has moments where she reveals to the reader that she is aware of the happenings of the previous arc. It creates a feeling like these arcs are related and are not just random.
The final chapter reveals that this girl, the shrine maiden to the shrine to Oyashiro-sama, in fact has "Oyashiro-sama" inside her conscience. The Oyashiro-sama is actually a girl, named Hanyuu, who repeatedly reverts time to the same point over and over, hoping to get the village past a certain date. And that date becomes obvious as you read on, because all the inhabitants of the village seem to eventually reach death by a certain day.
Through the different characters, you see that while time is reversed every time, they somehow retain part of their memories of their previous life. It is an unconscious thing, but the most traumatic part of their own madness is remembered. For example, Shion, who is the most notable character due to her annihilation of the entire village, doesn't remember exactly what happened in the timeline when she was the murderer. However, the younger sister of her crush, Satoko, who she murdered in spite in the previous timeline, becomes the object of her protectiveness in following arcs. She does not remember what she did to the girl, but she feels like it is important to protect her. Why? Because the moment she killed the girl was when her madness fell into the deepest stages. All the characters do the same, especially Keiichi, who has flashbacks to previous arcs.
Each time, the characters do something different, seemingly becoming able to proceed beyond that certain date. However, something goes wrong and everyone dies once more. That "something" that went wrong is corrected in the next pair of arcs until the final arc - "Matsuribayashi-hen" - which finally has a resolution where everyone proceeds beyond the date, along with "Oyashiro-sama", affectionately now known as Hanyuu. This arc was particularly scary because as Hanyuu takes a human form, she loses the ability to revert time and this arc is the final chance to get things right.
4. Answers Come at the End
In the final answer arc, the first few chapters reveals the true antagonist of the plot. What I love about this manga is that, it makes you sympathise with the antagonist. What she ended up doing was horrible, but you can see why she became who she is. The antagonist is Takano Miyo, who plays a supporting role in most arcs.
It is revealed that as a child, her name was Tanashi Miyoko, a girl from a humble family with loving parents. One day, as her parents took the train to work, a horrible incident happened and while her mother died, her father was hospitalised. When she visited her father, it is shown how the entire hospital was filled with blood and dying people. As she laid her eyes on her father, she realised how his arm was gone from the accident, the arm that he used to pat her head lovingly with. In front of her eyes, she watched as her father died from blood loss as the doctors were too busy to attend to him. Before she died, her father gave her a number of her father's old professor, because with his death, she had no other relatives or caretaker.
Due to her age, the police sent her to an orphanage. When she arrived, everyone was under the impression that it was a beautiful and nice orphanage but the moment the police left, she was slapped across the cheek by the caretaker. Looking into the windows behind her, she saw the hollow eyes of the other children. It turns out that the orphanage was something worse than even a concentration camp. The smallest mistakes, like not writing down a line of notes, earned the children punishments so horrible, it's probably part of Chinese torture methods. Even then, Miyoko found hope in one of her dorm mates, whose bravery and intelligence led to her formation of a plan to escape the orphanage.
However, the plan failed and all the children were captured. The leader of the plan, the one Miyoko admired with her life, was thrown into a chicken coop, pinned to the ground with food sprinkled on top of her. Miyoko was made to watch as the chicken pecked her to death, showing a gruesome scene where one of the chickens pecked out her eyeballs while she was still alive. The light of hope gone, Miyoko was brought to do her own punishment - cleaning the filthy bathroom toilet with her tongue. The caretaker forced her face into the toilet and made her lick up the filth, an image and experience burned permanently into her mind.
Thankfully while making her escape with the other children, Miyoko had came across a phonebooth and called the number her father had given her. She was thrown into the sewers after her punishment, left to rot, but the professor, Takano Hifumi, arrived just in time with the police to save her and take her under her care. By then, Miyoko was so broken that she thought everything in the world wanted to hurt her and could not eat without throwing up in memory of her punishment. However, under Hifumi's care, she finally regained purpose and a light in her life.
Her pain does not end there. Renamed Takano Miyo and taken in as Hifumi's grand-daughter, she was witness to his slow decline. Hifumi was a researcher, passionate on solving the Hinamizawa Syndrome and wanting to offer a cure for the disease. However, his research was not acknowledged, due to the lack of evidence and his stress slowly pushed him to death. Alone once more, her mind twisted beyond recognition from the suffering in her life, Takano Miyo travels to Hinamizawa, determined to continue her saviour's research.
It is her manipulation in Hinamizawa that exacerbated the growth of the disease. By planting seeds of paranoia and doubt within the minds of the villagers, she hoped to gain more dead bodies to cut up so that she may research the disease. Her desperation and twisted mind together drove her to commit even more atrocities when she realised that dead samples of the disease was useless to her. Instead, she kidnapped villagers and forced her surgeon to cut up their brains as they were still alive to obtain a fresh sample. She manipulated the entire village, including Keiichi and his crew, and was the ultimate cause of death in all the different arcs.
In one the last arcs, Keiichi and his gang come close to unravelling the truth, but was cut short when Takano Miyo orders soldiers to emit poisonous gas throughout the whole village, killing them. However, in the final arc and final scene, she is taken to justice and the series comes to an end.
The storyline of Higurashi is extremely complex and every detail is written superbly. The name of the manga translates to "When the Cicadas Cry" because the village is known for its cicadas during the summer. It is also the season when the date of death comes and each death accompanied with the cries of the cicada. The entire atmosphere of the manga, along with the psychological horror and unique plot makes the manga difficult to put down. Not to mention that I'm the type of person who refuses to let things go until I get my answer. I cried many times out of fear and had an entire month of curling up into a ball and sleeping with the lights, but it was worth it, I suppose. Even at the end of the manga, there is a sense of uneasiness, because I can truly feel pity for Miyo and what she has been through.
Also, the series has amazing music that sheds light very well on what the series is about. You may notice the lack of pictures in this post...it's because the first few images brought back such unpleasant memories that I couldn't stand looking at the pictures anymore. I'm a coward, okay?
1. Higurashi Opening 1
From the very first line, "Behind where I looked back (who's in the front?)", the song reveals the kind of paranoia that comes with the manga. It's not "who's in the back", but "who's in the front". It's a subtle difference, but the weirdness of the direction and the picture of someone looking back while fearing something in front creates 1. the idea of a demonic spirit - appearing suddenly in front of someone 2. disorientation and confusion 3. extreme paranoia.
The second line, "I raised my claws at the darkness (and ripped the night apart)" reveals the point-of-view of each murderer. "Darkness" because they themselves are very confused and the hallucinations have "blinded" them. They raise their claws at the darkness in self-defense, and ripped something harmless, like the night, apart. This is how the murderers felt. They were trying to defend themselves but as they came back to consciousness, they realise in horror that they have killed innocents.
Not trying to do a line-by-line analysis, so I'll just mention one last one. "The voice that was coming from the animal trail where the cicadas cry is no more." This one has many references. One, the animal trail refers to the location where the main character, Keiichi, commits one of the weirdest moments. He kills someone, hides the body, but returns to see that it's not there anymore. The voice can also refer to the murderer's voice, a reference to how Keiichi claws out his throat and loses his voice and life. Yet another one could be the voice of "Oyashiro-sama" and the notion that the voice disappeared could be the relief in the murderer's heart when death meets them and the voices they hear finally disappear.
2. Higurashi Opening 2
In the anime, the second opening is used for the revelation arcs and it's very appropriate. I'm not going to do another lyric analysis. Still, I must mention that I love the chorus, which shows very appropriate the desperation with which the characters and Hanyuu (Oyashiro-sama) want to get past that one date. Again and again the characters relive the same timeline, only to die each time. And finally, they unravel the plot and earn the ability to continue living.
3. Dear You Original Version
Almost all the characters have their own versions of Dear You, but I like the original the most. This is written from the perspective of Shion, the character who went mad and murdered everyone else. Her motivation was the lost of her crush, who had returned her feelings, but left the village and never returned. The truth was that he had succumbed to the illness, but no one in the village was aware. The lies piled upon lies built her paranoia, even subverting the promise she made to him - to protect his younger sister while he was gone. Instead, in that arc, Shion killed his sister and regretted it immensely, only to return in future arcs to become very protective of her. Truly cute couple, really.
No comments:
Post a Comment