• it/its

hi im maja im somewhere around 30yrs old and sometimes i draw. this is my blog for posting about random stuff.


gallery website!
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for a couple of months now, i have been feeling nostalgic about higurashi. like many other teenagers around the world, i watched the studio deen anime when i was young and was fixated on it for a number of years. when umineko was releasing, i read the visual novels as they came out, and once ch8 was finished, i eventually put the franchise away. occasionally, ive thought about reading the higurashi vn, or at least the well regarded manga adaption, but ive never had the motivation. i was in the middle of one of these thoughts, when the new silent hill announcement dropped, and all of higurashi went on sale for very cheap on steam, so i ended up finally going for it.

this is an unstructured post of various thoughts i have had while reading the first chapter, onikakushi, this week. there will be open spoilers for the entire series as i am a returning fan.


i enjoy ryukishi07s art a lot, and i personally believe ryukishi07 art is the best aesthetic for reading umineko. however, a short time into this playthrough, my discomfort with the way ryukishi07 draws these kids, particularly in their PE uniforms and the... "fanservice" sprites, led me to swap over to console art. while somewhat plain, i do appreciate that these characters genuinely just look like normal kids in the console version's art, and there is no uncomfortable emphasizing of body parts on anyone's sprites. the steam art of course is an absolute travesty when it comes to this criteria and i will not even consider it jokingly. console art, using 07th-mod, also has the added benefit of variable sprite sizes to emulate different distances between characters, which i felt elevated certain scenes. my favorite such scene was the uso da scene, when rena abruptly zooms in much closer with a blank eyes sprite when she starts speaking differently.

more than the horror, gore, and difficult subjects, the sexualization of its child characters is what i believe to be what most makes higurashi unapproachable and difficult to recommend. there is a certain amount of crass dialogue that i think adds to the characters' personalities, particularly when it comes to mion, but higurashi crosses that line and then continues dashing out into the street and out of the city. when i was younger, i mistakenly assumed this element to be played up to a tasteless degree in the studio deen version, and as i have grown older i have been disappointed to find out that it is actually faithful to the visual novel in that aspect. the swimsuits, the fetish outfits and accessories, the frequent indulgent descriptions in keiichis monologue and dialogue of how sexually desirable he finds his friends to be are frankly, disgusting and unacceptable. it actively lessens the text, completely undermining the series stance and handling of the subject of child abuse. the characters engaging with the sexualization in question become worse when they are possessed by the spirit of being horny over 10yos. not a single one of the scenes where the kids are playing batsu games to make each other do fetish shit are even a fraction as effective at conveying that they are good friends, as the TIPS scene where rena walks into the classroom and the rest of the kids abruptly start up a play historical fight.

with that out of the way,

ive always heard that the original higurashi vns have rough pacing. and its entirely possible later arcs will be worse, but i was pleasantly surprised by onikakushi. it definitely had its moments, at some point in the middle with all the different scenes of keiichi talking to ooishi i started getting impatient, but i had prepared myself for something much worse. my playthrough clocked in at 9.5 hours, and i definitely spent at least a combined hour afk while the game was running.

as someone with knowledge of the entire series, its hard to judge onikakushi on its own merits, or imagine what a first time reader would feel or think. i know ryukishi07 absolutely didnt have everything plotted out at this point, and itd be fascinating to see what his plan was at the onikakushi stage. theres no mention of the gas disaster, and i believe its been confirmed that midichlorians-hanyuu did not become a thing until later on as a response to fan theories. but slotting later revelations into onikakushi retroactively still works remarkably well. on the hanyuu point, i really enjoyed the hallway scene where keiichi imagines a girl is standing behind him outside the door. i think its pretty clear in onikakushi's writing that the intent was for the "solution" to be somehow drug-related. the possibility that tomitake was drugged is repeated multiple times, keiichi goes to the clinic for his faked cold and is suspiciously given a shot with no attention given to it, and keiichis note is torn off where he mentioned drugs and syringes. its incredibly fun to think about what the full picture was supposed to be at this stage, and i wonder if its ever been brought up in any interview or such.

in this reading, and with my spoilers knowledge, ive been reminded what a complicated and compelling character rena is. im always a sucker for characters who put on a facade to get people to like them more. thats autism baybey. taking onikakushi's writing entirely on its own, i think she comes across a bit two-dimensional in this text alone, mostly bouncing between "ditzy ultra-demure classmate" mode and "craaaaaazy anime girl" mode. but giving onikakushi the benefit of hindsight with whats revealed about her character later in the series, there are so many fascinating moments with rena in this chapter. particularly when it comes to the subject of satoshi. her sense of deep regret and guilt about not being able to do anything when satoshi disappeared hurts so much. while i do think the sequence in the last day where rena is comically chasing after keiichi has always been one of onikakushi's weaker points, (he really just needed to get keiichi back to his room with the girls SOMEHOW and the solution he came up with was an awkward one) reading the text on its face as a desperate rena pleading for keiichi to talk to her and let her help before he disappears too is heartbreaking. i love her. i want to get to tsumihoroboshi so bad but i have 69 hours of reading to go before i get there.

in general, there was way more focus on satoshi in onikakushi than i expected. my memory of deen's very hasty adaption is hazy, and i did have a look and confirm that he was actually brought up even in deen's version of the story, but i was surprised by how much onikakushi indulged in the satoshi mystery right from the start. the parallels between keiichi and satoshi's manifestations of the syndrome is an incredibly compelling theme, and rena's and mion's responses to it are both great. i wish there had been at least some satoko time in here to add to it, but i know thats coming in tatarigoroshi.

mion has always been my favorite character in this series. shes funny, relatable, i love her design, and her family is fascinating. the fact that throughout the whole series she never once doubts or betrays her friends and family no matter what happens is so compelling and often tragic. in this reading, the smallest little line from mion stood out as my favorite piece of writing in the entirety of onikakushi. from the third screenshot at the top of my post,

"Please, Kei-chan, don't mention Oyashiro-sama so recklessly! I don't believe in him, but the others very much do! Rena, especially!"

that line in the final day, in the midst of keiichi's full syndrome delusions, completely grounds the story. for the first time in the chapter, mion drops her tough guy act, and completely cuts through keiichi's paranoia with such a real show of concern for not just him but rena as well. the clear confirmation that there are villagers who revere and fear oyashiro-sama as a deity, and that mion simply thinks of it as folklore, but deeply respects and cares for her peers who think otherwise. its such a big, blaring and obvious signal that mion is clearly not up to anything, that theres no conspiracy to hide anything from keiichi for nefarious reasons. at this moment i immediately tabbed out, grabbed ep4 of the anime, and saw that all she says there is "hey, youre freaking people out" and threw my arms up. am i reading too much into it? is this a dumb line to fixate on? idk! who cares! this line is so good. i love this line so much. i love mion so much.

smaller thoughts
-tomitake has always been a meme character at most to me. weirdass fascy himbo guy. but the club members spending extended time with him at the festival and having a comedically last-day-at-the-job farewell scene with him was actually very sweet.
-god ooishi sucks so much lmao. what kind of dumbass cop thinks a group of 10yos are deeply involved in a village-wide murder conspiracy hes so stupid. i wanted to scream during the part where ooishi hammered down how weeeird it is that the boys who were attacked by rena at her last school never filed a police report!!! its so frustrating watching keiichi eat up everything ooishi feeds him instead of trusting his friends!!!!! but that is the point of the story of onikakushi, and i am going to be very happy to see more friends and less cop in future chapters lol
-renas fingers being slammed in the door is so awful. it hurts to read. god.
-you know its a red herring manifested from the ramblings of a deeply paranoid person that is never brought up again but dropping the concept of the construction manager still being alive is so fun. what if he was though. who was phone?

overall, i had somewhat tempered expectations, and needed to talk myself into accepting that the morally reprehensible "fanservice" parts of this story exist and that choosing to read this series means being exposed to them. but i ended up walking away happy with what i read. for the first couple of chapters i would only read a little bit every evening out of obligation, but i read the last 4 hours of the story in one compelled sitting. im very excited to start watanagashi and get some good sonozaki content.

hope you enjoyed reading my takes. i never learned how to read.


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in reply to @minmaja's post:

On that thing about having a tag about media thoughts, I think there's #whatcha reading/watching?

I started using #game log for whatever games I've been playing/visual novels I've been reading(and accidentally flooded the tag by backtagging my older posts) but I dunno if there's any for specifically longer posts about media in general?

No, he had! At least to some extent. He's confirmed in interviews that he had already decided on the ultimate mastermind from the start, but that his original plan for them was slightly different. And it's clear even from just Onikakushi alone that it's hinting at various things that get revealed later on. But he's also confirmed that he changed up a lot of details, and even created Hanyuu herself, after fan feedback. I think he absolutely had an idea in mind of what the end goal was, but not exactly every single detail leading up to that goal, if that makes sense. It's a pet theory of mine, I don't think it's been confirmed anywhere, but I personally think he hadn't thought of the "gas disaster" until Tatarigoroshi. Just because of how conspicuously missing it is from Onikakushi and Watanagashi's endings, and that when it does get introduced and later explained, the rules for whether or not the gas disaster is executed are somewhat clumsy imo.