Higurashi Gou

the original and gou seem to be the closest to each other, however a lot of information in gou is built off stuff you only learn in kai. threads will be filled with it too, so I'd say that's the bare minimum. everything else is either unrelated spinoffs/side stories, or more detailed but more time consuming (the VNs)

Hoo boy! two 20+ anime series in a row? Let's fuckin go

ganbare user, and don't worry, gou still has 20 episodes left split across two seasons. you've got time to finish, and honestly unless you still don't know a lot of the big spoilers you'll come across just by posting on Zig Forums hanging out in the threads will get you adjusted to the series. if you seriously know next to nothing about it though get as far away from higurashi threads as you can until you finish both or you'll learn the big twists almost instantly

Yeah I'm headin' out. Thanks user.

I'm going to split this in two since, if you're interested, there's a lot to cover. So, basically mystery fiction in Japan started with a bunch of English mystery short-stories and novels getting translated into Japanese in the later-Meiji era (mainly by this one guy, Ruikou, who translated a bunch of other stuff too.) Now, I say translation but it was closer to adaptation in a similar way to earlier anime where it was 50% the original story, and 50% heavy localisation. Anyway, the Japanese public still ate this shit up and started making their own around the Taisho-era and (since that lasted about two minutes) the Showa-era. The real Japanese literature fans didn't like this because they found that puzzle plots were shitty and didn't have much of that prose and emotion and such that you want from your I-novels and poetic smut. So there was this general perspective where books were split into "serious literature" and "mystery bullshit."

Around this time, a monk called Taro Hirai pops up and decides he wants to write his own August Dupin fanfiction ala Arthur Conan Doyle. Only, being more brazen than Doyle, he wasn't content with just stealing Poe's schtick but also his name and he started calling himself EdgarAllenPoe but in Japanese. This was Ranpo and after a little while of writing mysteries he had an idea. What if, he thought, mysteries were more fucked up and sexual and illogical? This lead to a new subgenre called ero-guro-nonsense which was short for erotic, grotesque, and nonsensical. And the Japanese populace read these and went holy shit sex and violence rocks.

But because mystery novels sort of live and die on being logical and making sense, this pissed off all the fans of real mystery novels and they decided to split the mystery genre in two camps. Henkaku for unorthodox mysteries, the wacky bullshit, and Honkaku for orthodox mysteries.

The henkaku style was often focused on psychological horror, as well as frequently getting experimental and modernist and lead to stuff like Dogra Magra which calls itself a mystery but is mostly a Freudian fever dream.

And then World War 2 happened and this killed the mystery novel for a while because the Japanese government decided they weren't patriotic enough and demanded everyone write spy stories instead.

Once the war ended, a literature fan pretending to be a mystery fan called Seicho Matsumoto popped up and started talking shit about how bad all the character writing in mystery novels was, since they were all about the puzzle. Now, for some reason, a bunch of writers in the community listened to him instead of telling him to fuck off and as a result a new branch was made called Shakai-ha (social school.) These were more like police procedurals and dramas with very little focus on the puzzle (if one even featured.) Most of Matsumoto's own mysteries are actually just high school maths homework about trains with melodrama on top. And so, until the late Showa-era, the majority of mystery novels were mostly about the feelings of the characters, and very little on impossible crimes or other tricks.

Then, one day, a bunch of mystery writers had an epiphany. They realised that they could do weird sex shit and character drama but still focus on good, fairplay puzzles. This lead to the revitalisation of the whodunnit spirit but with the knowledge of the ero-guro and social school years in what was called shin-honkaku (new orthodox) mystery. Unlike prior honkaku mysteries, shin-honkaku usually focuses on how much much one can play with the genre while still keeping a fair puzzle as the heart. So you'll often see very meta mysteries, or works that blend aspects of sci-fi other genres in. Basically, shin-honkaku mystery are the goal and style of honkaku mysteries, but with the experimental attitude of henkaku and (sometimes) the deeper character focus of shakai-ha.

>"hey Keiichi, I have a super secret scrapbook that Takano gave me before she died, I will reveal this crucial and dangerous information, so please don't say nothing to your friend because she's the next super hitler from Hinamizawa"
>not even fuckin 24 hours
>see mion laughing for 5 minutes
>"HEY MION, WANNA HEAR SOMETHING FUNNY?"

Yep going in blind made the VN so much better for me. I literally had no idea that Shion was real until the reveal. I thought it was just Mion being goofy.

What? Why would Ojiisan wear a ribbon in his hair?

It's still one of my best memories how I was literally crying seconds before Shion got revealed and it turned into a comedy scene.
The author set me up for 1 or 2 hours to troll me like that, so it's sort of a downer that Shion is spoiler so easily nowadays.

If you feel really intriged and want to get more... Yeah, you could check the anime (Better read the VN, but I dont know if you want to get into that. Its pretty good but long)

Interesting read, thanks user

No problem! I sorta did broad strokes but the history of mystery novels in Japan is really interesting. It also adds a lot to Ryukishi and, say, NisioisiN's stuff. Higurashi and, especially, Umineko are really neat products of the genre's evolution.

Even with the spoiler, it's a pretty damn good scene. I finished Watanagashi-hen just before Onidamashi 4, and the Shmion scene was very moving.

We're dying, Higurashibros

Uh, there's other threads up you know.

And both are at bump limit.
Just let it go, the amount of discussion is more than fine for a weekly series. If anything, dragging out the threads during dead time would be way worse, especially with how circular some theories are with people working with wrong information. Or autists with their own drama.

Oh it's gonna happen, for 6 straight months.

>watch the first series
FUCK SECONDARIES YOU'RE EVEN WORSE THAN PEOPLE STARTING WITH GOU

>not starting with Okami Kakushi

Attached: 2438.png (330x360, 17.11K)

Would Rena turn Yandere for Keiichi?

>What the FUCK was her problem?

Premise of the story was a virus turning the townsfolk into violent murderers.

Definitely. She kissed him in the original series

Keiichi's mom is cute!