#Minagoroshi

[jlalt]

!!SPOILERS FOR MINAGOROSHI-HEN!!

I REALLY wanted to redraw this, since its such a pretty piece. unfortunately i never learned how to draw actual human anatomy, like bones and stuff so i just traced them :sob:

regardless i seriously love how this turned out!! plus, this song really fits Takano surprisingly well.

[transmascmion]

Minagoroshi spoilers

but WHAT IS GOING ONNN

FJDJDJ I - THIS GROUP OF 12-17 YEAR OLDS ARE BEATING UP ASSASSINS AND STEALING THEIR CARS I-

[skelltan]

oh ok

[witch-of-illusions]

[uebermacht]

Ok, so Minagoroshi was... quite a lot longer than I expected; and for the longest time I wondered how a chapter with a name like that was the most hopeful and optimistic of all of them so far. But then, the final chapters hit.

Up until then, we left mysteries and curses behind us and finally tackled the real enemy: social norms and the public administrative bodies! And the cast splendidly managed to shatter all the obstacles that have been making the other stories so miserable.

That and the chapters length were the reasons why the ending kinda caught me by surprise, because by then I was sure it would be a two-parter with Matsuribayashi and end at the festival, but no, it needed to give you a final punch to the gut while going down.

But what else is there to say, the cat's finally out of the bag and the majority of mysteries are explained in this one. A lot came together as I theorized, but it was still surprising and ironic to see that a lot of the crazed characters delusions of the former chapters actually turned out to be true, but not in the ways we thought.

For the climax: even though I found the character who turned out to be the villain to be suspicious before, her reveal was far more extreme than I imagined. Her motives are, frankly, very bizarre and severely unhinged, almost cartoonishly so, if it wasn't for the really depressing consequences.

Sure, a lot of the reveal and the main casts actions where kinda corny, but I learned from several other stories that even the silliest and most cliche things become immensely powerful and emotionally impactful if you trudge through enough depression and despair beforehand.

And finally, some thoughts on the whole thing with Rika and the addition/reveal of Hanyuu: I suspected some time loop shenanigans for the longest time, since there is little to no other possible in-universe explanation for the narrative structure of the stories.

I personally don't mind it much, but I have to wonder how Hanyuu was received when the story originally came out. Somehow I can imagine that some people might not have been too happy about it, that's how it usually turns out with the inclusion/confirmation of supernatural elements in mystery-centric stories... but oh well.

With this, all the puzzle pieces are on the table and I guess the final chapter will try to piece them all together to a (hopefully) satisfying ending, I'm looking forward to it.

[utaitemusic]

みなごろし / なきそ - 歌ってみた【オリジナルMV】Cover

[pinkskunksleepy]

[connan-l]

Long Rant incoming, but I finished playing Yoigoshi from the Higurashi console arc and god, it really reminded me of how much I hate how it handles Yae Towada's character.

I like Yoigoshi in general, I even think it's one of the best Higu side-arcs, but man the entire abuse narrative has such an insensitive and gross undertone and framing.

There’s always been criticisms about how Ryukishi handles abuse, especially in Umineko, and generally I'm more lenient than most on the topic because I think that Ryu still manages to portray it in a very nuanced complex way, but damn Yoigoshi is the only instance where I’m really like "hey fuck this." The story is just so insistent to tell you it was Bad that Yae killed her abuser that it ends up feeling like insidious victim-blaming.

I have no problem with humanizing abusers or portraying abusive relationships as complicated. I think it's even important, because that’s often how it is in real life. But there's a difference between giving depth to an abuser, and putting the abuser's feelings over those of the victim and then downplaying and shifting the blame of the abuse, and Yoigoshi 100% fall in the latter. I think what pisses me off the most is especially... the implication that Somehow her boyfriend was about to get better; that if she'd just waited long enough instead of taking matters into her hands then he would have stopped abusing her and their relationship would have turned out for the best. Even though there is zero evidence that he would have stopped hitting her, and that we know how these stories turn out in real life, with the girlfriend dead. But here we're supposed to believe that she's in the wrong for killing him, and so the story put the blame on her for not… loving and trusting the guy who put her in the hospital enough somehow??

And like, okay, obviously it's awful she ended up having to kill him, and usually I always respect and appreciate Ryu's insistence that violence only breeds further violence and is never a good answer to problems, but here the general vibe feel so much like a "well okay it sucks he was abusing her, but murder is still worse" and highlighting the fact she "made a 'mistake' instead of properly trusting him," which comes across as just so unsympathetic towards her situation and how she was still the primary victim in all this. Honestly fuck the boyfriend, he had it coming

The other thing that bothers is the other characters' reactions too. Like okay Journalist Dude is an asshole so him victim-blaming makes sense, but none of the others actually defend her? Everyone agrees she’s 100% in the wrong?? The most sympathetic is probably Otobe, but even then he’s pretty mild. I genuinely feel it's insulting that Mion, who has a personal experience with abuse victims via Satoko, doesn't try to defend Yae at all, even saying Journalist Dude has a point, like what.

The console arc actually makes it worse tbh because we're stuck in Journalist Dude’s head who is just The Worst + Miyuki having this horrible speech at Towada and victim-blaming her even more, wtf?? (which, okay,  she's a cop to be fair so that does feel in line with what cops do orz, but that still feel so wrong because Miyuki within the story is portrayed as a pragmatic, intelligent person, like she’s a voice of reason, and no one call her out on her bullshit speech either, so that just frames it as if she’s Objectively Right about this when. She’s just not!!)

And then Yae’s sidelined after the reveal, play no role in the final confrontation when even Journalist Dude get to play hero and just show back up at the end so that we know she'll "pay for her crimes" and go to prison.... urgh, I hate everything about it. The only way I’m staying sane with this ending is by headcanoning Shion afterwards being all "nah that’s bullshit" and busting Yae out of prison thanks to her Sonozaki connections so that she can live free without having to throw away years of her life because of her abuser.

To continue on this, suddenly it hit me how Yoigoshi actually feels pretty similar to Tatarigoroshi regarding their narratives about abuse; however the difference is that to me Tatari manages to works in what it’s trying to say, or at least that it manages to say it in a more sensitive and compassionate manner, whereas Yoigoshi fails badly at it.

The two arcs have that same premise of having a victim stuck in an apparently inescapable abusive relationship, and the solution the characters comes up with is to remedy to it via violence in killing the abusers. Doing so result in the situation becoming worse and making them lose what they wanted the most. The message put forth that in the end violence only ever creates more violence and problems, and that no matter how horrible the situation is there are always (peaceful) alternatives to be found.

Ryukishi always had a general emphasis in all of his stories that violence only breed more violence and for a push to find other alternatives solutions instead (with a few exceptions and muddy framing here and there), and this is something I usually like. Tatarigoshi/Minagaroshi are specific narratives that function really well when it comes to this, and manages to do so while being (mostly) respectful to the abusive circumstances and the victim it portrays. The reason why I believe that Tatari/Mina is able to work compared to Yoigoshi comes down to two central differences:

First, there’s the fact that in Tatari the one killing the abuser is not the victim of the abuse (Satoko), but an outsider (Keiichi). Tatari’s second part really highlight the fact Keiichi becomes increasingly self-righteous in thinking he’s the only one who truly cares about Satoko and that he can solves the problem by himself; he doesn’t consult his friends or any adults properly (not about the murder), and more importantly he certainly doesn’t consult the primary concerned, Satoko --- something the narrative reproach him, and in the end 'punish' him for in how he completely wreck his relationship with Satoko and ultimately even fail to protect her at all, when that was the goal in the first place.

In Yoigoshi, the killer, Yae, IS the abuse victim. Unlike Tatarigoroshi, she’s the one with the agency deciding to carry out the murder because she feels she has no other ways of escaping. Neither of these are ‘better’ than the other per se, but that’s an important distinction, because Tatari puts into perspective the thing Keiichi’s murder really does in the end is denying Satoko’s input and agency as the victim and dismissing her own feelings on the circumstances; something a lot of people tends to do in these situations, thinking they already have the whole thing figured out without actually listening properly to what the primary concerned feels and what they want to do.

The second point is the entirety of Minagoroshi. Tatari has the benefit of proposing an actual alternative on the murder, and by doing so emphasis it has to be done with 1. the help of a community; even with the system failing Satoko badly, the story says there’s still hope in relying and working with people he trusts. 2. It finally let Satoko have agency and highlight her feelings as the victim; SATOKO is the one who has to makes the final decision to leave her abuser, to tell the social services that she’s abused. No one can makes that for her, and this is what saves her. In the end, the others can offers her help, but SHE’S the one who has to save herself.

But Yae, on the other hand? Yoigoshi doesn’t have a ‘Minagoroshi’; the only alternative Yae is offered is that she should’ve... just trust that her abuser was going to be ‘better’ now, because he said so and found a job he hasn’t even started yet. That she should just believe he was going to stop hitting her; despite the fact even in the brief scenes we're shown with them together before his death he's still seen as having to actively force himself to not be violent with her. No community or support is offered to her; she vaguely mentions having friends from college but she never seems to be in contact with them, we're told nothing about her family, or about having any kind of support network who could help her, really; we’re told she thought about leaving, but the story never really explore that more that it. Yae’s only alternative to murder is just... to blindly hope that her boyfriend was truly going to 'change.' (I suppose you *can* make an argument the story say it was just the murder that was bad and that she could’ve left him afterwards, but it’s never hinted at anywhere, be it in them manga or the VN). And there's nothing offered of the sort a the end of the story once she committed the murder either, except for her going to prison.

Tatarigoroshi/Minagaroshi and Satoko’s original arc are very important to me and ones of my favorite aspects of Higurashi.

I’ve seen criticisms of it because of how passive Satoko seems to be in them, only being there to be ‘saved’ --- hell, even Ryukishi himself said last year GouSotsu had kind of been written because he wanted to give her more spotlight because she felt too much like a ‘damsel in distress.’ There are some ideas and premises about GouSotsu I do enjoy and respect, and Satoko never having a proper spotlight in the original Higurashi is a fair criticism, but calling her a ‘damsel in distress’ actually annoys me, because as I’ve said here, she was anything but; she’s an abuse victim whose story is entirely about how her agency should be prioritized and how in the end she’s the one who saved herself, and I’ll always cherish how much Higurashi consistently make a point  in saying and showing that she is genuinely a very strong and brave person.

And Tatarigoroshi/Minagoroshi is able to do all this all while acknowledging that yes, generally, murder and violence are wrong, but even in Tatarigoroshi the narrative never entirely blame Keiichi for coming to this solution --- and that's pretty clear in how it treats Satoshi too, whose situation was pretty much the same as Yae’s, and who is offered a lot more compassion and understanding on the matter, here too emphasizing that even if he did murder his aunt it was only because he was a child everyone around him failed and that he felt he had no other options.

Yae Towada’s story /should/ have been more like this, because in the end what she did was very similar to what Satoko did. She saved herself, the only difference being that there was no community to help her out like Satoko had, and so she had no other choice but to resort to violence.

The story does makes a point in saying she’s determined and, in some way, a strong person, but it seems to be mostly there as a weak attempt to parallel Rena, and the attention focus more on the fact that she made a ‘mistake’ that she has to pay for at the end. What Yae was led to do is definitely a sad thing, but one that was done out of desperation; and as it is, the framing only makes it seems like the narrative’s punishing her for this, when just like Satoshi it certainly should not be something she should be blamed for.

[internationalplayboysdotcom]

OKAY WE SAVED SATOKO SO PLEASE GOD CAN YOU JUST LET RIKA BE HAPPY NOW CAN YOU LET HER ENJOY THE SUMMER TOGETHER WITH ALL HER FRIENDS PLEASEEEEEEE PLEASE

[dawn-in-the--adan]

higurashi no naku koro ni: minagoroshi-hen (massacre arc) vol. 1 - 6

[onewholivesinloops]

satoko watches minagoroshi and sees her friends coming together with the entire community to fight for her sake and save her from her abuse because of the deep and genuine love they feel towards her but feels none of the hope this fragment's satoko feels, because in her own world rika gently had the elders passively stop ostracizing her by putting an end to the dam war without addressing any of their wrongdoings against her and leaving her bearing scars that everyone pretends don't exist, which means satoko didn't get the chance to work through all this trauma, and to be convinced by her best friend at her most vulnerable that she does deserve to be loved, to be provided with the help and support she needs to escape her abusive environment, and most importantly that it was okay for her to be born and to continue living, but even then this fragment was ultimately never satoko's story, it was rika's and satoko being saved is only a part of that. a stepping stone towards rika's victory, so to speak. rika is the main character, rika is the special one, and rika is the one who was gracious enough to always let satoko be a part of her life by inviting her to live with her and protecting her from the village's discrimination. there's an immense power imbalance in their relationship caused by their upbrining and rika holds privilege over satoko, because the environment they were brought up in always treated them as polar opposites. satoko was the scapegoat, the one who's ostracized, neglected, and abused by family and the villagers alike. rika is the one who's deified and loved by the same people, and this dynamic was never challenged and is reflected again in how they're treated at st. lucia. satoko never allows herself to feel any resentment over these things for the longest time and compartmentalizes that, because after being told her entire life that she brings her abuse onto herself she believes she deserves it and she needs to suffer to get stronger anyway because it's all a trial, but after going along with rika's dream and watching her loops she watches herself being saved from teppei's abuse and yet nothing about this is cathartic because, even if this had happened, the future wouldn't be any different and she'd still be stuck between traumatic past and future with nowhere to go. satoko being saved from teppei's abuse becomes immaterial because she already knows how this tale ends. no matter what, satoko ends up feeling betrayed, isolated and unwanted. satoko becomes certain that, from the moment she was born, she never had a chance at happiness.

rika was complacent in her abuse her whole life, and satoko later learns that she was the same for a hundred years worth of that. in every tatarigoroshi fragment rika just drank herself unconscious and after witnessing a hundred years of that where she lived through so much suffering, including stuff that rika didn't experience or doesn't even remember, it becomes even more painful that rika keeps asking satoko to suffer for her dream's sake without granting her the chance to say no, even though she only ever fought for satoko's sake a couple of times. it's hypocritical and insulting. there's no undoing all of this and this story could never genuinely happen when her uncle is nice now, her friends are also kind, and the world is supposedly so much better, but she's just as traumatized and alone as she always was, so all she can do is weave together this tale which is a deception of a story she only ever got to watch and never actually experienced. satoko has always been someone who doesn't want people to pity her. she feels guilty because being pitiable is what she thinks led to satoshi abandoning her and her mother blamed her for being the catalyst of that and even went as far as telling her she shouldn't have been born, but in these loops she's once again trapped in a hopeless situation where all she can do is lavish in this pity. revictimizing herself because satoko doesn't feel like she has an identity outside of her suffering and trauma. satoko houjou is nobody if not the girl who's always abandoned, abused and ostracized.

tatariakashi is satoko pouring so much of her anger and resentment into one tale because nobody will ever see her for who she is and she feels as though she's being gaslit by the contradiction between the past and present because almost everyone arbitrarily decided it's finally time to stop abusing her without actually making any effort to acknowledge the hurt they caused her. rika also wants to save satoko from her abusive situation and this feeling is rooted in the deeply flawed and tragic love she has for satoko, but it's also selfish, controlling and thoughtless because rika feels special and wants to have both her dream and satoko even at satoko's expense when saving satoko this way ensures nothing but her tragic fate.

satoko may not be capable of being the main character in the same way as rika, but she can, at the very least, become the controller of the tale behind the scenes. she can be the abused and the damsel in distress and the pitiful princess, but also the witch and the bad victim.

[transmascmion]

Just finished Minagoroshi! I think this is the longest one according to my steam time lol

Random messy thoughts and spoilers below

Overall I really liked this one- did it feel slow at times..? Yeah. There was a lot of dealing with the consultation center GJFJD

But tbh, it felt important- you really feel the characters struggles that way! Not to mention all of this emphasizes how much these characters love each other- which is one of my fave aspects of the games XD

I love Hanyuu she’s so cute (playing with original sprites tho cuz i uhh. Don’t like her Updated look.)

Tbh the whole ending bit of the cast being like “Hanyuu we all died cuz u didn’t believe” kinda made me sad cuz I kinda related to her despair- but it is important and I respect the authors decision to stick to the message and themes. I think I really should take these themes more to heart lol,,

Uhm what else- I loved seeing more Shion she’s great XD also having Ooishi as an ally was cool to see as well.

Irie still needs JAIL I’m sorry it’s so hard for me to get behind his character GKGKH

WAIT I should mention the uhh. Hinamizawa Syndrome stuff is wild to me- this is the second VN type game I’ve played where the reason characters are killing each other (and sometimes themselves) is cuz of a drug made to kill lots of ppl (if u know the game you get a cookie gkgkg)

Tbh not a huge fan of when games pull this kinda stuff, but it doesn’t ruin it for me lol I still thought “yeah that makes sense”

OH speaking of the ending CAN I SAY THAT RIKA SAVING SATOKO, EVEN THO SHE COULD HAVE RAN AWAY AND SAVED HERSELF WAS THE CUTEST THING EVER??? AAAWHHH she was NOT gonna let her bestie die!! All the Rika and Satoko stuff this chapter was so sweet I just- aaaa they love each other so much 💚😭

Sooo yeah, overall I thought it was kinda cool. Not in my top 3 but to be fair there are some STRONG games in this series- hard to compete with XD

[96percentdone]

Y'know the thing about Irie and crew not letting Satoko know about her Hinamizawa syndrome is like. I'd understand not detailing parts of her sickness that would make things too complicated for her, or explaining it without getting into the excruciating specifics. She is a small child in a fragile state 24/7, and some things they could tell her have the potential to exacerbate her symptoms when they DON'T have a cure and there ARE no other adults in her life, but like. That's not the situation; they're just actively lying to her about why she's taking shots every day, and she doesn't know she's sick and that's absolutely unfathomable. She should still know she is sick in a way she can understand it without it hurting her! I think that's possible actually!

[zestyaahbutler]

Watch me whip

Now watch me nee-nee

[roseofcards90]

This is still the quintessential Shiirena interaction like I’m so obsessed

[illusionaloptics]

Just thinking about the confrontation in Minagoroshi-hen. Rena knew her death was inevitable but she embraced it and got the last laugh. What a legend