Meaning of "Can you still believe it?"

Currently, Higurashi When They Cry Sotsu is on air.

From the fact that these tweets are growing so fast, I can guess that many viewers are stressed out to a greater or lesser extent.

The reason why many viewers are stressed out is that they don't understand what the characters are thinking and find it hard to sympathize with them.

This description is most likely intentional.

First of all, in the works of 07th Expansion, especially in the "When They Cry" series, there are many story structures that immerse the reader or viewer in the story and shake our way of thinking.

For example, in "Higurashi When They Cry", in the Onikakushi Arc, the protagonist's point of view is deliberately fixed, and by reliving the distorted perception caused by the Hinamizawa Syndrome, 99% of the viewers are made to suspect Rena Ryugu of having no ill intentions at first (The catchphrase's 1% response rate is based on one person's of a hundred comments, "Poor Rena, she didn't say anything wrong". It can be inferred that R07 places the utmost importance on not being dragged away and misled by Keiichi's hallucinations).

In "Umineko When They Cry", Beatrice's wish to have her feelings understood from the bottom of her heart is supported by numerous hints, but the structure is such that players has to think for themselves to find out what her wish is. In the beginning of the game, Battler thought Beatrice was a cruel witch and misunderstood that she had actually harmed her relatives.

In "Ciconia When They Cry", the impressions of the characters are manipulated by their superficial conversations and appearances, and when the information is sorted out, there are characters whose words and actions are clearly at odds with what they are thinking from a first-person perspective. There are characters whose words and actions are clearly at odds with what they are thinking from a first-person perspective.

In When They Cry series, readers, viewers, and players are led to misunderstandings and assumptions.

In "Higurashi When They Cry Gyo & Sotsu," are we being led to believe that viewers will be stressed by the lack of psychological descriptions?

This is because, based on the descriptions in the story so far, there is one important character who would definitely have felt a lot of stress due to the fact that she doesn't understand the psychology of the other person, and her impression of the previous characters would have changed drastically.

This is Satoko Hojo.

Recall how she changed her behavior.

• At first, she repeatedly committed suicide until she found "Rika who would give up on going to Luchia".
• After that, she switched to the idea of "if I can get Rika to give herself up, she won't leave Hinamizawa" by going after the pieces of Rika's 100 years.

Someone said, "Hey Satoko, if you've seen what Rika has been through for a hundred years, you should empathize with her struggles." If Satoko had really gotten the exact same information as the viewers from this 100-year piece of information tour, then that would indeed be true.

But once again, I would like to confirm how Satoko saw this hundred-year piece of the story.

The first fragment Satoko saw in the Onikakushi Arc is remarkable. What Satoko saw was: 

• The scene where Keiichi, in a state of doubt after the onset of the disease, falls down with a sluggish gait and points the bat at Rena, who slowly walks up to him.

The only information the player actually gets in the Onikakushi Arc is:

• Keiichi's first-person perspective (in this scene, Keiichi is running, but somehow Rena, who is supposed to be walking, has caught up with him)

In other words, Satoko doesn't get the same information as the player. There is a very high possibility that Satoko did not get the same information as the player, and saw a hundred years worth of "tragedies just happening without any psychological description".

We, the viewers, have accumulated a lot of stress just by watching Oniakashi Arc and Watamakashi Arc for a hundred years.

I think that viewers who have already seen Gyo and Sotsu will easily agree with me, but in a state where objectivity is guaranteed, it is very easy to grasp what is happening superficially, but it is difficult to sympathize with each character.

In other words, isn't the current audience driven by the same feelings as Satoko, who is behaving in a way that is most difficult to sympathize with on the surface?

If Satoko had gone through Matsuribayashi Arc and thought the Bukatsu members were important, the shock would have been even more severe.

In particular, it must have been difficult for her to accept the fact that Shion, who was kind to her, had been torturing her in grotesque ways in many worlds with the intent to kill her for Satoshi. Because of the lack of psychological description, there is no time to know that she regretted what she did to Satoko, or that she wanted to start over if she could.

Without any psychological description, it is not unreasonable to assume that someone in Hinamizawa will randomly develop the disease, and that it does not matter how kind the original person is, it is normal.

Also, the question of how Mion, who has never had the disease, would behave if she did, was not just out of intellectual curiosity, but a desire to learn more about Mion, whom she could not quite understand even after seeing the hundred-year piece.

There is no psychological description of Rika in the Satokowashi Arc. And just by looking at the Hundred Year Piece from an objective point of view, it may not be possible to convey how much Rika cared for Satoko. Rika is not a person who expresses her thoughts out loud. In addition to that, sometimes she even aggravates the suspicions of the other party by saying things in a demoness-like manner, as she did in Meakashi Arc and Tsumihoroboshi Arc. Satoko believed that she was being used for her own convenience until she went to Lucia. It is possible that she has now aggravated her suspicions to the point of thinking that Rika is someone who uses others as pawns and discards them when they are no longer useful.

(If Satoko finds meaning in everything Rika says, she might even misunderstand that she is using H173 to further raise the onset level of the disease and force them to commit suicide, instead of even thinking that she is treating acute onset patients with C120).

If Satoko's actions do not take into account the psychological state that each person is in, it is expected that she will suffer a painful retribution when she realizes the weight of having "become the one who treats the other as a pawn" and the harmfulness of the irreversible transformation of her memory from the victim consciousness of "being treated as a pawn by Rika".

Rika will also be forced to face the "sin of not facing the person who is alive here and now", which she would have been able to realize and overcome if she had not been blamed by anyone and if only the memory of Minagoroshi Arc had remained.

By the way, the person who is most affected by Rika and Satoko's witch moves is Keiichi. He can't observe the different fragments like Rika, and he doesn't even know about the existence of the syndrome. He keeps choosing the best solution, but somehow he keeps getting caught up in the tragedy.

Keiichi is likely to have ingested Rika's brain in Nekodamashi Arc, prompted by Rika's desire to be killed quickly and go on to the next piece of the puzzle.

Rika's brain is nested with the parasitic queen of Hinamizawa syndrome. And if she' s on the wrong side of being accused of behaving like a witch in Gyo & Sotsu, there is a very good chance that this will probably not lead to anything good.

This is a very personal wish, but I would like to pray that Keiichi will have good things happen to him as a hero in Sotsu without putting too much expectation on him.