Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou

Higurashi: When They Cry - New
Promotional image from Kadokawa
ひぐらしのなく頃に (Higurashi no Naku Koro ni)
Genre	Mystery, Psychological horror, Supernatural
Anime television series
Music by	Kenji Kawai
Studio	Passione
Licensed by	Funimation (North America) AnimeLab (Australia, NZ) MediaLink Entertainment Ltd (SE Asia)
Original run	October 1, 2020 - ongoing
Episodes	26

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (ひぐらしのなく頃に, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, lit. When the Cicadas Cry), licensed in English as Higurashi: When They Cry - New, is a 2020 adaptation of the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni visual novel and an alternate version of the 2006 anime created by Studio DEEN. The new project, animated by Passione began airing on October 1, 2020.

Plot

On one hot summer day in 1983, a transfer student named Maebara Keiichi comes to a peaceful rural village in Hinamizawa. There, he befriends his classmates Rena, Mion, Rika, and Satoko. Accepted as a full-fledged member of the "club," Keiichi and the gang plays all sorts of activities ranging from card and board games to hide-and-seek. But just as Keiichi was beginning to be assimilated in simple rural life, he stumbles upon the dark history of Hinamizawa. As Keiichi dives deeper into the mystery, he finds that his new found friends may not be all what they claim to be.

Characters

Main characters

Keiichi Maebara (前原 圭一, Maebara Keiichi)

Voiced by: Sōichirō Hoshi (Japanese); Grant George (English)

Played by: Gōki Maeda (movie), Yu Inaba (TV series)

The protagonist of Onikakushi-hen, Watanagashi-hen, and Tatarigoroshi-hen. The son of a famous artist, his family recently moved to Hinamizawa after a violent incident event involving him in their hometown. His charisma and remarkable talent for rhetoric, which earns him the nickname "Magician of Words," allow him to easily make new friends and become popular in the village, not to mention win some of the club activities.

Rena Ryugu (竜宮 レナ, Ryūgū Rena)

Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (Japanese); Mela Lee (English)

Played by: Airi Matsuyama (movie), Minami Kato (TV series)

Rena is a girl in the same grade level as Keiichi and the main female protagonist of the question arcs. She is very kind and takes care of Keiichi whenever possible, but is also naïve and is usually subject to light teasing by Keiichi. She is distinguished by her obsession with things she perceives as adorable, calling them kāii (かぁいい, a slurred form of kawaii (かわいい), meaning "cute"), which are usually moekko characters or items she finds while scouring the local dump. Whenever she sees something that grabs her attention, she proclaims "I'm gonna take it home!" (お持ち帰り〜, Omochikaerī) and proceeds to try and do so, becoming virtually unstoppable during these intervals. She also utters the phrase haū (はぅ〜) when excited or flustered, and has a habit of repeating phrases at the ends of her sentences, most famously kana? kana? (かな? かな?, lit. "I wonder, I wonder?"). This is also an onomatopoeia of the sound that higurashi cicadas make.

Rena's real name is Reina (礼奈), a name she used normally before she moved from Hinamizawa to Ibaraki with her parents one year prior to the events of the story. There she discovered her mother having an affair, causing Reina to smash all the windows in her new school and assault three male students with a metal bat under the influence of the Hinamizawa syndrome. Believing herself to be cursed by Oyashiro for leaving Hinamizawa, Reina returned to the village with her father shortly after the incident and changed her name to "Rena" out of shame of her parents' subsequent divorce. So as not to alarm Keiichi, Rena claims to be a relative newcomer to Hinamizawa herself. Because of the incident, Rena is sensitive about the topic of Oyashiro, believing strongly in the existence of the deity and the curse, and becoming angry and unstable whenever anyone questions it. Her weapon of choice is a large cleaver borrowed from her tool shed (the dump in the anime).

Mion Sonozaki (園崎 魅音, Sonozaki Mion)

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (Japanese); Megan Hollingshead (English)

Played by: Rin Asuka (movie), Rika Nakai (TV series)

Mion is the oldest kid in Keiichi's class. As the elder, she is the class president and everyone looks up to her as the leader. Her social skills are on par with Keiichi, whom she highly respects as a friend and rival (though it is later shown that she is in love with him). She acts like a tomboy, and calls herself oji-san (meaning old man), but has a hidden girlish side. She is next in line to be the head of the Sonozaki household, one of the Three Families which holds tremendous influence in Hinamizawa. She is often seen with a holstered airsoft gun, even though she is never seen using it, and was removed in the PS2 adaption of the game; she is, however, very adept in the use of martial arts. She is notable as the only character that has never been driven to the extreme paranoia that causes the others to kill in the question arcs and the first two answer arcs. Her real name is actually Shion, as she was born second to the family, but due to sister swapping even at a young age, she was mistakenly taken as Mion and branded with the oni tattoo, ultimately causing her to stay as Mion. Mion also serves as leader of the after-school club consisting entirely of the main characters. She organizes a variety of strategy-based games for the members to play with penalties for any losers. Penalties usually involve wearing embarrassing or frilly outfits on the way home. Each game she organizes involves bending the general rules or using questionable and crude methods to win such as playing cards with a marked deck or using feminine wiles to discourage opposition.

Satoko Houjou (北条 沙都子, Hōjō Satoko)

Voiced by: Mika Kanai (Japanese); Jennie Kwan (English)

Played by: Erena Ono (movie), Reina Seiji (TV series)

Satoko is a younger classmate in Keiichi's school. She has a distinctive style of speech, ending all of her sentences with ~wa, and is known for her boastful laugh. In spite of her young age, she seems to have an impressive arm strength and is quite clever in setting up traps, and likes to practice on Keiichi. Although her personality is quite energetic and mischievous during the events of the games, Satoko's past was full of trauma; she shoved her parents down a cliff because she was paranoid, caused by the Hinamizawa Syndrome, and she was abused by her foster parents (her aunt and uncle), and her beloved brother Satoshi disappeared. And in Matsuribayashi-hen, Irie suggested she killed her parents because she thought they would kill her, and so to her it was an act of self-defense. She was suffering from the Hinamizawa Syndrome at that time, and though Takano wanted to dissect her alive for study, Irie fought to save her life. She is one of the few characters to ever recover from Level 5 of the Syndrome, but has to take shots on a regular basis. Though she greatly misses Satoshi, and feels that by being strong he will return, she comes to regard Keiichi as her new "nii-nii" (にーにー, a cute term for "older brother"), and once even regards Shion as "nee-nee" (ねーねー, a cute term for "older sister"). She dislikes kabocha, and confuses cauliflower with broccoli.

Rika Furude (古手 梨花, Furude Rika)

Voiced by: Yukari Tamura (Japanese); Rebecca Forstadt (English)

Played by: Aika (movie), Hinata Honma (TV series)

Rika is the main character in Minagoroshi-hen. She is a younger classmate in Keiichi's school, and is in the same grade level as Satoko. Naturally, she is great friends with her, as they live together in the same house. She is revered by the villagers as the heir of the local shrine, and plays the role of a miko in the annual Watanagashi Festival. She has been the head of the Furude house since her parents died, but rarely attends town meetings due to her young age. While she does speak in normal context, she likes to say nonsense words such as mii (みぃ〜) and nipah (にぱ〜) and often ends her sentences with nano desu (〜なのです, lit. "it is so"), which inflame Rena's passion for cute things. She also likes to describe events using sound effects, such as "The cat was going 'nya nya' and 'scritch scritch'" or saying "Clap! Clap! Clap!" when clapping her hands. In reality, she is being reborn in a 'new world' at some random time before or during June 1983, and in most of the worlds she is the only one to remember the previous lives. She believes she has lived over 100 years by the time of Tsumihoroboshi-hen, but continues to act like a child in order not to alarm her friends. Prior to Matsuribayashi-hen, she is the only one able to see Hanyu, who has been an "imaginary friend" to her all her life. Despite her young appearance, she seems to be quite fond of wine, as well as kimchi, which she uses to silence Hanyu when Rika is in a bad mood; this works because both Hanyu and Rika's senses are linked together, though this seems to be redundant by Matsuribayashi-hen, possibly because of Hanyu's coming into the world. It is later revealed that Rika's death would cause an outbreak in Hinamizawa which everyone would go on a rampage of hysteria. Further on, she attempts to stop Takano from her killing spree by pulling her friends and others around her together.

Recurring characters

Oyashiro (オヤシロ)

Always referred to as Oyashiro-sama, he is a deity observed in Hinamizawa and seems to be rather violent and brutal; his sacred shrine is full of ancient torture equipment. Legend says that Oyashiro brought peace between the villagers of Onigafuchi (Lit. Demon's abyss), the former name of Hinamizawa, and the demons that spouted from the Onigafuchi Marsh. The actual existence of Oyashiro is something of debate, some can see Oyashiro as the simple "perception" of a god. However, those who experience extreme paranoia (Keiichi, Shion, and Rena in perspective chapters) refer to Oyashiro as the "footsteps you hear when you stop walking" and felt like you were always "being watched".

Kuraudo Ooishi (大石 蔵人, Ōishi Kuraudo)

Voiced by: Chafurin (Japanese); John Snyder (English)

Played by: Tetta Sugimoto (Movie), Shinobu Tsuruta (TV Series)

Kuraudo Ooishi is a veteran police investigator at Okinomiya who has vowed to solve the mystery of the Hinamizawa murders before his retirement, to avenge the first victim who he was friends with. Due to his uncouth tactics and the lengths that he goes to in order to solve the mystery, he is looked upon as a nuisance by the villagers, especially the Sonozaki family. He approaches one of the main characters to become his informant in several arcs, and is sometimes unwittingly responsible for triggering their paranoia. However, he plays an integral role in aiding the protagonists during the last two answer arcs, Matsuribayashi-hen and Minagoroshi-hen.

Jirou Tomitake (富竹 ジロウ, Tomitake Jirō)

Voiced by: Tōru Ōkawa (Japanese); Kyle Hebert (English)

Played by: Masashi Taniguchi (movie), Yuma Ishigaki (TV series)

Jirou Tomitake is a freelance photographer who occasionally visits Hinamizawa (Around three times every year). He gets along well with Miyo Takano, because of their similar interests in photography. Despite being only an occasional visitor, he seems to know a fair amount about Hinamizawa's past (Specifically the Hinamizawa murders). Ooishi and the police are suspicious of his true identity. In the first six arcs, he is consistently found dead of suicide (clawing his throat out) on the night of Watanagashi, triggering many of the events that follow. It is revealed later, however, that he was actually murdered by Miyo, who gives him an injection of the H173 drug, produced in the process of developing a cure for the Hinamizawa Syndrome, but has the exact opposite effect (incurring the symptoms of the disease instead). Jirou is revealed in Minagoroshi-hen to be an officer working on the Hinamizawa Syndrome, together with Miyo Takano and Kyosuke Irie, and is but merely posing as a photographer.

Production

The anime project was announced by 07th Expansion and Kadokawa on January 6, 2020. Akio Watanabe serves as the new character designer and Keiichiro Kawaguchi serves as director. Kenji Kawai is returning as music composer and the original cast from the 2006 anime all reprise their roles. The series was originally slated for release in July 2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. An official trailer was released by Funimation on July 3, 2020, citing a Fall release date. On July 6, 2020, the release date was narrowed to October 2020. On August 21, 2020, a collaborative event promoting the release of Higurashi: When They Cry - New and the mobile game SINoALICE took place. On September 19, 2020, Hong Kong distributor MediaLink Entertainment Limited announced it would simulcast Higurashi: When They Cry - New.

Episodes

No.	Title	Original air date
1	"Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Episode 1"	October 1, 2020
Keiichi Maebara and his friends, Rena Ryuuguu, Mion Sonozaki, Satoko Houjou, and Rika Furude, enjoy their life in rural Hinamizawa. While Keiichi and Rena are spending time together at the dam construction site, Keiichi meets Jirou Tomitake, a traveling photographer who is visiting Hinamizawa. In response to a joke Keiichi tells, Tomitake offhandedly mentions gruesome death had recently took place. Keiichi attempts to find out more information about this but finds his friends are unwilling to reveal anything about it. Later, Keiichi discovers a news magazine detailing a violent dismemberment that took place some time prior.