Keiichi Maebara: Difference between revisions

* [[Ichirou Maebara]] (father)

* [[Aiko Maebara]] (mother)

* [[Rika Furude]] (friend, clubmate)

* [[Satoko Houjou]] (friend, clubmate)

{{nihongo|'''Keiichi Maebara'''|前原 圭一|Maebara Keiichi}} is a main character in {{higurashi}} and protagonist of {{onikakushi}}, {{watanagashi}}, and {{tatarigoroshi}}.

 

Keiichi was born to [[Ichirou Maebara|Ichirou]] and [[Aiko Maebara]]. As a child, he failed to excel in any specific field. However, he performed very well on an intelligence test required to enter [[Wikipedia:Cram school|cram school]], proving that he is fairly intelligent. Keiichi has claimed that he does poorly when asked to solve problems without a direct connection to himself or his life.

After entering cram school, Keiichi was placed in an advanced class and his grades quickly improved. Keiichi was driven by the feeling of superiority he felt when he outperformed the rest of his class. However, the feeling of superiority began to fade as it became more regular and authority figures stopped praising him as often. In frustration, Keiichi purchased an airsoft gun with allowance money and used it on cardboard boxes as a method of relieving stress. Eventually, his target shifted from the cardboard boxes to small children he saw walking home from school. His actions led to a minor panic within the town and parents were asked to not allow their children to walk home alone. Some time later, Keiichi shot at a young girl he saw walking by herself. She turned to face Keiichi at the last second and the BB hit her in the eye. Despite being horrified by her pained screams, Keiichi ran away from the girl to avoid being exposed. Guilt consumed him and he spent ample time researching eye injuries. Eventually Keiichi, overcome with guilt, confessed to shooting the girl. This led to backlash from the community as well as great disappointment from his parents. In pursuit of a fresh start, the Maebara family moved to the much quieter town of [[Hinamizawa]].

 

Keiichi appears as a slender boy with brown hair and grey eyes. At school Keiichi wears a white collared shirt over a red t-shirt, navy pants, and navy shoes. Outside of school, Keiichi wears a black sleeveless shirt, green shorts with a black belt, and red shoes.

 

Keiichi is a passionate individual who tends to express strong emotions freely, for good or ill. He also has a great amount of charisma, which is presumably why he's already so well-liked in Hinamizawa by his friends and the other villagers who know him. Keiichi is also in love with life in Hinamizawa, because it's so much more fulfilling than his old life. Keiichi is normally open and outgoing, but when something comes between him and his friends, he can become very withdrawn and overly self-reliant, making it easy for him to develop Hinamizawa syndrome. It takes him remembering his mistakes from other worlds for him to really start trusting his friends.

 

 

Keiichi runs into Tomitake again and his friend [[Miyo Takano|Takano]] during the [[Watanagashi Festival]], where the club plays a punishment game with Tomitake and draws on his shirt. The next day, Tomitake is found dead by the police, and [[Kuraudo Ooishi]] interrogates Keiichi since his name was drawn on Tomitake's shirt. Keiichi continues to talk with Ooishi over the course of the story and learns some more information about his friends and how they're all related to the victims of Oyashiro-sama's curse. Rena and Mion also start to show strange behavior near Keiichi regarding the curse, and at one point he's given ohagi to eat and discovers a needle inside one of them. Fearing for his life, Keiichi finds a bat used by an old student named [[Satoshi Houjou|Satoshi]] and starts holding onto it for self-defense.

 

 

 

During the Watanagashi Festival, Shion leads Keiichi away from watching Rika's performance and brings him to the ritual storehouse, where Tomitake and Takano are trying to break in. Keiichi enters with them and learns from Takano about Hinamizawa's past and how the villagers are descended from demons, with the Watanagashi Festival originally a sacrificial ritual. They leave the storehouse and Tomitake mentions hearing a banging noise; Keiichi doesn't recall ever hearing the same thing.

Keiichi is taken to the hospital and gets his wound treated, and Ooishi arrives with some information. They found Rika and Satoko's corpses inside of a well in the chamber, however they also found Mion's corpse there; she died the day Keiichi was rescued. They also found a syringe on Rika's corpse, and Shion had committed suicide after jumping off of her apartment balcony. Furthermore, Takano's burnt corpse was autopsied and it was determined that the time of death was 24 hours before the Watanagashi Festival, meaning she was supposed to be dead while Keiichi was inside the warehouse with her. Ooishi leaves and Keiichi thinks about this sudden wealth of information, and Mion suddenly crawls out from under Keiichi's bed and lies him down to hammer nails into his fingers.

 

 

 

Later, Keiichi's parents are away and so Keiichi tries to cook dinner by himself, however he proves to be bad at it and almost burns his house down. Satoko and Rika arrive and cook dinner for him instead, and Keiichi soon learns that Satoko's brother had gone missing. Keiichi decides to become a replacement brother and starts building a close friendship with Satoko.

Keiichi survived the fall after landing in a river, and he wakes up the next morning and heads to the village to discover people loading body bags into trucks. He learns that the [[Great Hinamizawa Disaster]] had happened overnight, where all the villagers were killed by volcanic gas, and Keiichi is one of the few survivors. He starts freaking out and he gets taken to the hospital.

 

 

 

Keiichi does the exact same things he did in ''Watanagashi'', but unbeknownst to him Shion trapped Mion underground and was disguising as her in public while spreading a lie that the real Shion was demoned away.

 

 

 

After Rena kills [[Rina Mamiya]] and Teppei, Keiichi and the other club members go to explore the junkyard and come across their corpses. Rena confesses everything to them, and Keiichi tells her that they're all friends and she should've told them about her problems. Keiichi unites the club as true friends and they go to hide the corpses.

Rena heads to the roof to confront Keiichi, and they begin dueling with their hatchet and bat respectively. Keiichi realizes that their water gun fight earlier was unsolved and that this is the perfect chance to settle that; Rena starts to calm down through her fighting with Keiichi and eventually breaks down crying.

 

 

*Keiichi's school uniform is identical to [[Satoshi Houjou|Satoshi Houjou's]] other than t-shirt color.