Juin 1983. Hinamizawa est une petite ville d'apparence paisible de la campagne japonaise où le personnage principal, Keiichi Maebara, vient emménager avec sa famille. Il va très vite se lier avec quatre de ses camarades de classe, quatre jeunes filles nommées Rena Ryugū, Mion Sonozaki, Rika Furude, et Satoko Hōjō, qui l'acceptent dans leur club d'amateurs de jeux de société. Leur bonne entente commence toutefois à se détériorer quand Keiichi apprend petit à petit certains éléments de l'histoire récente du village. Tout débute apparemment par un meurtre horrible commis quatre ans auparavant suivi d'une série de mystérieuses disparitions, mais ces faits sont passés sous silence. Pire, il semblerait que les amies de Keiichi aient été mêlées à ces événements ! Après le festival de Watanagashi, célébrant une déité locale, Oyashiro, de nouvelles énigmes apparaissent...
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Higurashi is an adaptation of an independently released horror/mystery visual novel series. While those kind of games usually work in the way that you have multiple paths you can choose (and often have a "definitive" true end after you played through all of them) this one actually has an overarching mystery behind them. So instead of getting a "mixed" adaptation or only one of them you get them all. The basic setup for the different arcs is always the same: Our protagnonists goof around in the town of Hinamizawa in your typical 'Slice-of-Life' manner until shit hits the fan on the night of the local Cotton Drifting Festival. By no later than then someone has lost all their marbles thanks to the curse of Oyashiro, smashing all their friends to a squishy red mass. To keep the mystery flowing each of the arcs features variations within including who will be covered in blood at the end and in each of them you learn some new hints to what is happening. Most of the arcs also get an "answer arc" to them in which you see things from a different character's viewpoint covering more ground (although only two of them are present in the first season). If you want to know the truth behind it all you will have to watch season 1 and 2 which leaves you at 50 episodes. From that point on everything is optional. Season 3 is 2/5th fanservice and 3/5th a new arc and season 4 is just an hour long action/gore fest that isn't really in the spirit of the first two seasons. Now the reason why I watched the show is simply because I love horror and if you see recommendations within the genre it does not take long for Higurashi to pop up. It is however not exactly what I hoped for. Due to the repetitive nature it can sometimes be tedious, especially so the "The Disaster Awakening Chapter" arc in the second season. The early parts of every arc are also often really silly. What it really does do well is building the mystery and changing the tone from cutsey to sinister. The art itself hasn't really aged well and isn't detailed but the expressions of the maniacs are always great and I loved how the crazies sddenly et demon eyes. The sound design is OK and I guess has many taken from the game and no one can hate on an OST composed by Kenji Kawai. The whole thing is flawed in my book but it is an interesting ride. PS: I called the show just "Higurashi" but the full romaji name would be "Higurashi no Naku Koro ni" for the first season and the official english title is "When They Cry". If you were to translate it directly from the Japanese you would get something like "The Moment the Cicadas Cry" which sounds just as shit so yeeah, it's easier that way :)...
One of my favorite anime of all time. Very creepy, very cryptic, and very emotionally taxing. Things get too explicit and loose their mystic quality in the next seasons though, so keep this in mind if you want to watch the following seasons as well