Higurashi no Naku Koro ni tells the tale of a group of ordinary high school students who live their happy lifes together in their weird little club in this little town. However, everything is not what it seems in this little town. Every year, one person dies and another person disappears on the night of the Cotton Drifting Festival. Villagers blame it on the curse of the town's local deity, Oyashiro-sama. And so, the group of high school students find their lives intertwined somehow with these events.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni has a very interesting format. Every arc starts out all happy until the characters go all insane. Then once the stories wrapped up in four episodes or so, everything resets and we get another story involving the same characters, but different things happen. This allows us to see different sides of all of the characters and how they react to different situations, allowing us to get a deeper understanding of them that greatly adds to the show. The format also helps as when an arc ends, you really want to know what happens next and who's going to go crazy next arc (as a lot of people go crazy on this show, trust me). And so that adds to Higurashi no Naku Koro ni's experience and makes it such an addicting, show.
And really, this show is so addicting. While I didn't find Higurashi no Naku Koro ni to be scary at all, I did love the suspense. While episodes do not always end with cliffhangers (there's very few actually) due to the mystery of the show, you need to watch another episode so you can try to figure out what's going on. The events that happen to the characters in the show are horrific and you truly pity them, even the ones who go absolutely insane. And while this season doesn't tie up all loose ends (the equal Kai, which I haven't seen but will very soon), it still ends well enough that even without a season two, it's just a really melancholy conclusion instead of a mess like other shows do.
The best part of Higurashi are the characters. While at first glance they seem like your normal harem stereotypes such as the dull harem lead, the moe girl who likes cute things, the tomboy, the moe loli, and the tomboy loli, they are not. All of the characters have hidden sides, almost like split personalities, inside of them. No one in this show is how they seem upfront, and finding out the character's true sides is part of the fun of the show. However, having characters with personalities that can change with a drop of the hat does mean that they can be however the story wants them to be with no pattern. While it does typically come off more as cool than lazy, I can see this angering some.
And now let's talk about the animation. Ah, the animation. To put it simply, Higurashi is one of the most badly animated anime I've seen. While it isn't the worst, it does come really really close at times. Characters almost never look on-model, people do not move when they talk, and their faces are commonly hidden. They always make these really silly faces that are supposed to be scary, but they are not, they are silly. Faces are covered in shadows often, and don't even get me started on the fight scene in the last episode. While Higurashi is not an action anime and good animation isn't necessary, there was more than one time where I thought that if Studio DEEN had just a little more budget, the scene would be more awesome.
Fortunately the soundtrack fairs much better. The opening theme is haunting and fits the mood of the show perfectly, with a slow-paced ending with haunting Engrish lyrics. The background music, while it doesn't have any standout tracks, does fit the show perfectly and adds to the tension. However, these voice actors are awesome. While they do sound average when the characters are normal, when the characters go insane, they just sound so perfect with some of the best acting I've seen in an anime and they really make their characters more believable.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is an addicting anime, and once you start watching you cannot stop. I recommend it to any anime fan.
