While I did really like a lot of Sotsu like Satoko’s perspective, so much of it could have been condensed. 70 percent of the content we got during this season was just rehashed from Gou. If you can suffer through the reused footage, Higu Sotsu has some of the best moments of the entire series in my opinion. Episodes 12 and 15 are probably my two favourite episodes of the entire franchise. Watching Satoko’s gradual descent into darkness and the lengths she’s willing to go to in order to break Rika’s spirit was simultaneously horrifying, yet amazing. I enjoyed seeing Eua and the divine aspects of the Higu series front and centre for once as well. The first few seasons focus heavily on the humans and the virus portion of the lore, but Sotsu gives a lot of time to the mystical and magical elements of Higurashi lore.
I think Sotsu has everything that makes Higurashi great. Mystery, dread, pain, magic, murderous lolis, etc., but it just feels inconsistent. There’s episodes that have mainly new content(last 3) and are a blast to watch, and then there’s ones that feel like a chore to sit through because I’ve already seen everything. Then there's episodes like the finale which kind of feel like a slap in the face to OG Higu fans because of the majority of time and money going to a loli fist fight and other plot conveniences. The final episode feels like it just came out of nowhere and left myself and others disappointed.
I honestly struggle to understand why they made a full 15 episode season of this instead of just making Gou longer and or just doing what MagiReco season 2 did and making a really short second season. The only explanation I can come up with is BD sales, for which higher episode counts equate to more volumes and profits. It looks like the production committee were having just as hard a time as the fans with saying goodbye to the beloved horror series. Sadly, they didn't leave it on the best note.
Because of the repetitiveness of everything, it’s really hard for me to rate Higu Sotsu. On one hand, I did really enjoy watching it and when we got new content it was on par with or better than anything we’d seen before, the DBZ style fight with Satoko and Rika in episode 15 will forever be immortalised. It just happened far too little and far too late in the 15 episodes for me to really rate Sotsu as high as I’d like to. For better or worse, the show does feel like a final conclusion to Higurashi and if you're a fan of the series you should watch it. I could see other Higurashi else-world stories being created later on whether in anime or VN form, but I’d like to think this concludes Rika, Keichi, Shion and crew’s long journey.
Higurashi Sotsu gets 7 out of 10.
