This review will contain spoilers for both the original Higurashi anime and Higurashi Gou/Sotsu. If you haven't seen the original Higurashi anime, I highly recommend it if you like mysteries. It's very well written and it kept me on my toes. I can't, in good faith, recommend Gou or Sotsu.
Now that I've finished the show, I can safely say that while it didn't get markedly worse from episodes 1-13, it hasn't gotten any better, either.
There is so much reused animation that this entire show feels like a clipshow, and not a very good one. The pacing here is God awful, shocking because the original Higurashi had wonderful pacing and Gou, at the very least, had decent pacing. Everything moves incredibly slowly and we're shown scenes we've already seen throughout Gou. If I had to guess, I'd say an entire third of the animation in this show has been reused. That's to say nothing about the story, which is just "here's this event, but there's also a scene here that adds almost nothing." Want to see how Keiichi got to L5 in Gou? Too bad, here's a scene after where it ended showing the police tackle him - oh, and Satoko does more evil shit or something. Want to see how Mion is injected with the syringe? Go fuck yourself! It happened when she and Satoko went for a drink or something. Want to see how badly Satoko treated Rena? Oh wait, they actually did a pretty good job with that one - more on that later.
I've seen a lot of people respond to the complaint that there's a lot of reused animation with "well, the original Higurashi did the same thing." I disagree with this. Firstly, the original Higurashi was made on a tight budget, which is why it looks so rough around the edges. Secondly, the original Higurashi revealed genuinely important secrets throughout the second season. It wasn't obvious that Mion was actually Shion, or that Keiichi had hallucinated Mion and Rena trying to kill him.
Speaking of Shion, she's in this season for about 10 seconds. I'm not exaggerating, she's here for one scene. Forget about Satoshi. Oh wait, Satoshi makes a little appearance at the end, just to say fuck you for thinking that we'll do anything with his character.
Going back to Mion, why don't we destroy one of the things that made her completely and utterly unique? We have an opportunity to give Satoko a roadblock, let's waste it! I'm sure you already know where this is going.
Mion was incredibly unique in the original series. She's the only one in the friend group who is immune to the deadly syndrome that plagued the original series. While the anime cut a lot of her character out, in the original visual novel, she served as the "rock" of the group, helping inspire Rika to keep pushing on along with Keiichi. Sotsu turned her into a yandere, almost exactly the same as Shion - just replace Satoshi with Keiichi. It changes almost the entire formula of the show. It took her a little bit longer, but she succumbed to the disease nonetheless, which has never happened in the Higurashi universe. I can't explain how disappointing this is.
Going back to Satoko, there is little to nothing stopping her. She is a God, or rather a demon. There's a scene where she finds out that Rika has to die before her or else it won't be the "same" Rika, but that does basically nothing.
...And they gave Satoko a way out. No no, you see, that wasn't the REAL Satoko, it's a demon/split personality that was created by this deity when the power was given to her. This makes little to no sense; the original Higurashi was about redemption, how people can grow and get better. On top of that, most of the actions in the original series, including Takano's, were due to the syndrome. This show explicitly states that Satoko was cured of Hinamizawa syndrome, along with the rest of the village - except for Satoshi, who's in a coma until the end of the series.
"Evil" Satoko has got to be one of the least likable villains in anime. Even Takano was somehow more likable. She's callous and cruel and comes off as horrifically abusive to Rika. Also, we get it, you don't need to show her eyes turning red every single time - she's evil.
Going back to the parts that I enjoyed, it was nice to see the first chapter from Rena's perspective. They did a really good job showing her descent into madness. Obviously, there was no twist, we saw Rena stab Keiichi - the clock meant nothing, as had originally been theorized by a lot of the fanbase. We also saw Satoko inject Rena with the disease and laugh when Rena started to go insane. It serves only to make me dislike Satoko even more, but apparently people like to see the "crazy" girl do evil things. I do love the scenes where Rena interacts with Rina, it's not as gory as Gou was and it felt a lot more like the original Higurashi. Rena's story also made sense and was believable, and the animation being recycled wasn't as obvious at this point.
If I had to rank the stories so far, it would be Rena's > Ooishi's > Mion's. Rena's story was great, Ooishi's story was kind of interesting, Mion's was horrible.
Just like Shion, Satoko's feelings towards Rika seem to have been put on the backburner. I wasn't a fan of this, the "psycho lover" story has been done to death and it feels incredibly harmful to make the only lesbian character a psychopathic killer and abuser. With all that being said, it comes off as queerbating in a medium that has more than enough of it.
There are some other good parts, including learning about Eua and seeing a bit more Hanyuu. However, it's not worth the obnoxious Satoko story and definitely not worth the reused footage. Also, this is an incredibly minor complaint, but Passione decided to add a weird fanservice scene involving Hanyuu - in one of the only dramatic moments that has been believable so far. It's also weird seeing it in Higurashi of all places, a show that has (thankfully) avoided fanservice thus far, aside from a widely disliked OVA.
Overall, while Sotsu is slightly more enjoyable than Gou, there is far too much reused footage, and the weaknesses from Gou are even more pronounced. I would not recommend watching this show unless you're desperate to finish Higurashi as a whole - though I'm slightly convinced that there's another season worth of reused footage in the works.
Sotsu feels like a bad fanfiction. The ending shows that very clearly. The original ending to Higurashi was, unfortunately, firmly stuck in the "friendship overpowers all!" dynamic; however, because the characters were so well written, it overcame the odds and concluded with a satisfying final episode. None of the characters in Sotsu matter at all aside from Rika, Satoko, Hanyuu (who's barely there) and Eua (who mostly laughs maniacally.) They tried to do the "friendship overpowers all" ending again... and ended up justifying abuse. Rika and Satoko decide "well, we don't need to be together all the time! Let's be friends." Friends, after being tortured, mentally and physically.
Mind you, Rika grew up, originally. She made new friends. She got slightly more distant from Satoko. She became an average high schooler. And Satoko responded by trying to mentally torture her "friend" so that she would stay in a village that Satoko knew Rika would hate. This "friendship" ending is such bullshit because Satoko, at this point, does not deserve the kinship of any of the people she's continuously tortured. There wasn't even a redemption arc trying to justify her, it's just "well, both sides were bad, so Rika deserved to be tortured I guess." Even with Teppei, his "redemption arc" comes down to "Satoko killed him and made him think it's a dream, so it's okay now." Gou and Sotsu seem to have a real problem showing that abusers are wrong in their actions, something the original Higurashi didn't struggle with.
Also, remember all the queer undertones from Gou? How a lot of the fanbase insisted that it wasn't queerbating, and that Satoko's romantic love for Rika would play a role in the story? Nope, they're just really really good friends. Satoko just doesn't want to lose her friend. How much clearer can we make it that they're just FRIENDS? Never mind all the implications that we've thrown out there from the beginning, Satoko harbors no romantic feelings towards Rika and vice versa. Satoko went on a killing spree because she didn't want to lose her totally platonic friend.
Overall, this show has been incredibly disappointing, and every criticism I've had has always been met with "No, Higurashi wouldn't do that, there's gonna be an episode where they explain it/it's a fake out." (aside from Satoko's character being drastically different, which I supposedly imagined and somehow was unable to see the "clear signs" that didn't exist.) And yet, we're at the end. They haven't fixed anything, and the story is just as unsatisfying at it has been from the beginning.
I would rate this a 3 out of 10. That score is for Gou as well as Sotsu. They're basically the same trainwreck.
