Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kira is similar to Rei in that it has episodes that are just random nonsense that aren’t connected to the main plot as well as those that are connected and serve as somewhat of an epilogue. Kira is different from Rei though, in that while Rei was weighted more towards being an epilogue, Kira is weighted more towards random nonsense.
The first three episodes of Kira are primarily centered around comedy. The first mainly involves a series of random delusions Keiichi has about the rest of the female cast. The second involves Rika turning into a magical girl. The third involves sudden harem hijinks with between Keiichi and Mion, Shion, and Rena.
The first two of these were completely absurd to the point of clearly being parody and clearly not being canon. I found the humor in these episodes pretty solid, the absurdity of it happening with the cast from Higurashi making it stand out a bit compared to just standard absurd comedy. I also found how many references they put to the main story and how well those references worked for comedic purposes pretty impressive. A lot were pretty subtle, the type that if you’re not watching not long after the main seasons you’d probably miss.
The third episode isn’t as absurd or as comedic, with it being more down to Earth and is mostly within the realm of believability outside of how they kind of threw Shion in there as interested in Keiichi as well despite that concept having disappeared long ago during Shion’s answer arc in the first season. Still, I found the fluff amusing enough. All in all there wasn’t any point or depth to these episodes but they were pretty enjoyable for what they were.
The last episode is the one with substance. It takes place after the end of the main story, though I suppose whether it takes place after after Rei or not isn’t exactly clear as both are essentially epilogue like side stories. It doesn’t have that much depth and doesn’t seem to be trying to convey anything major. Still, it’s incredibly sweet and really adorable. It’s centered around further developing the bond between Rika and Hanyuu and especially developing how it grew to what it is now. It also showed how Rika was before she went through the gauntlet so to speak, the contrast of which was also pretty interesting and enjoyable to see.
I feel I should also note while the first two episodes were solid in terms of production values, being about at the level of Rei on average in terms of art, animation, and soundtrack, the final episode was a major step above that. The art, especially the backgrounds were great and looked genuinely beautiful at times, the animation was great, and the soundtrack fit incredibly well.
The OP is very different both in visuals and audio from all the other Higurashi with how upbeat it is, but fits pretty well considering these episodes are mostly comedy. The same applies to the ED, though to a lesser extent. I should also note that each episodes ED is slightly different with each being sang by a different character with that character being slightly more focused on in the visuals as well, which mostly matched up to the characters focused on in the episode though not quite.
