Higurashi: When They Cry – Gou – 15 – Scratch Off

After coming so close to a good ending only for a crazed Ooishi to kill everyone, Rika is buoyed by her friends to try five more loops before using the fragment of the weapon she can use to kill herself for good. I figured the loops would gradually unfold in the next few episodes. Instead, we get all but one in one go!

This new loop starts out promisingly, with Ooishi and Keiichi getting along famously over their shared love of mahjongg (stop trying to teach us mahjongg, anime!) Ooishi’s mahjong buddy also makes an appearance: Akasaka, who is introduced with a soft filter and angelic light.

Back in 1978, one of Rika’s predictions saved his wife Yukie’s life, and he’s come to return the favor. Rika asks him to stay for the entirety of the Watanagashi Festival, and he agrees. Rika is genuinely happy and hopeful about this development!

Then there’s a smash cut to her covered in stab wounds and bleeding out on a tatami mat. Akasaka is the crazy killer scratching his throat out. Even as she burns Rika laughs out loud at how whimsical fate is, puts up her hand, lowers one finger, and snaps.

The episode doesn’t bother with the lighthearted fluff; we just fast-forward directly to the killing, as Mion and Shion’s mother is this loop’s crazed slasher, and she uses her katana to behead her own daughter, vowing to erase their family’s blood for good. Rika lowers two fingers and snaps just as her shoulders are relieved of her head.

In the next loop, Kimiyoshi is the killer, and drags Rika by a rope, rows her into the middle of a swamp, and tosses her overboard with a rock to drown her as a sacrifice…but not before Rika has to endure way too much unhinged monologue and bad breath for her taste. As she sinks into the swamp, she lowers three fingers and snaps.

Just when we’re wondering what ridiulous hell-scenario Rika will end up in next, there are columns of riot police outside the cosplay cafe, where a very itchy Keiichi is bludgening everyone to death, including Rena, who can’t get him to wake up from the bad dream. Rika gets Keiichi to end her life quickly by telling him the secret to getting rid of the “maggots in his neck” is to bash her skull in and eat her brains. She lowers four fingers and snaps.

These loops have become the most unbearably hellish torture for Rika, who is trapped in the goriest version of Groundhog Day ever. It is by far the bloodiest and hardest-to-watch episode of Gou to date. Those scratching sounds…Jesus. If Rika keeps to her plan, she’ll only have one more life to endure before ending it by her own hand. But will that really work?

The Quintessential Quintuplets – 14 – Scattered to the Five Winds

While his family sleeps, Fuutarou is hard at work hand-writing comprehensive problem sets to ensure the quints pass the exam coming up in seven days. As usual, his burning of the candle at all five ends results in him collapsing into a “death-like” sleep before he can reach the door of their apartment.

Itsuki, frustrated that he’s late, finds him out in the hall, and her annoyance immediately shifts to genuine concern, then genuine gratitude to see how hard he worked for her and everyone’s sakes. It’s no surprise she’d react this way, considering she was the first to originally seek Fuu’s help…but it’s still lovely to see her smile behind his back.

Fuutarou is happy that all five sisters are present for the session, but things go off the rails shockingly fast due to the persistently butting of heads of Nino and Miku. First, it’s little things like Miku borrowing Nino’s eraser or Nino drinking out of Miku’s can (though joke’s on her, it’s matcha soda!) Fuu’s attempts to get them to get along fail miserably.

Then Nino, regarded as the most sensitive (as well as prickliest!) sister, gets fed up and heads to her room to study alone. When Fuu tries to stop her, she tells him to butt out of family business. When Miku hands her her copy of the problem set, she slaps it out of her hand. Then Itsuki gets involved, slapping Nino and ordering her to apologize, showing Nino how Fuu handwrote all those papers.

Nino is clearly contrite, but also doesn’t want to lose face (as she sees it). Above all else, she’s hurt, angry and disgusted that her four sisters have turned against her and fallen for all of Fuutarou’s “slick talk”. She then decides to double down on her stubbornness and move out.

When she accuses Itsuki of being a “domestic violence meat monster”, Itsuki decides to move out too. It’s a disaster! The next day (with only six days before the exam) Miku joins Fuutarou to search for her missing sisters; Ichika and Yotsuba are apparently busy with other stuff.

Then Miku asks a crowd if anyone’s seen someone who “looks like this” (referring to herself, not a photo), and they locate Nino at a luxury hotel, to which Miku is able to gain access by simply pretending to be Nino. Fuutarou pleads with Nino through the door to remember how she’s always been the one who cared the most about her sisters and their home, but that doesn’t work.

Any time Fuu, an “outsider” to Nino, tries to act like he knows them, it only makes her more resentful. However, she does notice the bracelet Fuu was wearing when she mistook him for “Rintarou” (and basically fell for him), and takes it off his wrist before slamming the door. As for Itsuki, well…as soon as Miku mentioned she ran out without her purse, I had a pretty good idea where she ended up: Fuutarou’s place!

She’s already having a second helping of Raiha’s curry when Fuu comes home, seems to borrow Fuu’s gym clothes to sleep in, and along with Fuu make an adorable Raiha futon sandwich at night. Basically every second of Itsuki at Fuu’s place is a gift, with her seiyu Minase Inori delivering a wonderfully warm and subtle performance. While on a moonlit walk, Fuu protests Itsuki continuing to crash at his place, saying a “well-off girl” won’t be able to survive.

Itsuki corrects him: only a few years ago (and likely around the time Fuu met Mystery Quint(s) in Kyoto), she and her sisters lived in poverty, due to her mother having to raise five kids all at once. When mom fell ill and passed, Itsuki took it upon herself to “guide the others” in her stead, which for Fuu explains why she slapped Nino. But Itsuki laments that she seems to have failed.

The next day, Fuu conronts Yotsuba, who has apparently joined the track team. She apparently couldn’t say no to the captain, and he’s unable to get her to quit. He tries to reason with Nino, but can’t get past hotel security. With all the quints separated, his prospects of helping them pass the next exam are in dire straits—especially with Nino saying she doesn’t care whether she passes.

With only four days until those exams, Fuutarou considers trying to drown himself in the river, thinking it might unite the girls, before immediately checking his suddenly dangerous thoughts. He then comes around to thinking Nino was right; he should have never come into his lives, which seemingly caused all this discord.

Of course, they came into each others‘ lives years ago, as the arrival of a grown-up version of the Mystery Quint appears before him, leading him to jump into the river after all. What the hell was that? A hallucination? Our boy’s been pretty sleep-deprived. Ichika in a wig, dressed for an acting gig? A sixth sister? (No, probably not that.) Who knows, but she’s gone when Fuu climbs out of the drink. I would think if she were actually there, she’d have expressed concern about him falling in!

That said, Yotsuba runs past the soaked Fuu but doesn’t stop, as she’s practicing for track (I alsonoted that her shoes match the one that snapped a twig while Fuu and Itsuki were on their walk. Not sure what to make of that except…is Yotsuba doing track to stay out of the way vis-a-vis Fuu and the other sisters? At any rate, dunking himself apparently washed away his discouragement, and he heads back to Nino’s hotel, where again he’s stopped by guards.

But when Nino spots him, part of her admires his dogged perseverance, part of her feels bad for how wet he is, and part of her doesn’t want the other hotel guests to be subjected to him, so she invites him up to her place. Maybe she’s cooled down enough to hear him out…or maybe she just wants to ask how he came to possess Rintarou’s bracelet!

Episode Two Quintuplet Ranking:

1. Itsuki: The classic and presumptive Best Quint on most lists, here she really earns that top spot with the lion’s share of screen time. She showed all the sides: the eager student, the strict mom, the freeloader, the clear-eyed reminiscer, the moonlit walk companion…just a very strong overall showing. Total Points: 8 (2nd)
   
2. Nino: Yes, she’s a huge pain in the ass, but also yes I love her very much and just want her to go home! Getting that super-expensive hotel suite is so Nino, who’d never. She’s also wonderfully dense about the Fuutarou-Rintarou connection. Total Points: 9 (1st)
   
3. Miku: Good to see her standing up to the seemingly stronger-willed yet also more sensitive Nino, and defending Fuu’s hard work beside Itsuki. Total Points: 5 (Tied for 3rd)
   
4. Yotsuba: Second straight ep where there’s just not much of her, to the point I’m wondering if she’s avoiding Fuu on purpose. Total Points: 3 (5th)
5. Ichika: Ichiwho? A near no-show this week, though like Yotsuba there may be a reason: despite being the eldest, Ichika tends to fade into the background when sister conflicts rage. Total Points: 5 (Tied for 3rd)
   

The Promised Neverland – 14 – Bless Us for These, Thy Gifts

This week the kids catch two key breaks. First, they weren’t captured or killed by the farm trackers or the wild forest demon. Second, Mujika and Sonju, the two demons who rescued them, don’t eat humans and have no intention to harm them. In fact, it’s been so long since they’ve encountered humans they’re happy to show them ample hospitality.

Sonju later tells Emma and Ray that after endless war and killing, humans and demons agreed stop hunting each other and split to the world into segregated halves. All the humans on the demon side were “gifted” to the demons and vice versa. With hunting forbidden, farms like Grace Field were established. And, oh yeah, the great split happened over a thousand years ago.

At first Emma and Ray are gobsmacked by the amount of real time that has passed, but then literally jump for joy. The fact that demons only rule half the world and humans are free on their half is a huge boost to their outlook. Even if Sonju says no one has ever crossed the boundary between worlds, well, Emma and Ray will simply be the first, that’s all!

The pair relay the news to the others and rallies them to their suddenly more concrete cause. The good demons, who practice their religious faith by not eating human flesh, show the group the proper way out of the tunnel network under the forest to eventually reach the spot indicated in Minerva’s pen.

On the way, they teach them all of the things they need to learn to survive on their own, from building fires and cooking to medicinal plants and archery. Gilda and the little ones harshly scold both Emma and Ray for being so reckless earlier. They can’t afford to lose either of them, so they have to start being more careful and speaking up if they’re hurt.

When Sonju heads to the surface to scope out the area for threats, Emma accompanies him, but not for a change of scenery. She wants him to teach her something he hadn’t to that point: how to kill a living thing. Sonju acquieses, and while Emma initially hesitates to loose her bow on an unassuming bird, she eventually does so, and hits the bird right in the head.

While a clean strike, the bird is not yet dead, so Sonju shows Emma the Gupna, a ritual that takes place to give thanks and show respect for the kill.. By plunging a vampiric Vida branch into the heart of the still-living bird, when the plant blooms it means the meat is safe to eat. It also means the gods have approved the meat for consumption

When Emma remembers the same plant being used on her family members, she retches, but completes the ritual, adding her own prayer: “We don’t want to be eaten. We want to live. But we’ve been eating others too. And if we can’t keep eating, we can’t survive.” When she returns to the caverns with Sonju, the kids notice something different about Emma. Indeed, while out in the forest, making her first kill, she was changed irrevocably. You can see it on her face, and in the haunting way she whispers “I’m okay.”

I for one am glad the kids not only caught a couple breaks this week, but were blessed with a path forward. Not only that, for a few days they were able to stop being runaways or survivalists and simply live like the kids they are, being fed and taught and not having to worry about running for their lives. Emma took an important step into the new normal by officially becoming an active rather than passive participant in the food chain.

P.S.Check out Crow’s Episode 2 review here.