Higurashi no naku koro ni: Gou

I watched several episodes of this because I'd heard "When They Cry" was a great anime series and I actually didn't realize that this wasn't that show but a remake. And I was really confused because what I saw was so bad and I thought, how could this be a classic?

I watched three episodes before I realized my mistake, then watched the original, which is notably better. While the first two episodes of this remake are all cutesy games and banter with almost none of the mystery and horror, the original got going by episode 2, and the card game in episode one was genuinely entertaining, unlike the more elaborate games of this sequel.

One of the big annoyances of this series is the nails-on-chalkboard voices of the girls. They are all painfully cutesy. In the original there was more variety, with Rena's cutsiness balanced out by Mion's dryer delivery. I wondered if it was just bad dubbing so I watched one episode with subtitles but they did the same thing in Japan.

The animation is also more straightforward and less wild, and I found that rather dull and conventional.

I will say that the third episode was mainly horror/mystery and was much better than the first two, but no way I could keep listening to those squeaky voices.

Even though I didn't ultimately *love* the original, which is intriguing and compelling but a bit too intense in places for me, it is certainly much better than this one.

I haven't seen the original Higurashi, so I honestly came into this one blind. I was not ready. This anime has so many twists and turns, I don't even know what's gonna happen next! The adventures of Keiichi, Rena, Rika, Satoko, Mion, and Shion are so well fleshed out! This anime is fantastic!

What people forget about Higurashi besides the "horror" aspect, is the feeling of confusion because what makes Higurashi so memorable is the aspect of "mystery" I mean a whole alooooot of mystery, which they give you time to make your own theory as to what do you think is going on, and until they will show you answers later on as the show progresses. and this is what I love about Higurashi.

Starting off I'm quite a big fan of the higurashi series ever since I was a child, so seeing this type of execution of the show was like taking a child's candy, I am not talking about the plot, it's the same. I barely managed to watch the first episode and have this to say: please just watch the original series, I do not know who the hell thought this remake was any good of an idea. Starting with the most glaring issue: over the top visuals (comparable to that of h-word quality) not saying it's bad but in my opinion it really doesn't fit with anything in this show. The dialogue at times seems, well..... quite off (watch the og show and then this and you'll understand), and the scene where mion and Rena just sit there like npcs in the beginning before kiechi comes to them (also a moment of off dialogue) Oh and the voice acting, I personally may be very biased however the original sounded in my opinion much better.

TLDR: watch the original and never this of this again.

I haven't watched the original so my opinion is solely regarding this series by itself without comparing it to the 2005 version. Overall I have really enjoyed this series so far; it has good character development, suspense, and does everything it tries to do really well. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys horror anime.