Say It In Red

This week, Sara and Runa continue spending peaceful days in Hinamizawa, discussing Higurashi no naku koro ni, Chapter 2: Watanagashi (2002). We pick right up where we left off in our last episode which of course means that everything is back to normal and we're back to just before the Summer of 1983 in Hinamizawa! This time we dig deep into the history of Hinamizawa's main families, the question of Who Was Phone, and the vital question of where I can get some soy sauce at like 9pm after the stores have all closed.

In the Watanagashi chapter, we see a different version of the Summer of 1983, one in which Keiichi sticks much more closely to his friends and rather than suspecting them of being involved in a criminal conspiracy or divine curse, he trusts them with all his heart. Unfortunately, Keiichi is still just a teenager and a tremendous Fool, so things once again go very badly for him. He inadvertently hurts Mion early on and then meets Mion's twin sister, Shion, who he strongly suspects is... literally just Mion with her hair down. For a while he isn't really sure what to make of "Shion" and her sudden appearances and he's convinced that this is just Mion taking on the role of an Imaginary twin sister to do things that she wouldn't otherwise be able to do, but... is that really the case, Keiichi?

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Content Warnings for this episode:

00:31:30 to 00:32:00: Mention of attempted sexual harrassment:

35:00 to 35:45: Gross Bathroom stuff, including but not limited to mentions of people getting sick due to a laxative and men being creepy about bathrooms.

00:51:00: Death/Murdered body mention

01:05:32: Cannibalism Mention

01:10:42: Torture/Finger Trauma

01:13:48: Stabbing

01:15:40: Neck Injury

01:16:34: Neck Injury Again

01:18:06 through 01:18:44: More Blood and Head Injury and Finger Trauma

This week, Sara and Runa embark on a long trip to Hinamizawa and discuss Higurashi no naku koro ni, Chapter 1: Onikakushi (2002). In this first episode of our full dive into all 8 volumes of Higurashi, we talk about the harrowing stakes of afterschool card games, the existential significance of Air Conditioning, and the startling correlation between holding a metal bat and having a Real Bad Time.

Higurashi no naku koro ni is a lengthy story spread out over 8 Kinetic Novels and we'll be covering each game in its own episode over the next few months. Higurashi was originally released in 2002 but didn't receive an official worldwide release in 2009, and now thankfully it's not too difficult to buy an official release of all 8 volumes in English (and a lot of other languages too). It's part of the When They Cry series by 07th Expansion and creator Ryukishi07, and we'll be covering Umineko further in the future.

Higurashi chapter 1: Onikakushi follows the story of Keiichi Maebara, a teenage boy whose family has just moved into the relatively rural Japanese town of Hinamizawa and quickly settles into a delightful daily routine alongside his new friends, Rena, Mion, Rika, and Satoko. As he spends time with these girls playing board games and pranks, he learns that there may have been a grotesque murder in the town just a few years ago. When he asks his friends, however, they act as if nothing like that could have ever happened. After the photographer who first told Keiichi about the murder turns up dead, and under extremely suspicious circumstances, Keiichi begins to suspect that there may be something terrible about Hinamizawa.

Has a curse been claiming the lives of residents and enemies of the town each year? Is there a town-wide conspiracy bent on silencing anyone who threatened the peace and order of Hinamizawa? Are the residents of this town really descended from demons? Keiichi digs deeper and deeper into the mystery surrounding his new home and as he does, his friends start to act more and more terrifying and things become more and more uncanny... Right? All of that really happens, right?

Or, maybe...



Content Warnings for this episode:

Broadly, we talk about Death, Murder, Violence, and some unreality themes throughout.

00:22:00: Mention of a Needle hidden in food
00:23:55: Mention of Battery/Violence
00:25:04: Needles/Syringes
00:25:30: Mention of Battery/Violence
00:40:18 to 00:40:58: Details of a murder including self-inflicted neck injury and fingernail trauma.
00:52:08 to 00:53:45: More mention of needles in food
01:17:53 and 01:18:45: Finger/Hand injury
01:44:45: Another mention of self-inflicted neck injury and fingernail trauma.
02:01:15 to 02:03:06: further discussion of self-inflicted neck injury and fingernail injury

This week, Sara and Runa talk about Eliza (2019) and ask important questions like: What would happen if therapy became part of the gig economy? What if tech CEOs had all of your healthcare data? What if an dubstep drop made you feel Extremely Gay?

We're talking about Eliza, a very near-future story about Evelyn Ishino-Aubrey, a woman who begins work as a Proxy for the titular therapy app. Prior to Evelyn's arrival at the Eliza office in Seattle, however, she'd spent the previous three years in a deep depression and before that, she worked as one of the chief developers of the Eliza program itself.

In this episode we'll be talking about the nature of tech companies and technology itself in mental healthcare, the competing perspectives about Eliza and its impact on the world, and then we go on like a 10 minute tangent about how much we love Nora and Rae.

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