Anime — Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai (ひぐらしのなく頃に解)

Sequel/(re)solution/revelation series to the original Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (ひぐらしのなく頃に).

While the original was all about things falling apart and “WTF is going on??”, this explains what has been going on through all the previous reboots, and spins it out over a recap episode and three arcs spread over 23 episodes. This does give it pacing problems : the second arc is somewhat repetitious in the episodes of “Save Satoko.” protest, and the third and last stretches the back-story over an episode too many.

I stalled for a very long time over episode 16, the third of the final arc, which had a lot of covering the ground of things we had already inferred happening from the back-story revealed in previous arcs, but then marathoned the last half of that episode and the rest today. It did take a bit of getting started, but by the time it got to be obvious that we were past the “Oh, not that again!!” bit, it picked up momentum, and got to be more like what the series had been in the past (only with a happy end).

 

For the lulz -- in the style of the NaruTaru OP, with just the same level of spoilers…