/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>39493191
>The second is Rika being arrogant enough to think Satoko could still enjoy St Lucia
That lines up with the idea of Rika being arrogant about thinking she knows/understand Satoko perfectly, but it's really not the same as what he was talking about. In several interviews, like the Satokowashi booklet one, also some Newtype one that never got full scans, just summaries, and the Anime News Network one, R07 specifically talks like Rika believed Satoko would enjoy St.Lucia due to her past, and her being unable to realize what's actually going on leads to the tragedy.

Satoko struggling, and Rika still believing they can make it together is a separate scenario from that. In that case, it's obviously not about Rika believing Satoko would naturally enjoy St.Lucia, just her believing she could pull her through.

In fact, during the whole confrontation between Satoko and Rika in the anime, the idea seems to be that Rika thinks Satoko is just doing badly because she doesn't like the school or the other students, but Rika isn't supposed to think that Satoko dislikes the place going by the R07 interviews. Of course, that was referencing the St.Lucia time, but it shows the problem with them confronting each other. The moment Satoko is clearly suffering or displeased with the place you can't really keep Rika acting like SAtoko enjoys it.

>>39493315
>Higurashi was always about its characters' flaws, so making a sequel where the entire fault lies on a new (?) character that's more like an author self-insert with literal reality-warping powers and whose sole motivation is literally being bored, is just not very compelling.
The individual arcs were about character flaws intensified by Hinamizawa Syndrome, but the core plot was always about some vague "evil" forcing a tragedy for vague political reasons.

The issue in Gou/Sotsu is that we got a fairly minor motivation that then leads to the main plot itself, and it's all centered on a main cast member rather than some background evil forcing them to act. Still, considering R07's comments always blaming Eua as the real villain this time, I think the manga was much closer to the original intention in the sense of Satoko needing some time to be broken by the loops rather than the initial conflict by itself already resulting in a death after one loop.

Now, the random tragedies of the manga are kind of weak, but considering how even the anime brought up near the ending Satoko having looped for centuries in the St.Lucia years, it seems like tons of failed early loops were always meant to be there. It's just R07 seemingly didn't even bother establishing how they failed. They just did. The anime staff seemingly just sidelined and skipped all that, while Tomato had the random tragedies.

Where the manga seems to be diverging from R07's plot is attempting to completely eliminate the idea of Satoko hating Rika and just making it all for "love", which does end up making a killing plan just feel crazy. I think the centuries of loops before Witchtoko actually starts killing would have been enough to separate her from human Satoko, but Tomato seemingly didn't even want Witchtoko hating Rika.