I've had a pretty productive weekend, finishing up 428: Shibuya Scramble as well as reading both chapter 3 and 4 of Higurashi. I originally intended to just read one chapter a week, but chapter 4 is much shorter than the rest so I figured I might as well read that too so I can get started on the answer arcs next weekend. 428: Shibuya Scramble
The story isn't all that interesting on paper, but the way it's presented, combined with the great soundtrack and an interesting and quirky cast of characters, make for a memorable whole. Although I do have to say that, for a completionist such as myself, it was quite a pain to get all endings and jump back and forth in the timeline to find all the hidden content.
My favorite part of the game was after the Mean Clean bonus scenario, when you got to view behind the scenes footage from the recording sessions. After seeing static images with silent dialogue for 40-or-so hours, it made a surprisingly big impression on me to get to see the actors actually play out some of the scenes those images were taken from, along with hearing them speak for the first time.
On that note, I actually managed to find a documentary with interviews with the cast, which I will definitely check out when my Japanese has improved some more. Higurashi, chapter 3
As I mentioned in a previous post, chapter 3 is called "The Shortest Scenario", but in actuality, it's basically as long as chapter 1 and 2 so I don't really know why they chose to use that tagline.
The chapter itself was... hard to get a grasp on. It was equal parts exciting and confusing, with a lot of new questions raised, like
Higurashi, chapter 4
By far the shortest chapter of the question arcs, but I imagine that is because it apparently wasn't originally planned as part of the main series. In chapter 3, they refer to chapter 5 as the actual continuation of the story, so chapter 4 is really more of a filler episode. It was still a good read with some well executed and intense scenes, but it falls behind the previous chapters in terms of quality, in large parts due to the fact that there aren't any truly significant developments in the story that we didn't already know about. I also find Ooishi annoying, so him having such a large role in this chapter affected my overall impression. (My opinion of him improved somewhat, though.)
The thing that stood out the most to me in this chapter was when
I'm looking forward to finding out what's up with that.
I've been getting exponentially more confused as the story in Higurashi has moved along, so it's going to be very interesting finding out what the hell is really going on.