(MAJOR SPOILERS)
(This post is written from a standpoint of having seen the first twelve episode of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.)

Maybe I’m writing this post because I’m a stubborn son of a bitch. Maybe I’m writing this post because I’m hopeful that Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is a better show than it is. Maybe I’m writing this post because I read too far into things, like my Lit. teacher read too far into Othello. But whatever the reason is, I’m writing this post to show that the foremost catchphrase that comes to mind when one thinks “Higurashi” has nothing to do with the show itself. “Killer Lolis”, eh? People say they need their “Killer Loli” fix. We’re in Denial used the term “Killer Lolis” during the eyecatch for several episodes. Some anime bloggers bitch and moan when an episode of Higurashi doesn’t have enough “Killer Loli action” in it.

But the question I’m posing is, “What killer lolis?” Or, more specifically, “Why do you expect killer lolis?” “Why do you think there are killer lolis?”

And there’s the follow-up, “There are no killer lolis.”

This may sound ridiculous after 12 episodes of anime bloggers raving about Oyashiro-sama and Rena’s delicious murdering sprees. It’s true that many people are under the impression that Higurashi is a show about little girls that murder people. But is that the case?

The first name people give me when I ask “What killer lolis?” is often “Rena”, and this puzzles me. For one thing, Rena has, in twelve episodes, killed zero people. She has attempted to kill zero people. She has shown murderous intent zero times. So what makes her a killer loli? People say that she goes psycho and crazy, and that she looked weird when she was holding the axe in episode one.

Did she not fetch that axe just like Keiichi had asked?

Now, one of the big things about Higurashi is the shock of the girls “going crazy”, their tones switching, their facial expressions. As Jason puts it, “emo facial contortion”. If one were to see this as the girls being psycho, then that’d be a good indication of them being killer lolis, or at least wannabe killer lolis.

When Rena approaches Keiichi in the beginning of episode two with the axe, he freaks out. He’s scared. She looks ominous and she’s holding that axe like she’s ready to kill him. But the situation is what leads to this interpretation of her stance; Keiichi has just read that there was a murder case involving dismemberment. Power of suggestion causes him to see Rena as a dangerous person.

If that is all in this situation, one might ask, what’s with the look on her face when she’s walking all happy-like with the axe at the end of episode one? She’s happy. She’s going to get her Sanders doll. Keep in mind that she, like Misuzu of AIR, is lightweight retarded. Her “waku waku” and obsession with cute are like “gaoooooo!” She overreacts to things. She forms semi-crazed smiles around cute things. It’s only natural that she would smile like this, no?

When the Rena and Mion are hiding stuff from Keiichi, they’re most likely doing it for his own good. They don’t think he needs to know about all the horrible things that happened, and thusly they keep quiet about it. Any change in tone there occurs because they don’t feel good lying to Keiichi. They want to be honest, but at the same time they know what’s better for him. So they say “Nothing happened” and move along.

When Keiichi and Rena exchange their shouting match in episode two, and Rena screams “USO DA!”, she’s kind of upset that Keiichi is hiding shit from her, yet prying her at the same time. She’s not being secretive on purpose, she can’t help it. It’s unfair to her that he’s pissing all over her for hiding the murder. It’s unfair and she reacts much like anyone under pressure would- with a dose of vehemence. Keiichi, due to the touchy subject matter and the nature of the secrets they both have, projects this image of Rena going nuts.

At this point, it might be useful to add that Keiichi is insane. We might know that from the third arc, but it’s fairly apparent in the first arc as well, and it has a huge amount of bearing on whether or not Rena and co are killer lolis. Keiichi imagines a great deal of things.

When shit first starts going down, it’s when Oishi tells Keiichi that Tomitake clawed his own throat out. This is the first step towards Keiichi’s death, as it is ultimately the reason why Keiichi dies as he does. Shortly following this, Keiichi is on the phone with Oishi, and he later finds out that Rena was at his door. He thinks she was listening in on him- she was most likely came up, saw that he was on the phone, and left. There’s no reason for him to believe that she listened in. But he does! This is the second step towards his death, as it is the beginning of a rapid increase in his quanitifiable insanity.

He receives the food Rena and Mion give him, and eats it. He feels something pointy, and spits out the first bite. He believes he sees a needle. Most likely, there was a grain of uncooked rice, or something. If there had been a needle, there would be blood. There was no blood. Furthermore, there is no needle in the trash. His mother also never talks to him. He would not have cleaned up the mess he leaves after destroying the food; his mother would have, and she would have found the needle if there had been one. The fact that nothing further happened with the food means that there was no needle. His insanity grows further as he becomes convinced that the girls are trying to kill him.

Hereonout, it’s safe to assume that everytime he sees the girls as scary, or we see them do “emo facial contortions”, it’s Keiichi projecting his fear. We only see anything from his point of view.

Speaking of his point of view, he does have a good reason for thinking of Rena as a killer loli. Oishi told him about “Rena’s past before returning to Hinamizawa”. But is this information that Keiichi received meaningful? Is it enough for us to believe that Rena is a crazy Oyashiro cultist? Of course not. As shown in Arc 3, Oishi is a devious, devious man. He’s not a good guy, he’s out to do what he wants to do and that’s all he cares about. Knowing Keiichi’s background, and his relationship with the girls of the town, he exploits Keiichi’s mental processes by painting this picture of Rena as an unstable, dangerous person.

Before you say “It’s not just Rena, all the other girls were connected to murder cases”, keep in mind that this is Hinamizawa we’re talking about. There is a total of fifteen children in the town. It’s a tiny tiny town. Of course everyone there is related to everyone in some way or other! Of course Oishi could draw any kind of line from any murder victim to any of the girls.

But Keiichi is easily convinced, and he internalizes everything he’s told. Quickly, Rena transforms into a murderer in his mind, and he decides to defend himself. He gets the baseball bat, and starts acting irrationally. Concerned by his behavior, his friends act cautiously, hoping to get him to stop. Of course they’re wary. Satoshi acted in the same manner before mutilating his aunt and running away. Keiichi, unclear on the full story at this point, is afraid that their odd behaviour indicates their instability and desire to kill him.

Another thing to note here is that one thing bending him out of shape is the fact that he thinks that the girls “erased” Satoshi. Satoshi ran away from Hinamizawa.

His encounter with Rena in the woods on the way home is yet another projection of his own fear. She most likely wants to be by his side (it’s clear that she’s crushing on him, yes?) and he, insecure and afraid, imagines that she’s hunting him. At this point, it’s important to point out that she DOES NOT have the axe with her. The image from before, of her standing over him with it, and the story he hearsd from Oishi, form together to make it look like she has it. She would not be able to move quickly with it, it’s quite heavy and she’s really weak. She giggles a little after kissing him, but he’s so scared that it seems like she’s laughing uncontrollably.

He pushes her away and runs. Imagining pursuit, at some point he trips and hits his head. Rena finds him and brings him back to his house. She calls Mion because she’s worried, and they call the Director because, as we know from arc 3, the Director is also a doctor.

This is the end of Keiichi’s sanity, and as the girls giggle about the fact that he doesn’t know who the Director is he freaks out and lets his imagination take over completely. He imagines them injecting him with something and then kills them. Irie-sensei, the Director, comes to his house and knocks on his door. He imagines that more random men (ala Soldats knights) are after him, and he hurriedly finishes his suicide note and and stashes it behind his clock. Delusional, imagining a syringe, he believes that he tapes it behind the clock.

He flees the house.

This is the key to proving that he imagines things, because he sees several men at his door. He sees them turn to chase him as he runs. But they don’t catch him. Able-bodied men such as they, with longer legs, would have been able to catch him if he ran. If not, they definitely would have been able to keep up. When he arrives at the telephone booth, he is not being followed by anyone. There was no pursuit from his house, there were no men after him, he does imagine things.

Finally, he kills himself, again falling victim to power of suggestion. Convinced in delusion that Oyashiro-sama must exist, he claws his throat as he’d heard that Tomitake did. His insanity culminates and consumes him. Game over for Keiichi, and not a single killer loli to boot. This is the end of arc 1. Let’s investigate the second arc now.

As we know, there are a few constants throughout the arcs. One of those (that’s less important for understanding the show) is that the setting remains constant. Another constant (one that’s very important) is character. Everyone is the same person in each arc. As we see more of them, we learn more about who they are. The Oishi we see in arc three is the same Oishi we saw in arc one. The helpful Rena in the second arc is the same as the Rena in arc one. Rena has no “emo facial contortion” in arc two for a reason- Keiichi was never told about her “past” in this arc, never sees her with the axe, never makes the connection, and never projects fear into her face.

The major lacking constant is information. Information is what shapes the way our hero thinks and it’s what shapes the way WE see the world each arc, for we see it through his eyes. We know more than what we see, he sees based on what he knows, which is a limited set of information each arc. Depending on what he gets told or not told, he sees the world differently. Thusly, what people tell Keiichi affects how we see characters.

Obtaining the same information in different manners from different sources also affects our hero’s perspective. When he hears about the chain murders and their connections to the girls in arc two, he is less mentally affected than in arc one, when Oishi presents it in a “you’re going to die” way.

Now, most of arc two is silly crap. We have the Shion/Mion/harem/twin-fight/etc. bullshit, which isn’t much of a mystery and doesn’t help to set anything up. The show fails in that it doesn’t portray emotion well at all. We don’t get the urgency with which Mion needs Keiichi for herself. We don’t understand how much Shion’s flirting hurts her until the end, which most dismiss as “oh, she’s possessed by a demon.”

Mion is NOT possessed by a demon. She says a lot of scary shit to be dramatic.

She kills Shion and tries to kill Keiichi out of pure, unadulterated jealousy. It’s possible, though it’s a tad crazy. So is Mion a killer loli? No! For one she’s not a loli, but that’s besides the point. Her bout of insanity is developed in-episode. It’s character development. It grows out of control and culminates in her murdering people, which is completely independent of her character in other arcs.

Yes, other people are suspicious of the Sonozaki family. Keiichi is told about Onigafuchi and the torture rituals by Takano inside the shed, and this is clearly a factor in his acceptance of the “demon” story Mion craps out. Once again, affected by power of suggestion, he accepts the story and believes that there are two sides to Mion. He gives her another chance to kill him, thinking that she’d beaten the demon- but of course, she’s only human, and she as a jealous human wants to kill him. So she does.

There is no demon in arc two. There is no supernatural element. There are no killer lolis.

Further proof that there is no demon lies in arc three. When Keiichi begs Mion to organize the death of Satoko’s uncle, she says that she is not the leader of Onigafuchi like Keiichi thinks. She says it’s a mean rumor going around. This is the case; in this episode Keiichi hears the same information from Takano (just outside the storehouse and no one disappears) and then goes to Mion thinking of her as the heiress to the demon. She’s not, and turns him away.

Thus far, there’s plenty of evidence pointing to there being a supernatural element to the show. This element would make the show far less interesting, and far less good. There’s quite a big chunk of evidence pointing away from there being such an element, though. It goes hand in hand with the acceptance of the fact that there are no killer lolis. As we know from examining the show from an objective viewpoint, not a single of the four “killer lolis” has gone insane and killed anyone due to psychosis or supernatural influence.

There are no killer lolis.

Of course, there’re two holes in this theory: why does Tomitake die, and why does Takano die?

There are a variety of possibilities aside from “the girls are behind it”, and I’m sure it can and will be answered in future arcs (if not this current third one.) Tomitake COULD have just committed suicide, after all. We don’t know if he does or doesn’t have a reason to. As for Takano… she’s kinda kooky. We’ll see. We’ll see.

I just see, while spoiling episode 13 for myself, that a person commenting at Makenai desuwayo! said:

If you want more, then you might be disappointed. Because that’s not the main subject of the series. It’s just a wacky laughter with twisted face expression. it’s not even emphasized in the game. You should aim for the mystery it contains and the answer to it.

So it’s not even emphasized in the game? Further hints at it being Keiichi’s imagination, as if it were nonexistant the girls would look far less like killer lolis in the anime. Interesting, interesting.