Creative Staff
Story: Ryukishi07
Art: Hinase Momoyama
Translation/Adaptation: Alethea and Athena Nibley
What They Say
Watching the people of Hinamizawa rally together to liberate her friend Satoko gives Rika hope that she too can defy fate and curb her tragic demise. But when the bodies of Takano and Tomitake are discovered, Rika fears her chance is slipping away. Not knowing who to trust and not wanting to put anyone else in danger, Rika pulls away from her friends. But as her experiences in this world continue to diverge from the norm, Rika clings to the hope that the events that lead to her murder might also change. She has the will to change her destiny, but will that be enough to defeat whoever—or whatever—wants her dead?
Content: (please note that content portions of this review contains spoilers):
Maybe this is the life that Rika wins and she lives past the day of her death repeated in every arc. Thus far, she has been able to convince Keiichi to fight against every obstacle to save Satako from her usual fate when her uncle comes to live with her; thanks to his vague memory of a previous life. And the rest of her friends are living happy lives without any of the horrors some of the story arcs have thrown at them. Everything seems to be going great; but come on, this is Hinamizawa, the home of Oyashiro’s Curse.
This story arc, ‘Massacre Arc’, reveals the most secrets of any before it. There is no turning back for the reader, now we know who killed Tomitake and why he scratched out his throat, but who kills Takano and burns her body in every story arc? That’s where Oyashiro’s Curse comes back to haunt Rika. Takano, Tomitake, and Dr. Irie are all part of a secret organization studying the odd disease inflicting the people of Hinamizawa. This disease is connected to the people of Rika’s family throughout the generations. As long as the villagers are around people of Rika’s lineage, they are fine, with the odd case of a villager escalating to latter stages of the disease. The real problem comes from the situation of a villager leaving for too long. If a villager leaves for an extended time, they are away from the pheromones Rika’s lineage emits and the villager will advance the disease to the later stages that include paranoia so strong that they will kill the people around them and even scratch out their own throat until they die. Somehow, the people of Rika’s family emit a pheromone that keeps the disease in check and causes everyone to hold Rika in high regard. Kind of like a queen bee type situation. It has taken a long time for the reader to get this far, but that makes everything that happened up till now even cooler.
Rika doesn’t jump to this conclusion immediately. She has to wonder why she can’t beat the curse when Tomitake and Takano turn up dead once again. Rika has been using Detective Ooishi as a confidant in this arc, and he tells her of the strange circumstances Takano was seen by an officer on the night of her death. Ooishi thinks it is all too fishy and he believes the burned body found in the woods isn’t really Takano, and that Takano is still alive and actually killed Tomitake. This throws Rika into a downward spiral of fear, and surprisingly paranoia, as she begins to think she has spent the last 150 years of reincarnated lives trusting the wrong person. The way the end of her lives have always finished right before her death all start to make sense but she still can’t understand why Takano would kill her lover Tomitake and then fake her death.
All of Rika’s hope for making it past the day she always dies on slowly begins to fade. Close to giving up and resigning herself to her usual fate, Rika decides to fight back and take the ultimate gamble; she tells her friends everything. It’s tough to tell your friends that you are stuck in a never ending loop of living the same week of your life over and over, always dying on the same day, for 150 years. It is a ludicrous story and Rika is stunned when her friends believe her. Could this be the final piece of the puzzle she has needed all these years to break this horrible cycle?
The trick is for Ooishi to confirm that Takano’s burned corpse is a fake, then Ooishi and Rika can try and use Takano’s Wild Dogs gang to track her down. Too bad Ooshi doesn’t realize how dangerous the Wild Dogs really are, or at least how dangerous they are when they follow Takano’s orders. When Ooishi never returns from investigating Takano’s corpse, Rika realizes it is all true and that Takano is the person that has killed her in every life. This begins an action packed last few hours of her life and even more shocking revelations. Rika learns that involving her friends only makes things worse for them and the reader learns that Takano is bat shit crazy. I won’t spoil the crazy revelations revealed in the last chapter, but it certainly makes me want to read the next arc and learn if Rika can ever break her curse.
In Summary
I am just so impressed with the overall story and all the ways it has examined how each character went crazy and their perceived motivations. But really, all that kind of pales in comparison to the revelations of Takano and her goals for Hinamizawa. Takano has been the person behind Oyashiro’s Curse, to an extent because there really is a curse. Only the curse isn’t exactly what the villagers believe it to be. Nonetheless, Oyashiro’s Curse has been a perfect vehicle for Takano to manipulate the villagers to her own nefarious means. It is this manipulation that Rika has finally discovered, but the trick for her is being able to remember it past her death. Part of Rika’s curse is that she can never remember the events during the last few hours of her life. So every time she dies, she reincarnates into her new life without the memory of who killed her. But maybe, just maybe for Rika’s sake, she will enter her next repeated life remembering that Takano is the mastermind and somehow that knowledge will let her live past June 22, 1983, the day she always dies.
My copy of the next book that starts the ‘Festival Accompanying Arc’ can’t get here soon enough!
Content Grade: A+
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: Older Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: March 2013
MSRP: $18.99
