When Cicadas Cry: Solutions (Higurashi no naku koro ni: Kai)

Reunion

saa, wasuremashou sono mirai ga Come, let us forget about the future...

mata chinurarete yuku nante ...ending up stained in blood again.

namanurui kaze toguromaitara If the soft wind coils up...

sore ga tabun aizu ...that is probably a sign.

nukedashitete Break free.

kanashisugiru unmei kara From your heart-wrenching fate.

anata wa naraku no hana ja nai You are not a flower in hell.

sonna basho de sakanaide Don't blossom in such a place.

sakanaide Don't blossom there.

karametorarete ikanaide Don't get entangled.

oto mo naku tobikau toki no kakera Fragments of time flutter about without a sound.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai

No reception, huh?

Can I open the window?

I don't mind, but...

...it's very hot.

The air feels great here.

We're almost there.

It's been nearly thirty years.

Never mind.

This place should have changed with age.

My name is...

...Mamoru Akasaka.

A detective from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.

The first time I visited the village of Hinamizawa...

...was almost thirty years ago...

...in June of 1978.

Over there.

Did we keep you waiting...

...Ooishi-san?

Well well, it sure has been a long time.

Akasaka-san.

Nice to see you are still in good health.

At the time, I served in the Public Safety Division...

...and came to Hinamizawa to investigate the kidnapping...

...of the grandson of the Minister of Construction, Inukai.

There...

...I met Ooishi, a local police officer...

...as well as...

...Rika Furude.

It seems this place has changed quite a bit.

It's been closed off for ages.

It's to be expected.

Sempai!

This is my junior from my college days...

...Sawada, now serving in the Self-Defence Force.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you too.

I am Ooishi.

During the time Hinamizawa was closed off...

...he supervised the activities here.

As this was quite convenient...

...I asked him to be our guide.

Is that so?

We will count on you then.

Yes, sir.

Then, Sempai...

...where shall we go first?

Let's start at the Onigafuchi Marsh.

Roger that.

Is this...

I was told it was filled up shortly after the Great Disaster.

It was already dry by the time I was assigned here.

To think Hinamizawa ended up like this...

I see.

So this is that so-called UFO landing site people talk about on the Internet.

Is that what they call it?

Yeah.

Pictures of this place often show up on occult sites.

But this place was...

Indeed.

Near the end of June 1983, this marsh was...

...the site of a sudden volcanic gas eruption.

An extremely wet gas composed of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide erupted from the marsh...

...and totally without warning...

...wiped out the entire village of Hinamizawa in a single night.

And after the lockdown...

...it was filled up with concrete by the Self-Defence Force on duty here.

But still...

...to think of this as a meeting place with aliens...

According to some people on the Internet...

...any geologist could tell you that trying to stop a gas leak with concrete...

...is completely pointless.

Makes sense.

I've never heard about active volcano craters being buried with concrete.

The Great Hinamizawa Disaster...

...is a cover story made up by the government to conceal the truth.

There are those who believe...

...it might have been a bioterrorist attack by aliens.

Bioterrorism by aliens?

Those occult freaks...

...have grounds to make such a presumption.

A secret file called "Record #34."

Record #34?

Let's head to the next place.

Y-Yes.

Those are the remains of the only clinic in the village.

That Record #34 I talked about?

Yes?

Irie Clinic

It contains notes of a nurse named Miyo Takano, who worked at this clinic.

The name Miyo is written with the Kanji characters for "three" and "four."

Basically...

...as a pun on her name...

...it was named "Record #34."

Miyo Takano...

...studied the history of the strange demon legend of Hinamizawa.

Apparently, she was a researcher attempting to uncover the meaning behind the legend.

According to her studies...

...a UFO from outer space crashed here in Hinamizawa a long time ago...

...and sank in the Onigafuchi March.

That UFO...

...contained parasitic bacteria not existing on Earth...

...which infected the villagers one by one.

Humans infected by these bacteria went berserk...

...and transformed into beings akin to what we would call demons.

Miyo Takano theorized that this was the origin of the myth about demons coming out of the marsh.

The aliens that were on the UFO...

...realized what had happened to the Earthlings...

...and decided to show themselves to the villagers.

This was the descent of Oyashiro-sama.

The aliens gave the villagers medical treatment using highly advanced, extra-terrestrial technology...

...but that was only a stopgap measure.

As a consequence...

...the aliens, who the villagers came to worship as a religious symbol they called "Oyashiro-sama"...

...imposed rules upon the village to contain the disease.

Rules?

Yes.

The bacteria adapted to the natural environment of Hinamizawa.

If the hosts were to leave Hinamizawa...

...the symptoms of the disease would resurface.

Hence rules were set up prohibiting people from leaving the village.

But how is that connected to the Great Hinamizawa Disaster?

The aliens were protected by the three great houses...

...and remained alive for many hundreds of years.

All the while being worshipped as deities in the Furude Shrine for generations.

However...

...after a long time passed...

...the bacteria that had infected the villagers...

...unexpectedly stabilized.

They became harmless to the human body...

...and the bacteria and the aliens faded from the people's memories.

But then...

...wasn't it a good thing that peace had returned to Hinamizawa?

But then there were some people who weren't interested in that.

The three great houses.

The three houses?

Holding the power of the aliens...

...they virtually controlled the villagers for hundreds of years.

Kimiyoshi

However, since the effect of the bacteria had waned...

...the villagers no longer needed the power of the aliens...

...and were quick to stop obeying the three houses.

And then?

To take back control of the village, the three houses...

...began research to resurrect the power of the bacteria.

Sounds like a bad B-movie.

Yeah.

However, Miyo Takano, who wrote all of this...

...died a mysterious death in the middle of June, 1983.

And right before her death...

...as if knowing she was going to die...

...she entrusted a certain person with her scrapbooks.

That person is...

..."Girl A."

Girl A?

You mean from that school hostage incident?

So you know about that.

I heard about it from my colleagues when I was on duty here.

After occupying the school...

...she proclaimed the three houses were plotting a bioterrorist attack.

So that was the cause of that incident?

Yes.

And the day after the incident...

...the Great Hinamizawa Disaster occurred.

Wasn't that just a coincidence?

I don't know.

But according to people who don't believe it was coincidence...

...there were a lot of odd things about the subsequent lockdown by the Self-Defence Force.

They filled up the march for no reason...

...and the area was closed down for an unusually long period of time.

And then there were the periodic blood tests of SDF members involved in the Hinamizawa lockdown.

Those tests...

...may have been bacterial infection experiments performed on SDF members.