After looking at some reviews about the anime, I became excited to see this anime with all the praise it has gotten. But sadly, I quit watching around episode 6 and came to the conclusion that this anime wasn't as good as everyone made it out to be. Where do I start:Animation: Surprisingly, the animation was very...bland and sub-par to the other anime I have seen. The setting while well made were just dull to look at. Most of the environment weren't that great and fell flat most of what I had watched.Characters: There are times when I ask whether color theory is even a thing in Japan anymore, because this show has some of the worst color palettes I have ever seen. Colors were definitely never considered in this anime and could have actually made the show itself much more scary. Also, the fact that the character design are also stiff and feel restrained to the point that they too feel dull. Giving characters large cat eyes when they go insane did nothing for me. They weren't intimidating in the slightest and made me question how anyone could find the characters terrifying when their visible personality is never really shown.Also, just to get it out there, I hate moe stuff. Their actual designs and character makes me cringe and forces me to watch anime before the moe craze became a thing.Plot: The one thing that got under my skin the most weren't the characters, but the structure of the story. Literally the first second of the first episode starts with a gruesome scene, and then we get a boring backstory that lead up to the scene that takes several episodes to tell before we actually get back to it. The story being half moe slice of life and half psychological and suspenseful doesn't work when you reveal the gimmick to your anime this early. To be honest, I didn't care anyway about what happens since this anime loves to beat you over the head with its disgusting moe sh*t.Overall, the anime fails to interest me in its story with flat, boring characters and poor structure of storytelling. I do have to give credit to the soundtrack though, it was one of the few things I actually did like.

Simply put...NOT FOR CHILDREN!A lot of anime is somewhat violent and sometimes disturbing but Higurashi is something else! The violence is untamed and brutal. The story is surrounding a little village that is led by 3 families. It all starts when a young boy Keichii moves to the little village from the city in the month of June 1983. He makes friends with 3 girls, Rena, Mion (and later her twin sister Shion), Satoko and Rika. All seems well until he learns the village has a lot of secrets of murder and unexplained deaths. In a series of different chapters (arcs) the story is repeated all based around each character in turn. Each character goes mad and a lot of the time at least one of the group of friends is murdered brutally by one another. The stories explore murder, suspicion and even aliens! It's not something i would recommend to everyone but certainly one I'd recommend to those who don't mind a bit of violence!

I recently watched this anime for the first time and initially wasn't sure what to make of it; I'd heard that is was a horror story but the animation style and opening episodes gave little suggestion of what was to come apart from the short pre-credit sequence in the first episode.Keiichi has recently moved from the city to the small, traditional village of Hinamizawa and has settled in at the local school where he has befriended a group of girls and joined their "club". This all suggests it is going to be a comedy with him getting into embarrassing situations with the girls, there is some of that but it leads on to murder and mayhem.The story repeats a few times during the series with slightly different situations leading to different characters taking the lead roll. All the stories however end in murder, often shockingly brutal murder and torture.We later learn that the repeating stories aren't merely showing how things could be different if different choices are made but time is repeating like a macabre version of "Groundhog Day", except that more than a day is repeated. We later learn that one of the girls is aware of this and is trying to change fate to prevent it from reoccurring, occasionally one or more of the others will remember something too but tends to write it off as a half remembered dream or déjà vu.The story is fairly gripping and doesn't get boring as events repeat themselves. I found the juxtaposition of cute animated characters and disturbing imagery quite disturbing in a good way.

I said good but this show is amazing...After watching the first episode most people will discard it as a kids show, personally, I wouldn't let my kids anyway near this show, although I like horror movies and shows it's really rare for me to feel horror myself, this show though, did it like no other.The story takes place in a small village, around a group of small kids (I wold guess the ages between 8 and 14, but that's all this is), although the village gives you a warm and soothing feeling, it will, by the end of each story, make you feel isolated and suffocating, the children are perky and sweet at the beginning (a little too much, some will say), are really dark and scary at the begging, The show divide to few stories, all around the same time of the year, it runs as a detective story from different angles, slowly gaining more details about the dark past of the village and it's people.You should watch the whole show, though, if you expect to understand any of it (even twice won't hurt, if you'll like it as much as I do), but only after seeing the sequel "Higurashi no naku koro ni kai" (which is not half as good, and can't really be called "horror") you'll really understand more then a few pieces.And I'll finish in a few words of warning, this is one of the best Japanese anime shows ever created, but it really ISN'T FOR THE FAINT OF HEARTS, enjoy