For those who might not be privy to the original story, Higurashi is a horror anime that leans towards the theme of repeating plot elements in order to show a deeper story. As fans know—this is where the spoilers will begin by the way—one of the main girls of the series named Rika Furude is more aware of the world than the rest. In fact, Rika is caught in an endless loop of June 1983 forced to endure death over and over till fate changes. Finally, Rika is able to save herself—and her friends—from this seemingly inescapable hell but it seems as Higurashi 2020 wants to undo that escape.

Episode 2 of Higurashi 2020 reveals from the first few minutes that Rika has once more been sent into the June 1983 incident and at first, is confused and angry at her doomed reality. Hanyu—a god-like being revealed in the original series—has no idea why Rika is once more in this predicament but we see Rika knows that with her past 100 years of reliving this nightmare—another fact shown in the original—she can shatter through this situation once more.

The beauty of episode 2 from here is that it once more feels like a retread of the original Higurashi as the kids have fun with tag and get ready for the Watangashi Festival. Yet, Higurashi 2020 isn’t done just yet proving that it is indeed a sequel when our Keiichi has a moment that is seen from the second arc—The Answers Arc—where he realizes he kills two of his friends—in this case Mion and Rena—with a baseball bat. Keiichi was one of the stronger allies of Rika when he began to gain the ability to see the previous worlds where his friends were killed/murdered and was able to help her prevent some of those murders leading to changes in the timeline.

Now you may wonder, what does this all mean for this Higurashi 2020 sequel? Is this yet another arc that relies on repeating incidents like the past or will things change dramatically due to Rika’s understanding of this repeated landscape? In our opinion, we believe that Higurashi 2020 will indeed be an entirely different arc that could act as a parallel from the original. Maybe in another timeline, Rika awoke to her freedom from June 1983 and her friends in turn will begin to realize their actions earlier than the past. We doubt this will stop deaths from occurring—it took Rika and her friends several tries to break the cycle of death and restarts before—but in this new story it could be done quicker with less restarts needed.