Higurashi When They Cry: Time Killing Arc, Vol 1 [Anglais] [Broché]

If you've been following the series so far & have done a little studying of the series, you'll know that this particular arc isn't set during the same time period as the other story arcs. I'm making sure to make you the reader aware of this ahead of time so you don't read it & get frustrated that you aren't getting a look at the next parallel version of Hinamizawa.

This arc is set seven years before the events in 1985. A police officer has been sent to Hinamizawa in order to investigate the dam protest group that seems to be tied to the kidnapping of a government official's child. He immediately meets the enigmatic & adorable Rika, who seems to be harboring secrets of her own. The longer this officer stays, the more strange & dangerous the deceptively peaceful town begins to seem.

I did like this volume well enough, yet I'll admit that this isn't my favorite of the series. It's good in one sense that you get to see exactly how far back the strangeness of Hinamizawa began. However, it just doesn't seem to grab me as much as the other volumes do, perhaps because the main character of this arc (Detective Akasaka) lacks the charm of the other characters. The art in this volume is very nice & in keeping with the quality of the previous volumes, yet part of me knows that if I had my choice I'd have skipped over this arc & gone to the next arcs in the series.

I'll warn you- you'll either really like this or you'll be incredibly underwhelmed. I've never talked to anyone who rabidly disliked this arc- most of the people I've talked to online have just expressed a sense of being let down. This could've been a great look into a younger Rika as well as the mounting tensions of the town, but this volume just feels a little flat in comparison to how wonderful the tensions have been in the previous volumes. I'm going to chalk that up to the lack of action in this volume, so hopefully the next volume will improve on this.

In good news, the answer arcs should be coming up soon after the release of the second volume of this arc. (There's one more arc between this & the answer arcs!)