Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni

The first thing to say about this anime is that it is a horror anime, and it acts the part. My anime club is in the process of watching it right now. We watched it at our yearly Halloween party and the club got completely addicted. It seems like a Hero or Roshomon kind of anime, where it tells the same story several ways. The first arc ended bloodily in the 4th episode. I think that this anime is still airing is Japan right now, so we have to get it per episode via awesome American fansubbers.

The main characters in the anime are a boy name Keiichi and a group of four girls. They are part of a club of sorts, where they hang out after school and play games. The arc of the story follows these people and an event that happened in town concerning a dam that was going to flood the entire town. It was stopped, depending on which arc you watch, by an accident or a murder or the government. There's also a connection of that with a festival, the Wanatagashi festival that happens every year in this city. At the festival, there's supposed to be a curse, Oyashiro's curse, that gets someone killed or 'demoned away' (again, depending on arc) every year. So all of this is connected to blood and death.

This anime seems tame at first but don't let that fool you. It's very creepy and everything goes totally crazy the farther into the series you go. Little blonde girls weild machetes, a guy beats people to death with a bat, and another guy rips his own throat out with his finger nails. Parts of the anime becomes very graphic and bloody towards the ends of many of the arcs. As a horro anime goes, this one is great. It doesn't rely entirely upon blood and gore to make it scary. It mostly relies on complete personality reversals, where peoople just go CRAZY. And get really creepy, really quickly. If you're into horror movies, you would dig this anime, if not, I'd say let it pass on by.