In my eyes, the absolute worst part of Sotsu was the false equivalence it made at the end between Rika's and Satoko's flaws. Sure, Rika had been selfish in the way she treated Satoko at St. Lucia, but Satoko straight-up murdered their friends multiple times and physically and psychologically tortured Rika to force her to stay with her -- after she had personally witnessed her century of pain and torment. And yet the show doesn't have Rika totally devastated or furious or  with Satoko for that. They just fight each other DBZ style shouting about studying and shit.

Then at the end, Satoko never even apologizes for all the evil shit she did. She never even shows any signs of remorse. All of the other characters were reduced to pawns whose lives are apparently totally disposable. It was absolutely galling and I hated it. It spat in the face of everything I loved about the original.

I hated how they assassinated Satoko’s character in this.

My biggest problem is that Satoko's motivation isn't credible. She resents the fact that she's incapable of keeping up with the pace in Rika's desired school, so she flips out and decides to spend however many thousands of years it takes to break Rika emotionally. Apart from moral considerations it would simply be easier to spend a fraction of that time studying to the point where she could become the top student in the entire school if she so wished. Torturing her best friend doesn't even benefit her.

Sotsu really let me down... it took everything I loved in Higurashi and just stomped on it, I just hate it.

I'm glad someone else believes connecting Higurashi to Umineko makes them both worse. It felt to me like this story only existed to fit his need to turn Satoko into Vier or Lambda or whoever else. In the process he completely failed to tell a story that actually said anything about the character of Satoko at all.

What angered me the most is that they basically portrayed Satoko and ESPECIALLY Rika as characters who learnt literally nothing from Kai. At one point, Satoko and Rika fight over St Lucia, and Keiichi and Rena approach them, asking if they want help in sorting it out. Rika rejects them and says something along the lines of "I don't think you really can help". It made me so angry because it just felt like everything Rika learnt about being all together to make a miracle happen went completely to waste.

When the entire point of the original Higurashi was "communicate you damn teenagers", and then Sotsu is a direct sequel where they forget to communicate, I just couldnt. Great animation though.

My least favorite part was how satoko was literally let off the hook for treating her friends like shit and literally TORTURING Rika. It angered me so much how her character just got redeemed so fast without any retribution. It wasn’t earned at all, if anything, it just made me hate satoko’s character. And it’s sad because she was one of my favorites in the original 2006 version.

SOTSU wouldn’t have been so bad if they had done these 3 points:
1. Completely redone/new scenes giving more context with extra information that helps expand the story as a whole. Basically give us a bunch of new scenes like they did in episodes 1-2 or SOTSU.
2. Added a new plot point that not even Satoko could have caught onto. I’m talking about the club members remembering the events of every tragic/traumatic fragment that had happened between each and every character. Rena could have been the first that this could have happened to since she was the first one to be injected. She could have observed everything that happened in arc 2 and subtly convince herself that after each arc this is actually for real and Satoko must be stopped. The gun scene could have made Mion remember getting shot and even Rena for witnessing it. A better way of going about episode 17 was for them to all approach Rika when she comes out of her shrine and tell her everything that happened. Then they could all work on a plan to make her show her true self and work on avoid tragedy while getting answers as to why.

Keichi was the "miracle-maker" in Higurashi. He was pivotal in giving Rika drive to end the tragedies. In Gou and Sotsa, he had no use and no importance to the themes of the show...

The worst thing for me is that THEY JUST SHOW SATOSHI FOR 10 SECONDS STRAIGHT

Honestly, from the moment where Satoko had seen Rika’s 100 years of suffering and was just like “yeah, Imma use this against her”, Satoko just kinda lost me. Like, from the moment her role was revealed I was wondering “what will her reaction be to Rika’s suffering” and the series really just slapped me in the face. You’d think seeing Rika and the rest of their friends suffer for that long would bring some kind of emotions from Satoko, who SHOULD care for them just as much, but nah she’s just gonna use it all against Rika with no conflicting feelings or anything.

I remember in the show they made a big point to say that with every new timeline, people would start to remember more so I thought that, you know, the entire gang would end up remembering what happened and that thought only grew when I saw them in the sotsu opening.

But like— they didn’t. It was mainly just a device used to have Teppei be nice to Satoko.

Honestly after a while with gou I started to get bored with this for the repetitiveness and distance between each episode. Which was sad because the og anime was very compelling and had me hooked. Also nice job ! ! ! The video editing was fantastic and there was really good points in it.

I initially though that satoko after seeing rika's fragments started to believe that rika was only using her friends to try to escape her curse and then leave hinamizawa. Then satoko feeling betrayed started torturing rika.

I was expecting some type of more profound explanation to justify satoko's motive. But in the end it was only "I HaTe sTUdYinG". Truly disappointing.

Rika tries reaching out over and over again, Satoko rejects it spitefully because it isn't good enough, and then she makes that Rika's problem. As if Rika needed to grovel and beg her to hang out.

Bro, if your friend is making absolutely ALL the effort in the relationship and you're making 0 effort and being a massive burden, of course they're going to ditch you. This whole premise was so unreasonable, and it ruined Satoko for me entirely. She used to just be a cute kid, now she's actively the worst. She crossed the moral event horizon by miles and she ain't coming back around for me.

This was a very satisfying video to watch.  

My overall take on Gou/Sotsu was watching a dumpster fire emerging from the most toxic friendship in all of anime.  Rika wants to escape Hinamizawa, makes perfect sense.  She wants Satoko to come along, and gets her to do so by promising to be there every step of the way.  For almost no discernable reason, Rika totally abandons Satoko, allowing her dearest friend to wallow in despair.  Characterization is already WAY off.  Why insist on taking Satoko along if you know it won't suit her, and you've seen it making her miserable?  To be fair, Rika never sees how bad that school is with students who don't perform.  It's more like a prison, and I wonder if Rika would really want to pursue her future at a school that would hurt her friend so.  When we see this play out the first time, it seems the next logical step would be for Rika to experience this moment again and see where she went wrong.  In the end, she would realize her happiness isn't compatible with Satoko, and the two would put some healthy distance in their relationship.  I'm not sure if Satoko would accept this very easily, but without Hinamizawa Syndrome to screw with them, I'm sure they could properly communicate.  Either way, that whole "friends don't have to always be together" message was the inevitable conclusion, and we could see it the moment that conflict was introduced.  

Having Satoko gain powers and cause all of Gou's events, spanning an entire series of repeat content, only prolonged that obvious conclusion, bringing up all sorts of lore and questions that conflict was never designed to resolve.  It's made a mess out of Higurashi, calling into question exactly what kind of story it actually is.  

It started as a suspenseful horror based on pleasant, happy people committing horrible atrocities.  It complicated that by introducing time loops and magical stuff.  I honestly think it's a miracle they were able to mediate those two aspects as well as they did.  I remember being originally turned off by Kai because it didn't at all resemble the creepy factor present in the Deen adaptation, and that contrast was why.  I don't think my younger self would have ever imagined that kind of paranoid horror would somehow evolve into a shounen battle between gods/witches.  

Despite really enjoying the dark elements of Higurashi, I don't personally have any interest in Umineko.  It looks like a totally different kind of story, and I don't like the idea of trying to tie it into Higurashi's narrative more than a fun reference or cosmetic resemblance.  

There's something to be said about these reboots/remakes that, rather than capturing and polishing what the original did, actually try and subvert the original through metacommentary.  Almost nothing is free from that these days, and I would have preferred Gou just be a clean remake, or better yet, a side arc focused around the redemption of certain characters like Teppei.  Exploring Rika's future also could have been done on its own without dragging everyone back into the base Hinamizawa story.  You're absolutely right in that this show failed in part because it tried to cater to new and old audiences in the exact same work.

Ngl the ending is kinda satisfying but yet felt disappointed at the same time...

In my opinion in Sotsu maybe the reason why Rika-chan might be listing off the club rules is because she's trying to find reasons to not kill Satoko.

You know what would be good? After the gun cliffhanger, the next episode starts with the new loop. Everyone including Rika and Satoko is friendly. Now the mystery begins. What does Rika know? What does Satoko know? What are they planning, why is Satoko doing it. Friendly episode after that would create great uncanny atmosphere. You know Rika and Satoko know about each other, yet they appear friendly and make you question things and anticipate the next massacre