Rika, you've literally been through the Massacre arc world, this isn't anything new to you. This is the third time something about the Massacre world is being reused. While in the game shop looking for items to auction off, they find mahjong pieces laid out and decided to try and see if they could pull off
tsubame gaeshi, which was honestly helpful to see visually since I personally don't know anything about mahjong outside of the PC freeware.
Also this is actually bullshit, because if Akasaka's injured here, it's already too late for his wife. There's no point in cutting back to this after he tells her she's Yukine's savior because she warned him to go back to Tokyo
before he and Ooishi went to scout out Takatsudo and have their scuffle with the Yamainu. And the way she says "I don't want to die here" is too overly-dramatic. In the 2006 anime, she sounded dejected from exhaustion which helped to further emphasize how much older she actually was, mentally, since for a time she
was able to be sent back that far to interact with Akasaka. And unless this is a flashback to her
first attempt to ask Akasaka for help when she's "prophesying" the Watanagashi deaths, the way she said it here comes off as phoned-in.
Now this:
This is where the Massacre world will diverge, since in Massacre, even though Akasaka showed up, he was
not directly in or near Hinamizawa when she needed him most, which is what made her come close to giving up on that world.
OH, NEVER MIND. This is a goddamn comedy now. (Seriously, I was
this close to laughing out loud over this.)
The worlds that followed this one seemed more interesting, but thinking about it, they wouldn't make sense with Akane Sonozaki and Kiichirou Kimiyoshi going nuts given Rules X and Z. I think Ryukishi is just pulling stuff out of his ass at this point since instead of bothering to show us the progression of how it affected these characters, fuck us, I guess. How much can you troll your fanbase until they get pissed, do you reckon? 'Cause I think this is going beyond trolling.
Also it's actually disgusting how much violence has been going on since Higurashi was never about the violence. The violence was sparse but shocking because one of the moral lessons of Higurashi is how murder is murder no matter what, and that it never ends well for anyone, as in most worlds, killing someone ends up triggering the domino effect leading to the Hinamizawa Disaster. Throwing us into violent scenarios at the end of each world is actually missing the entire point, unless Ryukishi's entire point is to torture Rika because fuck Rika, I guess. Whether Takano and Tomitake's disappearance is the cause for why Rika dies much earlier than expected is still up in the air, but it more-or-less just comes off as kicking Rika while she's down for the lulz.
Legit, Higurashi fan fiction is more cohesive than this and less insulting in their violence. This is just becoming guro when that was never Higurashi's intent. Again, this better be a Bernkastel origin story because that's the only other way to explain this shit--although if it is, how does that explain her knowing she, as Rika, goes to St. Lucia's Academy when she was expelled after "Dice-Killing"?