Ryukishi07 megathread / griefing thread - Higurashi, Umineko, Ciconia, etc.

[skykiii]

There's a review I read once that noted this, most strikingly that the mansion murder mystery that started the whole "anti-mystery" genre was published in 1987... exactly one year after Umineko's setting. In other words, Ryukishi knows damn well he's treading on old ground, he just refuses to admit it.
And also there's another work from the same guy that's suspiciously similar to Umineko (mysterious woman with a western name, family inheritance squabbles, a forgotten maid, incest, swapped babies)... and also there's an interview where Ryukishi says there's no Japanese mansion mystery novels. I don't know what's wrong with that man, but it's fucking bad.

Do you know the names of that novel from 1987 and that other work from the same guy that's suspiciously similar to Umineko?

What gameplay aspects of Phoenix Wright do you find annoying?

Probably just autism on my part but I often run into parts where its clear what I need to do, but I'm not sure HOW I'm supposed to do it, in the game's interface. I believe I've also had times where I know exactly what shows a guy to be a liar, I try to present it, and get penalized, and have no idea what I did wrong.

Phoenix Wright (and Danganronpa) are both rare cases where it almost feels best to watch someone else play first, then visit them yourself so you can see sequences the lets player cut out or optional dialogue.

EDIT:

I have not read more Umineko since my last post so to keep the bitch-train going I'm remembering something I'm shocked I did not bring up before.

So back in the Episode 1 manga volumes (and that naming scheme is confusing as all hell--referring to multiple books as "Episode 1")... Battler would repeatedly punch Maria in the head whenever she would do her creepy bit.

Now, I get Ryukishi was likely just imitating Detective Conan with that. Difference is: Conan Edogawa is A) a near-adult in a child's body and B) a bit of a smug jerk who sometimes needed to be brought back down to Earth. (Also C, the bonks Conan gets are usually delivered by Kogoro Mori, who we're not really meant to side with... whereas Maria's bonks are delivered by Battler, who we apparently are supposed to side with).

Maria is a normal little girl who may or may not be possessed, so Battler's actions are just straight-up abusing a child, no matter how comically its presented. (Maria coming from an already possibly-abusive household and possibly being brain damaged ain't making this any easier)

This is before I bring up the whole "Battler saying he wants to touch Maria's boobs when she gets older" thing. I get there's cultural differences but the fuck is wrong with you, man?

Ryukishi was a social worker, folks.

 

[Wendell X]

Do you know the names of that novel from 1987 and that other work from the same guy that's suspiciously similar to Umineko?


Probably just autism on my part but I often run into parts where its clear what I need to do, but I'm not sure HOW I'm supposed to do it, in the game's interface. I believe I've also had times where I know exactly what shows a guy to be a liar, I try to present it, and get penalized, and have no idea what I did wrong.

Phoenix Wright (and Danganronpa) are both rare cases where it almost feels best to watch someone else play first, then visit them yourself so you can see sequences the lets player cut out or optional dialogue.

I assume the suspiciously similar work is the Decagon House Murders.

The only elements that set phoenix wright and danganronpa apart from a regular visual novel are the puzzle elements and the qte bullshit in danganronpa. Putting the clues in in the right order is how the game works, and basic puzzle solving skills like determining the relevant clues, of which there are usually only two or three, and picking the right one. Like a lot of puzzle games, and like life, it's not good enough to just know the answer, you also have to present it the right way. If you find it too frustrating, then you need to work on your discipline. I say this from experience. It's difficult to take your criticism of Umineko seriously as a result.

 

[skykiii]

Like a lot of puzzle games, and like life, it's not good enough to just know the answer, you also have to present it the right way. If you find it too frustrating, then you need to work on your discipline. I say this from experience. It's difficult to take your criticism of Umineko seriously as a result.

Yeah admittedly part of my autism there is that with Phoenix Wright I get caught up in the story to the point where the gameplay is almost unwelcome at times, and I think that triggers some autism on my part. I've compared it to watching a movie but then you have to solve a logic puzzle to watch more movie.

With a game like Myst for example I will always say try your best to play the game without a walkthru. With AA I feel the opposite, like I'd rather go in already knowing how to win so I can enjoy it as a "book."

.... Not sure what this has to do with my criticisms of Umineko though (guessing that part was a typo?)

 

[Horribadger]

Decagon House Murders was the 1987 work, but the suspiciously similar one was something else. I'd have to go look that up.

So back in the Episode 1 manga volumes (and that naming scheme is confusing as all hell--referring to multiple books as "Episode 1")... Battler would repeatedly punch Maria in the head whenever she would do her creepy bit.

Now, I get Ryukishi was likely just imitating Detective Conan with that. Difference is: Conan Edogawa is A) a near-adult in a child's body and B) a bit of a smug jerk who sometimes needed to be brought back down to Earth. (Also C, the bonks Conan gets are usually delivered by Kogoro Mori, who we're not really meant to side with... whereas Maria's bonks are delivered by Battler, who we apparently are supposed to side with).

Maria is a normal little girl who may or may not be possessed, so Battler's actions are just straight-up abusing a child, no matter how comically its presented. (Maria coming from an already possibly-abusive household and possibly being brain damaged ain't making this any easier)

This is before I bring up the whole "Battler saying he wants to touch Maria's boobs when she gets older" thing. I get there's cultural differences but the fuck is wrong with you, man?

Ryukishi was a social worker, folks.

Yeah. I could accept Battler bonking Maria as slapstick comedy for the most part, but putting it right alongside Rosa's actions makes it feel... poorly thought out, at best. Like I'm pretty sure it's outright mentioned at some point that Rosa hits Maria on the top of her head so the bruises don't show.
This might count as spoilers but I don't really care- if it had only ever happened "off-screen" I could see it being handwaved as some shit the culprit-author made up for drama, but I'm pretty sure she does it in front of Battler at least a couple times.
Honestly this is one of the many many things that makes Umineko less appealing than Higurashi. The group dynamics in Higu were unique and engaging and were wacky enough not to feel too close to any of the "real" stuff (eg Teppei and Satoko) but Umineko's just feel generic. Like, the second Jessica started doing the "ugh hentai baka, you touch tits me punch you!" thing I was like, this is going to be bad isn't it.

No one ever said he was a good social worker, P:

 

[Atatata]

Maria was a creepy autistic to be fair, I'd bonk her on the head too. Rosa did nothing wrong.

 

[skykiii]

Honestly this is one of the many many things that makes Umineko less appealing than Higurashi. The group dynamics in Higu were unique and engaging and were wacky enough not to feel too close to any of the "real" stuff (eg Teppei and Satoko) but Umineko's just feel generic. Like, the second Jessica started doing the "ugh hentai baka, you touch tits me punch you!" thing I was like, this is going to be bad isn't it.

Yeah, the funny thing about Higurashi is that it really doesn't start getting bad until the "Kai" season of the anime, and even then I think I only really turned on it in the last half. Umineko a lot of its problems seem to set in damn near immediately.... most notably the Ryukishi trademark of the main male hero being clearly someone we're supposed to see as the best person ever and every woman (including maybe Beatrice) low-key wants to have his babies. Keiichi didn't really get that bad until the last half of Kai.

Autistic theory: I was going through Danganronpa v3 and noticed Kaito Momota acts and even kinda looks like Battler. I find myself wondering if that character was an attempt to be "Battler but not as stupid."

To be weirdly positive for a second, I do almost think that the discussion of intellectual concepts makes Umineko worth reading if you're 15 or younger and can handle the gore.

Maria was a creepy autistic to be fair, I'd bonk her on the head too. Rosa did nothing wrong.

Nooooo Maria is the widdle cuteness! No bonkie Maria!

The only Bonks she deserves were made by Hudson Soft in the early 1990s.

 

[Wendell X]

Yeah admittedly part of my autism there is that with Phoenix Wright I get caught up in the story to the point where the gameplay is almost unwelcome at times, and I think that triggers some autism on my part. I've compared it to watching a movie but then you have to solve a logic puzzle to watch more movie.

With a game like Myst for example I will always say try your best to play the game without a walkthru. With AA I feel the opposite, like I'd rather go in already knowing how to win so I can enjoy it as a "book."

.... Not sure what this has to do with my criticisms of Umineko though (guessing that part was a typo?)

It was not a typo. If you can't solve phoenix wright mysteries then how can you have the patience to solve umineko mysteries? Phoenix Wright is a professionally made game series where every puzzle only has maybe three possible solutions, whereas as you note, umineko is a ridiculous sprawling deconstruction of the genre made by an amateur (an amateur with an obvious affection for murder mysteries, but an amateur no less.)

Have you played raging loop? That's still jam packed with tropes and stereotypes, because you need both for a deconstruction, but it is a much more tightly written deconstruction, you might enjoy it more than umineko.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Yeah, the funny thing about Higurashi is that it really doesn't start getting bad until the "Kai" season of the anime

So why are you blaming Ryukishi for Kai being bad when it was DEEN who obviously fucked it up? Even though they were clearly trimming the fat because good God does the second half of the sound novel drag on but it was mainly because the mystery was coming to an end and we clearly had too-high expectations for it.

Keiichi didn't really get that bad until the last half of Kai.

Keiichi was obviously living out his dream of being a shounen protagonist after getting three arcs of his POV where he clearly goes on during the silly moments about how he's "living the dream" of a shounen protagonist. If you have a problem with that, why are you watching/reading Japanese escapism?

It was not a typo. If you can't solve phoenix wright mysteries then how can you have the patience to solve umineko mysteries?

FTFY.

 

[Shaneequa]

Let's not get into an slapfight over whose anime game requires more autism

 

[skykiii]

It was not a typo. If you can't solve phoenix wright mysteries then how can you have the patience to solve umineko mysteries?

OBJECTION!

... Do you know what a "non-sequitur" is? Because you just made one.

First off, my problems with AA were game interface issues. It's unrelated to Umineko because Umineko does not have gameplay, its entirely non-interactive even in the original VN.

Second, you seem to be entirely blind to the whole concept of "gameplay interface issues" and seem to be incapable of understanding that someone can understand a game's story just fine but not always understand what the game wants us to do to advance said story.

Look, here's a visual demonstration (skip to five minutes in):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCpow9C_D6U

The player here actually does press on the correct scene in the video.... and gets penalized. First time I watched this, I shared his "what?" reaction. He's entirely on the right track, there's nothing long with his logic or "mystery solving."

Have you played raging loop?

Never heard of it.

And honestly I'm not interested in "trope deconstructions." I went into Umineko only knowing "its by the guy who made Higurashi but a lot of people say its better, and also its a murder mystery with magical elements."

If I had gone in knowing "its a bad murder mystery where the lead detective refuses to ever actually investigate and the main author apparently changed his mind about it being a murder mystery early on," I might have steered clear.

So why are you blaming Ryukishi for Kai being bad when it was DEEN who obviously fucked it up? Even though they were clearly trimming the fat because good God does the second half of the sound novel drag on

..... I mean... there's that right there: you say Deen screwed up but then still say the VN was shit.

We had this discussion last year and what I saw there was you basically confirming that all my problems from the anime are still present in the VN. And full disclosure... I had similar discussions off of KF and was told pretty much the same thing in other places: all the parts I hated are still there, just they were longer. Some people were nice and tried to say it had "more justification" or "more context" but you can only polish a turd so much.

Basically, the anime would need to be a Peter Jackson-esque case where a lot of the retardery or nonsensical parts are directly because of them rewriting or adding their own shit. But what I'm hearing is its more like a Ralph Bakshi case where they just condensed the story and maybe lost a little context but what you see on screen is still basically what happened in the book.

Keiichi was obviously living out his dream of being a shounen protagonist after getting three arcs of his POV where he clearly goes on during the silly moments about how he's "living the dream" of a shounen protagonist. If you have a problem with that, why are you watching/reading Japanese escapism?

As it happens I usually don't read a lot of Japanese escapism these days.

The Keiichi problem is twofold. First: his shonen protagonist BS comes after literal days of being in a horror story.

Secondly though.... when Ryukishi tries to have his shonen protagonist, he's such a bad author that there's a severe disconnect between what he wants me to think, and what my own eyes are telling me.

I bring up the Kai arc where Keiichi rallies the town to Satoko's side a lot, because its a perfect example: The whole thing is meant to be this big inspiring moment and (even according to the author) a message to kids in bad situations.... the problem is:

One - "Keep showing up at CPS to 'show your feelings'" is a retarded solution just on its face. It's been clearly explained to this retard that the problem is they need proof Teppei is abusive (in this case, Satoko's say-so). You have to be Reddit-level retarded to think that just brigading CPS a lot will make this inconvenient fact go away.

Two - The solution is something no real person could act on, its patently glurgy bullshit that would only work in an anime.

Three - Even in the anime, it almost doesn't work and, in fact, almost gets Keiichi arrested.

Four - And beyond all that, the only reason it does work is because of complete fucking happenstance--Keiichi didn't know that Rika inspiring Satoko was part of the puzzle, so he completely lucked out that she took the phone and gave Satoko a pep talk. If that hadn't happened, Satoko would still be fucked and Keiichi would just have made two towns worth of very upset people and become blacklisted by the CPS.

This would be like if in Yu-Gi-Oh, Yugi only joined the Duelist Kingdom tournament because he thought that if he won, Capcom would release Megaman X5... and then it actually appears in stores literally the day after the tournament ends and he thinks the two are connected even though logically X5 must've been in production long before and also Pegasus doesn't even work for Capcom... and then the author includes an afterword saying "the moral of this story is dreams come true" even though its literally not even a story about dreams coming true.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

 

[Kari Kamiya]

you say Deen screwed up but then still say the VN was shit.

I've never once said the sound novel was shit for its pacing, Ryukishi just badly needed an editor.

One - "Keep showing up at CPS to 'show your feelings'" is a retarded solution just on its face. It's been clearly explained to this retard that the problem is they need proof Teppei is abusive (in this case, Satoko's say-so). You have to be Reddit-level retarded to think that just brigading CPS a lot will make this inconvenient fact go away.

Ms. Chie had proof something was awry and reported it, but when a welfare check was done, Satoko sent them away, so the CPS wasn't doing shit, they said so themselves. Mion even mentioned how the bureaucracy for that department worked, which was why they had to keep rallying for Satoko. Keiichi had the will to do it, Rika had an inkling he was special like that given how he was super important for the friend group because his absence guaranteed it was to be a sad, boring world. Keiichi is literally crucial in helping the gears move.

Two - The solution is something no real person could act on, its patently glurgy bullshit that would only work in an anime.

How dare a fictionalized story take liberties that aren't realistic. How the fuck is that a negative?

Three - Even in the anime, it almost doesn't work and, in fact, almost gets Keiichi arrested.

How dare a fictionalized story have stakes and roadblocks to move the plot along.

Four - And beyond all that, the only reason it does work is because of complete fucking happenstance--Keiichi didn't know that Rika inspiring Satoko was part of the puzzle, so he completely lucked out that she took the phone and gave Satoko a pep talk.

Which only happened because Rika was inspired by Keiichi's determination to at last take a stand and reach out to Satoko as her best friend after years of giving up thinking she had no power to change fate.

And your Yu-Gi-Oh analogy is legit retarded and makes no sense in trying to prove the point you've already made ages ago.

 

[Sulla]

If I had gone in knowing "its a bad murder mystery where the lead detective refuses to ever actually investigate and the main author apparently changed his mind about it being a murder mystery early on," I might have steered clear.

Well there's your problem.

You don't want to think, you want to be told.

 

[skykiii]

Well there's your problem.

You don't want to think, you want to be told.

Sulla, you do realize you're just coming off as a dick-sucking Ryukishi fan, right?

I mean seriously, you're doing the Reddit thing of "you don't like my precious author, you just aren't SMART ENOUGH!"

And your Yu-Gi-Oh analogy is legit retarded and makes no sense in trying to prove the point you've already made ages ago.

Yeah reading it again its like.... I wanna take a mulligan. Just in general I can tell I was distracted when responding to you earlier and my words weren't coming out as clearly as they should have.

With that...

......... The thing is, that entire fucking arc is a multi-headed hydra of issues. Bad logic, bad morals, characters who do stupid things, being a point where you stop believing its any sort of organic situation and start seeing it as just a dumb TV show that plays out becuase the script says so (in other words, it ruins my suspension of disbelief).... there's a reason that entire thing reminds me of The Negotiator/Ambition series by Michael Gibson.

Heck, more recently it occured to me that this arc has a bit of a logic hole due to Ryukishi not planning things out: The final arc reveals that Satoko actually has Hinamizawa Syndrome and that the medicines she gets from doctor dude are actually suppressing it. IIRC the Teppei arc says he's not even taking her to get her meds anymore, meaning she should become murderous and crazy and just kill the guy on her own accord, meaning no matter what, the problem will get solved.

But the big problem with this arc in particular is...

Look, I like seeing heroes win against seemingly impossible odds. But there's two rules: One, the victory can never be due purely to luck. Two, it has to be believable.

This arc breaks both those rules.

Ms. Chie had proof something was awry and reported it, but when a welfare check was done, Satoko sent them away, so the CPS wasn't doing shit, they said so themselves. Mion even mentioned how the bureaucracy for that department worked, which was why they had to keep rallying for Satoko.

And the rules magically change if you rally enough people? That's what I'm getting at here: Keiichi's solution fundamentally does not even address the problem. Or it does, but in a way that should be counter-productive.

How dare a fictionalized story have stakes and roadblocks to move the plot along.

Its not about stakes--the problem is all Keiichi is really doing is what any and all rallyers ever do: fuck over society and stress out a bunch of blue-collar joes just trying to do their jobs because they think that enough emotion will magically change the world.

What he's doing here... should not work. And at this point the story seems to almost be paying heed to reality by having the cop guy step in and say "dude, knock it off or I'll have to arrest you."

Instead, the story bullshits a way where his retardation was actually the right answer the whole time.

This would be like if you and me were stuck in a cage together, and you made actual good suggestions like picking the lock or something, and my suggestion was "sit down and sing cartoon theme songs until the door opened," and we finally did that... and then a meteor happened to land and that caused the door to fling open from the impact. My strategy was not brilliant--I didn't even know the meteor was coming!

Same deal here--Keiichi had no idea that part of the problem was Rika's own attitude. He was only thinking of using the power of Feels Over Reals to get CPS to change their rules. Him inspiring Rika just happened to happen and that was what made everything else work.

At that point, it stops feeling like the events are happening organically and more like Ryukishi just used author fiat.

How dare a fictionalized story take liberties that aren't realistic. How the fuck is that a negative?

So I take it you had no issues with the Gamegate episode of Law and Order: SVU then?

Cheap shots aside, the first problem with this "fiction is allowed to be unrealistic" defense is Ryukishi was under the impression he was imparting real wisdom.

Secondly, this is subject matter that can hit close to home for a lot of people--the same problem any show that has an episode about school bullying often runs into. It's kind of dumb to ask people to see it only as escapist fiction when the story is directly tackling a subject that might personally affect you or someone you know.

I called this whole arc "glurge" before--the definition I always heard of that word included a byline that glurge attempts to be uplifting but often fucks it up by having easily-spotted darker interpretations... in this case, that Satoko woulda been fucked if it wasn't for the author literally protecting Keiichi from his own retardation. So essentially the "hopeful message" Ryukishi thinks he's imparting instead comes off as "hope you have connections."

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if this story actually drove abused children to suicide.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Phoenix Wright

I don't want to get into this autistic debate, but I want to emphasize that Phoenix Wright (and similar games like Danganronpa) is a very different beast from traditional mystery novels. Most novels have a very clear stopping point of clues, afterwards the villain is revealed. Sometimes the author will start trimming the list, but that doesn't add more information, but removes irrelevant information.

Phoenix Wright however works so that the reader will constantly be exposed to new information, and usually reach the conclusion the same time as the playable character. This makes the cases where the player "solves" the problem before the trial the absolute worse ones, while the ones where you solve it as you go along the best ones.

It sounds like small change, but it changes how you approach the cases.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

the problem is all Keiichi is really doing is what any and all rallyers ever do: fuck over society and stress out a bunch of blue-collar joes just trying to do their jobs because they think that enough emotion will magically change the world.

...what blue-collar Joes? Are you talking about the CPS people getting pressured into doing their fucking jobs by the people rallying to save a girl from their village using the law as intended instead of just disappearing Teppei?

 

[Shaneequa]

I kind of agree with skykiii that the Tatarigoroshi solution arcs are dumb in execution but K1 achieving victory through rallying the villagers was a callback to the protests to stop the dam that would have flooded the village (which worked and set precedent) and Satoko's family being isolated as a result of that incident so "rallying the villagers" is mostly about getting them to let go of their spite for the Hojou family and thus "killing" the "curse" of Tatarigoroshi.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Also Keiichi only actually succeeded because he had Oryō's backing after impressing her with his determination, and she pulled strings by having other members of the Sonozaki family (one of whom is a member of the Diet) come in to basically strong-arm CPS into doing their jobs. That was the miracle Rika was going on about, but it wouldn't have happened without Keiichi being stubborn. Remember that Shion was going to take matters into her own hands had Keiichi not stepped in, and it's implied she's done it in multiple worlds, which was why Rika was shocked that he stood up to Shion. Apparently Keiichi's will got strong enough to affect the later worlds before it was too late, and it may-or-may-not be a butterfly effect of Akasaka deciding to listen to Rika's warning in that world.

 

[Sulla]

Sulla, you do realize you're just coming off as a dick-sucking Ryukishi fan, right?

I mean seriously, you're doing the Reddit thing of "you don't like my precious author, you just aren't SMART ENOUGH!"

No, I don't think you're retarded because you don't like Umineko and don't want to solve for the individual murders. I think you're retarded because you say reddit tier takes like that you are doing a psyche analysis on ryukishi based on the first couple of arcs + you liked dgr which was actually bad.
----------------------
As a side note, when I first read the original vn ending I hated it. Because it leaning into one of the underlining themes "It doesn't matter who the killer is because people will arbitrarily argue in favor of whoever based on whether they like them or not" was pretentious.

However, these days I appreciate it much more because it was literally right. Case and point skykii already deciding he doesn't like it based off of what other people have said and completely ignoring people in this thread saying that battler will reanalyze murders from earlier chapters.

 

[Wendell X]

OBJECTION!

... Do you know what a "non-sequitur" is? Because you just made one.

First off, my problems with AA were game interface issues. It's unrelated to Umineko because Umineko does not have gameplay, its entirely non-interactive even in the original VN.

Second, you seem to be entirely blind to the whole concept of "gameplay interface issues" and seem to be incapable of understanding that someone can understand a game's story just fine but not always understand what the game wants us to do to advance said story.

Look, here's a visual demonstration (skip to five minutes in):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCpow9C_D6U
The player here actually does press on the correct scene in the video.... and gets penalized. First time I watched this, I shared his "what?" reaction. He's entirely on the right track, there's nothing long with his logic or "mystery solving."

He didn't pick the right item. He says so himself. He didn't understand what was required of him because the game was unclear. And what happened, he had to replay the scene and waste another half a minute? That's it, that's all it takes for you to check out? At least in danganronpa the truth bullet shit requires reflexes, but you noped out of Phoenix Wright because of a minor inconvenience.

So imagine you're me and you see someone criticising a series you enjoyed, but you notice that some of their criticism falls flat. It doesn't seem to understand what deconstruction is, some of it seems like pure personal preference (I don't like shonen manga stuff and it parodies shonen manga stuff), some of it is just nonsensical (keiichi can't just turn up at cps! That wouldn't work! And it almost doesn't!) So you ask what murder mysteries they like, reasoning that either they are severely off track with their criticism or they must be onto pure mystery kino and whatever they like will blow what you liked out of the water and you too will be embarrassed by umineko. And they start with encyclopaedia brown before moving on to sherlock holmes and Agatha Christie and they end by explaining they like two video game series you finished every entry of on release, series that you recommended to your nieces and nephews to learn how to solve mysteries, but they can't play them and have to watch other people play them. So they aren't onto pure mystery kino.

The primary difference between phoenix wright and umineko is that phoenix wright actually supplies you with answers. There are no easy answers in Umineko, because it's a deconstruction. Reading you beating your head against a wall demanding it stop being a deconstruction is just painful. Notice how nobody is picking on @Horribadger even though their criticism is even more caustic than yours at times? That's because their criticisms have a solid base beneath them. Yours do not.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Also I just realized this line:

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if this story actually drove abused children to suicide.

For one thing, children shouldn't be playing/watching Higurashi to begin with (hasn't stopped them, I've ran into a few Higurashi fans who saw it young), and anyone who kills themselves over something Higurashi did was already going to do it because they're just that fucked in the head. Satoko's character development here in standing up to her abuser knowing she has support backing her up isn't going to cause someone who experienced it to kill themselves simply for being unrealistic. Just because that's not how real life works doesn't mean it can't work in a fictionalized setting as long as it's not a complete deus ex machina, which it wasn't in the Massacre arc. How the characters became proactive in their rallying and lobbying wasn't OoC of them to do, and it wasn't a one-man effort, it was a team effort in which they found a way around any given obstacle that came across their path. It was actually realistic for the other classmates and Ms. Chie to burn out after a while and feel like they just had to return to business as usual and patiently wait for CPS to actually do what they said they'd do. It was actually realistic for Ooishi to step in and go "You need to stop while you can" (probably on orders from his government stooges higher-ups, though he was still obviously biased towards the Sonozakis) even though that just made Keiichi say "Nice try, no" and go prostrate himself before Oryō anyway, which miraculously worked even though it was realistic of her to see them as still children and that they didn't know how the real adult world works. But because they were still children, that was why they had to have adults be representatives and give aid.

This isn't so "glurgy" as much as it is a hope spot since there was still more story to tell, and that just because Rika was able to prevent one tragedy she had seen over and over again didn't mean it solved all of their problems because other things were happening in the background. The purpose of fighting back was to teach her (and the audience) to never give up, never surrender, trust in your friends, and that violence is never the answer. Compared to the previous Hinamizawa protest, no one did anything illegal or shady to get what they were advocating for, and it was a happy ending (for what it was). There wasn't enough time to further delve into Satoko's psyche in the aftermath even though we can determine she had gotten stronger like she was trying to be for Satoshi, and that she was going to be able to move on.

I get it, the child abuse angle is a sore spot and extremely uncomfortable, and perhaps Ryukishi could've handled it better than he did, but he wasn't trying to bum out his audience with "facts" and "realism". He just wanted to tell a story, and stories need conflict for the characters to earn their happy endings without it being contrived, and he probably also wanted to be critical of the system he was once a part of because he must've seen it fail children more than save them. That was apparently the biggest thing he wanted to talk about outside of showing how violence is not the answer and does more harm than good.