I've been keeping notes as I go through episode 2, and had originally intended to just save them up until the end and then edit them into something that makes sense, but I feel like they're all just going to be out of date by then. On top of that, it just feels a bit overwhelming to try to make anything coherent out of all of them. I think I'm just going to do some minimal editing, share what I have now, and then continue to share something any time I have accumulated more than a few notes.
You may want to see what I had to say after episode 1.
Perhaps I should try to say what I aim to do here. As much as I'd like to think I could, I don't feel smart enough to "solve" these things, nor to do meaningful literary criticism. I think really all I hope for is to try to illuminate my thought process and provide some entertainment for my friends who are fans of Higurashi. Perhaps you'll enjoy seeing me struggle.
As ever, this is going to be full of spoilers. I have read the first seven chapters of episode 2, Watanagashi, and there's definitely at least one pretty major thing revealed in that time that I think is best enjoyed without being spoiled, so please don't read if you haven't gotten that far yet.
Watanagashi
Who are the five demons of the Watanagashi festival? Five is an interesting number! Wonder if that could be significant... And later on, who are the "three families" associated with the Furude shrine?
What exactly is Rika doing in her Watanagashi practice?
Reading minds
The narrative repeatedly has characters respond directly to things others were merely thinking. I still can't tell if it's just for comedy or if it's trying to suggest something. Keiichi observes Rena's imagination in her eyes. Keiichi imagines that pulling weeds would be fun with this group and then Satoko says that it wouldn't be fun for her. Rika also demonstrates that she knows what Keiichi is thinking, and later Rena too. Does this demonstrate that Keiichi is simply transparent, that the others are actually able to see what he's thinking, or that they have some prior knowledge of how Keiichi would act in this situation?
Later on we see Shion responding to Keiichi's thoughts about Mion and herself. It's really hard to put it all down to just comedy. But it's also hard to see what pattern there is. It's almost always other people reading Keiichi's mind, but there was that one time Keiichi could see what Rena was imagining.
Mion...
Is her job some kind of criminal activity? She works for her family... are they some kind of crime syndicate?
What was she doing with that gym storehouse key? She made some comment early on about having to return the key to the teacher. It seemed oddly conspicuous, but it never came up again.
...and Shion
(Before the date.)
Mion and Shion get flustered past the point that can easily be explained by Keiichi knowing their "secret". It feels like they're trying to nagivate a web that we can't see.
It might just be that Mion has a crush?
Keiichi gets rescued
What on earth happened here.
I kept wondering if this was somehow a setup, if Shion engineered the encounter to get Keiichi indebted to her. But he clearly instigated the encounter himself, kicking over bikes like a little delinquent.
The Hinamizawans all seem to act in a trance. Is it just solidarity or something more? It felt like a hive mind, or that they were all following Shion's lead.
Just how old are Mion/Shion anyway? Do Hinamizawans age normally? How old would Mion have been at the time of the dam project? Were the riot police really assaulting little children? Shion says she was personally bleeding from the side of her head from such a wound. ("There was a time I was hit. Right around here I think. My skin split open and a whole lot of blood spilled out." It's a little awkwardly worded.) Keiichi certainly hasn't known any of them long enough to observe anything weird going on.
Maybe they have normal human bodies but when Shion is talking she's describing something that happened to a different body that she also considers to have been "her".
Pre-date pondering
Hypothesis: Mion and Shion are the same person. Mion invented Shion on the spot, and knows that Keiichi is skeptical, but is now using the separation to entwine him into something he would have been too skeptical of it Shion weren't flirting with him, while making him feel like a confidante so he won't spill the beans to anybody who will give him better advice. We are told this is a honeypot after all.
"It wasn't Mion posing as Shion in order to bait me into a trap, was it...?" Oh dear sweet Keiichi.
(Leaving this one here because I don't know where else to put it.) Did Ooishi just make the "opening a beer can" noise himself? That's very funny.
Rena tells us that something is hurting Mion. Something that's been getting worse, that she called Rena about in the middle of the night.
"What if that her being the younger twin was a lie, that she was just Mii-chan pretending to be her sister. What would you think?" There is more than one way to interpret this. This is still compatible with there being two of them, but one is pretending to be the other.
If we go with the simplest explanation, we can say that Mion has a crush on Keiichi and uses the Shion persona to create permission for that. Or maybe even to test if it's just her demeanour that dissuades Keiichi? Maybe her disappointment is that Keiichi only likes Shion and not Mion, even though she prefers to be Mion?
Post-date
looooooooooooooooool
Shion seems to be motivated to have Keiichi reject the notion of a curse.
Shion, Tomitake-san and Takano-san are arguing for a trilemma: coincidence, curse or plot. But what about a comedy of errors? The deaths could be related without a single coordinated plot to kill people.
Mion says there's proof that someone from Hinamizawa committed the crimes, and the villagers know it.
Why is new Shion's personality (confident, serious, arch) so different from both Mion (brash, gregarious) and old Shion (nervous, timid, sweet). I feel like we're getting the cup and balls magic trick: look, see, it was all a trick, there's actually two of them (there are three).
I mean, perhaps it's just they both wear a mask. Shion wears a mask of vulnerability. Mion wears a mask of bravado.
This lot giving me the impression that they all know fine well who is the killer. It's like one of those riddles about perfect logicians. I know. You know that I know. I know that you know that I know. But in a hundred nights' time suddenly you'll wake up and everyone has perfectly reasoned themselves into throwing themselves in the ocean.
The implements and the aftermath
The tips suggest that killing the ritual sacrifice isn't important... why? What can that possibly mean? ... Okay they do elaborate a bit later. I think it's more communicating a cold indifference than that they might not actually die.
Who is writing these tips? They seem to be from the perspective of an outsider, and they talk about somebody (Keiichi?) who might be able toget access to the locked away implements. Tomitake? Ooishi? Takano? ... I think it's probably Takano-san by the end of the chapter.
"Everyone got split up this year. We should make sure we have somewhere to meet up afterwards next year. Hau." Forward-looking. Everyone's going to be here next year. For sure. But... perhaps this says something about the meta-narrative. Will they agree somewhere to meet up next episode? Do any of them have an awareness of the repeating narrative?
Uh oh, what was Rika's mistake?
"After receiving Oyashiro-sama's trust, they chose a sacrifice." How do they know they have received Oyashiro-sama's trust?
If the villagers believe they are half-demon due to their heritage then presumably outsiders cannot ever become part of the in-group. Unless they are from the village originally, left and came back. Is Rena an outsider?
We're presented with a theory at the same time as a problem: perhaps the implements of the Watanagashi are for entertainment, and that explains why they might need 200 of them. But no mystery writer is going to just tell you the solution. So this feels like an invitation to look for other explanations. What else could they be? It sounds like the number of implements grew steadily over time. Do we perhaps accumulate one implement per victim?
Burned body. Autopsy... Oh dear.
Why was the body burned outside the prefecture? Perhaps the perpetrator or the victim could not be brought inside? We already have a hunch that Oyashiro-sama (or actions taken in their name) seems concerned with things entering and leaving the village. That said... the village is not the prefecture. A prefecture is pretty large!
Can you really match dental records that fast?
Victim had a wisdom tooth removed three years ago... so it's not any of the kids. Takano-san?
Mundane observations
Bits and pieces I wrote down that seem like they might be good to remember, but I don't really have any particular thoughts or insight around.
Oyashiro-sama protects from the "poisons" of the outside world.
The Watanagashi festival was never well attended before the dam fight.
Takano-san is also an outsider.
Missing kid was called Satoshi Houjou.
Kumagai-san: some police person. I don't think we've seen this name before.
Komiyama-san: another police person.
Moving forward
I'm a bit anxious about what comes next. I found parts of Keiichi's alienation in the latter part of episode 1 to get pretty dark and frustrating, much like I really disliked the descent into madness of episode 2 of Umineko. I wonder how Higurashi is going to function. So far we haven't seen any hint of a secondary layer like in Umineko, so I'm wondering if we're really just going to have have of every episode with Keiichi climbing the walls in paranoia and isolation.