Higurashi Matsuribayashi - TV Tropes (2024)

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• Big Damn Heroes: Just as Rika has been captured by the Mountain Dogs and is about to be sedated so she cannot resist, Akasaka appears in at the last moment and lays down a righteous beatdown on Okonogi and his goons.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Discussed. When infiltrating the Clinic, Irie explains that in order to enter, you need both the keycard and a fingerprint. Kasai asks Irie if he thinks his personal access credentials still works. Shion impishly remarks that if it doesn't, they could always borrow a card and a finger from one of the security guards.
• Common Mary Sue Traits: Discussed through Conversational Troping. When talking about who the main character of Rika's "manga" should be, Mion suggests that she should have secret hidden powers, come from a royal bloodline, and have "Ebony Fallen Angel" as her codename. Rena immediately dismisses this whole concept as some middle schooler's lame idea for an original character.
• Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: Satako starts taunting the Mountain Dogs like this when their pursuit is increasingly thrown into disarray by her traps.
• Faking The Death: In other to throw Tanako and the Mountain Dogs a major curveball and serious disturb their plans, the Games Club fakes Rika's death with help from Ooishi, to make it appear like she has been dead for 48 hours, thus putting the whole basis for the emergency manual into doubt.
• Fingore: During her escape attempt from the Orphanage of Fear, a young Miyoko is grabbed from behind by one of the staff members. Unfortunately for him, he grabs her by the face and as such he unwittingly inserts his pinky finger into her mouth. Desperate to escape, Miyoko doesn't hesitate bite down hard on said finger, causing him drop her as he falls over and writhes on the ground in pain, allowing her to fully escape him.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: In quite a few ways. The episode includes an actual gameplay segment in the form of the Fragments Menu — relatively simple gameplay, true, but still gameplay nonetheless. The episode also does away with TIPS for roughly the first half of the episode, perhaps mostly because the Fragments Menu is nothing but a long series of TIPS when it comes down to it.
• I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That: Irie tells Ooishi that once this whole ordeal is over, he will gladly tell him everything he knows about the mysterious deaths in Hinamizawa. He then asks Tomitake that though he is sworn to secrecy, if could be alright to make an exception for Ooishi. Tomitake merely chuckles awkwardly in response and says that if anyone asks, he definitely didn't hear any of what Irie just said.
• No-Sell: Okonogi unleashes his strongest kick technique upon Akasaka. Where Okonogi is used to see people he has used it on in the past crumble like paper, Akasaka just tanks it, and laconically comments that it was "too light."
• Prolonged Prologue: The first four chapters of the episode focuses on chronicling Takano's origin story and ultimately her Start of Darkness.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: In an internal monologue, Irie mentions that due to the nature of their work, and that the fact that Tanako is working with a semi-classified part of the JSDF, he cannot fully trust any personal details she gives him, and that even her name might be an alias. In actuality, Tanako is using her Real Name as an Alias in the sense that she is employed a different kanji spelling to conceal her connection to her grandfather and that she is doing it for personal reasons rather than in the name of official secrecy.
• Secret Expanded Epilogue: After completing the story, a secret extra fragment can be unlocked in the Connecting Fragment sequence, provided the player completes it without any broken fragments. If this condition is met, this secret fragment a new timeline in which Rika travels into Tanako's past and prevents her parents from dying in a train accident. Upon completion, it also unlocks the Special Thanks section of the credits.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Tanako offers to bribe Tomitake into joining her. Tomitake replies that it might work with the Mountain Dogs, but it won't work with him.
• Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: During a thunderstorm, young Miyoko curses God for everything he has put her through, demanding that he either gives her a better life or goes through with killing her instead of continuing to let her suffer. A subsequent bolt of lightning narrowly misses her.
• Sympathy for the Devil: After speaking with Rika about her suspicions that Tanako is trying to kill her, Irie realizes that he has never gotten to know Tanako all that well as a person, so he decides to strike up a conversation with her over lunch. Tanako ends up relating some of her Dark and Troubled Past to him in the process, and Irie realizes that while it seems to confirm Rika's claims, it makes him feel sorry for Tanako, as he now has seen a glimpse of the indescribable sadness she carries within her.
• Trojan Prisoner: When infiltrating the clinic, Irie points out that it will impossible to sneak past the downstairs security camera and that an automatic chime will alert the security guards in the basement whenever someone enters it. Shion quickly hatches an idea to have her and Irie pretend to be the prisoners, with Kasai and Akasaka dressing up in a couple of stolen security guard uniforms.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: In so far that this episode of an otherwise linear Kinetic Novel series actually includes gameplay at all. While some few instances of player interactivity has been showing up in previous episodes, they have been limited to fake choices that turns out to be a case of But Thou Must!, transparently meant to riff on other purely aesthetic choice mechanics seen in other popular Visual Novels. This episode, however, introduces the Fragments Menu, which works around a dependency tree, where the player must go through a series of "fragments" in the right order in order to advance.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Of sorts. Following the Watanagashi Festival, there is a short one narrated by Hanyu, where she details what the immediate future holds for the various cast members.