Character sheet for the characters of Higurashi: When They Cry as they appear in Gou, Sotsu, and Meguri. All spoilers under the tabs will be unmarked, because nearly every character is a Walking Spoiler.

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Club Members

Keiichi Maebara

Voiced by: Soichiro Hoshi (JP), Khoi Dao (EN)

The main protagonist in the "question" arcs.

The Constant: In the first half of Gou, he always survives through the time loops no matter how badly injured he is. Whether he's stabbed a dozen times, imprisoned in an underground panic room, or getting hit in the head with a baseball bat, Keiichi always pulls through and wakes up at the hospital for whichever one of his friends survived the story arc to tell him who died.
Killing in Self-Defense: In Onidamashi-hen, Keiichi gets attacked by a crazed Rena and has to bash in her head with an alarm clock in self-defense. He doesn't find out Rena died from her injuries until he speaks to Ooishi and later Mion and he mourns heavily for her.
Properly Paranoid: In Onidamashi-hen, after being convinced by Rika to trust his friend Rena in what seems like a repeat of the events in Onikakushi-hen, it turns out he had every right to be suspicious as Rena had a case of Hinamizawa Syndrome and attempts to murder him.
Tears of Remorse: At the end of Onidamashi-hen, Keiichi cries deeply in mourning and remorse in his hospital bed while retelling Ooishi how he killed Rena in self-defense while she, overcome with Hinamizawa Syndrome, was stabbing him recklessly.

Rena Ryugu

Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (JP), Emi Lo (EN)

A girl with an obsession with things she perceives as cute.

Extremely Protective Child: In Onidamashi-hen, she succumbs to the Hinamizawa Syndrome and stabs Keiichi under the impression that if she kills him and gets spirited away, Oyashiro-sama will let her father live peacefully in Hinamizawa.
Psycho Knife Nut: In Onidamashi-hen, after reaching L5, Rena goes insane and repeatedly stabs Keiichi with a knife.

Mion Sonozaki

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Michelle Rojas (EN)

The club's leader and next in line to be the head of the Sonozaki household.

Accidental Murder: In Wataakashi-hen, she accidentally kills Shion and Oryo in her Hinamizawa Syndrome-striken madness and is horrified when she realizes what she did. This doesn't happen in the manga version where Shion is the murderer instead.
Adaptational Villainy: While Mion is generally characterized as the Only Sane Woman and the only of the main characters who never attempts to murder anyone, the Gou/Sotsu anime series flipped this on its head with the Wataakashi-hen arc where Mion commits the murders in a misguided effort to protect Keiichi, albeit while under the influence of the syndrome Satoko injected on her. However, the arc's manga version turns Shion into the murderer.
Apologetic Attacker: She apologizes to Kimiyoshi and Rika before she tortures him to death and strangles her to death respectively in Wataakashi-hen.
Because You Were Nice to Me: In the Watadamashi/Wataakashi-hen arc, [Mion locks Keiichi in a cell and intends to deal with what she thinks is a conspiracy of the Three Great Families of Hinamizawa in order to protect Keiichi. When Keiichi begs her to let him help her, Mion tells him she was happy when he treated her like a girl by giving her a doll so she's going to protect him to the end or die trying. In the manga, however, the one who locks Keiichi in the cell is Shion doing what she can to protect Keiichi in the dead Mion's place.
Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the anime version of Wataakashi-hen, Satoko kills a crazed Mion. In the manga version, Shion goes insane instead, and accidentally kills Mion.
Dying Declaration of Love: She finally manages to confess her love to Keiichi in Watadamashi before being found shot by Satoko in the Sonozaki's mansion's hallway.
Forced into Evil: In Watadamashi/Wataakashi-hen, Satoko artificially injecting her with Hinamizawa Syndrome makes her commit horrifying deeds she normally wouldn't commit when sane and unaffected. However, in the manga version, Shion is the arc's killer.
My God, What Have I Done?: She's tearfully horrified that she murdered Shion after briefly regaining her senses from the effects of the Hinamizawa Syndrome Satoko secretly induced in her in Sotsu's Wataakashi-hen.
Sibling Murder: In the 2020 anime's Watadamashi/Wataakashi-hen, Mion kills her twin sister Shion. The manga version reverses it with Shion killing Mion by accident instead.
Yandere: In Watadamashi-hen and Wataakashi-hen, it's Mion's wish to protect Keiichi from her family what causes her to give into the paranoia and insanity induced by Satoko's H-173 injection. Mion ends up killing Shion, Kimiyoshi, Rika and Satoko in the name of the guy she likes. In the manga version, however, it's subverted as it's revealed Shion is the one who committed the murders after Mion's accidental death caused her to go insane and go to the extremes to protect Keiichi because that's what she thinks Mion would have wanted.

Rika Furude

Voiced by: Yukari Tamura (JP), Apphia Yu (EN)

^{Click here to see her as a St. Lucia student}

^{Click here to see her in her "witch" garment}

The only daughter of Furude Shrine. She lives in the same house as Satoko, who is in the same grade. Unlike others, she consciously retains memories of all the time loops.

The Nekodamashi arc is focused on her.

Adaptational Intelligence: The Meguri manga depicts her being more active and shrewd in trying to reclaim her future, knowing that she has to stop Takano quickly and prevent her friends from succumbing to paranoia. Oniakashi not only has her trying to quell Keiichi's suspicions, but also inform Tomitake about Takano's plans and asking him to call the Bloodhounds for protection.
Aesop Amnesia: One of the most important lessons for the club members in the original series is the value of friendship and good communication. In Gou, post-Matsuribayashi-hen Rika failed to properly maintain communication with her best friend Satoko after they enter St. Lucia and when Satoko started to drift apart, Rika focused on enjoying her new friendships instead of keeping the one she already had with Satoko.
Bludgeoned to Death:
- At the start of Nekodamashi-hen, a L5 Ooishi beats her head with a baseball bat until she dies.
- Again at the end of Gou Episode 15, she's killed when Keiichi hits her in the head with a baseball bat.
- Episode 14 of Sotsu has her die from this again during one of her looping fights with Satoko.
Bluffing the Murderer: How she ultimately uncovers that Satoko is the one screwing up the timeline. She arranges a birthday party for Satoko and, for her final gift, hands her the box she used as a prank several timelines earlier that punches whoever opens it in the face with a boxing glove. Sure enough, Satoko winces away from it, then tries to cover by claiming that a Trap Master can spot any trap from a mile away... only for Rika to open the box and reveal she'd replaced the trap with a teddy bear the previous night.
Broken Tears: She cries in grief and despair when Hanyuu vanishes in Episode 14 and leaves her to try and overcome the new time loops on her own.
Bust-Contrast Duo: As teenagers, Rika is still pretty flat-chested unlike Satoko who grew several cups. Given that Rika was looking forward to growing breasts after finally escaping the time loop the first time, this is quite ironic.
Chairman of the Brawl: As a nod to Saikoroshi-hen, Rika beans Satoko with a chair in retaliation for trying to brutally murder her.
Decoy Protagonist: For most of Gou, it looks like Rika is the hidden protagonist to Keiichi's Decoy Protagonist like in the original series. After Satoko is revealed to be the Big Bad of Gou, the remainder of Gou and the entirety of Sotsu are told from Satoko's POV, making her the Villain Protagonist.
Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Class Princess. Almost immediately after arriving at St. Lucia, Rika's elegant Proper Lady front gains the admiration and praise of her classmates. Rika never acts arrogant and remains the same good-natured person she always was, but there's really bad consequences to her high social position at school. Rika's popularity and sophisticated behavior causes Satoko to develop an inferiority complex as she can't adjust herself to the school's stiff culture. Since she doesn't get along with Rika's groupies, Satoko distances herself from her former best friend. Rika does try to offer Satoko help at studying because she's honestly worried after Satoko gets sent to remedial classes, but Satoko takes this as Rika pitying her and distances herself even more.
Don't Make Me Destroy You: Subverted by Rika who gets fed up with the new Big Bad's attempts to beat her into submission. She brings out a shard of Onigari-no-ryuuou and invokes its powers with the intent to slay her former friend for good.
Dramatically Missing the Point:
- In Episode 14 of Gou, Hanyuu's fragment tells her where to find the Onigari-no-ryuuou, explaining it has the power to kill off a looper permanently. Rika can only assume that Hanyuu is telling her to kill herself if she can't put up with the pain of being killed over and over again. It takes her a while to figure out Hanyuu was warning her about another looper who is behind her gruesome deaths this time.
- Whenever Satoko confronts Rika about her having a good time at St. Lucia while Satoko isn't, Rika just brushes it off as Satoko getting frustrated about her grades not doing that well. She either doesn't understand or underestimates how Satoko feels totally misplaced at St. Lucia and can't stand the ladylike behavior of other girls, including Rika, because she finds them snobbish. Also, Satoko is more frustrated with seeing that Rika isn't struggling academically while she is getting behind as that makes her develop an inferiority complex.
Empty Promise: In Satoko's first repeat, she communicates with Rika everything that'll happen at St. Lucia in the future and tells her why she won't fit in at that place like can. Rika tries to dispel Satoko's fears by promising that she'll be there to help Satoko if she needs her. When things do end up the same as the first time around, Satoko accuses Rika of breaking their promise. Rika, however, insists she never lied to Satoko and did offer her help when she noticed Satoko's grades were falling, but Satoko can't interpret it as honest help when it's obvious Rika isn't struggling with academics like she does.
Even the Girls Want Her: She's almost worshipped by the girl population at St. Lucia. Satoko, however, has a crush/falls in love on Rika instead.
Expository Pronoun: She switches from "boku" - her younger self's preferred pronoun - to the more ladylike "watashi" when she goes to St. Lucia, but still occasionally slips up when she's not focusing or is around her old friends.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her eyes turn a glowing purplish red at The Stinger of the first episode. And again, when snapping at Keiichi for entering Saiguden in Watadamashi-hen.
Gutted Like a Fish: In Episode 16, she has her guts ripped out of her body like when Takano killed her in the original series. Except her killer this time is not Takano, but Satoko. And worse, unlike Takano who at least knocked her out with chloroform, Satoko keeps her conscious the entire time.
Half the Woman She Used to Be: A particularly gruesome example. In Episode 16, Satoko performs the Watanagashi ritual on her, disembowling her and hacking at her intestines with the ritual hoe. By the time she is finished, the simple act of Satoko hugging Rika pulls the top half of her body off of what's left of the rest of her.
Innocently Insensitive:
- Rika notices Satoko is having troubles with her grades at St. Lucia Academy and tries offering her help for studying, which is a nice gesture. The problem is that Rika asked Satoko right in front of her new friends who already look down on Satoko and someone prideful like Satoko naturally doesn't want to admit she's failing at her grades in the presence of others.
- In Satoko's second loop, Satoko tries talking Rika out of studying for the entrance exam of St. Lucia Academy. Rika then gets upset at Satoko implying it's wrong for her to pursue her dream of a life away from Hinamizawa and declares that even if Satoko doesn't want to study with her, she's going to study and enroll at the school on her own. Unfortunately, Satoko's abandonment issues make her interpret this as Rika basically threatening to abandon her if she doesn't go to St. Lucia with her.
Living Emotional Crutch: Satoko is extremely attached to Rika due to her being the main reason she could start enjoying life again after suffering years of abuse and losing her brother. Problem is, that emotional dependence turns into an unhealthy possessiveness as they become teenagers which pushes Satoko to start the tragic time loop all over again to keep Rika to herself because she just doesn't have the emotional stability to even try building a happy life that doesn't involve having Rika at her side 24/7.
The Many Deaths of You: Episode 15 is basically a sequence of Rika being killed in different painful ways by L5 killers. This happens again in Episode 14 of Sotsu only this time she's willing to fight back during the second half of those loops.
Mid-Suicide Regret: In Episode 14, Rika considers putting herself out of her misery for good with the small shard of the sword Onigari-no-ryuuou since getting thrown back into the loop where she gets killed endlessly is too much. Then she hears the club members looking for her at Saiguden and she decides it might be worth it to try a few more loops before giving up completely.
Off with Her Head!: One of her many deaths in Episode 15 is being decapitated by Akane.
Ojou: She's technically high-class among Hinamizawa because the Furudes are one of the Three Great Families and she's universally adored by the townsfolk. At St. Lucia Academy, her refined behavior makes the other students who are not her longtime friend Satoko look up to her like if she was a beautiful princess. Only the club members treat her like a normal person.
Pinball Protagonist: Although Keiichi is the POV character for the first half, Rika is the true protagonist of Gou. However, despite her statement early on that she would try to fight fate harder, the first half of the series is her acting as a passive observer in the slightly changed scenarios that end in her and her friends' deaths all over again. The only actions she takes are trying to clear Keiichi's suspicions about Rena in Onidamashi and suggesting him to give Mion in Watadamashi, but the changes in the scenarios cause tragedies to happen anyway and Rika doesn't actively investigate why she and her friends are dying again. It takes her 17 episodes to even talk to Takano before she escapes with Tomitake, confirming that Takano isn't her killer this time.
- She averts this in Meguri. Oniakashi reveals that not only did try to calm down Keiichi but she also told Tomitake about Takano's evil plans and convinced him to call the Bloodhounds to protect the both of them, leading to his survival and Takano's plans being cut short. Overall, this makes Rika more proactive and has her statement about fighting fate have actual weight.
Please, Don't Leave Me: In Episode 14, she starts to fall into despair when she sees Hanyuu's spirit fading in the sea of fragments because she never wanted to face more deadly loops without Hanyuu.
Poor Communication Kills: The fall out between her and Satoko in St. Lucia Academy that eventually traps them both in the loop again could have been avoided if the two had a proper conversation before or shortly after enrolling at the school. Rika invites Satoko to go to St. Lucia with her because she assumed Satoko would love it as much as her. When Satoko doesn't seem happy at all and gets sent to extra lessons, Rika thinks she's just having trouble with her studies and offers her help, but as Satoko keeps rejecting her, Rika stops even trying to reach out and focuses on enjoying her new life by herself. As a result, Satoko's negative feelings about her situation and resentment towards Rika for "causing" it grow bigger over the year.
Proper Lady: At St. Lucia, she adjusts herself to the elite school perfectly by behaving like an ideal prim lady. However, this causes Satoko to distance herself from her because the Rika she likes isn't so sophisticated.
Rage Breaking Point: When Rika learns who's been screwing with her attempts to escape the loops, she furiously condemns their motivations for doing so and fights back hard.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: She angrily calls Satoko out for her bullshit after learning she's the other looper and being subjected to another series of brutal loops.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes glow red when she drops the cute act and goes into Creepy Child mode in front of Keiichi.
School Idol: She's idolized by the high-class girls at St. Lucia because of her elegance and refined manners. The other students except Satoko call her "Rika-sama".
Sore Loser: In the first episode of Gou, she pretends that she has no ill feelings over Satoko using her traps to beat her in the club's first game with Keiichi. Then, she gives her a box that springs out a boxing glove and punches Satoko's face.
Stopping the Blame Game: In the first repeat of their life in St. Lucia Academy, Satoko perceives Rika once again going to have tea parties with her Girl Posse instead of staying by her side as the ultimate betrayal of her best friend. When Satoko confronts her about breaking her promise to be there for her, Rika defends herself by reminding Satoko that she did offer her help at studying and Satoko refusing out of pride is on her. Rika doesn't seem to understand Satoko is angrier about Rika spending all her time with her groupies when she knows Satoko is falling behind in her grades.
Tea Is Classy: At St. Lucia, she spends her free time having tea parties with her Girl Posse who love to hear her poetic speeches.
Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Girly Girl to Satoko's Tomboy. Rika is much more polite and feminine compared to her haughty and loud best friend. This gets Played for Drama when Rika gets accepted by the rich girls at St. Lucia for her ladylike behavior while Satoko's bad-mannered personality doesn't fit in at the school and drives her to alienate herself from everyone.
Tragic Mistake: Rika had every right to seek out a new life outside of Hinamizawa after escaping the loop where she was trapped for 100 years, but she made the big mistake of expecting Satoko to share her dream of going to St. Lucia Academy. Rika doesn't seem to fully understand that Satoko is only following her out of abandonment issues. As a result, she focuses on enjoying her new life and friendships while neglecting Satoko's deteriorating emotional and mental state due to stress and isolation at the school. The most she tries to do for Satoko is offering her help at studying when she notices Satoko's grades are falling, but Satoko is too prideful to accept her help. After Satoko's prank on Rika goes terribly wrong and injures one of Rika's new followers, Rika stops trying to reach out to Satoko and pretty much lets their friendship end. This has horrifying consequences for Rika when Satoko runs into a godlike being who grants her magical powers to rewind time and once Satoko realizes she can't change Rika's mind about going to St. Lucia in the good way, then she's gonna destroy Rika's mind and will by making her go through torture and death until Rika can't ever think about leaving Hinamizawa and being apart from Satoko again.
Trauma Conga Line: As if being stuck in a time loop where she sees her friends becoming crazy killers and she's killed gruesomely over and over for 100 years wasn't enough, Rika gets thrown back to June 1983 yet again after experiencing a few years of peace and happiness. Even though she should know how to prevent the same tragedies to repeat, she and her friends keep dying. After three failed loops, Rika seriously considers killing herself permanently with the shard of the sword Hanyuu left her, but having her friends makes her think she should try five more times... What follows are five loops of absolute Hell where she's killed in even more painful and brutal ways than before. To make it infinitely worse, people she cares about and trusts more than anyone like Akasaka, Keiichi, and Satoko become her killers.
Walking Spoiler: All information regarding Rika in Gou spoils her true significance in the original series.
Wise Beyond Their Years: One of the reasons why Rika is so admired by other girls at St. Lucia is because she can act so mature and cultured despite being only 16-17 years old. It's justified as Rika is mentally over a hundred years old.
Wrong Genre Savvy: At the start of Gou, Rika thinks she's in the Onikakushi-hen scenario and to prevent Keiichi from succumbing to the Hinamizawa Syndrome and killing his friends, she tries to reassure him that Rena's scary behavior is all in his head and he should believe Rena isn't plotting to hurt him. Alas, this isn't Onikakushi-hen, it's a new arc named Onidamashi-hen and Rena does want to kill Keiichi here since she's the one with the Hinamizawa Syndrome this time around.

Satoko Houjou

Voiced by: Mika Kanai (JP), Brittany Lauda (EN)

^{Click here to see her as a St. Lucia student}

^{Click here to see her in her "witch" garment}

An energetic girl who is known as a trap master. She's Rika's best friend and roommate. Towards the end of Gou, she's revealed to be a looper like Rika and the real culprit behind the deaths in the new loops.

The Satokowashi arc and the entirety of Sotsu are focused on her.

Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The Meguri manga that provides different answer arcs from the anime tremendously amps up the mental and emotional pain Satoko had to go through in her loops. First, she's shown to have been locked up in a room where she was forced to do nothing but study 24/7 for several weeks, leaving her completely drained from the stress and isolation. Eua appears to her and offers her the chance to redo her choices in different timelines. However, every single path she takes results in either Rika or Satoshi dying and her being left alone to then either die in an accident or commit suicide. After countless loops of tragic endings, Satoko is just a shell of herself.
Adaptational Sympathy: Her Start of Darkness is way more tragic and sympathetic in the Meguri manga where she initially does try to make much more reasonable and peaceful choices to avoid her fall out with Rika as opposed to her Gou anime self who kills Rika and herself as soon as Rika refuses to give up on St. Lucia. Unfortunately, Eua sends Satoko to timelines where Rika and/or Satoshi die in situations out of her control, which sends Satoko past the Despair Event Horizon and convinces her that she must recreate the "Groundhog Day" Loop of June 1983 since there's no happy future after it.
Adaptational Villainy: While a mischievous brat, Satoko in the original series was nevertheless one of the "heroes" who cared for her friends. In Gou, her fear of being left alone takes her down a dark path where she devolves into the Big Bad.
Aesop Amnesia: Played With. In the Minagoroshi-hen arc, Satoko was finally able to understand that bottling up her emotions and trying to handle everything by herself wasn't real strength, and realized the importance of asking her friends for help. This lesson, however, doesn't seem to have entirely passed over into the Matsuribayashi-hen timeline, which the Gou anime is a sequel to. While she does openly express to Rika her worries and concerns about attending St. Lucia (once she's already suffered through them anyway), she does still wind up making the same mistakes of hiding behind bravado and letting her pride get the better of her when both her grades and relationship with Rika start to suffer upon enrolling in St. Lucia. Granted, these are also very different circumstances, but it's still unfortunate.
All the Other Reindeer: Much like in Hinamizawa, Satoko is an outcast at her new school, both for her inability, or even outright refusal, to conform like everyone else, as well as her slipping grades due to a lack of motivation. Contrary to Rika who is able to adjust rather flawlessly, much to Satoko's frustration and disbelief.
Apathetic Student: She enrolls at St. Lucia Academy because she wanted to stay close to Rika, but she dozes off or doodles instead of paying attention at class and gets mad when the teacher sends her to remedial classes. Satoko would be happy to drop out from the school as she has the freedom to do that unlike many of the girls there and the only reason why she even tries to study is because she doesn't want to be apart from Rika.
Arch-Enemy: She becomes this to Rika largely due to coming to resent her for choosing to enjoy her school life at St. Lucia without Satoko even though she knows Satoko only went to a school she hates because of her.
Asleep in Class: She falls asleep on her very first day attending class at St. Lucia Academy.
Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Not Played for Laughs, but rather quite realistically. Satoko is all but stated to have ADHD. When Rika is motivating Satoko somehow, she can be laser-focused to a terrifying degree when chasing Rika over hundreds of fragments; but when Rika distances herself from Satoko, she physically can't motivate herself without a tangible goal and gets utterly crushed by St. Lucia's relentless curriculum. Rika leaves Satoko to fend for herself at St. Lucia thinking she'll learn how to motivate herself, assuming Satoko's problem is simple laziness, but in truth it's a deeper issue that Rika ends up making worse.
Berserk Button: After the second loop, Satoko comes to hate lies as much as Rena as she will not let Rika try promising her to stay her friend at St. Lucia when she already broke that promise twice.
Big Bad Friend: Rika has always thought of Satoko as her best friend, but in Gou, Satoko becomes the Big Bad who traps Rika at a "Groundhog Day" Loop once again all because Satoko refuses to accept a future where she and Rika aren't best friends anymore.
Big Bad Slippage: Satokowashi-hen shows the increasing antagonism between her and Rika, and the resultant Start of Darkness that drove her to recreate the infernal "Groundhog Day" Loop out of a petty desire to keep Rika in Hinamizawa and break her mentally.
Book Dumb: While not good at academics, Satoko becomes more dangerous by using her wits.
Break the Cutie: Her backstory in Gou is her going from a cheerful young girl to an utterly unhappy teenager who is frustrated and resentful about her school life. Satoko was perfectly happy at Hinamizawa, but her best friend Rika wanted a high-class life at St. Lucia Academy, so she invites Satoko to join her because she wants to share that goal with her. Satoko agrees, but not because she likes the school; she only wants to stay close to Rika who is like family to her. She studies hard with Rika to get into St. Lucia Academy, and, against all odds, she makes it. However, while her friend is able to adjust to the school, Satoko could not. She doesn't have much interest in the lessons and her grades fall after the first day thus forcing her to take up remedial classes. Other girls look down on her for not being well-mannered like Rika and although Rika does tell the girls to not badmouth Satoko because she's her friend, Satoko doesn't have any interest in being friends with high-class girls and this causes her to push away from Rika as she doesn't get why Rika can get along so well with elitist rich girls. Satoko is then forced into solitary confinement when her prank on Rika gets one of Rika's Girl Posse injured and Satoko is under the wrong impression that Rika ratted her out when it was really one of Rika's Girl Posse. Her grades don't get better despite the remedial classes and spends the next year stressed and isolated at the school as Rika stopped trying to reconnect after Satoko turned down her offers to hang out and study together.
Brilliant, but Lazy: Satoko is a very clever girl and she can get good results academically when she puts real effort into it, as she was able to get into St. Lucia Academy with Rika after studying every day with her for two years. After she arrives at St. Lucia, however, Satoko can't get motivated to study if she can't spend all her time with Rika like before and doesn't even try paying attention at class. It's no wonder her grades drop quickly and she needs to be sent to remedial classes to make up for slacking off at the school.
Bust-Contrast Duo: She has much bigger breasts than Rika who is still flat-chested when they're teenagers.
Character Tic: She's taken up the habit of snapping her fingers right before she does something, typically, it involves one of her traps about to activate.
The Chessmaster: She is pretty good at quickly adjusting her plans if something were to pop up. After watching all the loops where Rika suffered for hundreds of years, Satoko quickly sets to work creating wedges to disrupt Rika's attempts at escaping the loop. It becomes clear towards the end of Gou that she also stole a sample of the drug that causes L5 of the Hinamizawa Syndrome and injected it in targets that she anticipated Rika would try to get to help her. She even ups the manipulation like when she faked having a traumatic episode.
Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
- To Miyo Takano; most of what Takano was able to accomplish was largely due in part to the backing she received from Nomura and the Tokyo organization. At the end of the day, she was a mere human who aspired for godhood to make her grandfather's work recognized. With Satoko, however, what sets her apart from her predecessor is the fact that she literally has the power to rewind time with her own death powers due to a godlike being taking an interest in her, as if Rika already didn't have any less of a chance of escaping this loop. Also, Takano's goal by murdering Rika had zero personal connection to her relation with Rika and she didn't even know that Rika's soul would go to a new fragment after that. On the other hand, Satoko is putting Rika through all the torture and death because of her obsession with having her best friend all to herself forever and only gains the will of murdering Rika when she knows for sure that time will restart anyway.
- Also Shion Sonozaki. While getting revenge for Satoshi's disappearance was part of her motivation, Shion was ultimately aiming to kill the Three Families out of paranoia that they would kill her as well as lashing out at the ghastly abuse she faced from her own family. She also mainly committed the murders because of her reaching L5 of the Hinamizawa Syndrome at the time. But ultimately, Shion realizes that all her victims were innocent and expresses a hint of remorse before her death. There is much less remorse on Looper Satoko's end; she ends up relinquishing Satoko's humanity and leaves Hinamizawa alone for good due to boredom and dissatisfaction rather than regret.
Cosmic Plaything: In the Meguri manga, it's heavily implied that Eua is deliberately throwing Satoko into bad timelines to keep herself entertained as she watches Satoko's endless struggle. Unlike the anime where she was the one causing the tragedies to stop Rika from leaving her, Satoko's happiness keeps getting ruined because Rika dies in an accident if she tries to leave Hinamizawa and Satoshi's condition worsens after Irie fails to find a cure for him.
Country Mouse: Feels she is seen this way by the girls of St. Lucia and that she's incapable of fitting in with their "stuffy high society".
Death-Activated Superpower: Like Rika, a godlike being grants her the power of rewinding time by dying.
Dismotivation: Perhaps one of her biggest faults is that she refuses to accept the changes in her life after Matsuribayashi-hen. Basically, she wanted everything to stay the same as in the days she played games with her friends at the club. After her older friends graduate and Rika makes new friends who Satoko doesn't like at St. Lucia Academy, Satoko comes to resent the future she lives in and instead of trying to adapt, yearns to go back to the old days where she was the closest person to Rika. This eventually drives her to restart the "Groundhog Day" Loop so everything is back to the status quo of the original series.
Disproportionate Retribution: Satoko makes Rika swear that'll be best friends forever even after entering St. Lucia Academy despite them drifting apart in the previous timeline. And then Rika once again goes and makes friends with the rich girls while Satoko stops hanging out with her for her own petty reasons and blames Rika for not being at her side all the time even though Rika did try to reach out only for Satoko to turn her away out of stubborn pride. But how dare Rika "betray" Satoko by breaking their promise? Satoko's gotta drop a chandelier on her and force her to relive the nightmarish "Groundhog Day" Loop of torture and death she finally escaped from after 100 years. That's the only way they can be best friends forever and Satoko can get back at Rika for breaking her promise of enjoying the school with her twice.
Don't You Dare Pity Me!: The reason why Satoko rejects Rika's help during the second St. Lucia loop. After Satoko's grades start to drop at St. Lucia Academy, Rika offers to help her study, but Satoko, likely with some lingering bitterness from the first loop, sees Rika's attempts to help as nothing more than disingenuous pity, especially from someone who is in a much better position both socially and academically. Rika insists that this isn't the case and that it's just Satoko making paranoid assumptions.
Dramatically Missing the Point: Satoko seems to believe that the way Rika's behaving upon arriving at St. Lucia Academy, so different from the best friend she's known for years, is just her putting on a persona to fit in with the new environment, and "just a phase" that she'll likely get over, and finds it frustrating and difficult to connect with her, contributing to her feelings of ostracization. The unfortunate irony being that Rika's more sophisticated personality is in fact actually closer to the real her, and the one that Satoko had been interacting with up to this point was the façade. Indeed, when Rika is seemingly able to suddenly and flawlessly transition back to her pre-St. Lucia personality, complete with the first "Nipah~" Satoko's heard in months when reunited with Mion and the others, Satoko's at a complete loss.
Driven to Suicide: After acquiring looping powers, Satoko goes as far as to kill herself when restarting a loop. She'll even do it at a moment's notice when the slightest thing goes wrong, as when she initially tries more peaceful ways to convince Rika to stay in Hinamizawa.
Easily Forgiven: While Satoko's actions were horrible, Rika can't hold it against her, knowing one of the driving factors in Satoko's Start of Darkness was Rika's own willful ignorance of Satoko's suffering.
Entitled Bitch: While she had suffered, Satoko stubbornly wants everything to remain the same and comes to antagonize Rika because her dream conflicted with her own. She refuses to accept blame at the bitterness of her drifting apart from Rika due to Rika's happiness not coinciding with hers. Instead of just letting Rika live her life, Satoko is determined to deprive her friend of her happiness because she felt wronged.
Et Tu, Brute?: Played With. After starting a loop for the first time, Satoko tries communicating her fears to Rika about why she doesn't want the two of them to go to St. Lucia Academy and makes Rika promise her to not abandon her when she's in trouble. But then Satoko once again sees Rika having fun with other girls at tea parties while Satoko's grades fall again. Satoko takes this as the ultimate betrayal and calls Rika a traitor, causing her to snap and start the "Groundhog Day" Loop where she'll have Rika murdered in painful ways over and over... Except Rika again did offer to help Satoko study and tried to involve her in her new life, but Satoko always turned away because she believed Rika is looking down on her so their falling out is far from Rika's fault alone and Satoko doesn't want to admit that.
Evil All Along: Episode 17 of Gou reveals Satoko's identity as Rika's enemy looper. The following arc shows her Start of Darkness and reasons why she came to resent Rika enough as to be willing to kill her repeatedly just to change her mind about leaving Hinamizawa.
Evil Counterpart:
- To Rika. Both are young girls who are given the power of rewind time with their own deaths. But while Rika wished for herself and all of her friends to escape the tragic "Groundhog Day" Loop of June 1983 and create a happy future, Satoko is dragging all of her friends into Murder-Suicide in order to preserve the loop because she prefers to keep herself and her friends stuck in June 1983 eternally than arriving at a future where all her friends go their separate ways and she becomes estranged from Rika.
- And to Shion, or probably an "eviler" counterpart. Much like Satoko, Shion was a Yandere who murdered a lot of people. However, Shion never harmed the target of her obsession and only became a murderer due to her Hinamizawa Syndrome and the Sonozakis purposely making themselves suspicious of the Watanagashi disapperances making her convinced that they killed Satoshi. Additionally, she has a Heel Realization where she realizes that all her victims were innocent and kills herself as she ponders whether she could start over. With Satoko, however, she is incensed with Rika for seemingly betraying their promise and suffers from Never My Fault not listening to Rika when she pointed out that she was the one who drifted from her. Satoko then proceeds to brutally murder Rika and their friends, not feeling even a bit of guilt as she reasons that she can undo her crimes as many times as she wants with her Mental Time Travel powers.
Evil Is Petty: In Satokowashi-hen, which is her Start of Darkness, Satoko is portrayed as an egotistical and rude girl who acts disrespectful towards everyone in St. Lucia Academy because she hates their formal manners and demand for exceling academic performance. She's also toxically over-dependent and possessive of Rika, ultimately dragging Rika back to June 1983 by pulling a brutal Murder-Suicide with a Falling Chandelier of Doom, all because she felt betrayed when Rika didn't keep her promise of continuing to be best friends with Satoko at St. Lucia, even though Satoko is the one who pushed away from her due to Rika making new friends and Satoko refuses to acknowledge she's creating the distance between them in favor of playing the victim in their conflict.
Expy: Although Satoko was in fact created by Ryukishi07 first, her character and motives in Gou are obviously based off of Lambdadelta from Umineko: When They Cry as Satoko devolves into a blonde Yandere obsessed with a blue-haired "cat" who she claims to love while wanting to trap and torture her for eternity. Satoko even uses the word "certain" several times, a reference to Lambdadelta being the Witch of Certainty. Taken a step further in light of the "Another End" web novella released in 2022, where her witch is confirmed to be, or at least become, Lambdadelta in the closing pages.
Face–Heel Turn: Satoko was one of the main heroes in the original series. In Gou, she's the Big Bad who's knowingly trapping herself and her friends in the "Groundhog Day" Loop of June 1983 because she selfishly wants them to be together in the same place forever.
Fangs Are Evil: Her fang is constantly sticking out. It looked like Cute Little Fangs at first until she's revealed to be the new Big Bad.
For the Evulz: Her injecting Mion with the Hinamizawa Syndrome was largely because she wanted to see how Mion would kill people under the influence of it since she never fell victim to it in the previous loops. In fact, a lot of her behavior on the side of her mission to break Rika's spirit and keep her in Hinamizawa can be boiled down to It Amused Me.
Freudian Excuse: Given her complete lack of a stable home life throughout her childhood until she started living with Rika, Satoko's negative reactions to all the drastic changes in her environment and relationships certainly make sense. Not that it justifies even remotely how Satoko eventually decided to abuse her Mental Time Travel powers and torture Rika inhumanly all in order to make sure Rika stays at Hinamizawa forever and Satoko can have her all to herself.
Gaslighting: She convinces Rika that all the pain and misery she's going through in her new time loop is Oyashiro-sama's punishment for wanting to leave Hinamizawa, when it's really Satoko herself. Despite being very close to the actual Oyashiro-sama, Rika nearly falls for it.
A God Am I: Satoko decides to make herself the new Oyashiro-sama who'll curse Rika for wanting to leave Hinamizawa.
Good Girl Gone Bad: Satoko started off as a fairly decent person who only wanted to be close to her best friend even if it meant following her to a school she hates. Unfortunately, through several issues of poor communication, stress, and dislike towards the formal environment of the school and its students, Satoko becomes depressed. Then she comes across a godlike being who grants her Mental Time Travel powers and gives her the chance to get back the life with Rika that she liked, only for the same cycle to repeat all over again due to Satoko blaming Rika for "abandoning" her even though Satoko is the one who pushes away due to selfish pride. All this leads to Satoko choosing to abuse her new powers as a looper and torture Rika in the loops until Rika's mind breaks and she never defies Satoko's wishes ever again.
Green-Eyed Monster: While she was alright with hanging out with the other club members because she was still Rika's #1 friend back then, Satoko quickly develops destructive feelings of jealousy for Rika's Girl Posse at St. Lucia Academy, even refusing to hang out with Rika if those girls are around and hating to see Rika enjoying herself at tea parties with them instead of her. After she loops for the first time, Satoko snaps at seeing Rika making friends with her Girl Posse again and decides that this time, she'll trap Rika in Hinamizawa so she'll never be able to make friends with other girls and Satoko will be her only best friend forever.
Satoko: Tell me, Rika. Do you remember what you said to me? You said you wanted to experience this life together with me. Tell me, Rika. What is... the meaning of this?
Groundhog Peggy Sue: She's depicted this way in the Meguri manga. Satoko finds herself trapped in the "Groundhog Day" Loop created by Eua where she must keep taking different choices until she finds a timeline where she doesn't have to lose either Rika or Satoshi. However, tragedy keeps striking at the end of the loops no matter what path she tries to take.
Hates Being Alone: She's got very serious abandonment and dependency issues because of her harsh childhood. As much as Satoko hates being at St. Lucia Academy where she feels ignored by Rika, she doesn't drop out because none of her friends are at Hinamizawa anymore. The mere concept of living alone at the village is unthinkable for her.
Heel–Face Turn: The human side of Satoko is able to somewhat let go of Rika and allow her to fulfill her own dreams. The looper/"witch" side of her, however, commits to chasing Rika down forever, which Rika has accepted by the end.
Hidden Villain: At the end of episode 17, she is revealed to be the villain when Rika tricks her to reveal that she knew about a trap Rika has set. Satoko's eyes immediately blaze red, and she pulls a gun on Rika. The next arc focuses on her road to villainy and why she's trying to force her own happiness on Rika.
Hoist by Her Own Petard: Satoko finally realizes how monstrous she was behaving, but she couldn't do much against her more powerful witch self, who takes dominance for the remainder of the series until the very end.
Hope Crusher: Satoko's main goal is utterly crushing all hope Rika had for a happy future after finally escaping the loop of June 1983, all in order to make her stop dreaming about a life outside Hinamizawa.
Hope Spot: Satoko doesn't want to endure St. Lucia a 2nd time, honestly speaks to Rika about fears. Rika promises to help her... then proceeds to do the same thing as in the original loop.
Hypocrite: When having a heart-to-heart with Rika in her second loop, Satoko claims that she's going to go to St. Lucia for the sake of Rika's happiness. The moment she sees that, once again, Rika's happiness at St. Lucia isn't her happiness too and she isn't even needed for Rika's happiness either, Satoko doesn't hesitate to utterly destroy the happiness Rika worked so hard to obtain by murdering her and dragging her back to June 1983 once more all so she can force her own happiness on Rika.
If I Can't Have You…: At the end of her second loop, Satoko finally snaps at seeing Rika once again hanging out with her Girl Posse of refined girls. Since she can now see that Rika is going to meet and hang out with these girls instead of her as long as they go to St. Lucia, Satoko commits Murder-Suicide with Rika by dropping a chandelier on them and declares that she'll make sure the future where Rika chooses those high-class girls over her won't come to pass ever again.
Ignored Epiphany: While in solitary confinement, Satoko does wonder why she decided to go with her best friend to a school she despised. However, she shifts to further blaming Rika for her plight.
I Never Said It Was Poison: In the first episode, Rika pulls a prank on Satoko by giving her a box only to press a button that causes a boxing glove to punch her in the face. At the end of Episode 17, Rika gives Satoko the same box as a birthday present. Satoko immediately kneels down to avoid the punch. But many loops have passed since the first episode and Rika changed the contents of the box for a teddy bear. Therefore, Satoko's reaction wouldn't make sense unless she remembers previous loops like Rika. This is how Rika exposes Satoko as the other looper who is behind her and her friends' gruesome deaths in the new loops.
Irony:
- She likes to present herself as a refined highborn noblewoman, but as soon as she transfers to a school filled with actual high-status girls where her hyper-polite speech doesn't sound out of place, she finds out the hard way that she is way out of her element and hates it.
- She actively becomes a much crueler person around the same exact time her Jerkass abusive uncle Teppei is trying to be a much kinder person.
It's All About Me: Her main motivation for everything. All Satoko thinks about is how she wants all of her life to stay the same as in the days she was Rika's #1 friend and they played at the club together. After they achieve their happy ending, everyone in the group starts going separate ways as they grow older and can't spend time together as before. In this future, everyone is happy except for Satoko who is the only one who doesn't try to find her own path in life and keeps trying to cling on to Rika, but their friendship falls apart after Rika develops new interests and makes new friends at St. Lucia that just don't match Satoko's tastes. So, after getting magical Mental Time Travel powers, Satoko rips away all of her friends from their happy future and throws them back into the "Groundhog Day" Loop of June 1983 along herself, all so she can have the life she likes better back even if it means dooming her friends to be murdered endlessly for her own utterly selfish wish.
I've Come Too Far: At the end of Sotsu episode 10, in the sea of fragments, Satoko realizes her own follies of preventing Rika from leaving Hinamizawa and making her stay there forever as she inadvertently creates the 'witch' version of herself who is determined to possess their own body to resume her goal by killing those close to her like the club members and Teppei who had already turned over the new leaf to become much kinder to her which causes her to realize that all she wanted all this time was to make sure her best friend was by her side to be loved as Eua rubs her in for being entertaining but it was already too late for her to amend her own actions as her witch self use her gun to 'kill' her and resumes killing Teppei.
Jerkass Has a Point:
- Satoko behaves very rudely and disrespectfully towards Rika and her Girl Posse when confronting Rika, earning her the spite of the Girl Posse and Rika has to demand her to shut up so Satoko stops making a scene in public. Yet, Satoko does bring up some legitimate grievances to Rika about how hard she had to work to get into St. Lucia, at Rika's request, only to find herself feeling excluded and stressed every day upon attending. Doesn't help that Rika only seems to dismiss her feelings as "just a foul mood" when she leaves.
- During her outburst in the third loop, Satoko yells at Rika for insisting on going to St. Lucia together despite Satoko already speaking about how Rika will strive while Satoko will only feel miserable at that school. While Satoko is being too emotional and resentful due to feeling betrayed by Rika in past loops, she does point out how Rika keeps saying she wants them to enjoy the school "together" when she's actually imposing her own dream on Satoko and arbitrarily expects Satoko to tag along for her own comfort, as studying alone would be more boring.
Kick the Dog: She does many cruel things to her friends for the sake of seeing what would happen and if it'd make Rika's life more of living Hell.
Kiddie Kid: Played for Drama. After the events of Matsuribayashi-hen, Satoko is the only member of the club who doesn't show signs of maturing and still wants to play with her traps while Rika is developing more grown-up interests. This becomes a problem when she and Rika enroll at St. Lucia high school, as Satoko feels suffocated in that demanding elite school and the other students find her quirks like her Noblewoman's Laugh to be unfit for the high-class culture of their school.
Lack of Empathy: Despite the fact she knows what Rika has sacrificed to get to an ending where she can live peacefully and away from Hinamizawa, Satoko is only concerned that she was "abandoned" by her and makes it her goal to force Rika to give up her dream by breaking her will.
Loving a Shadow: Possibly the biggest source of conflict between her and Rika is that Satoko doesn't simply want to be with Rika; she wants the Rika who acts all cutesy and playful, not the Proper Lady Ojou version of Rika that she becomes at St. Lucia Academy. Unfortunately, Satoko doesn't know nor understand that the Rika she adores so much is a mere facade that Rika got used to putting up while at Hinamizawa as she spent 100 years looping and pretending to be a clueless child to not draw attention. Once Satoko realizes Rika can only be the Rika she wants at Hinamizawa, she chooses to change Rika's mind about leaving Hinamizawa even if she must break Rika's will through ever-repeating torture for it.
Lower-Class Lout: She's from the countryside, and her attitude and inability (or rather refusal) to adapt to St. Lucia Academy's prim and proper environment makes her stand out like a sore thumb in a negative way and become an object of derision by her peers.
Manipulative Bitch: When she loops for the first time, Satoko tries to prevent the future where she follows Rika to St. Lucia by trying to talk Rika out of it and deliberately obstructing her attempts to study. After that doesn't work, she restarts the "Groundhog Day" Loop where Rika is painfully murdered which culminates in Satoko performing Watanagashi on Rika while convincing Rika that all the reason why she's suffering like this is because she wished to leave Hinamizawa for St. Lucia Academy so Satoko can get exactly want she wants; having Rika all to herself.
The Mole: For most of Gou, Satoko seems to be in the same role of the original series as a member of the club's band of True Companions. Episode 17 reveals she's in fact the other looper who has been orchestrating the tragedies in the new loops because she's trying to break Rika's will and force her to give up her dream of going to St. Lucia Academy.
Morton's Fork: From the point she accepts to follow Rika in St. Lucia, Satoko has only two options − either try to fit in with the high-class girls to stay close to Rika, something she's neither able nor willing to do, or drop out of the school and start a new life away from Rika, something she can't conceive. Naturally, Eua finds this the perfect opportunity to make Satoko a looper.
Mundane Utility: She uses her Mental Time Travel powers to perfectly memorize a card game.
Murder-Suicide: After failing to talk Rika out of going to St. Lucia Academy and seeing Rika spend time with her Girl Posse instead of her again, Satoko chooses to restart the loop and kills herself along with Rika by dropping a chandelier on both of them.
My God, What Have I Done?: She's shocked when she realizes her Drop the Washtub prank made one of Rika's Girl Posse bleed because she was used to the Amusing Injuries back in the club. Still, she didn't feel guilty enough to admit her blame and was found out because one member of Rika's Girl Posse rats her out.
Never My Fault: During the scene where she's performing the Watanagashi on Rika, Satoko goes on a rant about how this is the punishment Rika deserves for wishing to leave Hinamizawa and that she had to dirty her hands by murdering all of their friends is all Rika's fault. Once we're shown the flashback of Satoko's Start of Darkness, it's revealed that while Rika did play some part in making Satoko hate the future by taking her to St. Lucia with her, Satoko played an even bigger part in them stopping being friends. Satoko grows to resent Rika for seemingly forgetting their promise to enjoy their life at St. Lucia together and envies her for thriving in the academy in comparison to her. However, Rika did offer to help her with her classwork and invited her to tea, but it was because of her stubborn pride that Satoko rejected these offers. In short, Satoko paved the way for her own suffering because she did not want Rika to leave her. Yet, Satoko insists that Rika is the one who betrayed her and pushed her into recreating the "Groundhog Day" Loop where they and all of their friends are repeatedly murdered.
Not Afraid to Die: Unlike Rika who never was okay with dying even after hundreds of times, Satoko is ready to commit suicide at the most minor inconvenience to restart the loop.
Penny Among Diamonds: Deconstructed. Satoko is a Country Mouse girl who enrolls at St. Lucia Academy because her best friend Rika wants to go there. Unlike Rika, however, Satoko can't adapt herself to a private school meant for rich and prim ladies. The stiff environment causes her to get behind in her studies because she's too bored to even pay attention to the lessons, gets sent to detention for pulling a prank on Rika and her Girl Posse, and everyone except Rika looks down on her loud and bad-mannered personality.
Please, Don't Leave Me: In the manga version of Tataridamashi, a Level 5 Ooishi arrives at the Watanagashi festival to kill Rika. Just as their friends are being killed, Satoko begs Keiichi to stay with her and be her new Nii-Nii. Keiichi still goes to protect Rika, leaving Satoko disappointed and frustrated at feeling Keiichi chose Rika over her.
Poor Communication Kills: Downplayed. Satoko might have been able to stay friends with Rika at St. Lucia the first time around if she had properly talked with Rika about why she doesn't feel at ease in such an strict place instead of only complaining about how she hated studying as well as assuming Rika ratted her out after her prank and stop communication altogether. However, the second loop proves that even if Satoko does speak with Rika about why she doesn't want to go to St. Lucia with her and Rika promises to stay her friend, they run into pretty much the exact same problems because Satoko still refuses Rika's help when she falls behind in her studies and resents Rika for hanging out with her Girl Posse.
Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: With Rika. The hugging and hand-holding is even more emphasized between them in Gou than the original series. There's also the scene where Satoko cuddles with Rika after the latter falls asleep while studying. This takes a dark turn when Satoko develops a possessiveness towards Rika after Rika starts liking to hang out with rich girls better and it eventually culminates in Satoko going full-on Yandere on Rika by dragging her into a gruesome Murder-Suicide so she can trap Rika in June 1983 once more, all in order to never feel ignored by Rika ever again.
Rebellious Spirit: Much like Shion in fact, Satoko has no desire to conform to how St. Lucia expects it's students to present themselves, not even bothering to tuck her shirt in. Understandable given that she's only here because of Rika, but it unfortunately only results in her peers mocking her behind her back.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes turn red when she's exposed as the other looper by Rika.
The Resenter: She becomes envious and resentful of Rika due to her capability of blending in seamlessly with the student body whereas her grades were failing forcing her to take remedial classes.
Resurrection/Death Loop: Like Rika, Satoko can end and restart a loop whenever she dies. Unlike Rika, she's keeping the loop going on purpose to avoid arriving to the future where she isn't friends with Rika anymore.
Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Her Enigmatic Empowering Entity gives her the power of Mental Time Travel upon death and Satoko can keep her full memories of all the loops.
Sanity Slippage: Even though Irie claimed the Satoko's Hinamizawa Syndrome was cured a year after Matsuribayashi-hen, Satoko's mental state once again deteriorates after arriving at St. Lucia Academy because of all the stress of the classes and pressure to get good grades. While it's unclear whether she redeveloped the syndrome, after rewinding time and failing to prevent the exact same situation with Rika at St. Lucia to repeat, Satoko completely goes insane and starts abusing her Mental Time Travel powers to create a future where Rika is only hers.
Serial Killer: With her looping powers, Satoko is either directly responsible for the deaths of Rika and the club, or she influenced them. Rinse and repeat several times for the sole purpose of breaking Rika.
Slasher Smile: Once she's exposed as the Big Bad of Gou, she sports an evil grin as she pulls out a gun. Sotou takes this trope up to eleven.
Stepford Smiler: When it's time for one last club meeting with Mion and the others, she's able to convincingly act like her usual peppy and haughty trapmaster self. Once everyone else parts with her so she can take a walk around the village however, it quickly crumbles to reveal just how exhausted and depressed she really is.
Teens Are Monsters: Teenage Satoko becomes a possessive, murderous Yandere for Rika and the Big Bad of Gou who trapped herself and her friends in the gruesome "Groundhog Day" Loop of June 1983 all over again.
Time Loop Fatigue: In the Meguri manga, she goes through many loops where she tries and fails over and over again to reach a scenario where neither Rika or Satoshi die. After countless failures, Satoko looks dead inside.
Time Travel for Fun and Profit: After a mysterious purple-haired woman gives her Mental Time Travel powers, Satoko spends her first loop trying to sabotage Rika's attempts to study so she can't go to St. Lucia Academy. When that doesn't work and she sees Rika making new friends again, Satoko chooses to exploit her new powers by killing herself and her friends over and over to create a "Groundhog Day" Loop where none of them, especially Rika, will ever leave Hinamizawa and she can play with them forever. At one point, Satoko starts abusing her looping powers for something as trivial as winning a memory card game.
Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Tomboy to Rika's Girly Girl, same as in the original series, but it gets Played for Drama in Gou. Satoko is still the same mischievous girl who loves traps as when they were kids, but Rika develops an interest for a more sophisticated lifestyle which attracts her attention to St. Lucia Academy. When they arrive at the prestigious school, Rika fits right in with her Proper Lady behavior and soon gains the admiration of several other girls. On the other hand, Satoko's energetic and abrasive personality makes her come across as unrefined and this makes other girls look down on her.
Took a Level in Jerkass: Satoko acted like a Bratty Half-Pint a lot in the original series, but she was a Jerk with a Heart of Gold at worst and was truly loyal to her True Companions who she cared for as her family. In Gou, Satoko grows up to be a very self-centered, disrespectful, and prideful teenager who eventually becomes possessive, manipulative, and shockingly abusive towards her best friend Rika, going as far as to recreate the hellish "Groundhog Day" Loop where Rika is gruesomely murdered over and over to get back at Rika for letting their friendship fall apart in the future even though Satoko had an even bigger hand in that because Satoko pushed away from Rika the moment Rika made new friends at St. Lucia Academy.
Touched by Vorlons: She enters Saiguden, touches a weird horn that fell from Oyashiro-sama's statue, and is transported to a strange dimension where she meets a woman dressed like a Miko and wearing a horn-like device. This mysterious woman then grants Satoko with the ability to rewind time by dying so she can create a world where Rika will stay at Hinamizawa with her forever.
Troubled Abuser: Satoko was ostracized by everyone in the village because her parents supported the dam project and her parents died in a tragic accident caused by Satoko's Hinamizawa Syndrome making her hallucinate they were going to kill her so she pushed them down a cliff. Then she and her older brother are left under the custody of their uncle and aunt who proceed to abuse and neglect the siblings for a year. Satoshi then goes missing on Satoko's birthday, after murdering their aunt and Satoko believes he abandoned her. After she had no relatives left, Rika became like Satoko's only family once they started living together. Feeling neglected in favor of Rika's new friends at St. Lucia gradually causes Satoko to lose her mind. Once she receives Mental Time Travel powers from a magical being and she understands that Rika can't be talked out of going to St. Lucia, Satoko opts to cruelly abuse Rika physically, emotionally, and psychologically by trapping her in a new, even worse "Groundhog Day" Loop hell where Satoko'll have Rika be brutally tortured and murdered until Rika's mind and spirit are so broken that she'll never even think about leaving Hinamizawa again.
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The Cheerful Child who loved traps from the original series grew up to be an insane and vicious Serial Killer with Mental Time Travel powers that she abuses to torture and murder her ex-best friend for the simple fact that Satoko hated seeing Rika becoming friends with some rich girls at St. Lucia Academy and felt betrayed when Rika let Satoko keep her distance after getting behind in her studies.
Viler New Villain: In the original series, Shion and Miyo Takano were maniacs who had tragic pasts which led them to becoming murderers. On the other hand, Satoko in Gou behaves like a crazed psychopath who is willing to put her best friend through the same hell she finally escaped from after 100 years, all because she hated to see Rika in a better social and academic position than her at high school.
Villain Protagonist: She's the POV character of the final arc of Gou, Satokowashi-hen, that tells the story of Satoko's Start of Darkness that eventually drove her to recreate the infernal "Groundhog Day" Loop of June 1983 out of an extremely selfish wish to never become estranged from any of her friends, especially Rika, as it happened in the future. The next season, Sotsu, is all about showing from her POV how she injected her friends and caused the death of many people just to torment Rika.
Walking Spoiler: That there's another looper besides Rika and that looper is no other than Satoko are the biggest revelations of Gou.
We Used to Be Friends: After she and Rika arrive at St. Lucia Academy, they gradually stop being as close as they were in Hinamizawa because Rika gets popular at the school while Satoko's behavior alienates her from everyone as she doesn't even want to get along with the refined girls at the school like Rika does. Due to Satoko pulling a prank on Rika and her Girl Posse, Satoko is sent to a detention cell and thinks Rika ratted her out (it was actually one of Rika's Girl Posse) and this makes them drift away even more to the point they barely see and talk to each other until their visit to Hinamizawa.
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: While she was bitter and unhappy at St. Lucia Academy, she was still mentally stable. After Eua grants her Mental Time Travel powers, Satoko's descent into madness really starts and drastically escalates as she repeatedly kills herself and her friends to prevent the future where Rika goes to St. Lucia from happening.
Woman Scorned: Exaggerated in the most extreme way possible. Rika promises Satoko to continue being her best friend and be there for her no matter what. Then Rika makes new female friends at St. Lucia Academy and has fun at tea parties with them while Satoko is hating absolutely everything about the school and calls Rika a traitor despite her being the one who pushed away from Rika and refused to get involved in her new circle of friends. This causes Satoko to snap and starts abusing her Mental Time Travel powers by pulling a Murder-Suicide with Rika and recreating the "Groundhog Day" Loop where Rika was trapped for 100 years while she makes Rika get murdered in even more horrifyingly brutal ways than before so that Rika's spirit is utterly destroyed and never again thinks about leaving Hinamizawa, the only place where Satoko can have Rika all to herself.
Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Her fall into evil was an amalgamation of many misfortunes: already having a bad upbringing due to her living with an abusive uncle after unwittingly killing her parents and her older brother disappearing, Satoko also developed the Hinamizawa Syndrome as well as dependency and abandonment issues. But when Rika told her of her dream to attend St. Lucia Academy, Satoko opts to go with her because she did not want to be left alone. Unfortunately while she successfully enrolls in the school, she is badmouthed by the other girls due to her inability to conform; her abandonment issues worsen leading her to psychotically believe that Rika had betrayed the promise that she made with her; she becomes overly depressed at the stress of taking remedial classes, and she is forcibly given looping powers against her will. When reliving June 1983, likely the start of the unraveling of her sanity, she does try to prevent her Bad Future from happening only to relent when Rika promises to help her when they went to the school. As the events from before play out again, Satoko becomes suicidal and selects to take Rika with her to restart the loop.
Wounded Gazelle Gambit: In Tataridamashi-hen, Satoko has a Freak Out when Keiichi tried to pet her head like in Tatarigoroshi-hen, and everyone takes this as confirmation that Teppei is abusing Satoko. She actually faked it. In Sotsu, she's a manipulative monster, tricking Teppei into thinking the villagers beat her up while simultaneously making her classmates think Teppei is beating her.
Yandere: Satoko's possessive "love" for her best friend Rika eventually becomes destructively toxic and drives her to go completely insane and restart the "Groundhog Day" Loop where she and her friends are brutally murdered over and over again in June 1983, all because Satoko can't think of any other way to prevent the future where Rika goes to St. Lucia Academy and starts hanging out with other girls.
You Can't Go Home Again: After meeting with her friends while on break from St. Lucia's and having a reunion of their games club, Satoko's subsequent walk around Hinamizawa seems to only emphasize how the village she grew up in is changing rapidly, to the point where it feels like it's almost actively trying to erase the remnants of her childhood. She discovers that the old schoolhouse where she and the rest of the club spent so many happy hours is slated to be torn down due to its age, the house she and Rika used to live in collapsed in a massive snowstorm the previous winter, and with all of her friends other than Rika now attending university in Okinomiya, she has basically no personal connections in the village anymore.

Supernatural Beings

Hanyuu

Voiced by: Yui Horie (JP), Xanthe Huynh (English)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hanyu_gou.png

A very weakened goddess who gave Rika the power to loop back in time after death.

God's Hands Are Tied: Hanyuu is unable to really do much of anything for Rika outside of sending her to new loops Satoko is in. It's also not made clear if Hanyuu is even aware of Eua's existence; though Eua definitely knows about, and mocks Hanyuu for not being able to do anything.
Living Emotional Crutch: Rika would have probably become an Empty Shell long ago if it wasn't for Hanyuu. She has been Rika's sole companion who remembers the other timelines and knows just how much Rika has suffered from being killed so many times. In Gou, Hanyuu has already passed on and the copy she left behind can't go into the new fragments with Rika and fades away after Tataridamashi-hen. Without Hanyuu to support her in the new hellish loops, Rika seriously considers killing herself with a piece of the Onigari-no-Ryuoo sword so she does die for good.

Eua

Voiced by: Noriko Hidaka (JP), Emily Fajardo (EN)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eua_mei_11.png

A mysterious supernatural entity resembling Hanyuu who appears before Satoko in the Saiguden. Previously nameless, Satoko inadvertently gives her the nickname Eua in Episode 23.

Ambiguously Related: She looks nearly identical to Featherine Augustus Aurora from Umineko: When They Cry, but has a different voice actress, and is confirmed by Word of God to not be the exact same character. What the exact relationship between the two remains unknown. Episode 15 of Sotsu heavily hints that she is at most set to one day become Featherine, but due to the ambiguity, it can also be implied that they are two different beings.
Antiquated Linguistics: Her speech patterns in Japanese are very antiquated.
Arch-Enemy: To Hanyuu; they had apparently known each other for a long time despite Eua never appearing in the main series.
Cheshire Cat Grin: The Evolving Credits of the OP after her reveal shows her making a wide, creepy grin at the audience.
The Corrupter: She endorses Satoko's descent into madness and evil with the powers she gave her, never getting tired of singing Satoko's praises for entertaining her with her plans to ruin Rika's life.
Curtains Match the Window: She has purple hair and eyes.
Deal with the Devil: Subverted; she presents Satoko with her looping abilities after informing her that she knew about her wish. However, Satoko rejects the offer and tries to escape, leading to her forcing Satoko to take them and saying that Satoko entertaining her would be payment enough. However, once the events play out the same way, Satoko happily takes advantage of her powers.
Diabolus ex Machina: Her entire existence in Gou is for the sole purpose of completely undoing the happy ending of Matsuribayashi-hen by appearing out of nowhere in front of Satoko, the only person who was unsatisfied in said world's future, and giving Satoko magical Mental Time Travel powers so Satoko can abuse them and once again trap herself along all of her friends in the horrifying "Groundhog Day" Loop of June 1983 where they're all brutally murdered endlessly, all for the sake of Satoko's own selfish happiness and her Jackass Genie's amusement.
Enemy Without: Inverted. Eua refers to Hanyuu as being "part of her" and refers to herself as "the original", it's heavily implied that Eua is a Witch incarnation of Hainiryūn Ieasomūru Jieda, the original Oyashiro-Sama and the person Hanyuu was in life prior to becoming the child-like ghost she is now, making Eua essentially the Anthropomorphic Personification of the "demon goddess" Oyashiro-Sama legend that formed around that person. Tellingly, she'd been killed by her daughter with the very same weapon that Hanyuu uses to defeat Eua.
Enigmatic Empowering Entity: She's a mysterious supernatural being with magical powers even more powerful that Hanyuu's and randomly gives Satoko Mental Time Travel powers seemingly on a whim.
Evil Counterpart: To Hanyuu. Hanyuu placed Rika in the loops largely because she reminded her of the daughter she had in life and wanted to prolong the time she could spend with Rika for as long as possible whereas this new godlike entity takes an interest in Satoko on a whim (while implying she knows her as someone else from another place and time) and grants her the power of rewinding time for her own amusement. While Hanyuu was a benevolent entity, Eua is utterly malevolent as she seems to have chosen Satoko because she predicted the catastrophic results of giving Satoko the power to loop endlessly by killing herself and her friends over and over.
Evil Laugh: Whenever she's particularly entertained by whatever she watches happening, which always tend to be horrible things.
Excessive Evil Eyeshadow: She wears purple eyeshadow and acts as the Greater-Scope Villain responsible for giving Satoko the power to rewind time as well as an Evil Counterpart to Hanyuu. Funnily enough, this trait comes and goes depending on the scene.
Expy: Her character design and manner of speech are the same as those of Featherine Augustus Aurora from Umineko: When They Cry, a similarly horned Physical Goddess who does things because she wants entertainment. An interview confirms that the similarities are intentional.
Fangs Are Evil: Has noticeable fangs like Rika when her mouth's open.
Fountain of Youth: When defeated, she reverts to her child form before being banished.
Graceful Loser: After losing to Hanyuu's miracle slice, she decides to leave, finally ending the loops once and for all.
Greater-Scope Villain: While Satoko is the Big Bad causing the infernal "Groundhog Day" Loop to have Rika all to herself, she wouldn't have never been able to do that if she hasn't met this mysterious woman who could give her magical Mental Time Travel powers for the hell of it and actively sought to corrupt Satoko into a Witch so that she may entertain her forever.
Hime Cut: Complementing her Miko attire, she has straight full bangs, cheek-length sidelocks, and long straight hair.
I Gave My Word: Tells Hanyuu that she'll only stop her own goals and leave if she can provide a miracle. When Hanyuu manages to slice a bit of her horn and reverts her back to her child-like form in the finale for Sotsu, she keeps her word and leaves Hanyuu's world alone. Though whether or not she actually means it is unclear.
Jackass Genie: She appears before Satoko to grant her wish of "doing everything all over again" and have her relationship with Rika back to the way it was before they went to St. Lucia Academy by giving her the travel to rewind time with her own death. However, Satoko discovers that she can't talk Rika out of going to St. Lucia Academy and their friendship is fated to become estranged because Satoko refuses to adjust herself to Rika's beloved lifestyle in the school. So, Satoko decides to abuse the powers her godlike genie gave her by killing herself and murdering Rika until Rika's mind is so broken that she won't ever think of leaving Hinamizawa and being apart from Satoko ever again. All while the one who gave Satoko her powers sneers at the gruesome show she's watching, akin to what the opening lyrics say. She is also quick to abuse Satoko out of amusement as well when in one loop where Satoko's plan of making Rika suffer works too well, decides to break her mind in front of her friends. All the while calling the girl a witch and laughing at her pain in the process, leading to that loop's Satoko being killed by Satoko herself, who takes control from then on.
Karma Houdini: Similar to Miyo in other entries and Witch Satoko in this series, she gets away with her actions involving the loops and repeated deaths of Rika and Satoko, as well as brutalizing and nearly killing Hanyuu by the end of Sotsu. The worst that happens to her is that Hanyuu cuts off a small part of her horn and reverts back to her child-sized form before departing. Something she herself promised to do had Hanyuu promised to perform a miracle, and it's left ambigious as to if she'll actually honor it in the long run.
Kick the Dog: Loves to do this at Rika's expense. She also kidnapped Hanyuu and has her trapped in a fragment. She also forces Hanyuu to watch Satoko kill everyone over and over again in multiple loops when the two meet again and mocks Hanyuu's inability to do anything.
Line-of-Sight Name: In Episode 23, she allows Satoko to give her a name. Satoko stutters while thinking out loud ("Um... eh... ooh... ah...") and she takes it as an answer, declaring she is now named "Eua".
Mark of the Supernatural: Like Hanyuu, she's a supernatural being with purple hair and eyes.
Miko: Like Hanyuu, she's dressed like a Japanese shrine maiden.
Mythology Gag: In her first meeting with Satoko, she calls her Vier, Mitsuyo, and Anomalous Spinal Cord Specimen LD3105. These names are all references to Ryukishi07's work Ciconia: When They Cry and its character Vier Dressing who resembles Takano so this woman must have mistaken Satoko for Vier because Satoko is also a blonde.
Never Given a Name: This character initially is not given a name or form of identification; even in the credits, only her voice actor is listed. When Satoko finally asks her for her name, the woman says she doesn't have one because she only became self-aware when Satoko accidentally awakened her. She then asks Satoko for a name and settles to call herself "Eua" from the sounds of Satoko's mumbling.
Only Known by Their Nickname: Post-episode 23, she is referred to as Eua, yet insists that she has no real name with Satoko's nickname only used for convenience.
Outside-Context Problem: As far as the original series goes, Hanyuu was the only godlike spirit who could grant time-looping powers to a human. Come Gou and Satoko runs into this mysterious woman who gives her time-looping powers on a whim so Satoko can undo Matsuribayashi-hen's happy ending and restart the bloody "Groundhog Day" Loop all over again just because she hates a future where Rika isn't her best friend anymore.
Reused Character Design: She looks identical to Featherine Augustus Aurora from Ryukishi07's other work Umineko: When They Cry, with the only major differences being she wears a shrine maiden outfit rather than a Pimped-Out Dress and her horns fork downward rather than going horseshoe-shaped around her head. Many viewers even assumed she was Featherine when she first appeared. However, an interview with the creator confirms they shouldn't be considered the same character in this context.
Sadist: Eua was taking immense sadistic glee at forcing Hanyuu to watch as Satoko butchered Rika and the others.
Satanic Archetype: Grants Satoko the power to loop through fragments in return for her entertaining her. She is also the main reason as to why Satoko's mental illness worsened, further sending her down a dark path. She also has "horns" on the back of her head, although they're actually a device floating around her head.
Slouch of Villainy: While Satoko keeps creating new fragments with her suicides, Eua slouches in her chair as she enjoys the show.
The Sociopath: Manipulative as befitting a dealmaker. She is chatty and gives off a flair of allure, but it is all part of the deceit. And she gives Satoko powers out of boredom.
Villains Love Entertainment: The only payment that she requested Satoko for giving her Mental Time Travel powers is that Satoko creates an entertaining show for her.
Walking Spoiler: Like Looper Satoko, her existence in Gou is one of the biggest revelations that gives way to the answers of why the "Groundhog Day" Loop restarted.
We Meet Again: Subverted. She claims that she and Satoko have known each other for a long time, calling her by different names such as "Vier" or "Mitsuyo", but Satoko has no idea what she’s talking about. Played straighter when she meets up with Hanyuu again in the 12th episode, as Hanyuu does recognize her as well.

The Witch

Witch Satoko

Voiced by: Mika Kanai (JP), Brittany Lauda (EN)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/satoko_oyashiro_smile_open.png

The witch version of Satoko that was inadvertently created due to Satoko's looping.

Canon Character All Along: Ryukishi07's "Another End" web novella finally confirms her to be none other than Lambdadelta.
Enemy Within: Satoko starts hesitating about shooting Teppei and tries to give up on the plan. Her Witch self takes over and finishes the job.
Evil Counterpart: To Frederica Bernkastel. Frederica was an amalgalation of all the Rika's who didn't make it past June 1983, she also possessed Rika in each fragment to try and succeed. While Witch Satoko intends to keep Rika in Hinamizawa. Not to mention the both of them possibly being the Witch Bernkastel and Lambdadelta respectively as well.
Karma Houdini: In the final episode, Witch Satoko simply grows bored and gives up on living in Hinamizawa once she and Rika have come to an agreement that makes it clear she can't keep Rika there (and that Satoko doesn't have to go with her to St. Lucia's either), so she relinquishes Satoko's humanity as she moves on to seek out Rika again on the higher plane. This is well after a beatdown from Rika that, thanks to Hanyuu's miracle erasing all prior realities, is more like a slap on the wrist.
Kick the Dog: A sign of how far off the deep end is that she easily ups her vileness within minutes of getting control. She lulls and nearly beats Keiichi to death for no real reason other than he was an easy target.
Lack of Empathy: She openly rejects the "fake" Satoko because of her emotional drive.
The Sociopath: Ticks nearly all the boxes: she is manipulative when quietly pulling the strings; she has a disturbing lack of remorse due to her belief that her actions were meaningless due to her ability to loop. The whole reason as to why she restarted the cycle was because she felt personally wronged by Rika and tries to force her own happiness onto her whilst not understanding the implications of it. Whenever she has second thoughts to what she's doing, she falters back to Never My Fault mentality by blaming Rika for her own actions.
Split-Personality Takeover: The current Satoko has a sudden Battle in the Center of the Mind with Satoko who doesn't want to hurt anyone no more. One guess who won.
You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: She ends up killing Teppei when he no longer fits the narrative of her having a horribly abusive uncle, and kills her non-sociopathic side when she attempts to prevent this very murder.

Supporting Characters

Shion Sonozaki

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Michelle Rojas (EN)

Mion's twin sister. She loves Satoko like a little sister.

Adaptational Villainy: In the Wataakashi-hen's manga version, due to Mion dying during an argument with her, Shion becomes the villain of the arc and murders Rika and Satoko.
Broken Smile: In Wataakashi-hen's manga version, Shion confesses to Keiichi that she "loves" him while smiling, but her creepy-looking eyes make the scene disturbing.
Death by Irony: In Watadamashi/Wataakashi, we get a reverse of the situation in Watanagashi/Meakashi with Mion being the one with the Hinamizawa Syndrome instead of Shion. Mion ends up murdering Shion and dumping her corpse in the well just like Shion did to Mion in the original series.
Demoted to Extra: While all of the older members of the main cast have this partially happen to them, Shion especially is hit with this hard in Gou and Sotsu, to the point of barely being a factor into the majority of the series. The manga version of Wataakashi-hen fixes this to some extent by making Shion the culprit of the arc.
Dies Differently in Adaptation: In Wataakashi-hen's anime version, Shion is killed by Mion who went L5 because of Satoko's injection. In the manga version, however, Shion kills Satoko in self-defense and when she realizes what she has done, she despairs at having broken Satoshi's promise again and claws her own throat out.
Loss of Identity: In Wataakashi-hen's manga version, Shion kills Mion by accident, goes L5 and the resulting insanity causes her to not be able to tell which of the twins she is anymore, even confessing to Keiichi because she thinks she is Mion, who loved him.
My Sister Is Off-Limits: In the manga version of Tataridamashi-hen, Shion chases after Keiichi with a taser in hand when she sees him being too close to her "little sister" Satoko.

Kuraudo Ooishi

Voiced by: Chafurin (JP), Mark Stoddard (EN)

A veteran police investigator at Okinomiya.

Ax-Crazy: In Tataridamashi-hen, he comes down with L5 Hinamizawa Syndrome, and goes on a murderous rampage gunning down everyone at the festival.
Adaptational Villainy: In Gou, under the paranoia-induced influence of the Hinamizawa Syndrome, he goes on a rampage and shoots everyone to death at the festival, with the exception of Rena.
Batter Up!: In Gou, he goes L5 at the end of Tataridamashi and beats Rika to death with a bat.
Dirty Cop: Ooishi isn't normally this in the regular timelines, but when he comes down with Hinamizawa Syndrome in Gou/Sotsu, he becomes far more unscrupulous to get to the culprits who he thinks are behind the annual murders of Hinamizawa, playing both sides in the war between the village and Teppei and escalating the situation and then later shooting up the Watanagashi festival in Tataridamashi/Tatariakashi-hen.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In Gou, he comes down with L5 of the Hinamizawa Syndrome and goes on a murderous rampage, which has not happened in any of the arcs throughout the entire series.
Right for the Wrong Reasons: In Episode 11 of Sotsu, he accuses Satoko for being behind the Curse. Which is entirely correct, but only for this year and not for the overall incidents he's thinking of.

Miyo Takano

Miyo Takano (born Miyoko Tanashi)

Voiced by: Miki Itō (JP), Fuyuka Ōura (JP - young), Mallorie Rodak (EN, Sarah Wiedenheft (EN - young)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/miyo_takano_gou.png

A nurse at the Hinamizawa village clinic.

Babies Ever After: Implied. She looks visibly more rotund in uncharacteristically baggy clothes when she returns to the clinic with Tomitake in the epilogue of Sotsu, though whether that actually means pregnancy is never stated.
Disc-One Final Boss: During the Nekodamashi-hen arc, she willingly surrenders on the night of the Watanagashi festival and gives up on her ambitions resulting in an early version of the original story's Golden Ending. This is the first clue that she's not actually the Big Bad this time around.
Heel–Face Turn: Episode 17 of Gou has Takano doing this at the beginning, where she tearfully begs for Rika's forgiveness stating she planned to kill her and her friends but, for some unspecified reason, she has given up her plan and is going to testify against the faction of Tokyo that planned to start the Hinamizawa Disaster.
Karmic Death: In Gou, it's shown that in multiple timelines where her plans fails, she ends up going through with her suicide, being forced to shoot herself in the mouth, have her grandfathers research permanently rejected, and take all the blame for the planned massacre, however it can be difficult to have any sympathy for her since she murdered Rika's parents, of which she dissected her mother's brain with no anesthesia, and was planning genocide against a village that did nothing wrong to her.
Not Me This Time: Gou presents an interesting take on the trope: she readily admits to Rika that she was intending on killing her and her friends as part of her plan, but she ended up getting cold feet and opting to turn herself in. In her stead, the main villain turns out to be a looping Satoko who was receiving outside help from a supernatural source.
Tears of Remorse: In the Gou anime, Takano cries as she confesses to Rika that she was planning to kill her and her friends until she decided to give up.
Took a Level in Kindness: Her first full appearance in the Gou anime shows Takano doing everything she can to atone for the actions she was going to take against Rika and the others, and even begs for Rika's forgiveness. Tomitake explains Takano has revealed Tokyo's plans to cause the Hinamizawa Disaster and is testifying against the faction that would've caused it all. Though when Rika asks why Takano changed her mind, Takano vaguely states Rika wouldn't believe her.

Teppei Houjou

Voiced by: Katsuhisa Hoki (JP), Bryan Massey (EN)

Satoko's uncle who abused her in the past, but he's very changed due to having recurrent nightmares of his death in previous loops.

Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Another sign of how drastically different he's become in Sotsu is that he goes to Ooishi to kowtow and beg him to help Satoko out when it seems like the town's against his niece. Ooishi is flat-out stunned by this and implores the request.
Ascended Extra: In Gou and Sotsu, he undergoes some significant Character Development and is a major supporting character, which is a drastic change for a previously Flat Character that practically only existed to inspire audience hatred.
The Atoner: In addition to wanting to avoid Dying Alone and realizing he and Satoko are Lonely Together, a big motivator for Teppei's Heel–Face Turn in Gou and Sotsu is the realization of how long he'd been wasting his life and how horrible he'd been to his own family, who he should be more loving and caring towards.
Boom, Headshot!: In Sotsu, Satoko kills him by shooting him in the head.
Dying Alone: Defied; in Gou episode 23 where he starts remembering past loops Teppei realizes that his behavior is pushing everyone, including Satoko, away to the point that there's no one who will care if he dies alone. He resolves to be a better person and take better care of himself from then on to avoid this fate or at least not be an unnecessary burden on everyone around him.
Evil Is Petty: Gou exaggerates his pettiness at the beginning of episode 12 when he vandalizes a roadside shrine and pees on the gates offscreen. However, in Sotsu this is subverted as it turns out Teppei has already turned over a new leaf so he can treat Satoko better. It was actually Ooishi who was responsible after Satoko injected him with H173 so he can frame Teppei and have him seen in a bad light.
Gaslighting: A major victim of this at the hands of Satoko in Sotsu, ironically enough. She claims everyone in the village hates and bullies her (which was true before the series started) and makes her life a living hell but refuses to let him get any sort of "revenge" for this.
Heel–Face Door-Slam: A Heel Realization in Gou episode 23 from remembering past loops makes Teppei resolve to try to be a better person and be the uncle Satoko needs, buying her snacks and protecting her from a Motorcycle Gang. But it is too bad Satoko is still suffering from his abuse too much to be able to forgive him. Solidified when she seemingly experiences a Split-Personality Takeover courtesy of Eua's machinations and cleans his clock for good.
Heel Realization: Subverted. In Gou episode 23 Teppei begins remembering his past loops. The horror of dying alone so many times coupled with reliving the consequences of his abusive and brutish behavior over and over in an isolated and miserable life makes him regret all his prior actions, deciding to change for the better by losing the Hair-Trigger Temper and trying to be kinder towards Satoko, which continues into Sotsu. Too bad Satoko is taking advantage of his attempts to change and manipulates him until he lets his guard down.
Heel–Face Turn: By the end of Sotsu, Teppei is a cheerful man that's found a legal job and is also no longer an outcast in Hinamizawa, maintaining amicable relationships even with people like the Sonozakis. Although Satoko is implied to understandably have mixed feelings about him their relationship has improved to where she doesn't mind living with Teppei at all. All in all, Teppei resembles nothing of his former self.
I Was Just Passing Through: In Gou, he saves Satoko from some thugs and when Ooishi questions him, Teppei tries to pretend he only felt like picking a fight because even he knows he isn't the type of man he would go out of his way to protect the very niece who he abused in the past. Satoko and other witnesses do attest that he was defending her, getting him out of trouble.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Has become one by the "Tatariakashi-hen" of Sotsu, in a way that's played for maximum drama. His heart is now firmly in the right place of wanting to make amends to his neice, be a good uncle to her and protect her from the bullying and harrassment he's led to believe is happening to her at the hands of the villagers. But his Hair-Trigger Temper, alcoholism, and jerkish attitude tendencies remain with him and sabotoge his efforts, casting suspicion onto him for things he didn't even do. In the new reality shown at the very end of Sotsu, the "jerk" part seems to have mellowed out altogether as he Took a Level in Kindness and is on good terms with not only Satoko but Shion as well.
Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Played With. Even in Gou episode 23 where he has a Heel Realization and tries to change his ways, while keeping himself to his word of no longer abusing Satoko, Teppei still stalks her the day after he'd met up with her again and tries to worm his way back into her life explicitly because there would be benefit for him in doing so and he seems to regret the negative impact his poor life choices have had on himself first and foremost rather than being remorseful about all the people he'd hurt, his young niece and nephew included. In the reality of "Curse Deceiving", it's heavily suggested that Satoko did choose to let him back into her life and was only lying about his continued abuse to her friends, and by the end of that arc he's driven to attempting to murder Keiichi when Satoko lets the latter into the Houjou home, suggesting that despite his best efforts to change he still ends up slipping back into his old ways when pushed far enough. That said, Sotsu shows that his 180 degree flip on Satoko is genuine, in addition shown to being genuinely friendly with people with her presence, Teppei practically only does things with her if she allows it, and waits for her to approach him, not the other way around. At one point, he gets so upset about the alleged abuse she's suffering from the village, he's actually driven to tears because he's unable to help her. It's largely due to Satoko's manipulation that his violence and bad behavior come back. However, in the end his violent side never makes a reappearance as Satoko kills him before such a thing happens.
Karmic Death: In Tatariakashi-hen, he's manipulated and killed by his past victim Satoko.
Lonely Together: The reason why he suddenly tries to be nice to Satoko in Gou is because he realized that they're each other's only family in the world. Satoko calls him out on how he's only looking for someone who feels as lonely as him so they'll take care of him for free and he doesn't deny it, but still wishes that he and Satoko can at least be on speaking terms.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After years of being the biggest asshole with even Rika considering his appearance the point of no return for any given loop Teppei does a complete 180 in Gou episode 23. Remembering his past loops convinces him to change his ways, losing his Hair-Trigger Temper, taking better care of himself and going so far as to buy snacks for Satoko with his pachinko winnings and beating up the Motorcycle Gang attacking her. Both himself and Ooishi even lampshade it, Teppei saying unreservedly that this change is outright unnatural for someone like him.
Pet the Dog: While one could argue that him giving Satoko his snacks and later saving her from the biker thugs in Gou episode 23 was still largely self-motivated, as he'd wanted Satoko to let him back into her life so that he could live Lonely Together with her in Hinamizawa and be better taken care of, he did show himself capable of doing something decent for Satoko at the end - respecting her wishes for him to back off from her, putting space between the two of them when it was clear she was too traumatized by his past abuse to even entertain forgiving him to the point of being on speaking terms with him again, let alone letting him live with her. This is the big sign that change is indeed possible for him, as he shows dramatic self-improvement in future loops shown in Sotsu.
Rejected Apology: In Gou episode 23 Teppei decides to change himself for the better and mend his frayed relationship with Satoko. Even if Satoko won't live with him again (knowing his past abuses are already unforgivable), he at least wants to be on speaking terms with her again. However, Satoko is still suffering from the effects of his abuse and pushes him away. She ends up taking advantage of his newfound kindness and throwing it away by eventually killing him.
Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: In Gou, Teppei suddenly begins remembering past loops which he explains away as bad dreams, including one where he is killed by a trio of thugs. The terror of the previous loops combined with a Heel Realization convinces him to begin righting his past wrongs.
Took a Level in Kindness: In Gou, after having recurring "nightmares" (which are most likely him remembering the alternate timelines where he died) he undergoes a Heel Realization, and decides to turn over a new leaf, even going out of his way to be kind to Satoko. In Sotsu he becomes very protective of Satoko, though he remains respectful of whatever she asks of him and does not ask for anything in return.
The Unsmile: In Sotsu, he tries smiling for Satoko and ends up looking sinister instead.
Unwitting Pawn: Once Satoko realizes her looping is making Teppei more remorseful she decides to use this opportunity to exploit his newfound kindness in any way that can benefit her. In Tatariakashi-hen she actively asks Teppei to come live with her in their old house to reenact the loops where he returns to Hinamizawa to fool Rika further and to make sure he'd act like his old, belligerent self to others as part of this front she tells him the village is actively bullying her for being part of the Houjou family.

Rina Mamiya

Voiced by: Misa Watanabe (JP), Morgan Garrett (EN)

A hostess who's dating Rena's father.

Cruel and Unusual Death: In Oniakashi-hen, Rina gets strangled to near-unconsciousness, beaten and slashed with Rena's cleaver until she dies and to further drive it home her body is cut into pieces and stuffed into separate bags.
Everyone Has Standards: In Sotsu, while just as conniving and manipulative as before Rina has an uncharacteristic tinge of regret for driving Rena's father to drink and stealing his money. She's specifically hesitant to keep her scheme going for Rena's sake, not wanting her to be in a difficult situation as a fellow child raised by a single parent. Rina even goes straight to Rena appealing for her to ask her father to stop visiting her club and claims she'll stay away from him. It doesn't take.
Freudian Excuse: In the Meguri manga, Rina reveals that much like Rena, her mother abandoned her father for another man and her father got into debt while raising Rina on his own. Rina saw that she and her father were miserable because they didn't have money and this lead her to become a Gold Digger. However, this also makes Rina sympathize with Rena's family circumstances and she promises to stop extorting her father as well as to give back the money she took from him.
Heel–Face Door-Slam: In Oniakashi-hen, for the first time in history Rina regrets the trouble she has put Rena's dad through, presumably due to remembering past loops like Teppei. Like Teppei she's never truly given a proper chance to bury the hatchet. Rina is instead lured by an H173-infected Rena to her hangout spot and slashed to death. Just as she's asking Rena to stop her father from visiting her club.
Heel–Face Turn: Like Teppei, by the end of Sotsu, Rina is a kinder person that's found peace in living as a decent human being. Judging from her scene at the tea shop it's evident she's also lost her outcast status in Hinamizawa. Given she's also alive and happy, it's suggested she is on better terms with Rena than the previous loops.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In Sotsu, she regrets the scam and tells Rena about it, asking Rena to help her end it by convincing Rena's father to stop visiting Rina. Unfortunately, Rena takes this genuine act of remorse as another lie and responds by brutally killing Rina.
Slashed Throat: In Sotsu, Rena kiils her by cutting her throat.

Characters / Higurashi: When They Cry – Gou

Club Members

Keiichi Maebara

Voiced by: Soichiro Hoshi (JP), Khoi Dao (EN)

Rena Ryugu

Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (JP), Emi Lo (EN)

Mion Sonozaki

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Michelle Rojas (EN)

Rika Furude

Voiced by: Yukari Tamura (JP), Apphia Yu (EN)

Satoko Houjou

Voiced by: Mika Kanai (JP), Brittany Lauda (EN)

Supernatural Beings

Hanyuu

Voiced by: Yui Horie (JP), Xanthe Huynh (English)

Eua

Voiced by: Noriko Hidaka (JP), Emily Fajardo (EN)

Witch Satoko

Voiced by: Mika Kanai (JP), Brittany Lauda (EN)

Supporting Characters

Shion Sonozaki

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Michelle Rojas (EN)

Kuraudo Ooishi

Voiced by: Chafurin (JP), Mark Stoddard (EN)

Miyo Takano (born Miyoko Tanashi)

Voiced by: Miki Itō (JP), Fuyuka Ōura (JP - young), Mallorie Rodak (EN, Sarah Wiedenheft (EN - young)

Teppei Houjou

Voiced by: Katsuhisa Hoki (JP), Bryan Massey (EN)

Rina Mamiya

Voiced by: Misa Watanabe (JP), Morgan Garrett (EN)

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Characters / Higurashi: When They Cry – Gou

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Club Members

Keiichi Maebara

Voiced by: Soichiro Hoshi (JP), Khoi Dao (EN)

Rena Ryugu

Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (JP), Emi Lo (EN)

Mion Sonozaki

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Michelle Rojas (EN)

Rika Furude

Voiced by: Yukari Tamura (JP), Apphia Yu (EN)

Satoko Houjou

Voiced by: Mika Kanai (JP), Brittany Lauda (EN)

Supernatural Beings

Hanyuu

Voiced by: Yui Horie (JP), Xanthe Huynh (English)

Eua

Voiced by: Noriko Hidaka (JP), Emily Fajardo (EN)

Witch Satoko

Voiced by: Mika Kanai (JP), Brittany Lauda (EN)

Supporting Characters

Shion Sonozaki

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino (JP), Michelle Rojas (EN)

Kuraudo Ooishi

Voiced by: Chafurin (JP), Mark Stoddard (EN)

Miyo Takano (born Miyoko Tanashi)

Voiced by: Miki Itō (JP), Fuyuka Ōura (JP - young), Mallorie Rodak (EN, Sarah Wiedenheft (EN - young)

Teppei Houjou

Voiced by: Katsuhisa Hoki (JP), Bryan Massey (EN)

Rina Mamiya

Voiced by: Misa Watanabe (JP), Morgan Garrett (EN)

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