Yeah, I just saw that a new Higurashi is going to start next year.
Spoiler! :
I have to wonder though. How are they going to do this? I mean, they are saying that if they fail this time around that it is all over. If that is the case, they must succeed in this arc. The only way out of this is by going further in the past iterations. To me, as much as I love Higurashi, they are starting to milk this series a bit too much.
After seeing the last episode of Kai, I can see how there can be a third season. They left so much unexplained, I'll probably go read the TIPS in the AS forums now.
P.S.
Older Rika ranks 0.999999999 Yuki on the hawtness scale.
That is, if that is an older version of Rika. It looked and almost sounded like it, but you can have no guarantees in this series. I kept thinking that somehow they were going to have things go horribly wrong in the end; they did not. Takano gets defeated, and they all live happily ever after, or so it seems. Also, if that was an older version of Rika, what in the world would make her want to go back into the past?! I mean, they are finally happy now, being out of the loop with pride and all. You would think that Rika would learn a lesson from the idea that messing with the past usually screws things up. Oh well! We get another series out of it! Besides, the second series was awesome. I think that it was at least on par with the first series in terms of plot and suspense.
She is the combined consciousness of all Rika's in all worlds, but is not actually "Rika". She can see everything Rika does, and knows all of her thoughts, but isn't actually her. It's not that Rika's soul is going from world to world, but that Frederica dumps a shitload of memories into the mind of that world's Rika, giving the illusion of a soul transfer.
She is also responsible for allowing each world to have different events and circumstances, as well as other characters remembering things from previous worlds.
She is the combined consciousness of all Rika's in all worlds, but is not actually "Rika". She can see everything Rika does, and knows all of her thoughts, but isn't actually her. It's not that Rika's soul is going from world to world, but that Frederica dumps a pooping of memories into the mind of that world's Rika, giving the illusion of a soul transfer.
She is also responsible for allowing each world to have different events and circumstances, as well as other characters remembering things from previous worlds.
The ending of Kai was Frederica creating another universe in order to give Takano a better life where her parents never died. This is a significant event, since until then, Frederica never had the ability to take physical form or create a new world without Hanyuu's help, or even be aware of events that Rika wasn't, suggesting that she's somehow become more and more powerful as Hanyuu loses her own.
So, if I have this straight, Frederica is kind of like the missing link between Hanyuu and Rika. Basically, according to AuraTwilight's explanation, she is the culmination of Rika's experiences that link all of the worlds together. But if that were true, would that not mean that she did not exist before the first June 1983? Hence, her "power of existence" or "sonzai no chikara," to put it in Shakugan no Shana terms, is becoming stronger. I hope that they can explain this in the next series. In summary, it seems that Rika, Hanyuu, and now Frederica make up what is known as Oyashiro-sama. The funny thing is that if the three of them are so powerful, why can they not just reset things so that everything is perfect? On a side note, I wonder if Rika eats kimchi or drinks sake, will Frederica feel the burn or drunkenness?
Not quite, but you're getting closer. Hanyuu is only connected in that the creation of alternate worlds is what created Hanyuu (and I personally feel that Frederica may be receiving the power Hanyuu is losing, but that's a personal theory, and not to be taken as fact.)
No, Frederica is did not exist prior to the world reboots started, as she is the composite of all dimensional versions of Rika. Only Hanyuu is really "Oyashiro-Sama", and even that's a stretch. The truth is that there is no Oyashiro-Sama except what was invented back in the past, but that's another subject and I'll try not to spoil it.
The Three of them aren't powerful to make a perfect world during the series because they're just not powerful enough. Neither of the three are omnipotent. Hanyuu can create new worlds, Rika can influence the flow of time to a very limited degree along with ESP abilities, and Frederica is "able to roll the dice as many times as she like" and alter events, but she can't control the outcome. It is only after the barrier of June 1983 is broken that she is powerful enough to CONTROL events like she did in the epilogue.
Furthermore, in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei, Frederica does indeed create a perfect, flawless world that Rika is unable to tolerate, in order to show Rika what she's been struggling for.
