#someutsushi

The time has come to turn our attention as a community to the newly console-exclusive Someutsushi arc, which has been recently translated into English for the first time! To read Someutsushi in English, you must first purchase a copy of Himatsubushi off Steam or Mangagamer’s website, and apply the relevant Console Arcs 07th Mod. It’s super easy to install, just follow the instructions! As a pre-requisite, it’s recommended that you have at least read up to Ch. 3 Tatarigoroshi before reading Someutsushi, but otherwise you can feel free to read it whenever you want. We at Rokkenjima are super excited to dig into this newly translated arc, and what better way than to read it together as a community for the Higurashi Tea Party! What is the Higurashi Tea Party, you ask?

Our Tea Parties are Rokkenjima’s biggest event, in which we rally Higurashi fans from all across the internet to join us on the forum to read through, analyse and celebrate the story in question together. It’s the perfect chance for new readers to get involved and share their speculations with other new readers, but also for more seasoned fans to take a look at the chapter with the knowledge of later arcs.

On the forum we have two topics: one for newcomers to discuss without fear of spoilers, and one for veterans to speak freely about the chapter in the full context of Higurashi. We also encourage our more creative members to contribute to the Tea Party with fanworks of the chapter in our Higurashi Fanart topic, as well as other appropriate topics. We’ll also be keeping an eye on the Twitter hashtag #HigurashiTP, so if you feel like live-tweeting your readthrough, feel free to use that hashtag! Can be a fun way to keep notes as you read to draw upon for your eventual forum post.

At the conclusion of the Tea Party on the 2nd of July, we’ll be recording a spoiler-free podcast incorporating all of the discussion over the two weeks (possibly more) and showcasing fanworks produced throughout, providing the participants with a platform to voice their thoughts and creative inspiration on the chapter! If you’re new to Higurashi and want to be a part of our podcast, we’d love to try you out! Just hop on over to our Podcast Applications Topic and express your interest!

If you’d like to get a feel for our previous Tea Parties before diving in, you can find all our Higurashi Tea Parties Here, and all our Umineko Tea Parties Here. Definitely worth a listen on those long train trips home.

To incentivise contributions to the Tea Party, we’ll be offering two prizes at the conclusion of the Tea Party: one to our best discussion participant, and one to our best fanwork creator! Prizes up for grabs include a copy of the Miracles 07th Expansion Fanzine, or a Higurashi Steam Key of your choosing!

With the conclusion of our very first console-arc Tea Party, we’re proud to present the Someutsushi podcast! I Aspirety am joined by veterans kyuketsukimiyu and Seraphitic, together with acolyte and main character VyseGolbez! Being a non-Ryukishi chapter, this one turned out a bit more divisive than previous chapters, and we hope you enjoy hearing our differing thoughts on it!

My humble thanks to all the forum members for their discussion of this Chapter in the Spoiler-Free and the Full Spoilers topics, and congratulations to U4ea for earning the prestige of the Meakashi Tea Party Top Poster! You will be rewarded with a forum badge and a special prize! Unfortunately we didn’t receive any fanworks for this chapter, so we’ll be keeping that prize for a future Tea Party instead. Come on guys, I wanna see some Chisato and Natsumi fanart in the Kageboushi Tea Party when that gets translated!

With this complete, it looks like we’ve run out of Higurashi chapters to do Tea Parties on for a while! We’re now eagerly awaiting the release of Tsumihoroboshi on Steam, as well as the Kageboushi patch and Umineko Chiru on Steam. So where do we go from here? Well, I think we’ve all earned a bit of a break! But it’s my hope that once everyone is well rested, we’ll be ready to dive into an all new Bookclub with Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni! More details on that in the coming weeks; please look forward to it!

If you’d prefer to download and listen to the Tea Party offline, we’ve prepared an mp3 you can download here. For more information about the Higurashi Tea Party, including links to relevant forum topics and future episodes, keep an eye on our Higurashi Tea Party Page.