Anime Synopsis and Review - Higurashi no Naku Koro ni - Episode 3
Under cut.

Episode 3 starts with Keiichi awaking the next morning and telling his mother to tell Rena that he is not going to school today. His mother does so and then later on that day, Keiichi goes and walks to the clinic and the doctor tells him that it must just be a cold or something and they will give him a shot. While sitting in the waiting room he hears people behind him talking about Takano and how she may have gotten demoned away after finding her love with Tomitake, the guy with the camera from Tokyo.

On the way back from the clinic, Ooishi pulls up in his unmarked white car and invites Keiichi to come to lunch with him, which Keiichi says yes, too and while at a restaurant called Angel Morte, Ooishi tells Keiichi that he has been investigating his friends a little bit since the murders began and when Keiichi asks why, Ooishi begins to explain.

The first murder, the leader of the dam project, had a couple of fights with Mion a few weeks before he was murdered and dismembered. The second murder, the couple that was on vacation and pushed off a cliff - there was a child at the scene and that was Satoko. The third murder, the Shrine Priest and his wife, turned out to be Rika's parents. The fourth year, the housewife that was murdered turned out to be Satoko's guardians that she was living with, along with her BROTHER, Satoshi. This is the first time that Keiichi hears that Satoko and Satoshi were brother and sister, but Ooishi says that after their parents were gone, they began to live with their aunt and uncle, but Satoshi was her real brother. Their aunt was murdered in the woods and Satoshi was a suspect at first but then the culprit was caught before Satoshi 'transferred away', but Ooishi also thinks he may have been what the town calls, 'demoned away'.

Keiichi, yet again, gets extremely paranoid and from there on, Ooishi tells Keiichi that before Rena transferred to Hinamazawa, she had gotten suspended from school for smashing all the windows in with bats and after that she was on medication and had a therapist and the same name kept appearing in her reports - 'Oyashiro-sama'. Rena said that she sensed something stand over her while she slept and something followed her everywhere she went. This obviously surprises Keiichi who asks, oddly, "Why an outsider like Rena?" But then Ooishi explains that Rena's family used to live in Hinamazawa but transferred away right before Rena entered Elementary School. This makes Keiichi think even more and he wonders why no one told him any of this, although, to me, it is normal that these girls would not want to tell the guy that just moved to the town a month beforehand about all the horrible things that happened in their town - that might scare him away or make them come off as morbid? After that Ooishi tells Keiichi that he thinks Keiichi is the one in danger this time around, which is not something that already paranoid and stressed out Keiichi needed to hear.

That night, Keiichi is at his house, when the doorbell rings. He goes to see who it is and it's Rena and Mion, standing there, holding some ohagi (rice balls covered in sesame or sweet beans) for Keiichi. Rena says that Mion's grandmother made them and that Rena also made a special one and she wondered if Keiichi could find it. Then Mion said that there are letters on all of them and that Keiichi needed to figure out the code and that was club homework for missing the club that day. Things are laid back and then suddenly Rena and Mion's eyes changed and they suddenly asked Keiichi where he ate lunch and who with and he gets extremely freaked out again. Mion tells him that it doesn't matter what he says because she knows everything and he should remember that, then they pushed the package of food into his hands, before saying that he should lay down now because he doesn't look too good. Right before the door is fully closed, Mion stops it and all you see is her eye and she tells Keiichi that she doesn't want him to be absent tomorrow, scaring him yet again.

After calming down a bit, he walks into the kitchen and opens his food and finds the ohagi each have a letter on them and before even thinking about what code may be, he takes a bite into the first one grabs and inside of it he finds a needle that stabs him in the mouth. Spitting it out, he looks at it in horror, before throwing the rest of them at the wall, screaming and panicking before collapsing on the floor, still in a panic, not sure if that was Rena's special one or if they were all from Mion and her grandmother.

Later on that night, while in his room, Keiichi writes a note that says he thinks he is going to be killed soon and hides it up in his clock so that if something does happen to him, someone can find that note and know what happened.

The next day, Keiichi is walking to school when a strange white van is driving behind him and then almost runs him over, but he jumps across the road and the tiny stream that runs next to the road, so the van can't follow. The man driving has no real face, but you see them get annoyed and then they drive away, leaving Keiichi, yet again, extremely paranoid.

When he gets to school, he starts looking through all the lockers and things, for what, I am not sure, but he ends up finding a bat and picks it up and swings it once or twice in the hallway when Rika and Satoko walk up to him. Satoko looks at him in shock before running away and Rika tells him to watch his health and to make sure he does not lose that bat before wandering off after Satoko.

After that, Keiichi goes outside of the school in his gym outfit and starts swinging the bat like a psycho over and over again. Rena and Mion come out and ask him what he is doing and he says it's obvious, he's swinging a bat, then they ask why and he says he might join a sports team, which makes both of them gets extremely sad before wishing him good luck and parting ways. After they both run off, he flips out and slams the bat into the ground, extremely angrily before deciding to start walking home.

Before that, it goes to a scene of Keiichi being in the classroom and Mion and the group preparing for their club activities, but Keiichi grabs his bat and says he doesn't want to participate today, which makes them all very sad, but he doesn't care and leaves anyway.

On his way home, he senses someone behind him and knows that it's Rena and turns around and yells at her not to follow him, raising the bat up in the air, but she stands there surprised. He asks what happened to the club and she says that she was worried about Keiichi, but he yells at her not to follow him again, and she just looks confused and hurt. He starts to take some more steps and she follows and he turns and screams at her again, but she says that her house is also in that direction, so he tells her to go in front of her and he will go when he can't see her anymore. She starts to go in front of him, but then stops and asks him if she can ask him a question and he asks what. Rena then asks why it's the same as before, why is everything the same as before? Why is even the bat the same? Keiichi shakes his head and says he does not know what she is talking about, but she just repeats it again and says that it was the same exact as the last time with Satoshi and that the bat is just the same as Satoshi's. At that moment, Keiichi looks down at the bat and sees the name 'Satoshi' written on it and realizes that he has been using the infamous Satoshi's bat and he freaks out, yet again and Rena continues on to say that everything is the same as when Satoshi did it and ends it with, "And you know what happened then? You know what happened then?" And Keiichi, freaking out, grabs her and demands to know what and she looks at him with her insane eyes and says he transferred away. Then she asks Keiichi, "You won't, right?" And he asks, "What?" And she says, "Transfer," and Keiichi falls down on the floor in complete shock.

The next scene, it is night time and Keiichi is in his house talking on the phone with his mother, who says her and his father will not be back until at least tomorrow and he says it's okay, he'll be fine. When he hangs up the phone, he goes and closes the curtains and locks the door, before the phone rings again, making him jump in fright. He answers the phone and Ooishi is on the other end and asks Keiichi if anything strange has happened since the last time they talked and Keiichi tells him about the needle he almost ate. Ooishi asks him if he still has the needle for evidence and Keiichi goes and rushes off into the kitchen to find it, but it is gone. He gets back on the phone and tells Ooishi that he lost it and he says that he understands, and then before the conversation can continue, you see a silhouette outside of his house approaching the door and a finger goes and pushes the doorbell and then inside, the doorbell starts ringing and doesn't stop, as the person outside keeps pushing it over and over and over again. Keiichi freezes in his conversation and looks over at the door in horror and then the episode ends.