She...has a billhook, I guess?

[terajk]

I’ve been watching Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (When The Cicadas Cry), and I am…confused by fandom’s singling out of Rena Ryuugu as especially weird and scary. I mean, I know I’ve only seen two arcs, but I have spoiled myself thoroughly and am pretty sure that (skip) most of the cast has Hinamizawa Syndrome. Yet, on TV Tropes, Rena is the page picture for "Cute and Psycho," even though one Troper says that Rena doesn’t normally act that way. And on Yandere Daily is a picture of her being…yangire, I guess. (She is quite popular there, for some reason.) In this particular picture, she’s peeking through a partially open door locked with a chain. But in that scene the picture comes from, Rena is the victim of violence:

I give the side-eye to terms like "yandere" and "yangire" generally--as ember_reignited says in a piece about Sayaka Miki from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, "the term[s] get used to trivialize and fetishize mental illness in female characters with any sort of violent tendencies." But even so, why the Rena hate? Like I said, the syndrome correlated with the violence isn't unique to her at all.