About
Maebara Keiichi is the main protagonist of the first three Question Arcs, Onikakushi-hen, Watanagashi-hen, and Tatarigoroshi-hen. He is a charismatic boy with a lively attitude, and his talented tongue allowed him to quickly fit in the town and make new friends. Keiichi is the son of a famous artist, Maebara Ichirō, and his wife, Maebara Aiko, and recently moved to Hinamizawa after an array of unfortunate and awful events in his hometown, Tokyo. He and his family live in a large house they bought from the Sonozaki family, and as a result, many of his friends believe that they must be quite rich. However, in reality they are only about middle-class; the house was built large so that it would also house his father's art gallery and allow for clients to visit said gallery. It is assumed that Keiichi is 16 years old, and it is confirmed that his birthday lies in April. As Higurashi takes place in June, it is most likely that he is already 16.In Onikakushi-hen, paranoia drives him to believe that his friends are trying to kill him, which leads the murder of Sonozaki Mion and Ryūgū Rena. Likewise, he also kills Hōjō Satoko's uncle, Hōjō Teppei in Tatarigoroshi-hen. However, in subsequent arcs, he gains inner strength and faith in his friends, enough to change the fate of Hinamizawa, as he is able to remember the events of previous worlds through similar events.When in need of a weapon, he is often seen with Hōjō Satoshi's old baseball bat; however, on one occasion in Tatarigoroshi-hen, he wielded an axe in an attempt to kill Satoko's uncle "for the second time". Contrary to Rena and Mion's comments in Onikakushi-hen about how Keiichi is not athletic at all, he actually is quite skilled in baseball, having frequently gone to a batting practice center with his father before he moved to Hinamizawa.Keiichi often ends up being the butt of the jokes in the club's activities, as the girls like to pick on him. Remarkably, especially Mion and Satoko seem to be fond of teasing him. In the manga, he considers Mion's punishments "sexual harassment", as he is often forced to wear embarrassing costumes, typically a dress with a short skirt.It is revealed in Minagoroshi-hen that Keiichi has a fear of sewing needles being in his food, as a result of read a comic book about a girl who put sewing needles in a man's food when he was little. This mentally scarred him for quite awhile, and explains his violent reaction to the "needle" in his ohagi in Onikakushi-hen.
Before moving to Hinamizawa, Keiichi was struggling with his grades in a cram school in Tokyo. An intelligence test, however, showed that he was very smart, but if a question didn't make sense, as in "Why should one do that?", he wouldn't find it interesting, and thus would not answer the question very well. After the intelligence test, he was transferred to another, more gifted school, where his grades improved rapidly. He was soon the best in class in every subject, but that resulted in lack of social strength. Keiichi was bullied by his jealous classmates, but he could easily take it as there was only one thing that mattered to him—the praise from his teachers, and, more importantly, his parents, and he was given allowance raises as a reward. However, as Keiichi started to find school too easy and boring and his high grades became "expected", he felt like getting involved in something "more exciting". He bought an airsoft gun with his extra allowance and started shooting at smaller children as they walked home from school.Keiichi was never connected to the shootings, due to his clever ways of hiding and sneaking, but his actions did not go unnoticed, and parents were asked to never let their children go home alone. One day, however, a young girl was on her own, and Keiichi found her a too easy a target to resist. The girl turned around before he managed to shoot and she was hit in the eye. Her pained screams seemed to register with Keiichi, as he froze in horror. He wanted to help her, but couldn't do so without revealing himself and thus ran away. He felt so guilty and panicked that he even researched on what would happen if you shot someone in the eye with an airsoft gun.Keiichi, in the end, confessed to being the shooter to his parents one morning. His parents were greatly upset, but they also felt guilty for not hearing their son's "cry for help". For the sake of a new start, Keiichi's parents paid his bail and moved to a quiet town, Hinamizawa.This incident is quite possibly why Keiichi feels extra protective toward his friends, especially Satoko when she is abused in Tatarigoroshi-hen and Minagoroshi-hen.In Tsumihoroboshi-hen, his background is revealed by Rena when she asked Ōishi Kuraudo about each of her friends.
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