I recently watched this anime for the first time and initially wasn't sure what to make of it; I'd heard that is was a horror story but the animation style and opening episodes gave little suggestion of what was to come apart from the short pre-credit sequence in the first episode.<br /><br />Keiichi has recently moved from the city to the small, traditional village of Hinamizawa and has settled in at the local school where he has befriended a group of girls and joined their "club". This all suggests it is going to be a comedy with him getting into embarrassing situations with the girls, there is some of that but it leads on to murder and mayhem.<br /><br />The story repeats a few times during the series with slightly different situations leading to different characters taking the lead roll. All the stories however end in murder, often shockingly brutal murder and torture.<br /><br />We later learn that the repeating stories aren't merely showing how things could be different if different choices are made but time is repeating like a macabre version of "Groundhog Day", except that more than a day is repeated. We later learn that one of the girls is aware of this and is trying to change fate to prevent it from reoccurring, occasionally one or more of the others will remember something too but tends to write it off as a half remembered dream or déjà vu.<br /><br />The story is fairly gripping and doesn't get boring as events repeat themselves. I found the juxtaposition of cute animated characters and disturbing imagery quite disturbing in a good way.