[ home, rena, keiichi, rika, hanyu, shion & mion, satoko ]
Maebara Keiichi (前原 圭一) is one of the protagonists in the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni series. He serves as the protagonist of four Question Arcs: Onikakushi-hen; Watanagashi-hen; Tatarigoroshi-hen; and Taraimawashi-hen. He acts as the villain in Tsukiotoshi-hen. Other than Akasaka Mamoru in Himatsubushi-hen, he is the only male protagonist. He is a very sociable, charismatic boy with a lively attitude, and his talented tongue allows him to fit in the town quickly and make new friends. While his exact age is never explicitly stated, he is implied to be 14/15 in most media (or around 17 in the live-action adaptations) since he is a grade below Mion, who is facing her final year at their school before entering high school. It is confirmed in the visual novels that his birthday is in April, making him the same age as Mion for a couple of months each year.
Keiichi is the son of a famous artist, Maebara Ichirō, and his wife, Maebara Aiko, who recently moved to Hinamizawa after an array of unfortunate and awful events in his hometown. He and his family live in a large house, dubbed the "Maebara Mansion" by many of the villagers, built on property bought from the Sonozaki family. As a result, many of his friends believe that they must be quite rich; however, their house was only built large so that it would also contain his father's art gallery and allow for visitors.
In Onikakushi-hen, paranoia drives him to believe that his friends are trying to kill him, which leads to his murder of Sonozaki Mion and Ryūgū Rena. Likewise, he also kills Hōjō Satoko's uncle, Hōjō Teppei and contemplates killing Takano Miyo 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, which helps Rika to defeat fate.
When in need of a weapon, he is often seen with Hōjō Satoshi's baseball bat; however, on one occasion in Tatarigoroshi-hen he wields a nata 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 and had 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, he's usually forced to take the "penalty," and the girls like to pick on him. Even Hanyū has a moment of triumph in a game against him. Mion and Satoko seem to be especially fond of teasing him. Satoko spends hours designing and setting up traps just to humiliate him while Mion gives him tabasco sauce filled ohagi in Onikakushi-hen. Since he suffers from Hinamizawa Syndrome in that arc, he imagines the ohagi contains needles. In the manga, he declares Mion's punishment games to be "sexual harassment,". These games seem to always involve him wearing embarrassing costumes such as a dress with a short skirt, a cat-maid costume, and swimming trunks with a ridiculously suggestive swan goose neck and head.
For his part, Keiichi frequently teases the girls suggestively; however, Higurashi is not a "harem" story where the main male character struggles with a number of girls vying for his affections. In the anime and manga, he appears quite innocent and never pursues a relationship with Rena, Mion, or Shion. In the Sound Novels, Keiichi will make frequent suggestive jokes, but he does not pursue the issue. Thus, he appears embarrassed by Shion clutching his arm. In the manga, Mion and Shion's mother, Sonozaki Akane, happily announces that she approves of him and invites him to marry either of her daughters over their embarrassed protests, Keiichi seems shocked. It is heavily implied in the arcs in all media that both Rena and Mion have crushes on him. Shion makes Mion's interests clear, much to Keiichi's surprise. In comic relief end pages of the manga, his cluelessness to Mion's interests is one subject for humor. Nevertheless, in certain arcs, his inability to see Mion as a girl rather than a "tomboy" drives the tragedy.
Tsumihoroboshi-hen reveals that Keiichi has a fear of sewing needles in his food from a manga he read as a child. This is expanded in Minagoroshi-hen where the manga is about a girl who puts sewing needles in a man's food. This mentally scarred him for quite a while and explains his paranoid delusion under the Hinamizawa Syndrome of finding a "needle" in his ohagi in Onikakushi-hen.