Keiichi Maebara

"Come at me, nata girl!"

- Keiichi Maebara to Rena Ryuguu

Spoilers in black, highlight to reveal.

Keiichi Maebara is the protagonist of the visual novel and later anime Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. The son of an artist, Keiichi moves to the village of Hinamizawa, Japan with his family from a larger city at the age of 16. On his first day of school, a one-room school covering grades from K-12 due to the small size of the village, Keiichi quickly becomes friends with a group of girls, Mion and (in the arcs where she appears) Shion Sonozaki, Rena Ryuguu, Satoko Houjou, and Rika Furude. The group play together after school, and times are generally good until Keiichi discovers the dark secrets behind the village of Himamizawa. Exactly how this happens varies from arc-to-arc. However, in general, Keiichi finds out about a series grisly murders and mysterious disappearance that took place in town, described by the townsfolk as the curse of the god of the local Shinto shrine, Oyashiro-sama. In some of these arcs, Keiichi ends up as the murderer, and in others, the victim, in some arcs, Keiichi and his friends die in a mysterious volcanic gas leak that kills off all of the town. Finally, in the last arc, Keiichi and his friends discover the true identity of the individuals responsible for the incidents at Hinamizawa,  In fact, the insanity and murders in the village are caused by a local virus known as the the "Hinamizawa Syndrome, and Miyo Takano is in the employ of a conspiracy by rogue factions in the government to weaponize the virus. The volcanic gas disaster is actually an attempt to cover up experiments with the virus by Takano by killing off the village with chemical weapons. 