Maebara Aiko is Keiichi's mother in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. She first shows up in Onikakushi-hen alongside her husband, Ichirou, though the anime rarely features her—and when it does, her face is typically obscured or not fully drawn.
She's best known for being a serious mystery and detective novel enthusiast. According to Keiichi, she reads crime fiction obsessively, everything from classic Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express) to contemporary writers worldwide. She's even written her own crime novel and entered it into contests. Her deep knowledge of mystery tropes becomes plot-relevant in Tatarigoroshi-hen, when she casually explains to Keiichi how to avoid leaving an obvious "introduction" to a perfect crime—a detail he takes to heart when planning Teppei's murder. Ooishi mentions she attended a women's university, though he refers to it dismissively as a "humble" one.
She appears more frequently in the manga adaptations than in the anime.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
