The Higurashi franchise consists of 8 arcs. the first 4 arcs are the mysteries (the 'question' arcs), the last 4 arcs are the explanations of the mysteries (the 'solution' arcs) - but in reverse order .e.g. arc 5 explains what happened in arc 4, arcs 6 explains arc 3 etc, etc.
It's natural to ask "why is this happening" because it's a mystery series, but it's a mystery in the sense that everything you see has a concrete reason why it happened which is explained as the mystery is revealed. Shit only seems random because you don't know the backstory yet. There's almost no "random shit happened, just because" in Higurashi, even though it might seem that way at first.
Where this works best and is most apparent is from arc 4 to arc 5. Each of these arcs shows the exact same set of events, but from two different character's points of view, and in doing so, totally changes the meaning of what you see on screen.
They got up to arc 6 in the first 24 episode anime, so very little was explained at that point, the final two arcs explain what's actually going on in the town.
Overall, it's pretty much a 48 episode murder-mystery with lots of red herrings and violence. But in the sense you have to watch most of the 48 episodes to know why the people in episode 1 were murdered. Also there's no ass-pulling of characters partway through, all the suspects are actually right there all along through the series
hint hint.
If you want the full deal though, you should check out the 8 visual novels they're based on, the anime did a poor job explaining some important plot points.