Another [Archive] - UPNetwork

Talon87

01-27-2012, 12:49 AM

Kouichi's mother physically could not have died any sooner than fifteen years ago as we know (1) she gave birth to him and (2) he's fifteen years old. The girl in the stories, who we pretty much know has got to be Misaki Mei unless HELLO BIGGEST RED HERRING OF 2012, was said to have died twenty-six years ago. That means that she died eleven years before Kouichi's mother died. If you assume ...
that Kouichi's mother was in 3-3 when she died, then she would have been 14 years old when she got pregnant with Kouichi (possible, but ... the town is referred to as being Kouichi's mother's hometown, not his parents' hometown, and it's unlikely that a 14-year old girl would have gotten impregnated by a non-local and that if she had that her parents would have been able to find said local and pawn the baby off onto him) and then 15 years old when she gave birth and died
that Kouichi's mother died after being in class 3-3, say (for example) at age 22, that begs a new question: why did she die later and not when in 3-3? Unless a red herring, the parrot's call of "Why, Rei? Why?" would seem to imply that Kouichi's mother's death had something to do with Rei and/or Class 3-3. Granted, it could just be the wails of an old woman who outlived her own daughter and the parrot picked up on it and never let it go.
that Kouichi's mother was in the same class as Misaki Mei, then that means that Kouichi's mother would have had to have been 26 years old at the time her son was born -- because she would have been 15 years old when Misaki died, as were all the other 3-3 students, and then eleven years had to have passed before she herself died. This at least is more believable age-wise -- certainly more believable than the 15-year-old-mommy theory! -- but it suffers from the problem that, according to Mei's version of the events, there wasn't anything terribly bad that happened the year she died other than the fact that she died. The first year was the year the students carried on pretending that Mei was still alive. It wasn't until afterwards, apparently, that the shit really started to hit the fan. Shit the villagers are withholding from Kouichi. This would seem to suggest that his mom wasn't in the original 3-3.
The problem with this and other theories at this early stage of the game is, we're not operating with a full deck of cards. Particularly in a ghost story + murder mystery like this, there's a lot of information we're being fed which may be misinformation, misdirection meant to lead us astray. For example ...
we were told that Kouichi's mother died in childbirth. Did she really?
The when: there's no way for Kouichi to know -- he has no memories of his mother either way. What if she actually died when he was 1 year old and too young for him now, at 15, to remember any of this? What if she died when he was 7 or 8 years old and he was so traumatized by the event that he's completely blocked it and her out of his memory? We just don't know.
The how: maybe she did die when he was just a day or two old. But how do we know she died from complications of childbirth? What if she died from something else? Or what if she did die from childbirth but it was an uncannily improbable way of dying (e.g. say her uterus tore or something and the doctors just couldn't stop the bleeding and she bled out in the hospital bed and died)? Ways which would make the family think, "Oh no! The curse of class 3-3! 8O"
Speaking of "the curse," you asked about that too. Okay, so, there hasn't been any curse mentioned as of yet. However, it seems pretty obvious to me that the class is cursed. Why?
they tried to build a new school building but that didn't help. (Remember how Reiko mentions "the old library" being the one Kouichi visited whereas the new library is part of the new building?)
why not just keep Class 3-3 empty? Obviously this upsets whatever malevolent force is at work.
so they try to minimize collateral damage by completely segregating the students of 3-3 from all the others. 1 and 2 do P.E. together, so do 4 and 5, but 3 does it alone. Ordinarily you'd think it'd be 1 and 2 do it and 3 and 4 do it and that 5 is the odd-man out because "dem's da brakes" for being last in chronological order. Why skip over 3 to pair 4 and 5 together?
all the other desks are updated but the desk in the corner, despite being left intentionally empty, is ancient
why leave it empty? because apparently if you don't, you anger whatever malevolent force is at work
why even keep the desk there if it's just going to go unused? ditto
how did the desk get all of those deep cuts in it? Maybe that's just the animation studio's way of convincing us it's an old desk, but maybe it's because of something else.
the way the students all act like you mustn't mention Misaki. Like they're afraid of awakening a terrible evil.
the way the jock was like "aww~wwwwh! I was so disappointed to learn I'd been enrolled in 3-3!" when he was talking with the (gay?) art student and Kouichi out in the hallway, and then the art student was all like "Sshhhh! >_<" and the jock was like "Oh shit, yeah! 8O" and shut up.
the fact that the tsuntsun girl seems to be the class exorcist, a position that obviously doesn't exist at any other high school in Japan :lol: but which exists here because, you guessed it, they need to assign somebody to take on the unpleasant duty of trying to keep the malevolent force in check
All of these (and other facts I'm sure I overlooked) point to the school itself being cursed. But there are curiosities surrounding this theory should it prove to be correct:
why then assign transfer students to 3-3? Surely you can make room for them in 3-1, 3-2, 3-4, or 3-5! Why consign a boy to death (or risk of death)? :?
why then would Kouichi's family allow him to come back to this accursed town? and why would they allow him to enroll in that accursed school? The implication seems to be that this town is large enough to have more than one school. (Otherwise they wouldn't call it West something-or-other, right? It'd just be the name of the city and then "Middle School" after that, like in any other small country town.) So why not have Kouichi enroll in one of the other schools? And if he was assigned to the one he was assigned to because of residential geographical reasons, why not home school him for a year? hire a private tutor? have Dad take him to India? Anything! Why have him enroll in a cursed school!?
So, yeah. There are some serious questions which need to be addressed for this theory to hold water. But that's definitely the theory I'm running with for now.

YUKI.N

01-27-2012, 01:42 AM

The girl in the stories, who we pretty much know has got to be Misaki Mei unless HELLO BIGGEST RED HERRING OF 2012, was said to have died twenty-six years ago.

I have my doubts Misaki Mei is really the girl in the story.

a. Her personality doesn't seem to fit the description of an idol student. (Though being a ghost probably would make a person morose after a while.)
b. As far as I can recall, I don't believe it's been outright stated that she is the (a) ghost yet. Only heavily implied.
c. If the girl who died at the hospital was her cousin, how could she still be considered young if Mei died 26 years ago at the age of 14/15? I know there are plenty of teenagers and even adults who have three-year-old cousins or such, but this seems a bit of a stretch.
d. I read one person's comment that they examined the class photo (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/starswift/another-ep3-p2.jpg) that was revealed and didn't spot anyone who appears to resemble Mei. Interesting how they didn't even zoom in on the ghost's face to confirm her presence to the viewer either.
e. It just feels too obvious.

that Kouichi's mother was in the same class as Misaki Mei, then that means that Kouichi's mother would have had to have been 26 years old at the time her son was born -- because she would have been 15 years old when Misaki died, as were all the other 3-3 students, and then eleven years had to have passed before she herself died. This at least is more believable age-wise -- certainly more believable than the 15-year-old-mommy theory! -- but it suffers from the problem that, according to Mei's version of the events, there wasn't anything terribly bad that happened the year she died other than the fact that she died. The first year was the year the students carried on pretending that Mei was still alive. It wasn't until afterwards, apparently, that the shit really started to hit the fan. Shit the villagers are withholding from Kouichi. This would seem to suggest that his mom wasn't in the original 3-3.

How does this contradict anything though? If nothing bad happened immediately the year "Mei" died, that just supports the possibility of Kouichi's mother surviving past graduation, and long enough to give birth.

I'm banking on receiving at least some of the answers to questions regarding Kouichi's parentage when we learn how the tsuntsun knows his name and/or face from somewhere.

Talon87

01-27-2012, 01:57 AM

Yeah. I think these two points are connected somehow:
The fact that the tsuntsun class exorcist feels like she recognizes Kouichi.
The fact that Kouichi can see Misaki.
You say that you don't think that Misaki is a ghost but, if that were true, then ...
why did the old lady in the doll store say there were no other customers there at the time? (Possible answer: Mei is her granddaughter and was not there as a customer. Shop is 1st floor and basement, residence is on one of the upper floors.)
why did the other students seem flustered when Kouichi asked about the missing Mei (the times she was absent from class)? Sure, they may be uncomfortable telling the new guy, "Her cousin just died" or "She was involved in a pretty bad accident and lost her left eye as a result," but to the point that they'd act like it's some Resident Evil-caliber secret? Come on!
why would they seat Misaki at a desk that is in such clearly poor shape?
why would she have been free to go to the morgue in the hospital? You can't normally just waltz on in there unattended ...
Again: it could be all red herrings. She may well be a wan, single-eyed but living student. But for now, I'm going to keep operating with the understanding that she's a ghost.

Now, the idea that she isn't the Misaki from the past ... that I think is the red herring this series is probably going for. As mentioned in the last post, while we watch this show we have to work under the assumption that Misaki is the Misaki of legend -- but meanwhile we ALL KNOW that this is probably a red herring which could be revealed at any point. So ... to repeat myself, I won't be surprised if/when they reveal that she's not the Misaki of legend, but for now I'm going to keep making theories as though she is, and will only change once appropriate evidence that I can't ignore presents itself.

I looked at the photo too ... but your friend / the post you read got it wrong. They clearly said that the ghost showed up to the side of the group. And in all the screenshots, you never get to see the edges of the photo. It's zoomed in on the group with kids flanking the borders. See? (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/another_class_photo.jpg) So whoever wrote that wasn't listening properly. =P ^^; The ghost is supposedly to the side. She's not mixed in. So ... we totally can't see her. The screenshots we have to work with are useless, then. They're nothing more than teasers.

Talon87

01-27-2012, 09:14 PM

Have you gone back and rewatched the opening scenes to Episode 01 yet? I picked up a few things ...

First, they show a lot of scenes and images which probably have something to do with how the students die. I say this because:
one of the images is a very focused image of the sharp umbrella point above the flight of stairs. Other things that are shown include a speeding car (collision?), a shrine in a forest (?), and a dam or sewage treatment plant (drowning?).
Second, Reiko tells Kouichi in the hospital that she hasn't been in Yomi North since fourteen years ago. Not 100% evidence but it would seem to suggest that she's 29 years old.

Third, Sakuragi (the glasses girl) was the first person to question whether this was Kouichi's first time living in Yomiyama. The way she did so was very serious and intent, too. When Kouichi says it is, she gets flustered and says that she just figured he used to live here. Why? Is his face familiar? Is his name familiar? Certainly it can't be his accent (he doesn't have one).
Unfortunately, with Sakuragi dead, it's unlikely we'll find out from her herself why she was so intent. Perhaps Akazawa (the tsuntsun) will fill us in later.
Fourth, both the glasses guy and Akazawa seem uncomfortable saying the name "Sakakibara." It makes you wonder if ...
they recognize the name from Ritsuko's death (unlikely, as it's unlikely she was married yet or that Kouichi took his mother's family name instead of his father's)
they recognize the name from the legend
What if the girl who died was Sakakibara Misaki?
What if someone the girl knew was named Sakakibara?
Fifth, Akazawa makes a funny face, like a mixture of disappointment and surprise, when she shakes Kouichi's hand. The other two also look surprised. Akazawa then repeats the question, "Are you sure you haven't lived in Yomiyama before?"

Moving past the opening scenes and deeper into the episode ...

Sixth, Kouichi chides the parrot, telling it "Your name is Rei, you know," when it keeps saying, "Good morning, Rei-chan!" I must not have caught this on the first viewing. But I'm still convinced that "Rei-chan" refers to Reiko and not the bird.

Seventh, when Kouichi is talking to his grandfather -- a man whose sense of time seems to have broken after his daughter died -- he politely tells his grandpa that he's in his third year of middle school now and next year will be starting high school. To which Grandpa mysteriously replies, holding back tears, "Ritsuko, too ... if only such a [terrible] thing hadn't happened, y'know? :cry:" He doesn't exactly say what it is that Ritsuko would have done, but given Kouichi's previous line, the implication seems to be that Ritsuko would have entered high school too if only she hadn't died. Ridiculously curious since it seems so absurdly unlikely that she'd have gotten pregnant with Kouichi at 14 by Kouichi's father, died due to the curse, and that then Kouichi's father would have let him move back here. So maybe Grandpa is saying something else about Ritsuko. Who knows. (This scene ends with the first of our many "Why, Rei-chan? Why!?"s.

Eighth, if Mei is alive and real, and if there were at least two open desks to pick from -- the one Kouichi takes and the one she sits at -- why would the teacher assign her to such a rundown desk? The answer, if Mei is alive, would seem to be that our assumption about the two open desks was wrong: somebody used to sit at Kouichi's desk before he showed up. Perhaps it was Fujioka Misaki, Mei's cousin. Perhaps it was some other student who recently died. I noticed that the day Kouichi joins is May 6th. In the hospital scene, he told the others that he probably wouldn't show up until after Golden Week. This suggests that his accident and Fujioka's death occurred some time last April. Sakuragi (Glasses Girl)'s death was towards the end of the month (term exams were circa May 25, right?). I wonder if there's a pattern to be found from this. With only two data points, it's hard. Well have to wait for victim #3, I suppose.

Ninth, when Kouichi asks Sakuragi about Mei, her eyes widen in terror, she stammers, and she doesn't even choke out a reply. Why so terrified of a girl if she's real? Another reason I still say it's safer to bet on her being a ghost for now.

Tenth, just to have this handy, Mei spells her name 鳴.

Eleventh, Mei tells Kouichi that his classmates associate his name with death. "And not just any death. A cruel, irrational death that took place at this school." Is that because ...
his mother died in a particularly terrible way and was named Sakakibara Ritsuko?
the Misaki of legend was named Sasakibara Misaki?
And that's the whole episode again. :oops: :lol: I only meant to watch the first few scenes but before I knew it, another Talon essay.

YUKI.N

01-27-2012, 11:37 PM

First, they show a lot of scenes and images which probably have something to do with how the students die. I say this because:
one of the images is a very focused image of the sharp umbrella point above the flight of stairs. Other things that are shown include a speeding car (collision?), a shrine in a forest (?), and a dam or sewage treatment plant (drowning?).

Good catch.

Perhaps the window indicates falling? There was also a shot of flames -> Burning, most likely.

Curiously, we see a flash of what almost looks to be Kouichi smiling evilly, right after an image of the Myna bird...

The car appears again in the OP, as does a falling chandelier.

Also, they showed the class photo here again with the extended borders. >.>; There's no one to the side of the group.

Second, Reiko tells Kouichi in the hospital that she hasn't been in Yomi North since fourteen years ago. Not 100% evidence but it would seem to suggest that she's 29 years old.

Reiko calls her sister "oneesan", right? So her sister was older, ruling out the the possibility of them being in the same class.

Third, Sakuragi (the glasses girl) was the first person to question whether this was Kouichi's first time living in Yomiyama. The way she did so was very serious and intent, too. When Kouichi says it is, she gets flustered and says that she just figured he used to live here. Why? Is his face familiar? Is his name familiar? Certainly it can't be his accent (he doesn't have one).
Unfortunately, with Sakuragi dead, it's unlikely we'll find out from her herself why she was so intent. Perhaps Akazawa (the tsuntsun) will fill us in later.
Fourth, both the glasses guy and Akazawa seem uncomfortable saying the name "Sakakibara." It makes you wonder if ...
they recognize the name from Ritsuko's death (unlikely, as it's unlikely she was married yet or that Kouichi took his mother's family name instead of his father's)
they recognize the name from the legend
What if the girl who died was Sakakibara Misaki?
What if someone the girl knew was named Sakakibara?
Fifth, Akazawa makes a funny face, like a mixture of disappointment and surprise, when she shakes Kouichi's hand. The other two also look surprised. Akazawa then repeats the question, "Are you sure you haven't lived in Yomiyama before?"

Based on an earlier observation doing the intro, and another piece of evidence I present later on, I'm just gonna throw a wild theory out there...

Maybe Kouichi had a twin (or some relative who shares his name and/or face) who murdered someone(s)? Perhaps this ties into the "other half" aspect Mei brought up in the elevator.

Sixth, Kouichi chides the parrot, telling it "Your name is Rei, you know," when it keeps saying, "Good morning, Rei-chan!" I must not have caught this on the first viewing. But I'm still convinced that "Rei-chan" refers to Reiko and not the bird.

Same. Too similar to be a coincidence.

Seventh, when Kouichi is talking to his grandfather -- a man whose sense of time seems to have broken after his daughter died -- he politely tells his grandpa that he's in his third year of middle school now and next year will be starting high school. To which Grandpa mysteriously replies, holding back tears, "Ritsuko, too ... if only such a [terrible] thing hadn't happened, y'know? :cry:" He doesn't exactly say what it is that Ritsuko would have done, but given Kouichi's previous line, the implication seems to be that Ritsuko would have entered high school too if only she hadn't died. Ridiculously curious since it seems so absurdly unlikely that she'd have gotten pregnant with Kouichi at 14 by Kouichi's father, died due to the curse, and that then Kouichi's father would have let him move back here. So maybe Grandpa is saying something else about Ritsuko. Who knows. (This scene ends with the first of our many "Why, Rei-chan? Why!?"s.

Just to throw another idea onto the table: Maybe the reason she couldn't go to high school wasn't because she died, but because she got pregnant?

Eighth, if Mei is alive and real, and if there were at least two open desks to pick from -- the one Kouichi takes and the one she sits at -- why would the teacher assign her to such a rundown desk? The answer, if Mei is alive, would seem to be that our assumption about the two open desks was wrong: somebody used to sit at Kouichi's desk before he showed up. Perhaps it was Fujioka Misaki, Mei's cousin. Perhaps it was some other student who recently died. I noticed that the day Kouichi joins is May 6th. In the hospital scene, he told the others that he probably wouldn't show up until after Golden Week. This suggests that his accident and Fujioka's death occurred some time last April. Sakuragi (Glasses Girl)'s death was towards the end of the month (term exams were circa May 25, right?). I wonder if there's a pattern to be found from this. With only two data points, it's hard. Well have to wait for victim #3, I suppose.

Who is Fujioka again? Mei's cousin?

And I noticed another empty seat at the bottom right corner (facing the class) when Kouchi is being introduced. The seat he takes is towards the back, a few rows from Mei. Perhaps that one belonged to her cousin? Nevermind, it belongs to the tsuntsun.

Ninth, when Kouichi asks Sakuragi about Mei, her eyes widen in terror, she stammers, and she doesn't even choke out a reply. Why so terrified of a girl if she's real? Another reason I still say it's safer to bet on her being a ghost for now.

I took note of Sakuragi's sprained ankle during this scene. It's the same foot she slipped on running down the stairs. Perhaps the injury was a warning/mark of death from whatever supernatural forces are at work?

Tenth, just to have this handy, Mei spells her name 鳴.

Eleventh, Mei tells Kouichi that his classmates associate his name with death. "And not just any death. A cruel, irrational death that took place at this school." Is that because ...
his mother died in a particularly terrible way and was named Sakakibara Ritsuko?
the Misaki of legend was named Sasakibara Misaki?

Okay. Now that you brought this up, when I re-watched the rooftop scene I found it suspicious how Mei enunciated the name "Sa-Ka-Ki-Ba-Ra" and decided to look up the characters to see if they meant anything. I came across this as the first hit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakakibara_Seito

"On June 6, a letter was sent to the newspaper Kobe Shinbun, in which Sakakibara claimed responsibility for the slaying and decapitation of Jun Hase, and threatened that more killings would follow. This second letter, delivered in a brown envelope postmarked June 3, had no return address or name. Enclosed was a three-page, 1400-word letter, also written in red ink, which included a six-character name that can be pronounced as "Sakakibara Seito." The same characters, which mean alcohol, devil, rose, saint and fight, were used in the first message that was inserted into the boy's mouth."

As I was trying to isolate the kanji relevant to "Sakakibara", I was led to an Another discussion where someone already pointed out how the name is famous in Japan. A manga-reader replied, saying...

It's impossible to understand the relation now, but it will be explained.

Talon87

01-28-2012, 06:43 AM

Reiko calls her sister "oneesan", right? So her sister was older, ruling out the the possibility of them being in the same class.
Not exactly. They could be twin sisters. They could also be sisters born nine to twelve months apart.

Just to throw another idea onto the table: Maybe the reason she couldn't go to high school wasn't because she died, but because she got pregnant?
But again: this would strongly suggest that Kouichi's father was also from this town. In which case (1) why refer to it as his mother's hometown and not his parents'? And (2) why on earth would his dad knowingly allow him to enroll in Yomi North? (Then again, his grandparents and auntie didn't stop him either, so maybe that's just a hopeless lapse in logic on the author's part.)

Who is Fujioka again? Mei's cousin?
Yes. It's kind of weird that you'd name your daughter the same word (even if a different spelling) as the family name of your brother or brother-in-law, but still: Misaki Mei indicates that Fujioka Misaki was her cousin.

Okay. Now that you brought this up, when I re-watched the rooftop scene I found it suspicious how Mei enunciated the name "Sa-Ka-Ki-Ba-Ra" and decided to look up the characters to see if they meant anything. I came across this as the first hit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakakibara_Seito

"On June 6, a letter was sent to the newspaper Kobe Shinbun, in which Sakakibara claimed responsibility for the slaying and decapitation of Jun Hase, and threatened that more killings would follow. This second letter, delivered in a brown envelope postmarked June 3, had no return address or name. Enclosed was a three-page, 1400-word letter, also written in red ink, which included a six-character name that can be pronounced as "Sakakibara Seito." The same characters, which mean alcohol, devil, rose, saint and fight, were used in the first message that was inserted into the boy's mouth."

As I was trying to isolate the kanji relevant to "Sakakibara", I was led to an Another discussion where someone already pointed out how the name is famous in Japan. A manga-reader replied, saying...

It's impossible to understand the relation now, but it will be explained.
I dunno about that. It's an interesting connection, one which was probably deliberate on the part of the author, but the way Kouichi spells his family name is not at all like the way the serial killer spelled his. 榊原 is how he spells his family name and 恒一 is how he spells his given name. The serial killer you mentioned spelled his alias's family name as 酒鬼薔薇. Completely different characters with different meanings and everything. However, the time frame is another connection which, even if it's meaningless, was likely intentional as well: the serial murders you linked to took place in 1997 and Another is said to have taken place in 1998. Still, I wouldn't put much stock in this theory of a plot-relevant connection between Kouichi and Seito but for the fact of what you say the manga reader said.

big bad birtha

01-31-2012, 01:40 AM

Having an umbrella fight on an elevator = overkill

I wonder when a shark will come out of someone's toilet and eat them?

YUKI.N

01-31-2012, 01:47 AM

Prediction for how next week's episode will end:

Glasses boy dies via escalator

Will discuss speculation and stuff once Talon catches up.

Talon87

01-31-2012, 06:01 AM

"Where did you get the impression that there's a curse, Talon? :? I didn't get that impression."
+1 to Talon. :)
"I wonder if there's a pattern to the deaths ..."
+1 to Talon. :)
"Pretty sure the parrot is talking about Rei."
+1 to all of us because lol damn obvious.

But then ... (Episode 4 spoilers)

"I'm pretty sure the nurse is going to die."
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! ;_;
Also, +1 to Yuki. XP

So, it seems like a lot of our speculation was spot on. There is in fact a curse, students die each month one at a time, and it doesn't stop at students alone -- it also extends to their family members. The moment the nurse mentioned she had a little brother in Kouichi's class, I knew she was going to die. :cry: It's like I told Yuki last week: in Japanese horror stories, people don't typically die unless they have some sort of plot-relevant connection to the killing force. In The Grudge, it's that you set foot in the house. In The Ring, it's that you watched the tape. In Fatal Frame III, it was that you had a direct connection with somebody who had used the Camera Obscura or were yourself such a person. And in Another, it seems to be that you either go to Yomi North Middle or else you are a direct family member of someone else who does. Last week when I told Yuki that I disagreed with her about the nurse, it was because, at that time, the nurse had no direct connection to the curse. (Being in the same city isn't good enough. Not in most Japanese horror stories, anyway.) But the moment she talked about having a little brother, I was like, "Oh no. :cry: She's going to die at some point."

Little did I realize that "at some point" would be now. :cry:

Yuki mentioned her immense fear of things skewering her neck. One of mine is death by crashing. It can be an elevator cable snapping, an airplane crash, whatever. Anything where you're safely up high thanks to mechanical ingenuity and then suddenly those mechanics fail and you end up dying as a result. So seeing the nurse, one heck of a cute character, die in such a frightening and terrible way ... and they animated it so realistically, too! :cry: >_< What is up with that? Are these guys over at P.A.Works guro fetishists or something? :lol: ^^; The way they showed her face smashing down into the floor was just ... come on, guys. >_<
Speculation time!

(spoilers for Episode 4 inside)
That one girl (Takako, is it?) mentioned that she believes the curse started in May ... but wait a second. May? Doesn't she mean April? :? Sakuragi just died at the end of May. Fujioka died back in late April. And the way Takako talks, she seems to be implying that a death which predated Sakuragi's -- that is to say, Fujioka's -- is what she thinks signals the start of the deaths for this year. I went back and listened to the scene where they mention this. (Around the 17-minute mark.) Sure enough, the girl says ５月 gogatsu "May" is when she thinks the curse started. But ... Sakuragi died in late May herself, didn't she? And it's June right now, right? Because Kouichi went to the jock and demanded to know answers since the jock promised to tell Kouichi once it was June and (paraphrased) "it's June now, and I want answers," right? So what's going on? :? I have no idea. But even still ...

Postulation #1: Misaki Mei is real and is a student in Class 3-3 in the year 1998 (the present).
Postulation #2: Misaki Mei was the first target of the curse and the casualty of the curse was her cousin, Fujioka Misaki, who was so close to Mei that Mei described her as "[her] other half."
Postulation #3: Fujioka Misaki died in April.
Postulation #4: It was just a script error that they said May instead of April. =P

So here's the remedied list ...

April - Fujioka Misaki (family member, Misaki Mei's cousin)
May - Sakuragi Yukari (student, Glasses Girl)
June - Mizuno ____ (family member, older sister to a boy in Kouichi's class, Kouichi's nurse friend)

There's a lot that begs to be explained regarding that first postulate -- why does the old woman keep saying she has no guests? (Is it because Misaki's family?) How does Misaki disappear like a ghost (particularly in this episode)? Why don't the others want Kouichi to acknowledge Mei's existence? -- but it seems increasingly likely to be true now that we know about the family connection with the curse. It wouldn't make sense for Fujioka Misaki to die if she's the cousin of a girl who died 26 years ago and is now haunting a classroom. It would make sense that she died if Misaki Mei was a student in the 1998 Class 3-3 and if the curse sometimes goes after other family members.

Speaking of the curse going after family members ... it seems that light has been shone on what happened to Kouichi's mother.

Postulation #5: Kouichi's mother Ritsuko is several years older than Kouichi's aunt Reiko.
Postulation #6: Both girls were in Class 3-3, albeit it at different times.
Postulation #7: Ritsuko miraculously managed to survive her time in Class 3-3.
Postulation #8: However, when it was Reiko's turn to be in Class 3-3, the curse targeted her -- and then went after her sister, Ritsuko, instead.

This would explain how Ritsuko could have died after the curse. Yuki had been saying last week "Maybe the curse caught up to her later in life?" but I didn't really like that. It seemed to me that the curse was going to be something which either killed you while you were in the class or else it didn't. So I kept trying to reconcile Ritsuko's death (which was likely due to the curse) and the age she would have been when she delivered Kouichi. But now we can finally have our cake and eat it too: thanks to the family relation, we can have Ritsuko survive Class 3-3, move out of Yomiyama, meet Kouichi's father, fall in love, make a baby, and then die in a freak manner during childbirth while her younger sister, Reiko, is going through Class 3-3 herself. Her mother, tormented, cries, "Why, Rei-chan? Why!?", the parrot picks up on this, and boom: you have the parrot we've known since Episode 01. Reiko is tormented because she feels like she should have been the one to die, not Ritsuko, but of course nobody wants to die and so at the same time she has to deal with the conflicting emotions of joy that she survived the curse and self-loathing that she can possibly be happy when her sister is dead because of her.

This episode seems to lay some of the groundwork for answering another question of ours: why won't anybody tell Kouichi anything? It's one thing for the students at school to not tell him anything, but ... his own aunt? His own grandparents? :? But Episode 04 establishes that even explaining the curse to an outsider seems to exacerbate it, for whatever reason, and so ... this is probably why Reiko gave Kouichi the indirect hint of "be sure to value the group over the individual" rather than outright telling him "there's a curse, your classmates know all about it, so if they ask you to do something, you do it, okay?"

Three down, nine to go. Speculation about who else will die ...
This is not a happy show given how graphically they've killed off two of the most adorable characters, so I'm not crazy enough to think that we're going to get to keep the tsuntsun. She'll probably stick with us right up until January or February and then kick the bucket.
Glasses Guy
Jock Guy
Art Guy
Weak Heart Guy
Nerd Girl with Long Braided Pigtails
Drama Club Girl
somebody else, who I don't know, could be ANY of them ... if I had to randomly pick, how about the leader of the gaggle of girls we saw in the hallway in Episode 1?
Reiko
"Reiko!? 8O :?" you say. Yes. Reiko. I think that she will be the final casualty. The idea will be that the curse targets Kouichi last but that instead of killing him it kills poor Auntie Reiko (in March). :cry: I think the tsuntsun will be either second to last (February) or third to last (January) to die. No clue as to the others, I'd just be randomly guessing on top of already guessing that they're even going to be the ones to die in the first place. But there's my list.

As for how they'll die, I think we're all agreed at this point that the OP contains clues about the various accidents we'll see in this series as does the opening scene to Episode 01. However, as we've already seen with the smashing glass (OP), not everything featured in these two segments is indicative of a cause of death. So I don't know if there's any point in being like "So-and-so will die by chandelier, so-and-so will die by hit-and-run, so-and-so will die by ..." and listing off all of the OP scenes because ... because we know some of them will be deaths, but we also can't know which ones of them will be deaths and which ones will be the near deaths.
This post has gotten awfully long and I sure would like it if someone read it :lol:, so ... I'll stop here. Give you guys a chance to pick things out to reply to. I look forward to it!

EDIT: Just realized the sneak peek wasn't subbed. (Or at least Underwater's wasn't.) The desk says 死者は誰ー？ shisha wa da~re? "Who's gonna die next?" (lit. "The dead person is who?" but context and the dash after 誰 suggest the translation given.) The chalkboard shows a class vote, two votes to twenty-four, for Akazawa Izumi (the tsuntsun). Not sure if this is a flashback showing how she was appointed to her role as the class exorcist or what.

Also: I went back and watched the episode again, and Kouichi definitely confirms in a conversation with the nurse inside the hospital that Fujioka Misaki died in April. So yeah, the line in the later scene about the deaths starting in May has got to be a script error.

EDIT 2: The other name on the chalkboard 綾野彩 is Ayano Aya, the girl from the Drama Club.

Also, the official website has a seating chart for Class 3-3 that they update each week, it seems. This may be the original seating chart (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/91486acb.jpg), but unfortunately it's a bit smaller than the newer ones, I got it from a fan's blog, and the official site no longer has this image up. Here's the updated version (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/zaseki-04.jpg) from Episode 4. As you can see, it's otherwise the same but for two differences: one, it's slightly larger, and two, Sakuragi's been grayed out and scratched out. :( I took the liberty of indicating my twelve picks for who I think the curse has targeted already or will target eventually (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/zaseki-04edit.png). Here's another version (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/zaseki-04edit2.jpg) where I crudely gray-scratched out the ones who I think the curse has already targeted. I didn't see the leader of the gaggle of girls listed (or if she's there, I didn't recognize her), so I went ahead and circled Takako instead. (The girl with the glasses and the short hair, the one who was talking to Akazawa the tsuntsun this episode.) Feel free to make your own predictions with the seating chart if you like.

Also, I just realized: teachers can fall victim to the curse too, they had mentioned. So it's entirely possible that the beauty who teaches art might end up dying. Or even their homeroom teacher. If so, that'd knock a few of my predictions out of commission. In fact ... if I had to pick, I'd probably predict that the art teacher would be more likely to die than would Takako. The guy with the weak heart could also be a red herring, it's hard to say.

YUKI.N

01-31-2012, 07:31 PM

Last week when I told Yuki that I disagreed with her about the nurse, it was because, at that time, the nurse had no direct connection to the curse. (Being in the same city isn't good enough. Not in most Japanese horror stories, anyway.) But the moment she talked about having a little brother, I was like, "Oh no. :cry: She's going to die at some point."

I sensed her imminent death from the beginning because she was far too nosy and the only voluntary source of information for the protagonist. But yeah, as soon as she confirmed her relation to one of the students - right after they declared family members were at risk - her doom was pretty much sealed.

Yuki mentioned her immense fear of things skewering her neck. One of mine is death by crashing. It can be an elevator cable snapping, an airplane crash, whatever. Anything where you're safely up high thanks to mechanical ingenuity and then suddenly those mechanics fail and you end up dying as a result. So seeing the nurse, one heck of a cute character, die in such a frightening and terrible way ... and they animated it so realistically, too! :cry: >_< What is up with that? Are these guys over at P.A.Works guro fetishists or something? :lol: ^^; The way they showed her face smashing down into the floor was just ... come on, guys. >_<

Heh. I practically yawned at that scene because...

a. I was expecting it all episode, b. There was nothing anyone could have done, and c. At least it was quick. Yes, it was sad she gasped over the phone for a little while, but I tell myself the pain and shock would be too widespread to register, and it would surely be over soon. The fact there was pretty much no hope of survival after a fall like that didn't leave me feeling as completely helpless, ironically enough. It's not like the MC could suddenly teleport over to the hospital, or even call for help in that short span of time. It was entirely out of Kouchi's - or anyone's - hands. Conversely, seeing Sakuragi flail desperately while her throat was on fire and she couldn't cry out, likely realizing she was slowly dying with witesses merely looking on... Imagining myself in either the victim or bystander position scares me so badly, since I'd want someone to help but know that if I myself saw such a scene I'd be frozen too, let alone know the best way to handle it.

But like I was discussing with Chao the other day regarding eyegore in Mirai Nikki - which I barely batted a lash at - we all have different weaknesses. Kinda interesting how the show has brought out such varying extreme reactions in each of us.

(spoilers for Episode 4 inside)
That one girl (Takako, is it?) mentioned that she believes the curse started in May ... but wait a second. May? Doesn't she mean April? :? Sakuragi just died at the end of May. Fujioka died back in late April. And the way Takako talks, she seems to be implying that a death which predated Sakuragi's -- that is to say, Fujioka's -- is what she thinks signals the start of the deaths for this year. I went back and listened to the scene where they mention this. (Around the 17-minute mark.) Sure enough, the girl says ５月 gogatsu "May" is when she thinks the curse started. But ... Sakuragi died in late May herself, didn't she? And it's June right now, right? Because Kouichi went to the jock and demanded to know answers since the jock promised to tell Kouichi once it was June and (paraphrased) "it's June now, and I want answers," right? So what's going on? :? I have no idea. But even still ...

Postulation #1: Misaki Mei is real and is a student in Class 3-3 in the year 1998 (the present).
Postulation #2: Misaki Mei was the first target of the curse and the casualty of the curse was her cousin, Fujioka Misaki, who was so close to Mei that Mei described her as "[her] other half."
Postulation #3: Fujioka Misaki died in April.
Postulation #4: It was just a script error that they said May instead of April. =P

There is the possibility that they weren't referring to Fujioka Misaki's death. Mei herself might not necessarily have meant her cousin was "her other half". But from what you've said, the dates do seem fishy. So perhaps there was a script error.

Speaking of the curse going after family members ... it seems that light has been shone on what happened to Kouichi's mother.

Postulation #5: Kouichi's mother Ritsuko is several years older than Kouichi's aunt Reiko.
Postulation #6: Both girls were in Class 3-3, albeit it at different times.
Postulation #7: Ritsuko miraculously managed to survive her time in Class 3-3.
Postulation #8: However, when it was Reiko's turn to be in Class 3-3, the curse targeted her -- and then went after her sister, Ritsuko, instead.

This would explain how Ritsuko could have died after the curse. Yuki had been saying last week "Maybe the curse caught up to her later in life?" but I didn't really like that. It seemed to me that the curse was going to be something which either killed you while you were in the class or else it didn't. So I kept trying to reconcile Ritsuko's death (which was likely due to the curse) and the age she would have been when she delivered Kouichi. But now we can finally have our cake and eat it too: thanks to the family relation, we can have Ritsuko survive Class 3-3, move out of Yomiyama, meet Kouichi's father, fall in love, make a baby, and then die in a freak manner during childbirth while her younger sister, Reiko, is going through Class 3-3 herself. Her mother, tormented, cries, "Why, Rei-chan? Why!?", the parrot picks up on this, and boom: you have the parrot we've known since Episode 01. Reiko is tormented because she feels like she should have been the one to die, not Ritsuko, but of course nobody wants to die and so at the same time she has to deal with the conflicting emotions of joy that she survived the curse and self-loathing that she can possibly be happy when her sister is dead because of her.

I don't recall saying anything to that effect, but your new theory makes sense, and wasn't one I'd considered.

I'm particularly curious as to the cause of Reiko's strange behavior this episode. Headaches could be due to stress, but coupled with memory loss seems a bit suspicious for this series. While it may or may not hint at an underlying medical/psychological condition, it sure seems like a convenient way for her to escape conversation with Kouichi. As she is a current family member of a Class 3-3 student, I agree that puts her at risk as well.

Still not fully convinced the bird is parroting the grandmother's words, but it was intriguing to confirm Reiko is apparently aware of the original implications behind them, and her true feelings towards those memories.

Three down, nine to go. Speculation about who else will die ...
This is not a happy show given how graphically they've killed off two of the most adorable characters, so I'm not crazy enough to think that we're going to get to keep the tsuntsun. She'll probably stick with us right up until January or February and then kick the bucket.
Glasses Guy
Jock Guy
Art Guy
Weak Heart Guy
Nerd Girl with Long Braided Pigtails
Drama Club Girl
somebody else, who I don't know, could be ANY of them ... if I had to randomly pick, how about the leader of the gaggle of girls we saw in the hallway in Episode 1?
Reiko
"Reiko!? 8O :?" you say. Yes. Reiko. I think that she will be the final casualty. The idea will be that the curse targets Kouichi last but that instead of killing him it kills poor Auntie Reiko (in March). :cry: I think the tsuntsun will be either second to last (February) or third to last (January) to die. No clue as to the others, I'd just be randomly guessing on top of already guessing that they're even going to be the ones to die in the first place. But there's my list.

As for how they'll die, I think we're all agreed at this point that the OP contains clues about the various accidents we'll see in this series as does the opening scene to Episode 01. However, as we've already seen with the smashing glass (OP), not everything featured in these two segments is indicative of a cause of death. So I don't know if there's any point in being like "So-and-so will die by chandelier, so-and-so will die by hit-and-run, so-and-so will die by ..." and listing off all of the OP scenes because ... because we know some of them will be deaths, but we also can't know which ones of them will be deaths and which ones will be the near deaths.

For the record, I just wanted to make the escalator joke given we've had "death by stairs", and "death by elevator" so far. XP Wasn't necessarily predicting glasses boy will die next, though he seems a likely candidate.

I think the jock will stick around for a while. He seems like the type to eventually lose his cool after experiencing so many deaths around him and try to escape unsuccessfully, or completely break and pull some crazy stunt like killing other students as "sacrifices".

Shame, I actually really like his character. Kinda hoping he survives.

EDIT: Just realized the sneak peek wasn't subbed. (Or at least Underwater's wasn't.) The desk says 死者は誰ー？ shisha wa da~re? "Who's gonna die next?" (lit. "The dead person is who?" but context and the dash after 誰 suggest the translation given.) The chalkboard shows a class vote, two votes to twenty-four, for Akazawa Izumi (the tsuntsun). Not sure if this is a flashback showing how she was appointed to her role as the class exorcist or what.

Would need to go back and check this out myself (think I skipped the preview entirely). While the flashback origin is probably correct, I'm now vaguely wondering if this type of image could tie into/foreshadow my "sacrifice" idea. The whole "group organization" effort of working together to keep the "supernatural forces" at bay may ultimately collapse - especially if the leader dies. The class may start to grow suspicious and turn on each other, either voting each other off the island or even accusing anyone who steps out of line as a murderer, whether directly or indirectly.

Also, I just realized: teachers can fall victim to the curse too, they had mentioned. So it's entirely possible that the beauty who teaches art might end up dying. Or even their homeroom teacher. If so, that'd knock a few of my predictions out of commission. In fact ... if I had to pick, I'd probably predict that the art teacher would be more likely to die than would Takako. The guy with the weak heart could also be a red herring, it's hard to say.

There was a mysteriously focused shot of a man with long white hair(?) sitting at a desk in a dark room. I believe he appears in the exact same pose in the OP. Is he a teacher? Was he the guy at the library? I don't remember exactly what he or the place looked like. Whoever he is, he's surely relevant to the plot somehow.

Kinda suspicious of the zombie-like Kimura-sensei who introduced Kouichi on the first day. Jus' sayin'.

Talon87

01-31-2012, 08:22 PM

Voting off the island was something I'd considered before I took one look at that name on the right and recognized it for whose it was. There's no way that they'd vote the tsuntsun off of the island. First of all, they need (?) her to try and keep the curse under control, and second of all, she's too popular. You would think that they would be more likely to go after the two students they seem to resent the most: Misaki, whose existence they outright deny, and Kouichi, who not only (as far as they know) hasn't been targeted by the curse yet but who also seems to be connected to the deaths. (Sakuragi's and Mizuno's especially.) You'd think that if this was a Lord of the Flies-style vote to kill somebody that they'd vote to kill Kouichi. Right? So ... this is why I think the vote may be a flashback thing. If it's not, then what it might be is ...

Speculation:
... they may have realized that Kouichi keeps exacerbating the curse with his prodding -- remember, the students seem loathe to clue him in about the details, indicating that even doing this much can make things worse -- and so they may have decided that somebody has to be the one to tell him what's going on. By voting on it, (a) it shifts the criminal burden from the teller (Akazawa) onto the group, a generous gesture from the class; but also selfishly (b) it allows the class to have someone be "the scapegoat" who told Kouichi about the curse and who they hope the curse will go after in its vengeance before going after they who kept silent. In this case, it makes sense that the vote would be split between Ayano and Akazawa because ...

Points for Ayano being the one to have to tell him:
- it might become known that she was with Kouichi yesterday
- she skipped school in order to dodge the curse, a selfish act which puts herself before the group (a no-no!)

Points for Akazawa being the one to have to tell him:
- it's her duty as the class exorcist (I should really learn the real name for her position ^^; )

There are thirty seats in class. With Yukari (Glasses Girl) dead and the two girls not voting, that leaves 27 to vote. However, either Misaki's a ghost or else (more likely) they're ignoring her existence for some perverse and mysterious reason. So that leaves us with exactly the 26 votes shown on the chalkboard. Two people voted for Ayano, probably because they resented her for skipping school, while the remainder all voted for Akazawa because it's nothing personal and they just feel strongly that this is part of her duty as the class exorcist.
Anyway, that's a lot to say about something which may not even turn out to be true. But that's my speculation if in fact it is revealed that the votes on the chalkboard are from the present and not the past.

Talon87

02-07-2012, 01:02 AM

Wow! :D I'm very grateful that they finally explained so much to us! Episode 05 is a solid one that deserves at least two viewings. It's not very exciting but what it is is chock-filled with explanations about what's going on. It's a lot to wrap one's head around so I'll go ahead and try with some of my initial impressions here. Then I'll probably rewatch it and see if things make different sense to me then than they do now.

If I understood the episode correctly ...

(1) Twenty-six years ago, a girl in class died. The students all pretended that the girl was still there. Because they did this, they inadvertently invited the dead into the classroom. While it didn't affect their year, subsequent years were affected.

(2) The number of students listed on the class roster twenty-five years ago didn't match the number of desks available. Specifically, they were short one desk. They figured it was an error and decided to just move on with things. But then one student died. And then another. The curse had begun. (Misaki Mei indicates that the actual rosters may not have been doctored but rather that the faculty's and students' memories may have been altered. Meaning that looking back through the old documents wouldn't be of much help.) Six students and ten family members died that year.

(3) "Why do people die when there's an extra student?" "No one knows the reason."

(4) The extra student is a ghost who maintains corporeal form and walks amongst the living. (Hence the crazed carving in the desk, 死者は誰ー？"Who's the dead one?" the student who carved that was wondering.) Misaki mentions that there's no way to tell the ghost apart from regular people. "That dead person has a soul and its memories, and they don't realize that they're dead." The identity of the dead person, suspects Misaki, is someone who has previously died in Class 3-3. Because their death is directly connected to the curse, and because the curse draws the spirits of the dead into the class, naturally the very students who fall victim to the curse in years past can crop back up as the curse-causers for future generations.

(5) "About 10 years ago," Misaki says, they found a way to deal with the curse. If you treat one of the classmates as someone who doesn't even exist, it seems to counterbalance the presence of one dead spirit among the living and prevents the curse from triggering. This is why Misaki's existence was denied so fervently by everybody in the class. Why Misaki warned Kouichi to not get closer to her.

So basically, this is what it sounds like to me:
(A) It sounds like one of the students in their class is actually a ghost but doesn't realize it. (Speculation in a second.)

(B) It sounds like their countermeasures to prevent the curse from triggering failed not because Kouichi talked to Misaki but because the class failed to ignore a second student. What I mean by that is ... before Koucihi arrived, the class wasn't short on students. Though it did have one extra desk. (Ooooooooooodd. :|) They had a ghost amongst them, but they were ignoring Misaki Mei's existence in order to counterbalance that. However, when Koucihi was transferred in to Class 3-3, he pushed the limit back up. In fact, you could even say that the very act of transferring him in (paper-work wise) is what re-triggered the curse. Because as we know, Kouichi was supposed to start classes earlier in the month except he suffered a pneumothorax and had to recover in the hospital. Around the same time, Misaki Mei's cousin, Fujioka Misaki, died. This seems to suggest that even the very principle of the matter of Kouichi's transfer caused the class roster to overflow by one and for the curse to trigger. Maybe. Possibly.
Now for some speculation on my part ...
Who's the Impostor?
There are quite a few possibilities here.
Akazawa Izumi, the tsuntsun
the quiet, pale, nerdy-looking glasses girl with pig tails
Takako, the gossipy girl with glasses
Aya, the theater club girl
any of the other students
their homeroom teacher
the art teacher (though that'd sort of be a disconnect)
Misaki Mei, despite all that we've seen and heard
Kouichi, despite all that we think we know about him
nobody at all
Nobody seems the least likely since, obviously, somebody is dying each month and so something is causing the curse to happen.

The tsuntsun, Akazawa Izumi, is my vote for likeliest red herring candidate. She's such a cute character, first of all, that fans are bound to like her, making her being the ghost that much more poignant. Also, it'd be pretty ironic if the student they assigned to be the class exorcist was herself the poltergeist they're trying to get rid of. ^^; But I think it's a red herring because of some better answer candidates.

The nerdy glasses girl is another red herring in my opinion. Less so in the book, probably, but much more so in the show where we've gotten to see her on occasion. A girl like her is textbook for this sort of thing (think Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter series), which makes her too easy. So it's probably not her. But if it turns out to be her, we'll all understand why.

Going to skip over the other students for now since I think they're even less likely.

The teacher is an interesting guess imo. While he wouldn't take away a seat from one of the other students, which kind of begs the question as to why ignoring or not ignoring a student's existence would determine whether he curses the class or not, he looks an awful lot like the homeroom teacher for Class 3-3 twenty-six years ago. It'd be interesting if, like Kouichi's mother, the original 3-3 homeroom teacher survived the curse for a number of years only to eventually die if/when his own child or niece or nephew was in the class, and if he then showed back up ten or so years ago as a teacher and no one was the wiser. (It'd work pretty well if, the year before he showed up, yet another teacher died. So the ghost shows up for hire to fill the void of the previous teacher!) But there's not really enough to back this theory up yet.

So which is the leading theory? Probably that Sakakibara Kouichi is the ghost. It's a little silly / it's been done before in a number of works of fiction, but as a sucker for a good ghost story, I never tire of it. :) What happens when the dead come back to life and don't realize that they've died? Why is this my leading theory? For a number of reasons.
Why didn't the class explain the details properly to Sakakibara? Perhaps because they already suspected he was the ghost and they didn't want to tell the ghost all of their secret plans. Or perhaps because, just like Mei mentioned other ghosts have done in the past, Sakakibara altered their minds and they just weren't thinking straight.
Why did the class rep trio grill Sakakibara on whether he'd lived in Yomiyama before? Again, perhaps because they suspected that he was the ghost. Perhaps they had figured out what Misaki Mei had figured out -- that the ghosts seem to be former students -- and perhaps they'd pored over all of the old yearbooks and memorized all the faces they saw there. And so when they met Kouichi in the hospital, they were astonished because he was one of the very students whose faces they'd seen in an older yearbook.
Why would everyone allow the school to transfer a student into Class 3-3 and push it into overflow? They'd already had to ignore one poor girl's existence for an entire year -- why make it two students? (I don't buy the whole "we have a new principal and he just doesn't understand these things" explanation. It's way too much of a copout. Without the principal ever knowing any better, it would be trivially easy for the teachers to shuttle a new kid into one of the other classrooms. The fact that they didn't attempt to do this is very questionable.)
Why didn't they ignore Sakakibara's or another second student's existence in response to his transferring in? Because, as above, perhaps Sakakibara (as the ghost) altered their states of mind and they just weren't thinking properly when dealing with him.
Sakakibara, if he's the ghost, is himself "attracted to death," as Mei was saying ghosts tend to be. Hence why he returned to Class 3-3. Hence why he loved reading horror books. Hence why so many of the people who have died so far have come into contact with Sakakibara immediately before dying. Hence why, without knowing why, the first girl he tried to befriend was the gloomiest girl in the school and the one most recently stained with the stench of death. Hence why, on a whim, when he lost track of Misaki on the street he decided to go into a creepy doll shop. (Remember how Misaki mentioned that the dead are attracted to dolls since dolls are empty vessels?)
Now granted, this theory is not 100% rock-solid. There are some problems with it. They include ...
why would Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Reiko play along with this ghost? If it really is their grandson/nephew Kouichi, then how old must they be if he died in the past and has now come back as a poltergeist? If Kouichi is not their grandson/nephew and is instead just some other boy from Class 3-3's past, then that is all the more reason for us to question why they would allow this impostor to torment them like this instead of having an exorcist exorcise his ass. Also: why would his dad call him on the cell phone from India? Wouldn't his dad think it was a prank call and somebody was impersonating his dead son? Wait, that doesn't even make sense -- his dad called him, not the other way around. There's no way a dad would call his dead son. Which means ... if Kouichi is in fact a ghost, his entire Yomiyama homestay experience is in his imagination. There is no Aunt Reiko. There is no Rei the parrot. There is no grandma or grandpa. It's still kinda curious as to how a ghost manages to get a working cell phone =P ;-), but let's not poke too many holes in the story just yet. ;-)
If Kouichi is a student who recently died, you'd think that the class reps would have recognized his face for certain. No? Is it because he altered their memories? :| Hmm ... :) ... maybe the theory's pretty robust after all! ^-^ ^^;
If Kouichi is a student who died a long time ago (e.g. 10 years ago), wouldn't this mean Reiko has to be like 39+ years old? She's 29 now. She's cute, single, and nearing traditional Japanese spinster age. If she were 39+, it'd be absolutely crazy that she never wed. (Again, this bullet like bullet point 1 above assumes that Reiko and the others in Kouichi's family are not figments of a ghost's imagination.)
Now, I have a theory about Misaki's eye. She said that it can see things which can't ordinarily be seen. This theory would be more robust if the ghost is somebody else instead of Kouichi, but my theory surrounding her eye is that Kouichi will ask Misaki to take off her eyepatch and to scan the classroom to find the poltergeist. The thing is, she's already taken her eyepatch off in front of Kouichi once before -- so if he is the ghost, it really begs the question, why the hell hasn't she told anybody else about her find yet!? ^^; (That memory alteration stuff again!? XD What a convenient plot device! :roll: =P)

Anyway, this is my working theory. #1 red herring is the tsuntsun, #2 is the nerdy quiet pale girl. #2 real theory is the teacher, #1 real theory is Kouichi. If asked "Final answer?", I'd say "Final answer" for Sakakibara Kouichi at this point.

EDIT: Forgot to mention one final possibility.

There's always the possibility that we have two or more ghosts in the class. The reason for this being, ...

If you look at the class photo for Koucihi's mother's year, there are 29 students and 1 teacher in total. (5 girls and 4 boys in the back, 5 and 5 in the middle, and then 5, the teacher, and 5 in the front row.) If you recall, before Kouichi transferred in, there were 29 students in Class 3-3. With his transferring in, there were now 30. If one ghost shows up each year, and if nobody died in Kouichi's mother's year -- which, given the number of students in her class photo, would seem to have been the case -- then it would seem to be the case that there are 28 human students and 1 imposter student each year. So for example, in this year's Class 3-3 before Kouichi showed up, they had twenty-eight humans and one ghost. They had no way of telling who the ghost was so they decided by class vote (or some other means) that the person they'd shun all year was going to be Misaki Mei. By offsetting acknowledgement of the ghost's presence with lack of acknowledgement of Mei's, it restored balance to things. (For reasons we don't know yet.)

But now imagine if Kouichi is also a ghost, and imagine if he transfers in. Then ...
even were he not a ghost, they'd still be one over capacity again. By failing to ignore a second student in time, they triggered the curse.
but if he were a ghost, then even if they were to ignore him, it wouldn't help. In fact, it might make matters worse. You're supposed to ignore a real person and to acknowledge a ghost's presence as real in order to bottle the curse. Ignoring a ghost might not restore the balance. In fact, it might make things much worse.
So what I anticipate will happen is, the students will ignore Sakakibara's existence, and for a time -- the rest of the month of June -- things will be peaceful in Class 3-3. No deaths. But that's because we've already had two deaths in June alone (first the nurse's and then the kid with the weak heart's). Come July, a new death will occur. And the students will be desperately trying to figure out why the tactic that has worked for so many years now seems to be failing them. Little will they realize that it's because the second student they opted to ignore was a ghost.

If this theory ends up panning out, then my votes for this theory would actually be Akazawa as initial ghost (despite my red herring claims above) and Kouichi as secondary ghost. Akazawa is too obvious a candidate to be a ghost all on her own: that's why I said she's a red herring. But if we account for the possibility that there are two ghosts in Class 3-3 this year, then I could see Akazawa having been the initial one and Kouichi the secondary one. Not even the ghosts themselves realize that they're ghosts, and it'll be up to Kouichi and Mei to get to the bottom of things and to:
convince Akazawa Izumi that she's the ghost of a former Class 3-3 student
realize that Kouichi likewise is a ghost and that this is why the students' attempts to ignore a second student didn't seem to work
I'm not sure what if any effect it'll have on a ghost to convince them that they really are a ghost, but if they can manage to do it for both Izumi and Kouichi before too long, then they just may be able to avert a couple of deaths.

Talon87

02-07-2012, 06:06 PM

LOLOLOLOLOLOL, after taking a closer look at one of the character's faces, I had a suspicion about them. On a greedy whim, I googled for that character's name. Found a wiki article for them. And voilà: TOTALLY CALLED IT. :D XD It's a spoiler, though, so click only if you want to know right now too. I'll break it down into two parts. The first layer will mention which character I'm talking about. The nested spoiler will be the spoiler information about them.

Chibiki Tatsuji, the mysterious librarian in the auxiliary library at North Middle

image (http://www.another-anime.jp/character/images/chara-box-12.jpg)

So what about him?

Looking at his face in that image, I thought, "You know ... he looks an awful lot like the homeroom teacher for Class 3-3 in 1972. Now, I realize that this is P.A. Works and that a lot of their grown men look the same. But still. He looks an awful lot like him. And if he's got white hair now in 1998, then in 1972 ..." Then I realized, "And yeah ... he knew who Ritsuko was. Now sure, he might have been the librarian back then too and that was how he knew her, but ... what if he remembered Ritsuko because she had been one of his very own students? What if he's the former teacher for Class 3-3?"

So I decided to google for his name. The Another Wikia turned up as an early hit. "Should I click it? XD" I asked myself. "Oh what the hell. =P I want to see if I'm right."

Tatsuji Chibiki is a librarian at Yomiyama North Middle School. 26 years ago, in 1972, he is a homeroom teacher for the 9th Grade class 3.
BOOM SHAKALAKALAKA! :D :lol:
At the risk of sounding too self-congratulatory, I think Doppel is right: we tend to be like razor-sharp knives when it comes to picking out subtle clues in animes. Give us an inch and we take a mile. Hunter x Hunter ("examine the silhouettes!"), Another ("look at the OP sequence!"), Kaiji ("DICE ARE CUBES!"), and so on and so forth. :lol: We are not your usual group of anime watchers, are we? :lol:

EDIT: So, I guess I should update my theories since this find changes some of what I wrote last night ...

Q. Who do I think the ghost is?
A. If we have only one ghost, Sakakibara Kouichi. If we have two ghosts, Akazawa Izumi as the initial ghost and Sakakibara Kouichi as the overflow ghost.

Q. Do I still think the teacher today could be the ghost of the teacher from 1972?
A. No, of course not. :lol: What I called and confirmed today more or less rules that out. At the time our story begins, the 1972 Class 3-3 teacher is still alive. Unless Another is pulling some NasuVerse bullshit with the timeline. Which it could be doing since Japanese beliefs about reincarnation do controvert a strictly forward-and-linear timeline like we tend to think of in the West.

Q. If Kouichi is the ghost, then how do you explain the situation with his family? How do you explain his having a working cell phone which other living people are able to call?
A. Good criticisms. I don't know. I have offered possible explanations in the previous post but we'll just have to wait and see.

Q. Have you considered that Misaki Mei could in fact still be the ghost?
A. Sure. One of those "double red herrings" some stories like to do sometimes where Level 1 is "She's the ghost!", Level 2 is "Gotcha! :lol: She wasn't the ghost!" and then Level 3 is "Double gotcha! :D She really was the ghost! :lol:" But I don't think this is where this show is taking us. It may be? But I don't think so.

Q. Are you still sticking to your original list of predictions about who will die?
A. I'm probably not going to take anybody off of that list if that's what you're asking. But seeing two people die in June (the nurse and then the weak heart kid) and learning that in at least one school year there were six student and ten family deaths proves that any number of people could die. We also knew that both Yukari's mother and Yukari herself died in May, so that's two deaths right there too, sure. But those were deaths from the same family, so I wasn't necessarily ruling out the possibility that only one general target is targeted each month. But now that we've seen two completely unrelated families get targeted in June, all bets are off as far as how many students or people affiliated with those students will die.

YUKI.N

02-07-2012, 06:42 PM

I don't really have much to add on your theory, as Kouichi was also the first suspect that popped into my brain. Mei would still be my second guess. Didn't think to consider the tsuntsun, but I see your reasoning - mostly in favor of her being a red herring.

Just want to remark on something that confused me about the episode...

When Kouichi was trying to get people's attention in class, is it just me, or did a bunch of seats switch back and forth between empty and filled in different shots? I'd have to go back and check again, but because of this I initially thought the person he was poking was the boy who suffered a heart attack, and some weird time reversal occurred/Kouichi was seeing ghosts or a vision. My other reason for assuming this was that Kouichi was behaving rather casually for someone who had recently witnessed another person die before him - and shouldn't be so dense as to not realize at this point the reason he died was probably because he was trying to help the new kid. Maybe Kouichi's coldness towards death also has something do with him "being attracted towards it".

Agree this episode warrants a second viewing, if at least to understand exactly what transpired during that scene.

Talon87

02-07-2012, 06:59 PM

Just want to remark on something that confused me about the episode...

When Kouichi was trying to get people's attention in class, is it just me, or did a bunch of seats switch back and forth between empty and filled in different shots? I'd have to go back and check again, but because of this I initially thought the person he was poking was the boy who suffered a heart attack, and some weird time reversal occurred/Kouichi was seeing ghosts or a vision. My other reason for assuming this was that Kouichi was behaving rather casually for someone who had recently witnessed another person die before him - and shouldn't be so dense as to not realize at this point the reason he died was probably because he was trying to help the new kid. Maybe Kouichi's coldness towards death also has something do with him "being attracted towards it".

Agree this episode warrants a second viewing, if at least to understand exactly what transpired during that scene.
That wasn't what I had in mind when I said the episode warrants a second viewing. I was referring to the conversation between Kouichi and Misaki at Misaki's house. As for the scene you found confusing ... I think that might have just been you. ^^; I didn't find it confusing the first time, but I went and just re-watched it, just for you. There are multiple different shots of the class following you know who's death, but the students are always sat in their same (appropriate) seats. When you get home, you might want to check it out yourself. It's from 11m12s to around 13m55s.

YUKI.N

02-07-2012, 07:09 PM

That wasn't what I had in mind when I said the episode warrants a second viewing. I was referring to the conversation between Kouichi and Misaki at Misaki's house. As for the scene you found confusing ... I think that might have just been you. ^^; I didn't find it confusing the first time, but I went and just re-watched it, just for you. There are multiple different shots of the class following you know who's death, but the students are always sat in their same (appropriate) seats. When you get home, you might want to check it out yourself. It's from 11m12s to around 13m55s.

Well, that too. I just thought it was really weird how Kouichi asked, "Hey, what happened?" when he even saw it for himself. Uh, read the atmosphere, dude. Even if they weren't making a point of ignoring your total existence, of course they'd be gloomy and not want to talk. If it persists, his second thought should logically be that they're snubbing him because they think he's the cause of all these accidents, not necessarily for some grand purpose. I mean, he's gotta realize himself that the fact nearly all the victims had some connection to him just prior to death can't just be coincidence... Right?

Talon87

02-07-2012, 07:36 PM

I just thought it was really weird how Kouichi asked, "Hey, what happened?" when he even saw it for himself. Uh, read the atmosphere, dude.
He wasn't asking "What happened?" referring to Takabayashi's death. He was asking "What happened?" as in "So, what did I miss?" There was an impromptu announcement by the class reps at the start of class. He wanted that information which he'd missed. The point of that scene was never meant to be "The class reps are telling everybody else that Takabayashi is dead." The point of that scene was, "They decided to convene extra-early in class without letting Kouichi know. That way, when he showed up to class at a regular time, they would have already had the ten to fifteen minutes necessary to discuss a plan of attack." You're saying, "I realize that, Talon, but Kouichi doesn't." But what I'm saying is, "No, in fact, I think he did begin to figure it out that very moment." Think about it this way: why would you convene class early to announce Takabayashi is dead and not notify Kouichi too? Why even convene class early at all? Why can't you use the first few minutes of homeroom to announce this? If you were in Kouichi's shoes, wouldn't you feel like the class is acting strange? Doing things behind your back? I guess you're saying you wouldn't and that that's why you find his actions so peculiar, but ... I found his actions to be quite natural. I don't think he was being insensitive about Takabayashi's death. He just wanted to know if he'd missed anything else besides that. And when he then got the cold shoulder, that was the first of several clues that tipped him off that he was being ignored.

Even if they weren't making a point of ignoring your total existence, of course they'd be gloomy and not want to talk. If it persists, his second thought should logically be that they're snubbing him because they think he's the cause of all these accidents, not necessarily for some grand purpose. I mean, he's gotta realize himself that the fact nearly all the victims had some connection to him just prior to death can't just be coincidence... Right?
I don't really know what to say to this. What you say makes sense ... but it isn't how I think. And it's not how Kouichi thinks either. Maybe I'm the weird one, then. Maybe we need a third and a fourth juror to weigh in on this verdict. I think I would have acted very similarly to him this episode. The only difference in our behaviors, I think, is that if I were in his shoes, I would have told Takabayashi "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to" after seeing how distressed the art student was and after seeing how much Takabayashi seemed to be steeling himself to tell me whatever it was he was going to tell me. Aside from that ... I'd have done the shoulder tap in class, I'd have been like "What the hell's his problem? :?" when the art student ducked out of the classroom, I'd have been miffed when the jock walked right past me when I called out to him, I'd have gotten up in the middle of class and noisily exited the room, and I'd have gone to Mei's hangout and solicited information from her. To be honest, both times I watched this episode, I kept imagining to myself how I would have, had I been in his position, knocked things off of the wall, pulled backpacks out of their cubbies, sang a song, etc. Then I realized (1) that'd be pretty immature and (2) no way in hell is a well-mannered Japanese kid going to do something that audacious. :lol: But yeah. I would have been angry with them for ignoring me and would have tried to trigger a response out of them. The fact that he didn't, I'd say, shows that he acted pretty maturely.

YUKI.N

02-09-2012, 03:08 AM

There was an impromptu announcement by the class reps at the start of class. He wanted that information which he'd missed.

Hm. Maybe I just missed that memo then, and that's why I was confused. Though I'm still a little surprised Kouichi was so direct. If it were me, I'd have waited until the meeting was over before approaching anybody to ask for an explanation. Then again, I'm naturally shy about that sort of thing, but the fact this is Japan, and an already formal class combined with a tense, edgy atmosphere... If two classmates had just died and I was a witness to both, I don't think I'd be concerned over what the others are up to behind my back, as they've clearly proven they have reasons to be scared and suspicious. I'd learn to keep my mouth shut and try not to touch anything for fear of bad things happening, or if I was that desperate to find out what's going on - perform my own private investigation, as he did in the library. I guess I'm just a bit taken aback at how Kouichi seems to be a relatively outgoing kid, despite his polite and mild-mannered appearance. Didn't consider him the proactive type. Like you pointed out, it was extremely forward of him to demand answers straight from Takabayashi, even though he'd seen evidence of the damage nosiness can lead to.

On that note, the real reason I came to post was to share this image my friend sent me. Safe if you've seen episode 04.

http://i.imgur.com/DMi8q.jpg

Talon87

02-14-2012, 02:36 AM

WOW! :D Episode 06 was not the boring intermission episode I'd predicted it would be! Instead, we got a fair bit of information out of it! On the whole, it was pretty entertaining and made for an excellent follow-up to the also information-heavy Episode 05. Discussion follows.

The episode opens with a flashback to May showing how Misaki was selected to become the outcast. The jock says that he thought it wasn't going to happen this year since "we had the right number of desks and everything." But I wonder if this'll end up proving incorrect somehow. If the ghost is toying with people's memories again or something. (Particularly if my theory about there being two ghosts is right.) Akazawa points out to him that they were short one desk once Kouichi was transferred in, suggesting that even the class feels like they already had a ghost prior to Kouichi's arrival -- and that they felt that by outcasting Misaki, they were making up for Kouichi's transfer. (Which would have been true if the original ghost had been the only one. But we know better! :D ;-))

Akazawa says something very interesting to the jock, and it's our first clue that Kouichi is very, very probably a/the ghost. When the jock asks her if she checked him out and whether she thought he might be the ghost or not, she tells him, "It's not him. He's never lived in Yomiyama before. He also has no siblings. And his hands weren't cold." This suggests that she's already forgotten what she and Yukari had clued in on when they first went to visit Kouichi in the hospital -- that he looked awfully familiar to them. Both grilled him as to whether he'd ever lived in Yomiyama before. So it's funny that she'd report back to the jock, "He's never lived here before" instead of "He says he's never lived here before, but ..." The latter would suggest that she at least still has her memories intact, but the former suggests that Ghost Kouichi fucked with her memories and made her forget all about him. OoOoOoOoOoh! :D

In this episode, it's really driven home (with the flashbacks and visuals) that Kouichi is the cause of Misaki's terrible situation this year. So it lends sort of a Romantic twist to the fact that Kouichi, the very cause of Misaki's ostracization, wound up seeking her out and becoming friends with her. And now the two of them can be outcasts together. There's a certain charm to it. A bittersweet one, where Misaki has every reason to detest Kouichi for transferring in and bringing this fate upon her and the class yet at the same time she has every reason to like him for being there for her, the only person who can be, and being such a good person. I liked this a lot.

The author, via Misaki, throws a decoy at the viewer when she has Misaki say, "I know I'm not dead. So if it's not me, then who?" This is because, as we learned in Episode 05 from Misaki's very own lips, the ghost doesn't realize that they're dead, they have some memories from their life, physical form, etc. So saying "I know I'm alive, therefore I am alive" isn't really a persuasive proof in this instance. But Kouichi eagerly nods in response to her, setting us up of course for a big fall come Episode 11 or 12 when he discovers that he's the ghost. (I am so certain my theory from last week is right, if that isn't already obvious. :lol: Apologies for this, (a) if you don't share it and (b) if I end up being wrong. XD)

Didn't really care for the bit with Kirika, but more or less only because it was suggested that she was a bad parent and I don't care for bad parents. =\ Also, it seems like she was introduced only to be fully fleshed out later, which is a mite frustrating. But who knows. I didn't think in a million years we'd got all the information we got in this episode so soon, so maybe we'll learn about Kirika by next week. :lol:

The next useful bit of information we learned this episode is that Misaki had a bizarre tumor in her eye which caused her to lose it when she was four. This rules out the possibility that Misaki lost her eye in the same accident that robbed her cousin of her life, something I'd wondered about in the very first week of watching the show (which for me was Eps 1-3). Maybe it's not terribly useful information, but you never know.

Now, the first HUGE scene of the episode. :D When I saw this in the episode, I paused the episode, half-muttered half-yelled an "OH MY GOOOOOD! :D 8O", and had to hold myself back from posting on UPN right then and there that my theory about Kouichi being a ghost was all but confirmed. :) This is the scene where Koucihi is looking at the ceiling before bed when he gets a phone call from his dad in India. Kouichi asks his dad for more info about Ritsuko's time in Class 3-3. The nature of the words they choose all but confirms that Kouichi's father met Ritsuko in Yomiyama -- that they may even have attended the same middle school together though been in different classes -- and that he therefore ought to know about the curse. So it was kind of odd when he told his son that he had absolutely no memories of anything to do with Ritsuko's time in Class 3-3. But what really was the big red flag was when Kouichi's dad then asked him:

"How's it feel being back in Yomiyama after a year and a half?"

Kouichi is understandably confused and tells his dad that this is the first time he's been back to Yomiyama since he was born. A year and a half? What's his dad talking about? His dad gently protests at first, certain that Kouichi moved back to Yomiyama a year and a half ago ... but then confusedly says, "Oh, you're right. It's only been half a year. My bad." Uh, what? :lol: No way did you just mix up whether your son had moved back to your hometown a year and a half ago vs. only a few months ago. No way in hell. This is our first pretty big proof that Kouichi is either (a) the ghost or else (b) one of two or more ghosts. More on this in a sec. (Edit: Looking at the scene, I didn't even notice this the first time because I was just too excited, but L-O-L at how obvious the animation director is making it for people. The scene ends with a fade-in to the desk at school, zoomed in on the words "Who's the dead person?", and then cuts for commercial break. :lol:)

Kouichi's fantasy about dancing in the middle of class with Misaki was AMAZING. :D :) Looooooved it. This hearkens back to what I said last week -- I would TOTALLY do something like this if I were in Kouichi's shoes. The fact that he doesn't shows just how mature he is about this. Didn't notice this the first time, but looking back at the episode now as I write this post ... neither Misaki nor Kouichi were given a practice test. So not only are they socially ignored, but they really are ignored in all senses. They may as well not even go to school. It's frankly a miracle that Kouichi even had the opportunity to meet Misaki. My guess would be that if the ignored person plays hookey too much, it breaks the charm. So you've gotta just suck it up and go to school, even if the teacher is never going to collect any of your homework or give you any tests. :| Damn.

Lunch on the roof was a surprisingly dull scene, but the visit to the art club was kind of cute and sad. Lol when Mochizuki ushered all of the kouhais out of the classroom so they wouldn't acknowledge Misaki's existence. ^^;

Now comes the second huge scene of the episode. :D The library scene. Much to my surprise, the anime wastes no time in explaining my prediction that I made last week and thought was probably going to be like an Episode 8, 9, 10~ish spoiler: that Chibiki the librarian was actually Class 3-3's homeroom teacher in 1972. So I guess if you read my spoiler last week *cough*YUKI*cough* that you don't need to feel terribly spoilered. They were going to reveal it this week anyway. hahaha

I really liked Chibiki's frank explanation to the children about his role in these events and why he didn't leave this town. Depressing, sure, but very real and very human. +1 to the author for penning a character like this.

Chibiki explains to the kids that the curse can only go up to two connections beyond a Class 3-3 student or teacher. The diagram in the anime depicts grandparents, parents, and siblings as being the potential victims. Suspiciously, it omits aunts and uncles even though they too are only two connections away from you. I'm going to accuse this of being the second big decoy in this episode. I think it's a safe bet that poor Auntie Reiko is going to die before all is said and done. The only way she won't die is if we find out that family and friends of the ghost are not possible targets for the curse.

Chibiki also explains that the curse doesn't have any power if you're outside of Yomiyama. This pretty solidly explains why Ritsuko and Kouichi's dad left Yomiyama despite growing up there. Kind of odd, though, that she'd opt to go back to Yomiyama to deliver Kouichi. :? They have plenty of hospitals in Tokyo, so why would you need to go back to your hometown to deliver? In any event, this also lends us some insight in to why Kouichi's dad is going to be immune to the curse: he's all the way in India, so it can't reach him.

We learn from Chibiki that the identity of the mysterious Misaki from twenty-six years ago was a boy named Yomiyama Misaki. We also learn that the photo that Misaki appears in and the photo in the school yearbook may be completely different photos since when Kouichi asks Chibiki if he's ever see Misaki in the legendary photo, Chibiki says that he has but that he doesn't have a copy of the photo, suggesting that it was a different picture from the one that ended up in the yearbook.

Now comes some more big information. Chibiki explains that the school records are literally altered (or rather, that humans' perceptions of the records are altered) during the time the relevant party is haunting the class. This is a convenient little plot device but I don't begrudge the author it too badly, to be honest. It's not that cheap, and it certainly falls in line with traditional Japanese views about how ghosts work. (See also: Kanon.) This information is important because it tells us that looking in the class rosters will not be of any help in proving that Kouichi was a former student at Yomiyama. Because, for the duration of this calendar year, his name is going to be missing from the old records. Chibiki also mentions that people's memories stay altered, too, until the end of the year. And then, he importantly notes:

"All memories of [the deceased] as the deceased are lost."

This suggests that we're being set up for a pretty big bawwww-fest in the final episode. ^^; Misaki is going to forget all about Kouichi (unless her eye affords her some special privileges) and so are all of the other students and teachers. Instead, everyone will remember Kouichi as that unfortunate transfer student from 1997 who died.

Note: Akazawa isn't exactly the most rare family name in the world, I'll grant you, but just FYI: on the class roster for 1996, a boy named Akazawa Kazuma is listed as one of the students who died that year. What if Akazawa Izumi is the younger sister of Akazawa Kazuma? I guess we'll find out eventually.

For our second to last scene, we get another welcome surprise: Kouichi confronts Reiko about all the information he's learned and she finally spills the beans. Kouichi's grandmother and grandfather are there too. The frustrating thing is, Reiko doesn't have many beans to spill: her memory of what happened fifteen years ago is too hazy. In real life, it's hard to imagine this happening. (Repressed memories, sure. Hazy memories, no.) This seems to also suggest that Kouichi is a ghost and that he's preventing his own family from remembering all the details, whether he intends to or not. One thing I noticed which was kind of odd, though :? ... Kouichi refers to his aunt by her first name only, calling her "Reiko-san" instead of "Reiko-obasan" or, if Reiko doesn't want to be called Auntie due to the connotations that has in Japan, "Reiko-neesan." Calling her "Reiko-san" seems very impersonal. Like they're not even family.

For our final scene, we get a kind of bizarre cliffhanger. Class 3-3's homeroom teacher shows up ... and he's totally lost it. The sneak peek for next week seems to imply that SOMEONE in the front of the classroom dies (because the drama club girl gets showered with a spray of blood). Whether it's just him or whether it's one of the students, who can say. Probably the latter, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. This seems to be setting us up for Ms. Mikami becoming Class 3-3's homeroom teacher again. We know that she was the homeroom teacher in 1996 as well, so it'll be interesting if we discover that she was also the homeroom teacher for that class in 1997, implicating her as Kouichi's very own former homeroom teacher.
Okay. That basket of thoughts very quickly burgeoned into an episode summary. My apologies. I'll go ahead and offer in this next spoiler box a very summed-up version of my thoughts and theories as we head into next week:

#1, Kouichi's gotta be one of the ghosts (if multiple) or else the ghost (if only one). There's just too much in this episode which indicates that he's the ghost. His dad's phone call was the really big one, but the library scene and his conversation with Aunt Reiko were two others that seem to implicate Kouichi as the ghost. My working theory for now is still that Akazawa Izumi is the initial ghost (but it could be anybody else) and that Kouichi was just an overflow ghost. When Class 3-3 thought that they had enough desks for everybody, they were probably right ... but that also probably didn't matter. They had to ignore somebody. By ignoring Misaki, they cancelled out the effect of the first ghost. But because they were only ignoring Misaki as a countermeasure against Kouichi's transfer, they were still one ignoree short. And they're still one ignoree short, I believe, because ignoring a ghost won't work. That may even be part of the answer to the mystery Chibiki was talking about where he mentioned that "Some years the countermeasures fail and we have no idea why." Ignoring a ghost is probably very bad.

#2, the way to end the curse prematurely is probably to get the ghost to realize that they're a ghost.

#3, more about Kouichi being the ghost. My theory, one they more or less hinted at in this episode with his dad's phone call, is that Kouichi transferred in to Yomiyama North Middle some time in 1997 (last year). The reason the other students like Izumi and Yukari recognized Kouichi in the hospital was not because they'd seen his face in the yearbooks (though I guess that's still a possible explanation) but instead was because his was a face they had seen in the flesh. They'd seen him in the hallways in school. They'd seen him in clubs they were mutually a part of. Hell, they may have even had a crush on him for all we know. The point is, the girls recognized Kouichi's face because he was their senpai and was only one grade older than them.

One bit of information it'd be nice to have would be to see what year Reiko was in Class 3-3. We know that Ritsuko was in the '72 class, but which year was Reiko in? EDIT: Chibiki confirms at around 20m20s that Reiko was in the class of 1983 fifteen years ago. This implies that when Reiko told Kouichi that she hadn't been in Class 3-3 since "fourteen years ago," she was referring to when she graduated from it in the spring of 1984. But who knows. This could be yet another decoy. Chibiki's memory is a little hazy at times and Kouichi is only operating based off of what his aunt told him. It's still entirely possible that when she said "fourteen years ago" she was referring to April 1983 (which was actually fifteen years ago) and that she thinks it's 1997. Or something. We'll just have to see. *deletes all of the confusing stuff he originally wrote after this point ^^;*
Phew! :oops: Wrote a lot. Will people read it? And offer more than a simple "I agree"? >_> I sure hope so!

YUKI.N

02-14-2012, 07:50 PM

Man, I'd just finished the episode last night, and was debating over whether to post simply to say the ballroom dancing was AWESOME before your speech... Then you had to go and cut in before me anyway. XP

We already discussed some of this, but I’ll just repeat/expand on a few points:

Official art definitely seems to confirm Tsuntsun is a major character next to Mei (often the two are paired together or even placed next to Kouichi). After her is the jock, and then the glasses guy shows up once or twice.

Again, I feel it's rather too obvious how they're feeding us hints that Kouichi's the ghost. Plus I'd like to give the author some credit. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the jock's the ghost.

One commenter remarked how it’s odd Kouichi’s father would be affected by the memory manipulation if he’s outside of Yomiyama. I was going to theorize that maybe the dad doesn’t exist at all, and the voice is just inside Kouichi’s head. Although while I was referencing the manga yesterday, the dad’s face is apparently shown there.

On the subject of the manga, we may have disproven any relation between the serial killer and the actual novel source material. Apologies for potentially misleading anyone.

Interesting to learn the Misaki of 26 years ago was indeed a boy. Perhaps this calls for an edit of the introduction post?

Now, for my comments on the park scene I mentioned: Personally, I got kinda angry that Kouichi thought the others were being unreasonable. Talon, you say you don’t like joking about fictional death… But if you were in a cursed classroom where the students were purposefully ignoring you so they don’t, you know, die, you’d take advantage and run around causing a ruckus in front of their faces? Even without knowing about the charm, would you really go so far to make a such a huge fuss during the first day of silence, when it’s in the immediate wake of several of your classmates’ deaths? Even if there was no curse, and their deaths weren’t obviously your fault, I’d give the rest of the class the benefit of the doubt. I’d assume people are just gloomy/scared and don’t want to talk until the shock blows over. (Still, especially to someone who was closely related to all three casualties… Come on, you’d have to be blind not to recognize a pattern. I’d stay away from someone so prone to show up where strange accidents are concerned too.)

Sorry, ended up venting my frustrations from last week again. Point being- as fun as the comedic relief in this episode was, I don't think that trolling the class would be an appropriate action to take in a realistic situation. Mei is right, death is scary. Why dare to tempt fate just for kicks? Yes, it is wrong to ignore somebody, and I know just how painful isolation can be. But valuing one's pride over another's life is just... I know I wouldn’t forgive someone whose careless taunting led to my own death. They want to flaunt their freedom a bit to get back at the others, fine. We’ll see who’s laughing when the next poor kid is caught in an elevator about to be crushed to death, all because those two felt bored and insulted enough not to cooperate.

Yes, I know it was only a fantasy. I’m just saying that in reality, I wouldn’t agree with that kind of dangerous thought at all given the gravity of the circumstances. This goes back to what I said before: IMO, Kouichi is a creepy kid who seems to take death a little too lightly. You could say he’s mature or stoic, and I thought that too at first, but he’s honestly starting to scare me a little.

Anyway, when they actually start literally sacrificing one to save the many, then you can start to argue ethics. Until then, suck it up and deal with it. Mei has the right idea. It’s a small price to pay to ensure everyone’s safety, if it works.

Rant aside, this segues into my next theory: What if the way to stop the curse once it’s started is to sacrifice one of the students in order to make up for Another? Maybe that’s how Reiko stopped the curse in her class, and why she doesn’t wish to remember it. Perhaps that’s what the teacher is trying to do.

Also, since we were discussing the implications of the title for your “second ghost” theory, thought I’d point out the ostensibly probable case that “Another” may simply refer to “another student” in the class, i.e. the ghost who takes up an extra seat. In case somehow both of us missed that at 2 AM. >.>;

On a random note, I thought it surprising Mei was well-received by the juniors in the art club. So it seems only the students in Class 3 (and the faculty) are aware of the curse. Yet it seems the success rate goes up if the entire school ignores one person, given how Mochizuki ushered them all out. I wonder how Mei could’ve gotten to be so popular in the first place then. I would assume the silent treatment started on the very first day of the school year. Was she a member of the art club before becoming a senior, and got to know the freshman during her second year?

Talon87

02-14-2012, 08:35 PM

Personally, I got kinda angry that Kouichi thought the others were being unreasonable. [...] This goes back to what I said before: IMO, Kouichi is a creepy kid who seems to take death a little too lightly. You could say he’s mature or stoic, and I thought that too at first, but he’s honestly starting to scare me a little.
In before "Talon87's actually the ghost of a former UPNer who died." :lol: ........ 8O

What if the way to stop the curse once it’s started is to sacrifice one of the students in order to make up for Another? Maybe that’s how Reiko stopped the curse in her class, and why she doesn’t wish to remember it. Perhaps that’s what the teacher is trying to do.
It's possible, but ...

Assuming we haven't been lied to about dates and such, Reiko implies that the curse stopped halfway through her year (meaning before November 1983). Kouichi not only claims to be 15 years old already (implying he was born in Spring '83) but we also have been told that his mother Ritsuko died giving birth to him. If Ritsuko died in connection with Reiko's being a student in Class 3-3 in 1983, then only conclusion we can reach is that there's no possible way Kouichi was born after November 1983. He had to have been born before then. And, since his appears to have been a spring birth anyway, that means we can conclude that Ritsuko must have been amongst the first to die as a result of the curse in 1983.

Where am I going with this? Well, where I am going with it is, why would Reiko be more traumatized about the class having sacrificed a student to bring the curse to a premature end than she would be traumatized that she (indirectly) is to blame for her own sister's death? I agree that both would be mind fuckey, but I'm asking you: why is Reiko only blocking memories of the one event and not the other? Why is she able to think about Ritsuko but not the sacrifice? To me, this calls into question whether there even was a sacrifice or not.
Like I think we discussed on Skype last night, my theory as to how you bring the curse to a premature end is:

You get the ghost to realize that he/she is a ghost in the first place. Doing so ends the curse for that year. As Chibiki explained, in an ordinary year, the ghost graduates alongside everybody else but then, after graduation, all memories of the ghost disappear from students' minds and the ghost themselves disappears as well. Their name also returns to their original class roster (in which it's shown that they died). So the point is, even if a class is successful in getting a ghost to realize that he/she is a ghost, they won't be able to pass this tactic on to future generations because they'll forget all about it. The other tactics -- ignoring a student's existence, making that student sit at the crappy desk -- those things aren't inextricably connected to the ghost's identity. So the students can still remember all those details even after graduation. Misaki will remember having been the outcast. Misaki will remember which of her classmates died and how. She will remember sitting at the crappy desk. She will remember the teacher bringing a knife to school. And all because the memories of these events can be extricated from Kouichi. (E.g. Yukari's death? The only thing Misaki's memory has to change is the fact that Kouichi was there with her in the stairwell. All she needs to remember now is that she was all alone at the top of the stairs when she saw it happen.) But when it comes to memories like identifying that Kouichi was the ghost, or that he had to realize that he was a ghost for the curse to be broken, all of this information is going to disappear right along with Kouichi. And when that happens, Misaki and all the other students will have no recollection of breaking the curse (for that year, anyway) by getting Kouichi to realize that he was already dead. And because they won't remember this, they won't be able to pass this strategy along to next year's class. This explains why they remember the bullshit charms like the assigned seat or the outcast ritual but why they can't remember the strategies that helped past classes to nip the curse in the bud very quickly.
That's what I think, anyway. I could be wrong and you could be right, or we could both be wrong. But for now, this is my theory and I'm sticking to it. ;-)

Also, since we were discussing the implications of the title for your “second ghost” theory, thought I’d point out the ostensibly probable case that “Another” may simply refer to “another student” in the class, i.e. the ghost who takes up an extra seat. In case somehow both of us missed that at 2 AM. >.>;
lol, very true. :lol: It could still also refer to what I was saying ...

... that there are two ghosts, and the second ghost is the titular "another" ...
But you're quite right that it could simply mean what you wrote above.

On a random note, I thought it surprising Mei was well-received by the juniors in the art club. So it seems only the students in Class 3 (and the faculty) are aware of the curse. Yet it seems the success rate goes up if the entire school ignores one person, given how Mochizuki ushered them all out. I wonder how Mei could’ve gotten to be so popular in the first place then. I would assume the silent treatment started on the very first day of the school year. Was she a member of the art club before becoming a senior, and got to know the freshman during her second year?
I get the impression that she was not ignored until some time in very late April. Explanation follows.

The school year begins some time in late March or early April (not exactly sure). Kouichi transferred in a few weeks late à la Koizumi Itsuki and was slated to begin classes the week of April 26th. We know this because he is visited in the hospital circa April 26th and Yukari mentions how they (the students of Class 3-3) had heard that Kouichi was to have started classes on Monday but for his pneumothorax. Near the start of Episode 06, after the OP, the chalkboard shows that it's May 1. The jock's, the tsuntsun's, and the glasses guy's words seem to suggest (to me, anyway) that they were not originally planning on cruelly ignoring a student's existence this year and that they only did so after learning that they were going to be getting a transfer student. The jock says "So it can start a month late, huh?" He was thinking that they'd already beaten the curse at the start of the school year (by having the right number of desks) and thus weren't going to have to resort to any countermeasures now. The glasses guy then says, "Maybe. That's why ..." and then the camera cuts back to Misaki, sitting at her new seat, all alone. To me, this suggests that it was some time in between learning of Kouichi's transfer and May 1 that the students started to ignore Misaki Mei, and that they had not been ignoring her from the start of the school year.

Again, I could be wrong. We've had to piece a lot of things together from the snippets of evidence we've gotten so far. Without them coming out and showing us a flashback of Misaki in early April actually talking with and being not ignored by her fellow classmates, there's no way to know. Sadly, the flashback at the start of the episode didn't give a date. It could have been Day 1 of class, it could have been after they learned about Kouichi.

It seems unlikely to me that Misaki would have had a painting in the art classroom that carried over from February/March 1998. It seems more likely to me that she started painting that in March/April 1998 and then, once she became the outcast, she had to abruptly quit going to the art classroom, meaning she couldn't retrieve her painting nor finish it. The again, she could have started it as a second-year student, too, so who knows. :roll: :lol:
Last night, you had mentioned that your friend observed that everybody who's shown in the OP is someone who dies. However, I don't think this is is necessarily true. I mean, it could be -- each of those people could die before the end of the story -- but what's odd is that there are several deaths we've already seen and which are not featured amongst those faces. For instance ...

Yukari, Sanae, and Takabayashi are all missing from the sequence.
It might be tempting to think, "Then perhaps those faces are all of the living?" But there's at least one person shown there who we know (or we think we know) is going to die next week, so that's not likely either. I think they're just a random assortment of faces. Some of the faces shown are of background students we don't even know the names of yet, while some of the others are of major characters. No clue why the odd mix. Perhaps the minor characters will soon become major, who knows.

Unrelated: I was having a mindblank on Takabayashi's name so I googled "Another Misaki Takabayashi" just to confirm I was remembering his name right. Look what Google turned up as the first hit. (http://maunaloa.uhh.hawaii.edu/~misaki/About_Misaki_Takabayashi.html) XFD (Not a spoiler. By all means click away.)

YUKI.N

02-15-2012, 04:08 AM

Last night, you had mentioned that your friend observed that everybody who's shown in the OP is someone who dies. However, I don't think this is is necessarily true. I mean, it could be -- each of those people could die before the end of the story -- but what's odd is that there are several deaths we've already seen and which are not featured amongst those faces. For instance ...

Yukari, Sanae, and Takabayashi are all missing from the sequence.

It wasn't a friend, but a random observer who also posted an image with tally marks:

All of those people you mentioned do show up in the OP (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v396/PoisonStrange/etc/another.png)

Top left is the nurse, Sanae Mizuno.

(Also, there's the image of the librarian I mentioned.)

Btw, have you figured out what was the thing you wanted to talk about yet? XP Or still pulling a Rei-chan?

Maybe what you're trying to remember is the fact that you're really a ghost. =O

Talon87

02-15-2012, 05:20 AM

I still can't remember. Also, do us a favor and load up Episode 06 and look for those people for me. I swear to you, they're not there. Also, ...

The homeroom teacher for 1998 Class 3-3 is there, and yet he's missing from the image you shared.
If you load up Episode 06, we can compare. Here is who I see ...

1m43s = Akazawa Izumi (the tsuntsun) and Takako (the girl with glasses and the green hair clip who was speculating with Izumi in an earlier episode)

1m47s = an adult-looking young man, I think he's the really tall student we saw in one episode, followed up by a boy I've never seen before but who looks an awful lot like Kouichi except with a different haircut

1m50s = the jock and then the girl we haven't seen too much of and who was listed in spot #4 (2nd row, right column) in your picture, and then the girl in the drama club who almost got crushed by that glass pane

1m51s = Mochizuki (the shy art club kid) and then 1998's Class 3-3 homeroom teacher

No Mizuno Sanae. No Takabayashi. No Yukari. (People who were in yours.) Vice-versa, yours is missing Tall Kid, Kouichi Doppelganger, and Crazy Sensei.
So ... I don't know why they're changing the OP, but I'm going to go and look at all the past episodes now and see if a pattern emerges.

EDIT: Found the pattern. Explained it to you on Skype but will edit this post for others to read too.

In Episodes 1 through 3, the sequence is Akazawa, Takako, Yukari, Takabayashi, Jock, Nameless Cutie, Drama Club Girl, Mochizuki, and finally Sanae.

As you know, in Episode 03, Yukari dies. So ...

Episode 4 = exact same as Episodes 1-3 except for Yukari's picture, which is now replaced with Tall Guy's

Then in Episode 04, poor Sanae dies. So ...

Episode 5 = exact same as Episode 04, only now Sanae's picture is replaced with 1998 Class 3-3's Homeroom Teacher's

And then in Episode 05, Takabayashi dies. So as you might guess, we then get what I reported to you for Episode 06.

Basically, Episode 01's collection of faces served as a primer, a seed if you will, that seeded the nine empty slots. These slots then are left alone, quasi-permanently, and are only changed when the person in them dies in the previous episode. So like, Episode 07's montage should theoretically be identical to Episode 06's since nobody died this week. Alternatively, if they're going to say, "Bah, we all know the teacher's about to die :P," then they may go right ahead and replace him as early as next week.

YUKI.N

02-15-2012, 02:36 PM

Talon, no more late-night Another chats. x.x I had trouble getting to sleep and even walking to the bathroom in the dark. =<

Anyway, in addition to the OP images, we discussed a theory of mine that I now feel fairly confident in to post here:

I believe Teshigawara (the jock) could be the ghost.

When I initially brought the idea up, it was half-jokingly, but there is a small bit of evidence to support the theory. When Mei first revealed the nature of the cursonemon and how memories can be altered, a recollection of some prior dialogue led me to seriously consider the possibility in the back of my mind. However, I didn't dwell on it too deeply until now.

Teshigawara and Kazami (glasses boy) both claim to have known each other since childhood. I find it slightly suspicious the story would make a point of revealing this relationship to us, especially so early on. Perhaps one of them has had their memories altered, leading us to believe their alibis check out since they corroborate each other's story.

Although Kazami could be the odd man out, I lean more towards suspecting Teshigawara, since his goofy smile makes him seem the most innocuous. Yet he's clearly still a major character - if the official art is anything to go by. More than that, he's been the one most closely, intentionally involved with Kouichi since his arrival to school (before everyone started ignoring him), and aside from Mei and the nurse has tried to be the most helpful. Yet the cursonemon hasn't afflicted him. Why?

If we ask why the cursonemon hasn't affected Mei either, well... Perhaps being ignored gives you immunity, since you're no longer considered part of the class? A sort of compensation for having to endure suffering for the others' sake? I dunno. We'd have to see some hard evidence that all the outcasts of past years somehow survived the carnage. On the other hand, I'd be curious to find out what happens if the "nonexistant one" does die, and whether the class would bother to re-elect a new candidate in such an event. (Actually, now this makes me pause to consider whether Reiko may have been ignored in her class. Maybe she refused the role, and that's what sparked the curnomenon that year? More guilt to add to her conscience.)

Anyway, the point is that from a storytelling point of view, would you immediately suspect the cheerful, friendly guy who welcomes our hero? Even if he's not the ghost, I definitely think there's more to this jokester than meets the eye. The "Sad (Class) Clown (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SadClown)" isn't a trope for nothing. The fact that he seems as strangely lax about the deaths as Kouichi probably says something as well. I originally thought he'd be the type to laugh it off, meanwhile hiding his anxiety until it builds up to the cracking point. But perhaps there is a true underlying reason for his nonchalance.

On a random note, I dared to look up Kazami's name to make sure I had it right... And came across a blog post (http://pureyoungboys.blogspot.com/2012/01/another-3-kazami-and-teshigawara.html) where the author was convinced the two were lovers repressing their feelings for each other. Just from that one exchange. Oh, silly fujoshi (what, she even describes herself as one). XP

At any rate, it gave a nice summary of the conversation with screencaps to back my reference. =) ^~

YUKI.N

02-20-2012, 09:39 PM

It's official. Kouichi isn't the ghost. XP

1) Way, way too obvious.

2) Both Akazawa and Mei state that he isn't.

inb4talongentdenialthatit'sareversepsychologytrap

P.S. Lol at next week's preview. Obligatory beach episode go!

Talon87

02-21-2012, 04:10 PM

I really think that it is. XD By dropping subtle clues, you start to suspect it. By dropping more blatant clues, you become confident you're right. But by then going completely over the top with clues (like his death-melty nightmare) and by having numerous people tell him he's not the dead one, you do a 180 and rule the theory out. It's exactly what he'd want you to do if his goal as an author is to constantly surprise you and keep you guessing. The only problem is, going this far with it is only going to make people mad, feel deceived, once he reveals that their theory which they had cradled for so long and only abandoned because he told them to ended up being the right one all along.

Yuki: Oooooooor ... he's not the ghost. :lol:

That's possible too. ^^;

Just saw the episode (obviously). Thoughts:

That blood shower was very impressive. :hmm: Did not expect it to reach that far and wide with him staying at the front of the classroom the whole time.

Animation seemed kinda wonky during Kouichi's nightmare. :? Nightmare was pretty gross, too. >_<

Izumi is so cute. :oops: Kouichi x Izumi! (Sorry, Mei! ^^; )

I get the impression from the cafe hand-holding scene that my theory is right: both Kouichi and Izumi are ghosts. The reason she remembers the feel of his hand is from their previous lives. Then again, an even more logical interpretation might be that (between the two of them) just Kouichi is the ghost. Why? Because: it fits very well with my died-in-1997 theory from last week. Kouichi moved back to Yomiyama in '97, not '98, and was one year older than Akazawa Izumi. One way or another the two met and started dating / started to become close. This is why she gets nostalgic feeling his hand. He then dies ... and now, a year later, he's back, but as a student of Izumi's very own Class 3-3. Because of how the curse works (as explained by Chibiki in previous episodes), Izumi had no memory of being boyfriend-girlfriend with Kouichi. She also has no memory of his death. She felt she recognized his face ... because she did, from being in love with this guy for a number of weeks or months.

It'll be interesting to learn how Reiko's class stopped the curse. I'm still convinced that it has to do with getting the ghost to realize that he/she's a ghost.

lol @ the scene where the jock denies being the ghost and offers the very sort of evidence that Chibiki has already explained to us doesn't count for shit. :lol: Maybe that's your decoy, Yuki! :lol:

Chibiki noted that they never identified who the dead person was Reiko's year. First of all, that raises a question from me. I'm a bit confused as to how they can knowingly identify the ghost and joy it down in the records if, as was explained previously, once the ghost disappears, everyone's memories revert back to normal and nobody has any memory of the ghost having been in their class. It begs the question of how, then, they could identify who the ghost had been. :? Plot hole? Second of all, I wonder ... Chibiki noted that the name of the ghost disappears from their original class roster while they're back on Earth, and then it returns once they leave. Could the missing ghost name be proof that whoever the ghost is this year they're the same person as in Reiko's year? That this individual has gotten to be the haunter not once but twice? Kinda weird though, then, that this ghost from 1983 is totally cool with all the advancements in technology by 1998.
If I think of more to say later, I'll edit it in (or reply anew if someone else posts first). Other than that, this was a good episode, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I did 05 or 06.

YUKI.N

02-21-2012, 06:13 PM

I take it someone was too busy playing Yu-Gi-Oh! to watch the episode last night? ^~

That blood shower was very impressive. :hmm: Did not expect it to reach that far and wide with him staying at the front of the classroom the whole time.

Animation seemed kinda wonky during Kouichi's nightmare. :? Nightmare was pretty gross, too. >_<

Izumi is so cute. :oops: Kouichi x Izumi! (Sorry, Mei! ^^; )

I get the impression from the cafe hand-holding scene that my theory is right: both Kouichi and Izumi are ghosts. The reason she remembers the feel of his hand is from their previous lives. Then again, an even more logical interpretation might be that (between the two of them) just Kouichi is the ghost. Why? Because: it fits very well with my died-in-1997 theory from last week. Kouichi moved back to Yomiyama in '97, not '98, and was one year older than Akazawa Izumi. One way or another the two met and started dating / started to become close. This is why she gets nostalgic feeling his hand. He then dies ... and now, a year later, he's back, but as a student of Izumi's very own Class 3-3. Because of how the curse works (as explained by Chibiki in previous episodes), Izumi had no memory of being boyfriend-girlfriend with Kouichi. She also has no memory of his death. She felt she recognized his face ... because she did, from being in love with this guy for a number of weeks or months.

It'll be interesting to learn how Reiko's class stopped the curse. I'm still convinced that it has to do with getting the ghost to realize that he/she's a ghost.

lol @ the scene where the jock denies being the ghost and offers the very sort of evidence that Chibiki has already explained to us doesn't count for shit. :lol: Maybe that's your decoy, Yuki! :lol:

Chibiki noted that they never identified who the dead person was Reiko's year. First of all, that raises a question from me. I'm a bit confused as to how they can knowingly identify the ghost and joy it down in the records if, as was explained previously, once the ghost disappears, everyone's memories revert back to normal and nobody has any memory of the ghost having been in their class. It begs the question of how, then, they could identify who the ghost had been. :? Plot hole? Second of all, I wonder ... Chibiki noted that the name of the ghost disappears from their original class roster while they're back on Earth, and then it returns once they leave. Could the missing ghost name be proof that whoever the ghost is this year they're the same person as in Reiko's year? That this individual has gotten to be the haunter not once but twice? Kinda weird though, then, that this ghost from 1983 is totally cool with all the advancements in technology by 1998.

One thing the teacher's death pretty much confirms for us is that there must supernatural forces at work, and not some serial killer. Not only can the cursomenon trigger accidents, but it can apparently manipulate people's actions before death. This is akin to Kira's "tests of power" in Death Note. While the umbrella death and heart attack might've been difficult to humanly pull off, it wouldn't have been impossible to at least tamper with factors to try and tip the scales. The teacher seemed to be visibly struggling with the knife, as if he were being forced to stab himself against his will. This may or may not be a vital clue to how the cursonemon works.

The nightmare's visceral animation of bleeding eyes and peeling skin was cool, but at the point Kouichi literally imploded in a pile of flesh it lost any semblance of seriousness for me. XP

I prefer Teshigawara x Akazawa. If she's "tsuntsun" towards anyone it's him. ^~ (I honestly thought when he told Kouichi to bring Mei as a date and it turned out Izumi was seated at a table for four, they'd reveal the two were already secretly together. But don't tell the class, can't risk the "head of countermeasure's" already shaky reputation~)

Akazawa brought up an interesting theory during that scene, that Kouichi might be the ghost of a child who was never born at all. The fact Mei revealed she had a stillborn sister at the end feels too close to be unrelated. There's probably some significance to the idea of unborn children coming to life, or being able to exert an effect on the present.

This sort of brings me to a topic we've yet to discuss, but is probably worth considering outside the realm of "creepy standard horror trope". How do you suppose dolls fit into the grand scheme? So far the episode titles describe the process of creating a doll, but we've yet to see them play a large role in the story. You've seen Rozen Maiden, maybe you can shed some light on how dolls are perceived/portrayed in Japanese culture.

To throw an idea of my own out there based on my own prior manga experience, but perhaps Kouichi isn't a "ghost" per se, but a "doll" crafted to believe he is the original. Whether he is literally an "artificial" shell possessed by the spirit of Koiuchi Sakikabara, or an adopted child raised as a replacement, perhaps the real one did die in some manner- whether it be through drowning, pulmonary collapse, or before birth.

Also regarding his lung disease, maybe Kouichi received a transplant from the original, which could tie into the idea of (an)"other half". Or if Akazawa's the ghost, she donated her organs before her death, which is how she feels she know him. Going back to the doll theory, perhaps nearly, if not all of Kouichi's parts aren't really his own. I'm thinking of the mannequin scene in 999 when Clover asks if a person still retains his or her identity even if the body parts are switched.

I also find it suspicious how rather than the dad breaking up this time, Kouichi purposefully cut off the conversation right when he was about to declare Kouichi "his-". Perhaps foreshadowing that he's not the Sakikabaras' biological son?

Anyway, onto breaking the curse. I still hold the belief that a sacrifice is required, and the fact that two people died on the trip that year before it stopped smells somewhat fishy. One natural casualty from the cursomenon, the other from...? Perhaps the crazed guy in the bar, wracked with guilt, left some evidence of their crime up in the shrine or surrounding area.

Plus, if all it took was for the ghost to realize he/she's the ghost, wouldn't that debunk your theory Kouichi's the ghost then since he's already started to question it? XD Lol, I know, you'd probably need hard proof first. Just joshing. ^~

It is the jock, I tell you! Either him or glasses-boy. >.>; ^^;

Correct me if I'm wrong, but was it shown that the name of the deceased also magically appeared at the bottom of the page after the year was over?

Oh btw, I solved the mystery of the Sakikabara murder association. Apparently in the novel it was clearly explained Mei was making a reference to the real-life serial killer on the rooftop, and Kouichi recalled how the similarity of his name made his life difficult for a period. Animé viewers were just expected to make the connection. ...So there ya go. *flees projectiles*

Talon87

02-21-2012, 06:53 PM

Spoiler boxed 'cause long. Safe to click if you've seen through Episode 06 (last week's episode).

Episode 06, 17m36s: where they look at the name written at the bottom of the class roster from two years ago. The one that says 死者：浅倉麻美 (Deceased: Asakura Mami).

Episode 06, 17m54s: they show the top half of the class roster. Asakura is not listed amongst those top fifteen or sixteen students, nor is there an empty line for her name to have gone.

Episode 06, 18m15s: Chibiki explains that this Mami girl was originally a student in 1993. But that between April and June of 1996, she wasn't. What does he mean? ...

Episode 06, 18m27s: Chibiki explains, quote, "As I recall, her name was on the 1996 roster." Even though it's clearly not now. Nor is there an empty space for it. He continues, "But it was not on the roster for 1993. It had disappeared." How he could know this now in 1998, given what he's about to tell us in a bit, is what confuses me. If your memories supposedly change back at the end of the school year and you forget all about who the ghost was, then how on earth would he recall the memory of believing that Asakura Mami's name was missing from the '93 roster and was present on the '96 one? :?

Episode 06, 18m48s: Here it is. "By the end of the year, after the deceased vanishes after graduation, the records revert to their original state, thus revealing the extra student." (During this point, visually the episode is showing us the name "Asakura Mami," typewritten, showing back up in its appropriate place in the '93 roster.) "All memories of her as the deceased are lost. All is forgotten." See? :| I don't get it. I don't get how this can be true and yet how, at the same time, Chibiki and the others can remember having seen her name on the '96 roster (and having looked at the '93 roster and not having seen her name). If "all memories" of her as the deceased vanish, shouldn't that mean that they don't even remember looking into her? :?

Episode 06, 19m06s: Kouichi seeks clarification, asking, "The records and memories just go back to normal?" To which Chibiki answers, "I cannot comprehend the logic behind it. I've essentially given up." And he then proceeds to talk about how to beat the curse via ignoring a student's existence.

They don't show anyone's name appearing at the bottom of the page. Rather, they show Mami's name appearing in the middle of the class roster for 1993. The names penned in at the bottom, in blue ink, would seem to be something penned in either by human hands or else the curnomenon. In any event, we don't get to see any blue ink outside of "Deceased: Asakura Mami" on the '96 roster from earlier in the scene.

To be honest, if it's the curnomenon penning the names in and not Chibiki, then things make a tiny bit more sense to me. After graduation for the Class of '96, Chibiki checks the records and discovers the name "Asakura Mami" filled in in the deceased name field for the 1996 class roster. Here's where I get confused though:
what I think would happen next, given what they've told us: "B-but that's impossible!" says Chibiki. "I ... I don't remember Asakura Mami being in class this year at all! I remember even checking the class rosters and seeing her name listed right there along with all the others in the Class of '93's old roster! So why ...? Why is her name appearing here now? Was she really just here? Was she really this year's deceased?"
what seems to be happening instead: "That's weird. :? 'Cause I distinctly recall looking Mami up in the '93 class roster and not seeing her name there. And I distinctly recall seeing her name in the '96 roster. But nope: no name in the '96 roster now (aside from the blue ink) and sure enough her name's right where it's always been in the '93 class roster. Weird."
The latter seems to be what the author's having Chibiki say and do, but it contradicts basic logic. :| You can't tell us "all memories are lost" and then in the next breath have the character recollecting everything that happened. :| The former'd be what I'd expect with true memory alteration, but it doesn't seem to be happening.

Shuckle

02-21-2012, 10:16 PM

Unless the reason Chibiki doesn't get his memories wiped is because he's the ghost-librarian.

This is an anime I can totally get into. Only six episodes so far and a mystery/horror storyline - I'm game.

I think jock-dude is definitely the ghost. The fact that things started happening when Kouichi came is troubling, though, and Talon's theory of multiple ghosts is probably...wait. Didn't Kouichi acknowledge Misaki's existence?

It could still be a lot simpler than you've made it out to be, Talon. :roll: (naw, just kidding. Whoever this writer is, s/he's good. I can't project as well as you can, and I just can't tell what's going to happen).

inb4 obligatory "Shuckle's memories have been altered!"

Talon87

02-21-2012, 10:36 PM

In general and also in the specific writing of that last post, I've considered Chibiki as the ghost as well. But ... we just don't have enough assumptions-facts yet to run with it as anything more than an "ACCUSE ANYBODY OF BEING THE GHOST! :D" theory. It's certainly interesting, but the author's given us an assumption-fact or two to run with that sort of call into question Chibiki's being the ghost. By that same token, they could be decoys he's handed us.

(1) The author's implied that Chibiki's testimony is forthright and accurate. Both are assumptions we've no choice but to run with for now. Until he reveals "Mwa ha ha ha :D, Chibiki was lying!", we have to assume that Chibiki's been forthright. And until he reveals "Mwa ha ha ha, Chibiki's memories of the past were altered! Including the very ones he spoonfed the children! :twisted:", we have to assume that he's been accurate.

(2) The author's implied that when ghosts come back, they don't come back at their "how old I would be if I were still alive?" age but instead they come back at the age they were when they died. Again, this is really only an assumption we're operating off of. For all we know, every single ghost up until Chibiki has been one who came back within 2-3 years of dying, a.k.a. they were no older than 18 when they came back. An 18 year old could easily be mistaken for a 15 year old. So we could simply be assuming that "since kid ghosts come back as kids, and since the curse has been going on for years, they must be coming back at the age they were when they died." And, for all we know, the ghosts really do come back at their how-old-would-I-be-if-I-were-still-alive age. In which case, if Chibiki died as Class 3-3's teacher back in 1972, then it totally, totally works that he's the ghost now and looks all old and stuff. But ... we don't have any evidence to sell this theory. ^^; We don't have evidence to definitively rule it out either, but I'll side with theories that are possibly correct thanks to shaky evidence we have any day over siding with theories that are possibly correct given that (and only given that) nothing yet has come along to disprove them. I mean, by that latter logic, we could also say "This is all a dream" (hasn't been ruled out!), "There's really a swamp creature who's doing this" (hasn't been ruled out!), "Kouichi is actually living a virtual reality simulation some tech geek created" (hasn't been ruled out!), etc.
It's certainly possible. Like an Agatha Christie novel, I feel that with Another, anybody could be the culprit until all is revealed in the final chapter or chapters. I'm sure Christie fans will object, but in my experience, it's not possible to 100% know who the murderer is in her stories until you reach the end. The evidence for their culpability is there all along, yes, but so are a thousand and one other pieces of evidence for others' possible guilt. (An idea she radically toys with in Murder on the Orient Expess. :lol:)

Also ...

Welcome aboard, Shuckle! :) We always welcome more people in Anime discussions. Glad to hear your opinions. By all means, please do chime in for the remaining episode discussions. I think I can speak for both Yuki and myself when I say that we would really welcome it.

YUKI.N

02-22-2012, 02:13 AM

Hey, Shuckle. ^-^ Welcome aboard the fright train.

Postulation on how Mei knows Kouichi is alive:

Mei said her eye can see things that are "hidden", right? We haven't heard an explanation for that cryptic message yet. Perhaps it does allow her to sense something about him that verifies his existence. It might not be able to directly differentiate whether a person's dead or alive just by looking (otherwise she'd just be able to sweep the classroom and point out the imposter), but it gives her some form of proof that leads her to conclude Kouichi's safe.

More wild theorycrafting time:

The new focus on prenatal deaths has me thinking... Really going out on a limb here, but what if "Another" was a baby? As in, a child being carried by someone? Ms. What's-her-name or even a female student? It wouldn't show up on the registrar, nor would it require an extra seat. Perhaps Reiko got pregnant during her school year and she got an abortion. The guy in the bar must've raped her and that's why her memory is hazy and... *shot* Yeah, I'm just rambling now for the heck of it. ^^; The original concept still stands though.

Dunno. Just a weird random thought bolstered by experience with R11. If we're entertaining the theory Chibiki could be the ghost/ignoring the assumptions he laid out for us, Another may as well be anyone or anything.

Talon87

02-28-2012, 07:38 PM

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/001_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/001.jpg)
I am going to be so, so sad when she dies.

So ... Episode 08. The token beach episode. It was a shameless filler for most of the run. But at least that means ... screencaps! :D :lol: Discussion and pictures inside.

The opening scene was pretty obvious. They went out of their way to make the watermelon juice look like blood, but it was a pretty clear red herring. :lol: During the OP credits, I made sure to watch for who had replaced their old teacher. Sure enough, it's Mikami-sensei. So we'll have to see whether she can survive the rest of the show or not.

This episode was a clear contest of beauties. You can either look at it as a two-way contest between Izumi and Reiko or you can look at it as a three-way contest between Mei, Izumi, and Reiko. The former is more "girl vs. woman," the latter is more "girl vs. young woman vs. mature woman." I dunno. I think Reiko wins either way. =P ;-) But there's something for everyone in this episode.

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/002_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/002.jpg) http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/004_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/004.jpg)

Let's start with Akazawa Izumi. My favorite of the students from early on, Izumi is only becoming more and more endearing as time passes. Which is going to make her likely inevitable death that much more tragic when it comes to pass. Even if it'd be really sad, at this point I'm pretty much hoping that she'll be revealed to be (one of) the ghost(s). I know that's really weird logic ^_^;, but whatever. In any event, Izumi was pretty cute this episode, and ...
we find out that she's an ojou type :lol:
we see more of the Kouichi-Izumi-Teshigawara love triangle at work
I'm half-inclined to agree with Yuki's theory that she really is tsundere for Teshigawara and is putting distance between them because that's how tsunderes operate, but I'm half-inclined to say, "No, she just doesn't like him, whereas she does fancy Kouichi and is starting to morph from tsuntsun to tsundere towards him." Guess we'll have to wait and find out.

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/003_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/003.jpg)
This kid knows the score. :lol:

Second up is Reiko, the series' MILF. And man is she smoking hot. Hot damn. It's a wonder why she's still single. Not too much to say here -- Reiko was mostly eye-candy until the final stretch of the episode -- but here are some more photos for her adoring fans. ;-)

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/005_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/005.jpg) http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/006_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/006.jpg)
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/007_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/007.jpg) http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/010_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/010.jpg)

Reiko: a man's woman 8)

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/008_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/008.jpg)
Ever the child.

And then finally, we had Misaki Mei. She was pretty much the little-kid-in-a-teen's-body character for all the lolikons out there. We saw her doing little kid things like ...
wearing a navy blue one-piece
building sand castles
making little kid faces or noises
her outlook on discovery was more like a child's than any of the other characters'
This is the only photo I took with Misaki in it. Most of her other shots were clearly meant for adoring DFC fans. But if that's you, then you'll like this episode for Misaki the same way I liked it for Reiko.

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/013_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/013.jpg)
Ohhhhh shit... 8O

The moment the wind blew strong and the overcast sky turned even darker, you knew the curse was catching up with them and that it didn't want them finding out what happened 15 years ago. So when what's-his-face offers to go and get the beach ball that got blown into the ocean, you just know he's going to die. My #1 bet was on a shark attack, but I guess that's too western. My #2 bet was that he'd get pulled in by the undercurrent and drown. That almost was what happened ... but for the fact that, after his drowning body surfaced, he got sliced to pieces while still alive thanks to a speed boat. IRL, I found this death to be one of the more difficult ones to believe. Sure, the speed boat was coming around the corner like a bat out of Hell, but seriously: you couldn't see a 4-foot-long body floating in the water right in front of you? :? If the body had been deeper, I could see it ... but it was floating at/near the surface when this happened. If at, it should have been seen. If only near, then ... I question Another's physics. =P :lol: Pretty sure a body will either sink or float well, not halfway in between and oh so perfect for this sort of accident. But whatever. It happened, it was grisly, and it had you on the edge of your seat. =P

Not sure what to make of his death though. Is it really evidence that the curse caught up with them beyond the reach of Yomiyama? Or was his death an honest-to-god freak accident that had nothing to do with the curse? If the latter, his death could potentially really lead them astray from solving the mystery. If the former, I want to know why now, and whether other families who have fled Yomiyama are now in danger or not.

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/014_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/014.jpg) http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/016_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/016.jpg)
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/017_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/017.jpg) http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/018_th.jpg (http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g92/talon87/Another/018.jpg)

The sneak peek for next week's episode seems to have revealed an awful lot. If this week's episode was the most fillertastic one the series had yet seen, next week's looks to be a return to form where we'll get gobs of information. Kouichi appears to be having another nightmare in this episode. There's a moment in the sneak peek where they show the boating accident kid's body dangling in front of Kouichi in what looks like a hospital room. There's also the moment at the very end (see final picture) where Yukari appears to be back, pale, covered in blood, and holding her bloody umbrella. I suspect that both of these visuals are from a nightmare. However, earlier in the sneak peek (see first picture) is a very briefly-shown bolt of lightning striking one of the characters. It's hard to tell who it is that gets hit, but it appears to be one of the male students. You can't see that in this picture, but watch the sneak peek for yourself, pause it real quick at this part, and you'll see what I mean. That death I suspect is real, not imagined, and will be the death we're going to see next week. So yeah: I'm kinda surprised that they'd give that away already. :? ^^; Well, at least we know what's coming for next week: now the only question is who!

Finally, and perhaps most exciting of all, is the sneak peek of two major plot devices we've been wondering about. The first and, to me, more exciting of these two is the cassette and cassette player. My guess is that this is what Matsu-what's-his-name left behind for the kids fifteen years ago. It fits (1983 = they would have had cassette players back then), but ... we'll have to see to just what an extent the curse has rendered the tape's recorded bits unintelligible. The second of the two plot devices is the building that looks like an abandoned mansion in the forest, with dead ivy crawling up its walls. It may be the old school building. In fact, this may be where Kouichi finds the cassette. That would make a lot of sense if this boy left it behind there in 1983 and if the move to the new building occurred afterwards (say in the late '80s or early '90s). Since it looks like somebody is already due to die by lightning, I don't want to get too greedy with one episode, but I can't help but wonder if this is also where we're going to see the falling chandelier, and whether it'll be another student's cause of death or whether, like the falling pane of glass earlier in the series, it'll be a near-death accident that ends up scaring everybody involved but harming nobody.
A decent episode, yes, but this is probably my least favorite of the series so more. Mostly because it was just a shameless filler episode.

YUKI.N

02-28-2012, 11:34 PM

As obligatory beach episodes go, this was the best kind.

I was impressed by how tasteful the fanservice was: delicious eye candy, yes, but nothing overbearing. Instead of focusing on exaggerrated bouncing boobs, they treat us with some artful angle shots, emphasizing natural yet appealing poses.

Beginning to see now where Akazawa's appeal comes from, as her personality really got a chance to shine in the beginning. Still rooting even harder for her and Teshigawara though, despite her obvious interest in Kouichi. ^^; I felt so bad for the poor dude when she effectively slammed the car door in his face. =<

Anyway, I really enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere here. It wasn't just fanservice in the bodily sense, but also the spiritual sense. At least that's how I felt. Seeing all the kids set aside their anxieties for a day and partake in so many mundane yet glorious beach activities put my mind at ease as well, and even made me yearn to join them for some fun in the sun. I'm starting to hear why you admire the soundtrack, Talon. The mellow piece played in this episode was fantastic, what a great mood-setter.

Then, of course, the calm spell is broken by yet another unnatural death. XP This was like the icing on the cake though. At this point, the unrealistic over-the-topness is something to look forward to. I was also expecting a shark attack or drowning, but mm, sliced and diced into sushi by boat propellors~ Far out, man. ...Though I'm still confused as to how the boy actually died. Did he drown first, and the boat was just overkill? What caused him to go under in the first place?

The conversation between Reiko and the bar guy was very curious indeed. Both of their memories are patchy, and the guy claims to have seen her recently... Wonder if this might tie back to the impression Kouichi's father had that his son had been in Yomiyama a year before. There is the possibility I've been hearing that she's really Kouichi's mom, and that would explain why she's still "single".

Next episode's preview is definitely intriguing. What's on the casette tape? Why are the dead making reappearances? (You can also see the nurse slumped on the bed in the hospital room.) Where's this mansion? Who's struck by lightning? Someone actually pointed out that this scene might be a flashback, since the character profiles don't seem to quite match ones we've seen so far. The boy's hair looks a little short to be Kouichi's. Although one wonders if it might have any relation to the creepy smile in the rain from the prologue (which we assumed was Kouichi's lower face)?

This is actually probably my favorite episode in terms of sheer pleasure derived. ^^; It was filler, but damn fine filler. Would certainly go back and re-watch it. =D

Talon87

02-29-2012, 12:46 AM

Talon: Least favorite. D:
Yuki: Most favorite! :D

I think we're watching the show for completely different reasons. XD But I'm glad that at least one of us got something out of it. =P This was just a bad week for me with anime. No HxH, Another was a bummer, and ... well, no, Mirai Nikki was good to me. :) For the first two-thirds, anyway. ^^;

Regarding the theory you'd heard about Reiko ...

It doesn't make sense for her to be Kouichi's mother given everything else.
we clearly see Ritsuko in the Class of 1972 yearbook picture, and no one remarks "OH MY GOD IT'S REIKO! 8O" (though they DO look similar ... but this is ANIME, and they're SISTERS ffs :lol:)
Kouichi's grandparents speak of both Ritsuko and Reiko
Kouichi's grandfather mourns for Ritsuko still
Reiko gets all "I HATE THAT STUPID BIRD >.<" in Episode 3 or whatever it was when Kouichi asks her "Why?" and she freaks out. No reason for her to behave like this if she is the one and only daughter of that family. Clearly, she's Reiko. Clearly, there was a Ritsuko. Clearly, she feels guilty for causing her sister's death.
etc, etc.
It's a cute theory, and it's clear that we have comrades elsewhere who are also thinking on their toes and trying to solve the mystery, but ... I don't think this is the most solid of theories. ^^; And that's putting it politely. Will eat my hat if it turns out to be correct.
It's funny you mention liking the soundtrack in the episode I least liked ... because I didn't even notice the soundtrack while watching. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I dunno, but ... lol, I didn't notice the music so I can't say whether it set the mood well and was pleasant to listen to or not. Will have to pay attention to it on a reviewing.

YUKI.N

02-29-2012, 12:57 AM

Bummer? I think you mean summer fun. ^~

Well, it turned out to be my highlight of a bad week for animé at least. XP No HxH as you said, you heard my thoughts on MN, and even Natsume was kinda lackluster IMO. =/ (not to mention Nisemono's filler was bleh, though Danshi was good-fair as usual)

Yeah, I agree the theory doesn't make much sense. But I guess it's the only leap to be made with the clues at hand so far.

Talon87

02-29-2012, 01:08 AM

Yeah, I agree the theory doesn't make much sense. But I guess it's the only leap to be made with the clues at hand so far.
I don't understand. You can't be talking about the show overall because obviously we've made many leaps using the many clues the show's provided us with. I don't think you can be talking about "Reiko's identity" either since, aside from the theory you shared, I've never heard anyone question her identity nor do I see any real reason to. I mean, by that same logic, you may as well argue that ...

... Chibiki is really Kouichi's father. Or that Mei is really Kouichi's sister. Or that Ms. Mikami is really Ritsuko.
I mean, you could argue a hundred and one different and crazy baseless theories but they'd only be just that: baseless. So ... you can't be talking about Reiko, then. Meaning ... back to my original question: what are you talking about? ^^; "It's the only leap to be made with the clues at hand" ... the leap to where from where?

Sorry to hear your anime-watching week sucked too. Yeah, this was kind of a dead week. No idea why. Really would have been nice if HxH had given us the next episode. Though ... I have to admit, I'm half-tempted to walk away from the show and let it blossom for 6+ months before coming back to it. ^_^; Just so I can see more episodes all at once! Watching a shounen series weekly is terrible. ^^; The last time I experienced this was right before Dattebayo dropped Naruto back in ... what would that have been? 2008? Surely no later than 2009. Yeah, it's been a while. Strike that. The last time I experienced it was with FMA:Brotherhood. Man oh man were those killer. ^^;

You know, I just realized ...

Imagine how terrible Reiko must feel right now. She was the chaperone for this trip to the beach. It was on her watch that that poor kid ran out into the ocean and got himself chopped up. How's she gonna explain this to his family? Damn. Bad enough she felt responsible for her sister's death, now she's gone and added someone else's kid to her list, too. Poor thing. :( It'll be interesting to see how she's handling this next episode. I sure hope she doesn't blame herself for it too badly.

YUKI.N

02-29-2012, 02:41 AM

I don't understand. You can't be talking about the show overall because obviously we've made many leaps using the many clues the show's provided us with. I don't think you can be talking about "Reiko's identity" either since, aside from the theory you shared, I've never heard anyone question her identity nor do I see any real reason to.

I had a feeling I should've said "information" instead of "clues". What I mean is that both Reiko's and Ritsuko's identities are mysteries at this point, and the only link we have to one is the other. The main crazy conclusion one might try to draw within that realm is that the two have been switched. I've harbored the thought for a while myself, but never bothered to mention it since it does seem so unlikely.

I have to admit, I'm half-tempted to walk away from the show and let it blossom for 6+ months before coming back to it. ^_^; Just so I can see more episodes all at once! Watching a shounen series weekly is terrible. ^^;

Aw. I've never experienced watching a shounen show weekly myself, this is my first time following one from the beginning. ^^; Only it's not the same since I obviously know what's going to happen. XP Guess I'll know what it feels like when we finally reach new material. >.>;

big bad birtha

02-29-2012, 03:47 AM

YUKI.N

02-29-2012, 04:15 AM

I have a hard time buying what's going on in this show, to be honest. I dunno, all of the details of this "curse" seems random and silly. I kinda hope old librarian or Suzaku's dad ends up being the killer, turning it into a murder mystery with a supernatural mask.

Another general after episode 3 spoiler Am I the only one who laughs at these deaths? Other than maybe the elevator one, they're mostly silly. During the last episode's death, I wanted someone to walk up to the teacher's dead body with his school book and say "I don't understand how to do this problem on the homework you gave us last night." This week...they were even starting to make fun of their own deaths, with them doing a dramatic stare-down with a huge truck passing by them.

Also, I was disappointed that a shark didn't eat the boy this episode.

Nah, you're not the only one laughing. The umbrella completely desensitized me to anything that comes after it. I'm having a grand time just anticipating what over-the-top stunt they'll pull next.

In fact, here are two of my other favorite parody images for fun:

http://i.imgur.com/Nop65.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/oZkoY.jpg

Edit- In continuation of the above:

Actually, I didn't perceive the staredown as the show making fun of itself. On the contrary, I think it's appropriate to be a little overly paranoid in that situation.

Personally, I'm fine with parodying the story as a work of fiction. But within its own context I do try to respect and treat the characters' actions and explanations behind them as serious business, regardless of how they'd hold up in reality.

Talon87

03-08-2012, 06:41 PM

Episode 09. Entertaining, solid in parts, ... and yet what a tease in others! =P :lol: More after the break.

The episode's first half felt very slow, almost fillery ... but then you had to realize, "Well, they're just trying to set everything up nice 'n' neat for the second half." Not much to say here other than a few important facts:
Chibiki introduces the knowledge that the boy who died last week had probably been suffering from a subarachnoid hemorrhage and had died (or had been in the process of dying) mid-swim. This doesn't make the motorboat accident any less grotesque, but it does help us to rule right back out the possibility that the curse now operates beyond Yomiyama's borders. Nope! =P Still limited to the city borders.
Earlier, we hear girls discussing the possibility of leaving town, only to realize that they can't because the curse (they now believe) follows you even beyond Yomiyama. This'll be important for the second half of the episode.
So then in that second half of the episode, the story really gets rolling. Teshigawara, Mochizuki, and Kouichi decide to try and find the clue that Mr. Matsunaga left behind for future generations. On their way to the school, they run into Ayano (the drama club girl we've seen quite a few times before) and Komu (the cutie we haven't seen too much of yet and whose name I had to just look up, lol). The two girls are heading home after having talked with Chibiki. They lie (imo =P) to the boys, telling them they were there asking for Drama Club advice. However, as we see later on in the episode, Ayano and her family try to make a break for it, packing their car up and leaving town. To me, this suggests that:
the two girls we heard talking in the beginning of the episode were Ayano and Komu
Ayano learned from Chibiki that the curse still only holds within the borders of Yomiyama
And that, given this, her plans to run away from Yomiyama were back on the moment she learned about what had happened at the beach probably being the result of an earlier accident that took place within Yomiyama.

So anyway, we then head to the old abandoned school and ... whaaaaaaat. Misaki is waiting for them inside!? :lol: How much more suspicious can she get? :lol: So now the party of four -- Teshigawara, Mochizuki, Sakakibara, and Misaki -- head upstairs and into the old Class 3-3 classroom. And in there, they find the cassette tape we've been wondering about since we first started watching this series. :o

The part with the cassette tape was pretty exciting. That stated, you just knew that they weren't going to get to hear the juicy details. XP I mean, Another has been very entertaining thus far, but it's also been ridiculously obvious in places, and Teshigawara ruining the tape was no exception. It's hard to believe the tape'd get caught like that in the first place, but that he'd then freak out and tug it so hard it snaps? :? C'mon. :lol: I'm curious to know what Mr. Matsunaga's sin is. We now know that the two students who died during the school trip died due to the curnemonon calamity, so I think we can rule out the murder-sacrifices and such things that some of you had been postulating about in earlier posts. Rape (one of your theories) is still on the table, but aside from that, I've really no idea what his sin could be (in relation to this class trip). As for what the solution proved to be, that too will be interesting to learn.

I'm still convinced that the way you end the curse is to get the ghost to realize that he's/she's a ghost. I'm also still holding tight to the theory that both Akazawa Izumi and Sakakibara Kouichi are the ghosts, Akazawa the original, Kouichi the surprise second. I think the author is guilty of the ol' double red herring trick where he's like "I'm going to make the truth really obvious ... so obvious they'll start to doubt it ... and then I'm even going to tell them 'It's not this!' so they'll be all 'I knew it! :) I knew that'd be too easy! =P' and then they'll be so surprised when I reveal that it really was what they had thought from the start! Mwahahaha! >3" But of course we won't be able to know anything for sure until the final episode finishes. Such is the nature of mystery stories.

The sneak peek makes me think that Teshigawara may be next week's victim. One, there's a rather tall male student who appears to have been shot through the head or something. (It's the one shown at 24m34s next to the tree.) Two, Teshi continues to play a big role next episode, it seems, given the snippet which shows up immediately before this one. Three, Izumi is shown just bawlin' at 24m36s. Even though I'm a shipper for Akazawa x Sakakibara =P, even I have to admit that the way she acts towards Teshigawara could just be her being such a ridiculous tsundere. I mean, we know that he likes her, so it's not hard to imagine that she'd have started to fall for him in return and thus be really shaken up over his death. The only problem is ... where and when she's crying (not in the woods, some time in the late afternoon) doesn't match up with the scene with the dead body (in the woods, at night), so ................ either she doesn't find out about his death until the next day, or else the dead body isn't Teshi's. (It could even be more flash back casualties from 1983 if we should continue to hear more from Mr. Matsunaga.) But yeah: Izumi's bawling seems to indicate either that she loses an immediate family member or else that Teshigawara dies. I guess it could always be one of her other female friends, but like ... Ayano just died last episode and I don't get the impression that Izumi would bawl that badly over Takako dying. So we'll see.
As we near the climactic finish, the next three weeks are certain to be unbearable. ^^; Considering they'll probably end Episode 11 with a ridiculous cliffhanger and then not fully explain things until the final episode (Episode 12) ...

YUKI.N

03-08-2012, 07:27 PM

BBB, I'm starting to agree with you the show is making fun of its own deaths. XP

Lol at the kid who died at his computer by runaway crane. Was that a jab at otaku?

Also found the explanation behind the boat kid's death kinda handwavey and ridiculous. Either he's really dumb or the cursomenon makes people act dumb.

Thoughts on Mr. Matsunaga's sin:

Did I say rape? When was that? I don't even recall. =x

I'm still not ruling out murder-sacrifice just yet. The events of the flashback made me consider that the bodies of the students are significant since they were left behind. Specifically, the death of the girl who fell off the cliff wasn't confirmed. Perhaps Matsunaga came across her broken body, still breathing, and silenced her then - though I can't fathom what reason he'd have to kill someone who's about to die at that point. Another possibility is that he did something to desecrate the bodies.

Thoughts on Teshi/next week:

Noooo, don't die! ;; Although I don't recall even seeing the preview, maybe I skipped it by accident. =x I would've thought Mochizuki would be in the most danger seeing as he's in charge of fixing the tape.

As for Teshi ruining it in the first place, I didn't expect to receive all the answers at this point either...

...After all, there's plenty of time to unravel the mysteries, we've still got a ways to-

As we near the climactic finish, the next three weeks are certain to be unbearable. ^^;

Huh?

Considering they'll probably end Episode 11 with a ridiculous cliffhanger and then not fully explain things until the final episode (Episode 12) ...

Wait, what? Another is only 12 episodes, really? I could've sworn it said 26 on MAL. *goes to check*

...Dang. =| That was fast. Now I'm really burning for answers. >O Darnit, Teshi!

Man, I'm gonna miss the crazy deaths after the show is over. =/ I thought we'd burn through half the class at least. ^^; Although maybe this means our main cast will have better chances of surviving. 83 C'mon, Teshi, you can make it! Just a few more episodes!

Chaotic

03-10-2012, 04:42 AM

I'm leaning towards the whole human sacrifice thing. Maybe he discovered who the dead one was, and killed them again.

Talon87

03-13-2012, 02:10 AM

When you make as many theories as I have, you're bound to hit paydirt with some of them and completely miss the mark with others. But insofar as I've hit paydirt, I'm :D'ing all over; and insofar as I was wrong, I'm like "Meh! =P Not important!" lol

Episode 10 is out. And it is good. ;-) The wait for Episodes 11 and 12 is going to be painful, painful, painful.

The episode opens with an amazing flashback scene that more or less confirms for us that one of the following has to be true:
Akazawa Izumi is the ghost
Sakakibara Kouichi is the ghost
Akazawa Izumi is the initial ghost and Sakakibara Kouichi is the second ghost
And the reason for this is pretty simple: Izumi lost her older brother in relation to the Class 3-3 deaths and, when she did, that was when she first met Kouichi. Remember I had mentioned before that, in an earlier episode, we saw an Akazawa in the Class of '96 who was among the deceased?

Note: Akazawa isn't exactly the most rare family name in the world, I'll grant you, but just FYI: on the class roster for 1996, a boy named Akazawa Kazuma is listed as one of the students who died that year. What if Akazawa Izumi is the younger sister of Akazawa Kazuma? I guess we'll find out eventually.
Well, it seems almost certain now that this is what's going on. Akazawa's older brother died in 1996 or 1997. Soon after, Sakakibara Kouichi moved back to Yomiyama. (This fits in with his dad thinking that Kouichi had been back for over a year now.) Kouichi and Izumi meet. (They may even have hit it off. :oops:) And then ...

... one of them died. We don't yet know who died. It might have been just Kouichi. It might have been just Akazawa. It might even have been both of them. But one of them died, and that explains why the two are reunited in Class 3-3 but neither has any memory of the other. (Or rather, Izumi has hazy memories and Kouichi's a blank slate.)
Going to leave that spoiler in its own box since it's so juicy. (And it feels so, so good to be right. 8) =P) But I'll move on with the rest of the episode discussion now:

I was shocked that we got to hear the rest of the tape and that the only thing missing from it was the name of the student who died in 1983. That's pretty impressive. Definitely didn't think we'd ever get to hear more about that again, let alone so early in the episode. And here ... we have Li'l Miss Yuki getting her own chance to stand in the sunshine with the second theory confirmation of the night:

The way to put a stop to the curse is to kill somebody.

But not just anybody: you have to kill the ghost themselves. And since there's no way to tell who the ghost is, this leads to a very terrible situation for our heroes ... one which Teshigawara seems to have awakened by the end of the episode. :|

We skip to dinner and Izumi totally rips into Misaki. It's kind of ironic when you consider that there's a 90% chance at this point that Izumi herself is the ghost. :lol: Then poor Wakui falls victim to the curnomenon calamity when, curse-affected, he stupidly forgets to pack an extra inhaler for the trip and brings one that was practically on empty before he left home. :doh: The poor kid doomed to die, Chibiki-sensei says "NOT ON MY WATCH! :evil:" and risks his own life to try and cheat the curnomenon and get Wakui-kun to a hospital before it's too late. We can only hope that Chibiki doesn't drive off the side of the mountain road or something. :|

LOL @ the hilarious sexual innuendo Misaki gives Kouichi when she invites him to her bedroom. Whether that was in the original novel or not, who knows, but I'm sure the otaku fanboys were HRNNNNGHing it up at that scene. :lol:

Interesting that we finally got to see the fabled photo from 1972. The boy didn't look familiar at all which means we can probably rule out that the ghost is Yomiyama Misaki back from the dead.

Misaki once again insists in this episode that Kouichi is not a ghost. We even get to see out of her green eye with her and look at Kouichi -- and he looks perfectly normal. To me, this is kinda silly since there's no way a glass eye should give you PERFECT vision. :| ^^; (I was thinking it was going to look like heat vision or something.) But whatever, fictional story, we'll roll with it. The fact that Misaki not only insists that Kouichi is not the ghost but that we even got to see it for ourselves ... if we can trust that we're not being duped once again :lol:, then this means that with 99.9% certainty Akazawa Izumi is this year's ghost. (See earlier spoiler box in this post.) 'Cause if it isn't Kouichi, and it therefore isn't the both of them, then it's her. Just her. Awwwww. :( Adorable tsuntsun ends up being not the red herring candidate but indeed the real ghost. (And since we called this ... what? Back in Episode 4!? :lol: I guess this means we've seen one too many Japanese mysteries. hahaha)

lol @ obvious tease tension builder when Kouichi keeps demanding Misaki tell him who the ghost is and, after stalling for what feels like an eternity, she opens her mouth to tell him and-- BOOM! Teshigawara starts knocking on the door like an elephant. :lol: So predictable, but nonetheless goddammit! hahaha

Uh oh. 8O It looks like Teshi may have murdered Mochizuki in cold blood. :( And if not Mochizuki, then some other student in Class 3-3. I didn't think Teshi would do such a thing. I'm sure Yuki's going to be gutted. Oh well, can't be helped. :? Now poor Teshigawara's a murderer. (Well, maybe Episode 11 will exonerate him yet. I'll stay the executioner's hand until next week ...)

The sneak peek for next week seems to suggest several things. One, that Teshi did kill somebody. Two, that he then snaps and either (1) tries to kill himself or else (2) tries to kill somebody else. (There's a bloody hand that reaches out for Akazawa's leg. One wonders if that's a dying Teshi doing that ...) We see Akazawa accompanying Kouichi as they enter somebody's room. We see some poor female with short hair getting blasted by a fireball. We see Ms. Mikami sitting all alone in some room. There's not too much to go off of here, but ... it's not looking good for either Teshigawara (as a murder suspect) or Akazawa (as "Another" candidate numero uno).

Oh, and before I forget: DAT CHANDELIER! :D :lol: We've been waiting for that sucker to show up all season long. :) Looks like it's finally arrived. If it doesn't come crashing down next episode, then I guess it'll do that in Episode 12.
Oh Yuki D: ... I just went back to watch the OP again to see if there were any clues I'd missed and ... D: ...

Remember that mysterious lunging figure in the woods? The one who's silhouetted and looks like he may be brandishing a knife? Remember how we thought we saw his reflection in some sort of glass box? How I said it might have been a streetcross sign? Well ... what if it's Mochizuki's camera's flash rectangle? D: ^^; If you look real close in the reflection, you can see what looks like either the gate to a shrine or else the gate to this summer retreat hostel. But yeah ... I wonder if Mochizuki was trying to take photos in the woods late at night (Lord knows why :?) and Teshi decided that that was suspicious --> "Mochizuki must be the ghost! 8O" --> and then Teshi decided to slash him. :(

YUKI.N

03-13-2012, 03:22 AM

Re: Akazawa and Kouichi

Given how Mei confirms her cousin was actually her twin (surprised you didn't comment on that), I still wonder if Kouichi might've had a secret twin. I plan to go back and re-examine that conversation.

I think we can both claim half credit for guessing the way to stop the curnomenon.

I did always believe it was a given that any method of removing "Another" would work, whether it be through self-realization or murder - but in the context of the show I figured killing a random person would be more dramatic. Plus Matsunaga didn't strike me as someone capable of finding out Another's identity on his own when no one else could. I see now an accident explains things, as well as the fact all records of Another's existence that year were erased.

Speaking of sexual innuendo, LOL at the scene where...

Mei pushes Misaki onto the bed. XP Close cousins indeed.

I find the eye explanation a convenient cop-out at this point, but meh. It's the obvious answer we've been expecting.

Re: Teshi

I theorized from the beginning he may be the type to lose his cool and off someone in a panic, so I'm not surprised. (Just disappointed.) I initially thought he might've killed Kazami though. He was seen yelling on a balcony, and I thought maybe he got into a heated argument like Matsunaga, rashly accusing and doubting his long-time "friend" (or maybe the other way around). Kazami was seen climbing the stairs earlier with a determined look on his face. The body at the end seemed to have fallen off a balcony, and the lightning flash revealed a boy with short, dark hair.

You may be onto something with the camera lens though. However, I don't think Teshi is the knife assailant. There was a shot of someone sharpening the blade on a grindstone. I doubt Teshi has the guts or wits to premeditate murder in this manner. It looked like he was simply lounging around on his bed earlier. I believe he simply got into a scuffle with Kazami, and accidentally pushed him off. Kazami(?) might not even be dead. With such heavy foreshadowing, not to mention this being Teshi we're talking about, it could just be a false alarm.

Talon87

03-13-2012, 03:44 AM

I think we can both claim half credit for guessing the way to stop the curnomenon.

After boasting so much about the other prediction seemingly being confirmed, I completely forgot to mention this. But yes, you're right:

Talon's theory: "They have to get the ghost to realize that they're a ghost."
Yuki's (or Chaotic's or somebody else's) theory: "They have to sacrifice somebody."
The correct answer: They have to kill the ghost.

I think the sacrifice people were closer to the mark, but you're right that my heavy emphasis on the solution having to do with knowing the ghost's identity has proven right too. It's just ... my theorized method was totally wrong. :oops:
Re: Teshi

I theorized from the beginning he may be the type to lose his cool and off someone in a panic, so I'm not surprised. (Just disappointed.) I initially thought he might've killed Kazami though. He was seen yelling on a balcony, and I thought maybe he got into a heated argument like Matsunaga, rashly accusing and doubting his long-time "friend" (or maybe the other way around). Kazami was seen climbing the stairs earlier with a determined look on his face. The body at the end seemed to have fallen off a balcony, and the lightning flash revealed a boy with short, dark hair.

You may be onto something with the camera lens though. However, I don't think Teshi is the knife assailant. There was a shot of someone sharpening the blade on a grindstone. I doubt Teshi has the guts or wits to premeditate murder in this manner. It looked like he was simply lounging around on his bed earlier. I believe he simply got into a scuffle with Kazami, and accidentally pushed him off. Kazami(?) might not even be dead. With such heavy foreshadowing, not to mention this being Teshi we're talking about, it could just be a false alarm.
This is a good point. To be quite honest ...

I was wondering why they even bothered to bring Kazami back after his ridiculously long absence from the series. I had written him off at this point as being one of the students who had left town. Were it not for the opening scene to the episode which strongly hints at Akazawa and/or Kouichi being the ghost, I'd have suspected that they were hiding the true culprit under the radar and had brought him back out now that he was needed. Or, more likely, I'd have suspected him of being the red herring and would have still supported my Akazawa & Kouichi theory. =P :lol:

In any event, you may well be right: he's back because he's who Teshi accidentally (?) pushed off the balcony. But if you're right, it begs the question as to who kills Mochizuki. Which, uh, brings us to your pet theory ¬_¬; ...

What if Kouichi really does go ebil? What if he's the one who kills Mochizuki? It seems unlikely for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is that the person whetting the knife was shown doing so while Kouichi was talking with Mei. But what if that was not concurrent? What if Kouichi really is the nocturnal slasher from the OP? I forget where we saw Creepy Kouichi, but it would help to locate that scene and to rewatch it. To see if where Creepy Kouichi is standing can be discerned. To see if it might possibly be this summer retreat.

However, I hope/do not think that that's going to happen. I have to admit, I'll be pretty disappointed if it does. I'm more a fan of Kouichi remaining the sane, rational hero we've seen him be this entire time.

I also don't want to see Akazawa be murdered nor commit suicide. :( I mean, I don't want to see her die period! Remember how I've been saying all season long how her death is probably gonna get me all teary-eyed the most? :( So even if I've long suspected that she's the ghost, I've ... I dunno, I've always hoped that the way to cure the curse would be something relatively innocuous to the ghost (like simply getting them to realize that they're the dead person) and that they'd then fade away while tearfully saying their goodbyes to their friends and loved ones. A kiss between a departing Akazawa and Kouichi would have been nice. :oops:

Yuki: You are SO SAPPY. =P

But instead, it looks like she's going to either (1) be murdered, (2) commit suicide to spare the others, (3) be killed by her own curnomenon's effects (somehow), or (4) die in some other way. REGARDLESS, it's looking like death is inevitable for the adorable tsuntsun. :( So that makes me sad. *sigh*

Place your bets now for who's going to die by chandelier. ;-) My bet goes to ... Takako, the girl with the glasses and the short brown hair. Only reason being I don't see Kouichi, Mei, Izumi, Teshigawara, Mochizuki, or Ms. Mikami dying that way, and you've persuaded me going into Episode 11 that Kazami may have just died by being pushed off the balcony by Teshi. So that leaves me with Glasses Girl #1 (the pale nerd with the long black pigtails) or Glasses Girl #2 (Takako). And I've arbitrarily picked Glasses Girl #2. =P :lol:

YUKI.N

03-13-2012, 04:16 AM

After boasting so much about the other prediction seemingly being confirmed, I completely forgot to mention this. But yes, you're right:

Talon's theory: "They have to get the ghost to realize that they're a ghost."
Yuki's (or Chaotic's or somebody else's) theory: "They have to sacrifice somebody."
The correct answer: They have to kill the ghost.

I think the sacrifice people were closer to the mark, but you're right that my heavy emphasis on the solution having to do with knowing the ghost's identity has proven right too. It's just ... my theorized method was totally wrong. :oops:

Like I said...

I think your method is a perfectly valid way of stopping the curnomenon too. Maybe it's just never been achieved before - or maybe it has, considering it's just been demonstrated that once Another is removed one way or another, all the memories associated with him/her fade away as well. If you know the ghost's identity though, automatically moving to murder doesn't seem to make logical sense. Obviously you'd try to negotiate peacefully first, unless you're really desperate. Neither of us anticipated an unintentional killing, believing the ghost to be exempt from such accidents typically activated by the curnomenon itself.

Re: Kazami

After focusing on Teshi so much, I was inclined to lean more towards Kazami being the ghost instead. But the fact he has been completely out of the picture for so long does seem to rule him out as a candidate.

Re: Creepy Kouichi

The scene is 01:15 in the prologue. It certainly looks like he's standing in the woods. In the rain. Hey, isn't there a thunderstorm going on right now?

Re: Akazawa

I still feel like it's too early to call her out just yet. I think any obvious path they try to lead us to before the final episode is inevitably the wrong one. So perhaps there's hope (for you). XP

Re: Chandelier

I guess I'll arbitrarily pick Glasses Girl #1 then. ^~

On a somewhat related note: Checking through the cameos again, I haven't been able to pinpoint the scene of Teshi yelling from the balcony, since the positioning might put a damper in my theory considering he'd have to be yelling at someone already below. However, I did notice Mochizuki seemed to spot something outside the window that arrested his attention.

Perhaps that's what leads him into the woods to investigate, where he meets his death.

Edit- Found the scene. Ho ho, perhaps I'm right after all. Teshi's still in the room when he's yelling. He's just facing directly towards the outside, arguing at eye level. Also, right before that scene...

There's a dark image of what appear's to be a chef's back inside a kitchen/dining room. So I think it's safe to assume either the knife is not specifically being prepared for any purpose other than to cook, or we've got a crazed killer chef on our hands.

Shuckle

03-19-2012, 02:10 AM

Holy carp! I'm behind! D:

I need to get watching. I'm only on #7 now!

Talon87

03-19-2012, 02:15 AM

Well, you've got a lot to look forward to then. :) Try to pace yourself. Hell, if I were in your position, I might even try to put off watching 11 until mid-to-late week. That way, I could have minimum delay between 11 and 12. But if you do decide to watch all the episodes you're backlogged on right now, I'm sure Yuki and I and the others won't mind! :)

big bad birtha

03-20-2012, 06:31 AM

Do you like your middle school boys rare or extra crispy?

Talon87

03-20-2012, 06:39 AM

Yuki and I talked and talked and talked this one into the ground on Skype. ^^; (Apologies!) But yes, we've both seen Episode 11 as well. It was ...

Yuki says: "Something."
Talon says: Not sure if great, terrible, or some combination of the two.

It definitely came out of nowhere, that much I can say with confidence. :lol:

And according to Yuki, according to people who've read the book, this episode more than any other that's come before it took many liberties with the source material. So if you liked what you saw, give three cheers to the staff writers at P.A.Works! And if you don't like what you saw, give 'em a hearty boo urns for deviating from the source material. Me? I have no clue. :lol: It just ...

... all hell broke loose this episode and out of fucking nowhere too. :lol:
On to Episode 12!

big bad birtha

03-20-2012, 07:48 AM

The answer you're looking for is that Another 11 was funny. I spent most of that damn episode laughing.

There were so many damn silly deaths that episode. It had the girl doing a gymnastic pose after falling to her death. It had a boy suddenly burnt to crisp with no warning whatsoever. It had a guy kill the teacher with a fucking mop. It also had a guy killing his best friend because he had a bad memory. All while this was happening, Misaki kept a "meh" expression.

YUKI.N

03-20-2012, 05:25 PM

Do you like your middle school boys rare or extra crispy?

Well done!

For all my nitpicking, I enjoyed this episode. It was because there was so much ridiculousness that it's easy to just sit back and take it all in stride.

All while this was happening, Misaki kept a "meh" expression.

What's even funnier is that she still managed to show a shocked expression at times, while Kouichi was uncharacteristally calm throughout the whole thing.

P.S. If you want to see a real silly reaction face, check out Teshi's at 9:11: O_O

YUKI.N

03-20-2012, 07:07 PM

Talon87

03-20-2012, 07:26 PM

Double-posting because I think I may have stumbled on something important?

Still putting stock in Knox man's (you know who I'm talking about, Talon) claim that there is a major clue to Another's identity which is made "obvious" by episode 10, I've been poring over it repeatedly. I don't know if this is it, but I've just realized...

Didn't Mei say that "the color of death" is faint in those with serious illnesses or injuries? Wouldn't Kouichi's lung condition count as a "serious illness"? How come he appeared perfectly normal to her then?

Pneumothorax is when your lung collapses, usually because the parietal pleura has been punctured in some manner (e.g. knife stabbing, gunshot wound, fractured rib). It can happen "spontaneously" due to infection or other chronic ailments. But unless it happens bilaterally -- in which case you need to be placed in the modern equivalent of an iron lung ^^; -- you usually just wait for the pleura to heal and then that lung is able to re-expand on its own. Kouichi seems to have some sort of congenital defect he inherited from his father that predisposes him to these pneumothorax incidents: but seeing as he wasn't on a ventilator or anything of the sort, we can assume that only one of his lungs collapsed. Thus, he wasn't really in serious serious danger of dying. It's not good to have a collapsed lung -- the patient definitely feels like they're struggling to get as much air as they normally would (I WONDER WHY) -- but you usually won't die from it, certainly not with modern medical assistance.

You can read more about the different causes of pneumothorax here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumothorax#Cause).

tl;dr it's conceivable that, depending on the author's impressions about pneumothorax from the medical literature, Kouichi either ought to have the aura of death about him or he ought not to. And so ... we can't really say much more until the story wraps up.

Shuckle

03-20-2012, 11:54 PM

Well done!
I lol'd in spit of myself, though I fried to keep from laughing.

Talon87

03-26-2012, 11:24 PM

Just watched Episode 12. It was ... good and okay and ehhh all wrapped into one. ^_^; I didn't care for how everyone just completely lost their minds over the past two episodes, but I definitely appreciated the tugging at my heartstrings that they did both at the halfway point and at the final climax.

When Akazawa died, that was really, really sad. What a terrible way to go. To finally remember the boy you loved ... and for him to not clearly remember you ... all while having been impaled by tens of shards of glass. Just awful. :( I didn't actually cry, but like I told Yuki in an earlier PM, I wish that I had! :lol: ^_^;

But what really emotionally got to me was the scene with Mikami-sensei -- or should we say Reiko!? 8O -- trying to crawl out from underneath the debris and pleaing with Kouichi not to murder her. She looked so beautiful even in her final moments but here she also looked so pathetic and helpless. :( The way her arms were flailing was like the classic body language of Japanese ghost stories. Sad stuff. Again, though, no tears or anything. Purely cerebral in its sadness, I guess.

Kazami going apeshit and killing a lot of people was blah. I guess "he deserved" to die, then, but really, I don't feel like any of these poor kids deserved to die. In fact ...

... it was pretty shitty of Mei to keep it a secret that Ms. Mikami was the ghost after she saw that the countermeasures weren't working and that people were dying. Yes, Kouichi is your friend. And yes, you clearly wish he was more than just a friend. And yes, you can tell that Reiko means a lot to Kouichi, who never got to know his real mom. But holy shit, girl, you need to tell someone that you have reason to believe that Ms. Mikami is the other. Whether it's old man Chibiki, whether it's Akazawa, whether it's your mom, you need to tell somebody so that they can try to look into it, if at all possible, and try to figure out how to deal with it. You could say (fairly) that they wouldn't have even known what to do to poor Reiko until after they found the cassette tape, but even then I would say, "Okay. You're at the summer retreat. You just heard the rest of the tape. You've just learned the grim truth that the only way to end the curnomenon early is to kill the extra person. And you know who that extra person is. So even if you don't have the heart to kill 'em yourself, you need to go out now and tell Chibiki-sensei what you just discovered. And tell him your suspicions. And let him handle it." I dunno. I don't want to put too much blame at Mei's feet since ultimately a lot of this is the curnomenon's fault, not hers, but still: I feel like to at least a partial extent the deaths of every single student at that summer retreat are on her hands, especially those who died after she ran into Ms. Mikami and clearly had an opportunity to do something about this. I guess this brings me to another point ...

... which is, would you be able to kill somebody if there was a high but uncertain likelihood that they were causing a lot of deaths? And if that likelihood was all based (ALL based) on circumstantial evidence and hazy memories? Nothing concrete, nothing physical you can show to others, nothing solid enough by which to persuade them? I'm not sure I would. If I were in Kouichi's shoes, (1) I'm almost 100% certain I would not have been able to kill Reiko then and (2) I'm 70+% certain I would not have gotten out of the way for Mei, even if it meant risking my own life. Sure, "all's well that ends well," but you can't count on that when you're in the act of actually killing the person you believe to be the extra. In that moment, you are a murderer. In that moment, you are ending someone's life and you have no solid evidence to prove that you're killing the right person. I'm not sure it's fair to distinguish between what Kouichi did and what Kazami or Tatsuko or the other murderer-students did. Mei remembered seeing Ms. Mikami get murdered, sure, but Kouichi only remembered his grandfather mourning and muttering both girls' names. Aside from that, what we saw in his flashbacks was nothing but evidence that Ms. Mikami was actually Reiko -- evidence meant to satisfy us, the readers/viewers at home, but nothing new to him of course. He didn't recall a funeral for Reiko. He didn't recall anything of the sort. The closest he came was remembering (and I don't even see how he could have remembered this since he wasn't there for it :?) his grandparents purchasing the myna bird a year and a half ago. That's as close as Kouichi's memories got to condemning Reiko as the extra. All he really was going off of when he ended her life was the testimony of one strange little girl. And then down the pickax fell. Lucky for them, they were right. But it was still ridiculously sad. :( Poor Reiko.
Overall, I feel like Another was a pretty good show. And so ... I guess it's Review Time.

Plot: 7/10. It was a decent enough mystery story. A little silly at times and not too amazing of a mystery, but pretty good nonetheless. Definitely worth checking out if you like mysteries and you like anime.

Characters: 8/10. I gave this a 9/10 at first but that feels maybe a mite too generous, I dunno. In any event, the characters were well done. Sure, they were kinda tropey, but they were very exemplary in their tropishness. I enjoyed them.

Animation: 10/10. Very good animation. The color, the lusciousness, the physics, all of it. Very well done.

Music: 7/10. It does the bare minimum it needs to do: provide pleasant ambient music for most of the episode and then provide tense, exciting music for the tense, exciting climaxes. Not a big fan of either the OP or the ED, will not be getting their CDs. Probably won't bother with the show's OST either.

Replay Value: 3/10 to 7/10. It's always hard to say with a mystery. It could be as low as a 3/10 because, let's face it, a lot of the fun in watching a murder mystery is trying to figure out who the culprit is and once you know that, well, you know it and it removes a lot of the suspense and intrigue. On the other hand, it could be as high as a 7/10, especially on the second viewing specifically, as you not only re-enjoy what was otherwise a well-presented story but you specifically look for any and all clues that might have tipped you off as to the ghost's identity. So I dunno, this one's tough to say.

OVERALL: 7/10. I liked the show, but the final two episodes did the story more harm than good in my eyes. Probably would have been a generous 8/10 before them, but now I can safely say that this show gets a solid 7/10. It was a good show, and a 7/10 ought to fairly reflect that.