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Old 01-25-2012, 11:13 AM   #1
lilboocorsola
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Sableye Another


26 years ago, in a third-year classroom of a middle school, there was a charming honors student who was good at sports and popular with her classmates. When she suddenly died, her classmates decided to carry on as if she was still alive until graduation. In spring of 1998, Kouichi Sasakibara transfers to his new school. He can sense something frightening in the atmosphere of his new class, a secret none of them will talk about. At the center of it is a beautiful girl named Mei Misaki. Kouichi is immediately drawn to her mysterious aura, but then he begins to realize that no one else in the class is aware of her presence.

Summary Source: Anime News Network and MyAnimeList, with edits made by me
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Old 01-25-2012, 11:13 AM   #2
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Kouichi Sakakibara: The new transfer student into Yomiyama Kita Middle School's third year's third class. Because of his father's work, he has come to city of Yomiyama, his mother's hometown. Due to a lung condition, he spends his first month there in hospital. He is 15 years old and the only son in the Sakakibara family. His mother, who also attended Yomiyama Kita Middle School, supposedly passed away 15 years ago after giving birth to him.



Mei Misaki: A mysterious girl Kouichi meets while in the hospital. She is in the same class as him, a 3rd year student at Yomiyama Kita Middle School. Her left eye is always covered by an eye patch. She has a mysterious presence and is always sketching alone.

Character bios and images taken from Anime News Network and MyAnimeList, with edits made by me
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Old 01-26-2012, 03:21 PM   #3
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Just watched the first episode. Frustratingly confusing in the first half, but in the second half things started to pick up. Probably won't say much else before pressing onward other than that the moment I heard the first three or so notes of the OP, I was like, "This already sounds like Ali Project. Watch this be an Ali Project song." And sure enough I was right. A few other things ...

Animation: You can definitely see shadows of the Hanasaku Iroha cast's faces in these new characters. And the animations, both the foreground and the background art, are amazing.

Voice Actors: Yuki told me the other day that Ibuki Fuuko (Clannad) / Yayoi (Natsu no Arashi)'s voice actress showed up here. She was right! What a cutie. Sure do hope she isn't either a villain or an early casualty. But I also noticed some other all-star voices. Couldn't place most of them, but the tight-laced leader of the boys, the one who visited the main character in the hospital, is totally Sunohara (Clannad) / Shinpachi (Gintama)'s voice actor. He's doing a good job trying to sound unlike his typecast voice but he's got a natural timbre to his voice that's so distinctive and that he just can't mask. I wonder what a high-budget project this one must have been. o.o
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Old 01-26-2012, 04:51 PM   #4
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Just finished Episode 03. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!?

Spoiler: show
FUUKO! ;_;

All episode long, I was waiting for Yuki's gory moment to show up. Nothing, nothing, nothing ...! Finally we reach the final 30 seconds of the episode and ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE! Why did the glasses girl burst out of the classroom like that? Why did she look so terrified when she saw Kouichi? Why did that freak accident take place?

And why did P.A. Works have to animate it so graphically? >_< Snuff fetishists will be jerking off to that one for months, I'm sure. >_< Man. That was just awful. All the while left wondering, did it go through her eye and into her brain? Did it go through her neck? Did it puncture somewhere else? And all the while realizing, it's not like it matters! Because she was destroyed either way! >_<

So, as a ghost story, the show's kinda interesting, but they're ducking around stalling for time too much. It was obvious from the first episode that Mei was a ghost yet they only just revealed it now in Episode 03. Just as obvious is that she is the girl from the legend -- yet this fact still has yet to be formally revealed. But there are so many other things we should like to know. Why does the family parrot cry, "Why, Rei-chan!?" Did Auntie Reiko have something to do with Kouichi's mother's, Ritsuko's, death? Why won't anybody clue Kouichi in -- not even his own family? Why would they allow their own flesh and blood to move back to this cursed town? Why was the tsuntsun missing from school that one day? What is the rest of the legend? Why do the others act like Misaki Mei is sinister but she seems nice? Who is Fujioka Misaki (allegedly Misaki Mei's cousin)? A former classmate of 3-3's? Why doesn't the nurse seem as phased by all of this as the rest of the village? How do dolls factor into this? What can Misaki's eye do? Why did the Misaki look-alike doll have two green eyes instead of only one green eye and the other socket empty? (Who keeps a doll in a glass coffin anyway!?) See what I mean? Just so many questions already presented and sadly we're probably not going to get the answers very quickly or else the show'd be over in just one or two more episodes. *sigh*

Glad I waited to watch this until there were at least three subbed episodes out. Very smart move, if I may say so.
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Old 01-26-2012, 07:08 PM   #5
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Aha, an opportunity to basically copy over my post. I already theorized on a bunch of the points you brought up:

Spoiler: show
So what's under the eyepatch is... A green eye. Okay. A doll's eye, apparently. There's a doll that looks like her, and its right eye is green while the left is covered? Coincidence? Seems a bit too obvious.

I get the feeling the others actually can see Misaki, but are pretending not to for some reason. Why else would poor glasses girl get so scared and run away? People seem to think that Misaki appears to those before their death, but the other guy with glasses also seemed to sense her presence on the roof... Don't tell me he's next. (Though it might make sense he's the next to go, since it was hinted he liked the girl but didn't get a chance to confess before she died. Sucks, man.)

I bet the phrase the Myna bird keeps repeating is vitally important. Perhaps it witnessed a murder? (Edit- was also speculating Reiko might've killed her sister, but didn't want to accuse her at this point) MC's mom must have somehow been related to these strange occurrences, considering how his classmates associate his name with "death".

Expect the nurse to die at some point. Or reveal she's actually behind everything. ...Maybe she's the doll-maker?


Also, in regards to the last scene:

Spoiler: show
It definitely pierced her throat. There was a graphic close-up of it protruding from the nape and squirting blood. -.-

See my other spoiler where I explain I have a severe paranoia of anything even touching my neck. If it had gone through her eye or any other part of the body I would've been okay, but this just freaks me out beyond belief. =/ Still walking around with my head down most of the time, especially on the stairs. >.>;
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Old 01-26-2012, 07:39 PM   #6
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I have to admit, I already read all of your old posts and was hoping for something more in your reply. ^^; But I can see that you want your points addressed before you'll address mine, so ...

Spoiler: show
1. It exited out the nape. That says nothing for where it entered. Could have been the mouth, could have been the throat, could even still have been the eye (given that force and that sharpness). Like I mentioned, it doesn't really matter.

2. I also have an irrational fear of neck incisions. Impromptu tracheostomies make me squeamish while thoracic, abdominal, perineal, and limb surgeries don't make me bat an eyelash. But I don't seem to be quite as bad as you, poor thing. ^^; Sounds like that scene was positively traumatic for you.

3. The doll has two green eyes. One always shows, the other was revealed when Mei brushed its bangs aside.

4. Parrots are known for "parroting" what they hear, not putting words to what they see. The parrot is likely parroting what was said by either:
- Ritsuko as she was murdered by Reiko, questioning why; or
- Kouichi's grandmother after she learned that Reiko had abandoned Ritsuko to the curse
Those are my top two (mutually exclusive) guesses.

5. Misaki specifically declares that nobody else can see her. Since the kids visibly react when Kouichi is with her, this either means that you're right and she's lying or that you're wrong and the kids' reactions signify something else. We won't know till next week at the soonest. The glasses girl might have possibly just been reacting to seeing Kouichi talking to a corner of the hall with nobody there. The glasses boy might have furrowed his brows at the roof not because he saw Mei there but because he remembered from stories past that Misaki Mei liked to hang out on the roof. (The sign forbidding kids from going on the roof suggests that it's off-limits and so Glasses Boy can easily put two and two together: that if Kouichi looked up at the roof, did a double-take, and then ran back inside, that he probably saw Mei on the roof. It doesn't mean Glasses Boy saw her too.) Or maybe Glasses Girl did see Misaki Mei just before she died -- but maybe that was only her very first time. Maybe legend says that if you see the girl with the red eye and an eyepatch that you'll die soon after. We'll just have to wait and see.

6. If this were a Western horror film, the hospital nurse would totally die before all's said and done. But this is Japanese horror and, at least so far, the nurse is pretty disconnected from the shitstorm. This is analogous to the Grudge where only people who go to the house get screwed, not friends or coworkers who talk to you elsewhere in the real world. The nurse never met Misaki, never went to the basement, etc. She also doesn't seem to have a connection to this school, given her relaxed attitude about telling Kouichi that the deceased's name was Misaki. I could be wrong, but I'm going to bet against you and bet that the nurse is neither a villain nor an eventual victim.

There. Now it's your turn.
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Old 01-26-2012, 08:10 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Spoiler: show
3. The doll has two green eyes. One always shows, the other was revealed when Mei brushed its bangs aside.
Right, yeah. I vaguely recalled that later but got confused by another commentor. My bad.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Spoiler: show
4. Parrots are known for "parroting" what they hear, not putting words to what they see. The parrot is likely parroting what was said by either:
- Ritsuko as she was murdered by Reiko, questioning why; or
- Kouichi's grandmother after she learned that Reiko had abandoned Ritsuko to the curse
Those are my top two (mutually exclusive) guesses.
I know how parrots behave. Your first guess is the same as mine, though I had forgotten about the grandmother. What "curse" are you referring to exactly?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Spoiler: show
5. Misaki specifically declares that nobody else can see her. Since the kids visibly react when Kouichi is with her, this either means that you're right and she's lying or that you're wrong and the kids' reactions signify something else. We won't know till next week at the soonest. The glasses girl might have possibly just been reacting to seeing Kouichi talking to a corner of the hall with nobody there. The glasses boy might have furrowed his brows at the roof not because he saw Mei there but because he remembered from stories past that Misaki Mei liked to hang out on the roof. (The sign forbidding kids from going on the roof suggests that it's off-limits and so Glasses Boy can easily put two and two together: that if Kouichi looked up at the roof, did a double-take, and then ran back inside, that he probably saw Mei on the roof. It doesn't mean Glasses Boy saw her too.) Or maybe Glasses Girl did see Misaki Mei just before she died -- but maybe that was only her very first time. Maybe legend says that if you see the girl with the red eye and an eyepatch that you'll die soon after. We'll just have to wait and see.
Fair points. It could go either way. As you said, we're not going to get any more answers or even clues until next week, so there's not much else to go on at the moment. However, I have thought of another theory to throw out there...

Spoiler: show
Maybe Kouichi's mother was the student who first claimed Misaki was still alive? Could the two have been friends? (Or enemies? Usually if someone's claimed to be that perfect and popular, there's always at least one person who hates their guts...)
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Old 01-26-2012, 08:49 PM   #8
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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 ...
  1. 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
  2. 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.
  3. 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! "
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! " 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 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.

Last edited by Talon87; 01-26-2012 at 08:51 PM.
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Old 01-26-2012, 09:42 PM   #9
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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 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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
  1. 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.
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Old 01-26-2012, 09:57 PM   #10
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Yeah. I think these two points are connected somehow:
  1. The fact that the tsuntsun class exorcist feels like she recognizes Kouichi.
  2. 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? So whoever wrote that wasn't listening properly. ^^; 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.
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Old 01-27-2012, 05:14 PM   #11
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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:
Spoiler: show
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).
Spoiler: show
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? " 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.
Spoiler: show
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. I only meant to watch the first few scenes but before I knew it, another Talon essay.

Last edited by Talon87; 01-27-2012 at 05:20 PM.
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Old 01-27-2012, 07:37 PM   #12
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First, they show a lot of scenes and images which probably have something to do with how the students die. I say this because:
Spoiler: show
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.

Spoiler: show
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.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
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.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
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).
Spoiler: show
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...

Spoiler: show
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.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
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.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
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? " 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?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
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.
Spoiler: show
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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
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?

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
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...

Spoiler: show
It's impossible to understand the relation now, but it will be explained.
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Old 01-28-2012, 02:43 AM   #13
Talon87
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Quote:
Originally Posted by YUKI.N View Post
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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by YUKI.N View Post
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.)

Quote:
Originally Posted by YUKI.N View Post
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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by YUKI.N View Post
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...

Spoiler: show
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.
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Old 01-30-2012, 09:40 PM   #14
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Having an umbrella fight on an elevator = overkill

I wonder when a shark will come out of someone's toilet and eat them?
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Old 01-30-2012, 09:47 PM   #15
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Prediction for how next week's episode will end:

Spoiler: show
Glasses boy dies via escalator


Will discuss speculation and stuff once Talon catches up.
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Old 01-31-2012, 02:01 AM   #16
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"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)

Spoiler: show
"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. 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. She's going to die at some point."

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

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! >_< What is up with that? Are these guys over at P.A.Works guro fetishists or something? ^^; The way they showed her face smashing down into the floor was just ... come on, guys. >_<

Speculation time!

(spoilers for Episode 4 inside)
Spoiler: show
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.

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!? " 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). 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 , 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, 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 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. Here's another version 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.

Last edited by Talon87; 01-31-2012 at 01:13 PM.
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Old 01-31-2012, 03:31 PM   #17
lilboocorsola
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Spoiler: show
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. She's going to die at some point."
Spoiler: show
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.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Spoiler: show
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! >_< What is up with that? Are these guys over at P.A.Works guro fetishists or something? ^^; The way they showed her face smashing down into the floor was just ... come on, guys. >_<
Heh. I practically yawned at that scene because...

Spoiler: show
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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
(spoilers for Episode 4 inside)
Spoiler: show
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.
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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Spoiler: show
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.

Spoiler: show
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.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Spoiler: show
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!? " 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). 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.
Spoiler: show
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.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
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.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
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'.
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Old 01-31-2012, 04:22 PM   #18
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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:
Spoiler: show
... 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.
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Old 02-06-2012, 09:02 PM   #19
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Wow! 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.

Spoiler: show
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 ...
Spoiler: show
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.
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.)
  4. 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.
  5. 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 , 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! )

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.

Spoiler: show
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:
  1. convince Akazawa Izumi that she's the ghost of a former Class 3-3 student
  2. 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.

Last edited by Talon87; 02-06-2012 at 09:46 PM.
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Old 02-07-2012, 02:06 PM   #20
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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 voilŕ: TOTALLY CALLED IT. 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.

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

image

So what about him?

Spoiler: show
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. I want to see if I'm right."

Quote:
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!

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. We are not your usual group of anime watchers, are we?

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

Spoiler: show
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. 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! She wasn't the ghost!" and then Level 3 is "Double gotcha! She really was the ghost! " 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.

Last edited by Talon87; 02-07-2012 at 02:32 PM.
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Old 02-07-2012, 02:42 PM   #21
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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...

Spoiler: show
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.
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Old 02-07-2012, 02:59 PM   #22
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Originally Posted by YUKI.N View Post
Just want to remark on something that confused me about the episode...

Spoiler: show
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.
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Old 02-07-2012, 03:09 PM   #23
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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?
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Old 02-07-2012, 03:36 PM   #24
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Quote:
Originally Posted by YUKI.N View Post
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.

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Originally Posted by YUKI.N View Post
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. 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.
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Old 02-08-2012, 11:08 PM   #25
lilboocorsola
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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
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.

Spoiler: show
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