[totoum]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

I can think of a number of ways that doesn't sound plausible

Like what?

Now, to further extend that train of thought, I would say that this year's Other is almost certainly a boy, not a girl.That would rule out Izumi as a suspect, along with Reiko and Ms Mikami. Consider this: the name of the Other in Matsunaga's year consistently cannot be heard in the audio record, and we know now that it was a boy Matsunaga accidentally "killed" that year, thus putting the extra person back into the grave and stopping further deaths in his class.

It also means that the Other of 1983 has returned to haunt the Class of 98. Whoever this person is, he would be someone who died before 1983.

While it is said that all traces of the Another come back once the year is gone it is also said that all traces of the Another from the year it came back is erased.
So I don't think the reason they can't hear the name is that he's come back,but that the all traces of his appearance that year got erased.

A couple of other random thoughts:
(1)
I think I now know why the ostracism counter-measure works, even if I were to disregard my now debunked theory about just assigning 29 students to the class the year before. We've already established that ostracism is a form of "social death"; the person who doesn't "exist" is as good as "dead" in the eyes of the world.

Since it's now established that killing the "Other" effectively stops the phenomenon for the rest of the year, ostracism "works" because it plays out like a proxy for murder — but only if the "social death" is inflicted before the real deaths occur.

That's what Mei speculated in episode 5

(2)
You know, I wished at least one of the students had thought of taking along a polaroid camera for instant photos...

It would appear that you don't need a special eye to see the "extra", as the original Misaki clearly looked out of place even to normal eyes. So... if you really need to identify the Other, simply take a class photo at the beginning of the year, not at graduation.

The huge difference is that the original Misaki wasn't an "extra" like all the ones that followed.He was invisible to the naked eye,he just appeared in the picture.That's has nothing to do with the situation the class is in now.
Taking a picture couldn't make the extra "appear",it already has a physical appearance.

(3) How is it that Mei could see through her glass eye? It's an inorganic construct. How could it possibly be sending visual signals to her brain?

I've always thought that Mei sees through her right eye, and that the glass eye superimposes another layer to her vision, allowing her to identify the dying and the dead. But, in this episode, she clearly shows that she can actually "see" through the glass eye alone. Wut? How's that possible? Is this something voodoo I have to accept at face value, or just another mistake in the adaptation?

I would prefer that Mei's ability isn't so out-and-out mystical, as almost everything that has happened in Another isn't completely outside the realm of possibility

The story has a dead person nobody could see appearing in a photograph,how is that not completely outside the realm of possibility?How do you scientifically explain that?
Or how does science explain that a dead person can come back to life for a schoolyear?
How does science esplain records changing and the memory alterning?
So really Mei's eye isn't the first scientifically implausible thing that's been thrown at us.