Well, Alex & crew finally managed to get episode 9 out the door, woot. This might need some new temporary glue for a few days as a lot of us can FINALLY discuss this episode intelligently.
Spoiler:
Concerning Rena's "freakout" scene: the only place where I thought Rena's vocal tone didn't really match her facial expression was the part where they zoomed up close on her face and "scrolled" down to her mouth. For the rest of the scene, her voice crescendoed into mania quite nicely along with her face, and the MionSlap to bring her around was quite well-timed.
Mion, yeah, this is DEFINITELY not the same Sonozaki who got pissed during the ladder scene. That was definitely "Shion". And Satoshi was "touched by the curse", apparently... I have my ideas about what that means, and why he ran away, but I'll keep this post short and say that "transferred away" may not actually be totally inaccurate.
Though I do wonder why Rena gets annoyed about "transfer" here but was so cavalier about it in Onikakushi-hen.
And finally.
On the whole, very good episode, and a side of Sakoto we've not seen before, even in the anime left a few details out (even without knowing any TIPS, though, it was still hugely informative). Hopefully Alex & crew can get Ep.10 out ASAP so we can get fairly caught up in discussion again.