[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Agreed. The one thing I didn't like about this episode is how it cast Irisu in a totally negative and unsympathetic light.

Irisu's motivations were perfectly sound. So was her desire to not needlessly piss people off or hurt their feelings. I don't think she was entirely in the right, of course, but I would have preferred a less
black-and-white portrayal of her than what was given. It lacked fairness and nuance, imo.


That being said, I could also get where Oreki was coming from on this. You feel good about yourself over successfully completing a project, as lots of people compliment you on it. Then your three best friends, one after another, all pick it apart and really critique it. That has to sting, and really crush one's self-esteem, at least for a short while. Keep in mind that what they're critiquing is central to Oreki's key talent - playing Detective. It would be comparable to a young protege pianist being told "It sounded nice, but it was not a good recital as you were way off on a few notes" by his three best friends.

Oreki feeling depressed, frustrated, and angry/irritable over it, makes sense to me. The good news is that it shows how much his character has developed. It shows how, deep down inside, he wants to be a guy that can feel proud of himself, and help other people. He doesn't really want to be an energy conserving loner ay more.

Well, after this incident, he may lapse a bit back into that energy conserving loner stage again, but I doubt he'll stay there.

It's normal for Houtarou to feel bad about the whole thing. To be angry. But as we're more impartial observers... I don't see her in that bad a light.

I think that's the problem with little white lies - when they're found out, it may turn out they're not so little or so white.

Originally Posted by Hyper

It was made pretty clear though that herself thinking that it's boring is her concern.

Clear to whom? She never let on to Hongou. Houtarou didn't figure it out either, probably. She didn't mention it to her interlocutor on the other side of the world, even though she was seen through.

She does not try to avoid the class confrontation. What she did is trying to avoid telling Hougou outright that it's boring.

Yes, and why? To avoid hurting her feelings, and also, possibly, to avoid having the class turn against Hongou. They're nice people, so it wouldn't have been that bad. But considering her personality, it would have been bad enough for Hongou.

On this point, I might make Irisu too much of a bad person. Still, I believe what implied by Tomoe and to lesser extend Houtarou is that she did not do that for the benefit of Hougou or the class, but herself. She did not want to be the one rejecting it because that'll make her looks bad. If we thrust Eru's assertion, the class would understand and accepted Hougou's script just fine if she were to actually tell them that they screwed up. However, Irisu think that Hougou's script was so boring that it would make the project a failure. Therefore, she came up with a plan that would make Hougou retreated and she will get to choose how the story would be. Essentially a writing contest where Irisu is the only judge, as Houtarou said.

If they'd known from the start nobody would die, they'd maybe have accepted it or found another writer. Considering the project's advancement, and the fact that the whole scene with the body would have to be redone, and so on... Even if possible, it would have been unpleasant.

Originally Posted by joeboygo

The use of the word "wrong" may be throwing you off. If you change the term "wrong" to "not Hongou's" then you'll find that it doesn't take much of a deductive leap to figure out what just happened. If it's not Hongou's ending, then it can only be an Orecki original.

So what? Well, you can paraphrase what all three of his club mates were tactfully trying to tell him, each in their own way, as "do you realize that you wrote the whole ending of their movie and are getting zero credit for authorship?"

When you look at it that way, doesn't it suddenly seem obvious that he's been ripped off? And by who else?

The knowledge that Irisu knew Hongou's ending may be throwing you off. The other three had no reason to assume that - except maybe Chitanda, who did wonder why they didn't ask Eba. But she's too naive to have suspected foul play.

It was never presented as a guessing game where the solution was in a sealed envelope in Irisu's possession. It was, from the beginning, a question without a "right" answer - they were just to pick the best one, provided it was good enough, and call it right by default. Houtarou, after thinking it through, honestly drew a wrong conclusion. Why couldn't Irisu just as honestly conclude that he was right? Did she know about the rope? Is she a Sherlockian?

And even if she did spot the inconsistencies, why does she need to know in advance that there was no answer that'd be both good and right, and just went with "good enough" because she was pressed for time? And didn't point out Houtarou's mistake because, hell, why would she do that when he tried so hard for her sake?