Another - Episode 5 Discussion / Poll

[Eater of All]

Shit, gotta stop watching this at night. Now I can't even bear to be alone. I'm just gonna quietly slip into bed now....

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by djmaca

Funny, The manga is set at 4 volumes(or so I heard). This episode seems like in Volume 2. So this show is 12 episodes only?

Yes. 12 episodes only. Seems like 12 episodes should be plenty to cover the material, which wasn't all that long to begin with. Another is no The Dark Tower, that's for sure!

[warita]

Originally Posted by Random32

They can lose something. They are forced to acknowledge Misaki to tell Sakakibara to ignore her, thus breaking their rules for avoiding the curse.

Also, the only classmate to speak up about Misaki openly to Sakakibara had a heart attack before he could say anything and died.

You misunderstood me. I meant to say they cant lose anything by trying to ignore Sakakibara as well and hope it will stop the curse, even though it is obviously triggered.

I wonder how much experience they have with this, you know? So 10 years ago they figured out, that ignoring one student from class does the trick and they have stuck to that rule diligently. But do they have any experience with what will happen, if the curse is triggered and then they start ignoring the one person... or 2 in this case?

My intuitive response to it is, that now it wont make a difference anymore. People will keep dying and thats that. But the class must feel helpless and they want to do something, at least have a hope they can still stop it, so they ignore him now too and hope for the best.

[Skyfall]

Originally Posted by warita

I wonder how much experience they have with this, you know? So 10 years ago they figured out, that ignoring one student from class does the trick and they have stuck to that rule diligently. But do they have any experience with what will happen, if the curse is triggered and then they start ignoring the one person... or 2 in this case?

My intuitive response to it is, that now it wont make a difference anymore. People will keep dying and thats that. But the class must feel helpless and they want to do something, at least have a hope they can still stop it, so they ignore him now too and hope for the best.

I'm pretty sure they don't have any prior experiences such as this, hence the general uncertainty/non-agreement regarding Kouichi and how to treat him. Not only is he a transfer student, but he also happened to start school late because of his collapsed lung. Which (I assume) means, his name was probably only added to the register sometime later in the year.

That being the case, I wonder what actually triggered the curse - him acknowledging Mei, or the very simple fact he actually exists within said class. The original issue is that the class has "one extra person", so the countermeasure to this is pretending that someone doesn't exist (probably selected before the school year starts), thus putting the number of "existing" people back to normal levels.

But if Kouichi was transferred to the class in middle of the year (and thus added to the register at this time), wouldn't this fact put the class rooster one person above the amount that should "exist" ? Granted, this relies a lot on technicalities like the class register, as it is during the start of a new year, being the determining factor of the "correct" number of people ... which puts undue importance on the register itself, which seems a bit iffy. But since crossing a person out of it seems to do the trick, perhaps technical details is what this curse relies on *shrug*

Anyways, they are sort of killing two birds with one stone by choosing Kouichi as the person to be ignored - he is both the person who acknowledges Mei, and the one who became an another extra during the middle of a school year. Whichever the case, ignoring him specifically helps to isolate both of these possible trigger events.

So ... no, I highly doubt that anyone can be sure about this working. But it's their best shot (given what they know, which probably isn't much ... it's a curse after all, not really the most tangible thing), as it isolates the most likely causes, whichever they might be.

Question obviously is, will this work - they are boned if the curse runs it's full course once activated (in which case, they might as well start treating Mei as human again, it wouldn't matter at this point), or if ignoring Mei (the person chosen as non-existent at start of the school year) is the only condition that must be observed. Kouichi is still going to interact with her, and him being ignored doesn't necessarily mean the curse stops acknowledging him as part of class 3. Which would be grimly ironic ... Kouichi, in his investigation of the curse and interactions with Mei while doing so, being the continuous trigger of said deaths in the first place.

So ... yeah, I guess the class is as much in the dark as we are about the potential workability of this solution, and it's a shot in the dark, albeit the only shot they might think of. I guess we will have to wait and see whether it works, but I agree with your gut feeling there - I wouldn't be surprised at all if it doesn't. Will be interesting to see how the people start acting once they realize their latest countermeasure is having no effect.


Above all though, I got to ask ... assuming the school's staff know about these issues (and they certainly do, seeing the teacher is in on it), why on earth did they assign a newcomer to this class specifically, that's like asking to be shot in the foot

[totoum]

Originally Posted by Skyfall

Above all though, I got to ask ... assuming the school's staff know about these issues (and they certainly do, seeing the teacher is in on it), why on earth did they assign a newcomer to this class specifically, that's like asking to be shot in the foot

Principal is new,also the curse doesn't affect the staff so in episode 4 students speculated the staff didn't want to get involved since it doesn't concern them.

[LKK]

Originally Posted by totoum

Principal is new

Not only is principal new, students have explicitly said that the principal doesn't believe in the curse. Although I doubt we'll ever know but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the principal put Kouichi in that class just to prove (somehow) that the curse is an urban legend. Principal may be regretting that decision now.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by Skyfall

That being the case, I wonder what actually triggered the curse - him acknowledging Mei, or the very simple fact he actually exists within said class. The original issue is that the class has "one extra person", so the countermeasure to this is pretending that someone doesn't exist (probably selected before the school year starts), thus putting the number of "existing" people back to normal levels.

Mei's cousin dying before Kouichi started attending class suggests it's the latter. That's assuming she fell victim to the curse, of course. I suppose it's not outside of the realm of possibility that her death is a red herring and is actually completely unrelated to Class 3's curse.

[blakstealth]

The more explanation this show gives, the more I "wtf" at myself.

My brain hurts.

[Malkuth]

I don't know guys the more I think about Mei's explanation and follow the discussion about it here on the board, the less sense it makes... it's either wrong (could even be intentional) or missing huge chunks of information on the mechanics of the curse... I tend to believe the latter, since for a casual viewer the plot-holes shouldn't matter much.

[Oyashiro]

Spoiler for ...questioning how true what Mei said was:

How does Mei know so much more about the curse than the other students? Since now we know she's a normal human, shouldn't she be just as clueless about it as the rest of them? If what she told Kouichi was just the rumors she'd heard from others, there's really no proof that there's an actual curse killing anyone.

And actually, isn't it just the fear of death and a curse that's caused a few of the deaths so far? Yukari only fell down the stairs because she was afraid that the curse would start when she saw Mei and Kouichi. If she didn't believe there was a curse, then she wouldn't have become scared and would have made it down the stairs just fine. This is going to sound ridiculous, but Takabayashi did have a heart problem so severe he couldn't even run with the class at gym. Like almost everyone else, he was afraid of the curse. So, after everything that had happened, when he tried to acknowledge the forbidden person in front of others, is it possible the stress and fear was enough to give him a heart attack...?

Anyways, Kouichi acknowledged Mei and nothing happened to him. He didn't have a curse to be afraid of, because nobody told him about it. Mochizuki acknowledged Mei also, but he did it through a note. By putting it in letter, he wasn't being put on the spot like Yukari or Takabayashi. He had time to think about it before and after he wrote the note. If the curse was completely real, wouldn't he have died almost directly after writing Mei's name or giving Kouchi the note?

And then there's the accident in the old elevator, the car crash, and Mei's cousin's unexplained death... not the same kind of thing is going on there.

tl;dr... basically I think at least some of this is just in their heads. There might be some sort of curse, but I think acknowledging Mei has no relation to who dies. Refusing to acknowledge a student might even do nothing other than just make students feel safe for the year.

[Dengar]

I didn't expect my supicions to be so completely on the ball.

Poor heart failure kid. He was only trying to be nice.

...Maybe the kid thought he was going to die soon, so he figured he might as well spill the beans. He probably didn't expect to die straight away.

[Malkuth]

^ That would make perfect sense IRL, but we are talking about an anime here

[MasterVampire]

Man I would be pissed if I was now getting ignored by everyone.

But then I would probably see how far I could push it by throwing paper at people, shooting spit balls, playing music in class, flipping skirts or touching boobs lol

[djmaca]

Originally Posted by MasterVampire

Man I would be pissed if I was now getting ignored by everyone.

But then I would probably see how far I could push it by throwing paper at people, shooting spit balls, playing music in class, flipping skirts or touching boobs lol

Try going to the girl's locker room during PE and pile all the underwear and use it as a pillow and let everyone see it. Or hide all the underwear and watch the girls squirm.

I still don't get why they didn't tell him in the first place then put him in the ignore list. The countermeasure girl is a dumb redhead.

[fertygo]

Originally Posted by djmaca

I still don't get why they didn't tell him in the first place then put him in the ignore list. The countermeasure girl is a dumb redhead.

Well if you notice, they already greet him when Kouichi still on hospital, (I'm not wrong for this right? lol) its clear the plan is they want to tell him quick before even his first day @ school.. but shit happens, they can't tell him because that.

[speedyexpress48]

Originally Posted by djmaca

Try going to the girl's locker room during PE and pile all the underwear and use it as a pillow and let everyone see it. Or hide all the underwear and watch the girls squirm.

I still don't get why they didn't tell him in the first place then put him in the ignore list. The countermeasure girl is a dumb redhead.

Because if the girl told him in the first place, it would end in the same result (by saying it, you are literally causing the curse to start...by acknowledging Mei's existence.) It's a double edged sword.

[MeoTwister5]

I've always assumed that because if they do tell him, he'd investigate it more and (in theory) make it worse, or Sakakibara is in an unknowing position of making it worse by default.

Edit - Transfered my theories to the appropriate thread.

[orion]

I'm also not getting if they had info passed down to them, shouldn't that had started the curse? So shouldn't just having a Countermeasures section in the class be enough to start the curse?

[boomerangnizorro]

Passing the info can be done between school years, when nobody is officially a member of Class 3.

[molitar]

It's totally dumb.. Either purify make the class holy so the dead can't go to Class 3. Or better yet you do not rename it or anything else you close it off! You do not pretend it does not exist you just stop using class 3 so class 3 is still class 3 but nobody is in the class so nobody dies!

But the animators need to go watch the movie about death and escaping death because their is no semblance of reality to the deaths at all.. ridiculous fall where she does not try to fend for herself with her hands but falls like a limp doll, a very heavy glass pane that was tilted quite a bit not balanced precariously tipping over from a sudden gust of wind that was not even enough to knock them off their feet, and the elevator scene totally awful all elevators have emergency braking system for that reason.. now a realistic horror story would of had the emergency brakes go off than snap.. but the realism would of been there that they were there and did go off. When it comes to physics and common sense this is worse than a B Rated movie.

Now if the dead are all connected to the class in the past that raise the status quo than go look in the year books and find who matches in name and face. He only attempted that once and was interrupted by head of the anti commitee.. Why not go back and go through them.. why not find out who is dead than force that dead person to realize he/she is dead maybe it will break the damn chain.. but again no common sense at all it's like them horrible Hollywood Horror movie where the killer is walking slowly with a limp and the victim is running but the killer always catches up.. I can't stand any horror movie but Nightmare on Elm Street it was the only one where they acted usually on common sense but being in a nightmare it did not help.. it was explained properly but this is like the stupid Hollywood Movies that explain nothing and have no semblance of realty in it.

I had to vote this painful because it could of been so much more than another poorly designed horror story like Friday 13th.