Line #54 Headscratchers/Another


1	!Per wiki policy, Administrivia/SpoilersOff applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.
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3	* This might be TruthInTelevision, but were umbrellas ever actually manufactured with a metallic pointed cone tip? [[TooDumbToLive And why would anyone buy something like that, at any point after stairs were invented?]] It just seems like something to make its particular importance that much more contrived.
4	** Umbrellas with metal pointers [[AluminumChristmasTrees are indeed]] a real thing, though the odds of finding one that's as sharp as an ice pick are low.
5	* So how does the ignored student actually get anywhere in their studies? Keep in mind that they're in their last year of middle school--a year spent doing nothing is ''very bad'' considering upcoming high school applications and how that would feed into college prospects. Since only 3-3 has to follow the charm to the letter, I assume Mei can simply bop over to the staffroom and have another teacher correct her homework or something?
6	** This seems to be the case, considering that other faculty members can acknowledge them fine.
7	* According to Mei's flashback, she gets asked if she's okay with being the {{Unperson}} for the year but gets also told that, if she refuses to get ignored, she will be held responsible for every death that occurs during that year. Couldn't they just pick a different student to be the ignored one, if the first one refuses?
8	** They could but Izumi, head of countermeasures along with her cronies hate Mei, said hate increased when Koichi became close with Mei.
9	* Why not simply transfer one, randomly chosen student to another class once the school year has started? That way there would be a right number of students on the class, and no-one would have to be excluded so harshly.
10	** Moving to other classrooms and changing the class's name didn't work, so presumably this would be a similar cheat. Or maybe the curse would start affecting the classroom the student transferred to. The explanation of the charm made it sound like they had tried every conceivable solution before they found the one that worked.
11	* Why is it that Misaki, the dead student, is suddenly a boy? In the first episode Misaki is referred to as a girl, but now the old teacher said that she was a he. I suppose it's not really that significant but it's bugging me...
12	** This is just an issue of something getting LostInTranslation. In Japanese, you can easily get by with non-gendered pronouns or no pronouns at all. The Japanese script ''very lightly'' implies that Misaki was a girl, and the English translation (which is likely going on an episode-to-episode basis as opposed to really knowing the whole plot) pretty much had to run with Misaki being a "she" without realizing that there would be consequences.
13	** Alternatively, outside of Class 3 the story itself may have distorted in retelling and most of the student body does think Misaki was a girl.
14	** Without any prior knowledge of the series, one can easily think that the original dead person is Mei herself, like it happened with me and my friends on the first watch.
15	** It's explicitly mentioned in both the novel and manga (iirc) that the details of the original story have gotten twisted around - remember, it's like a school legend, and it's been 26 years. Some details are bound to get lost. A few times the story is mentioned, they're not even sure if its Misaki or Masaki, or whether Misaki is the persons first name or last name. Misaki is also a gender neutral name, which doesn't hurt.
16	* Why does the curse kill so many people? If the premise behind it is that it's balancing out the uneven roster due to the Extra, shouldn't it need to only kill one person?
17	** Perhaps it's trying to kill the extra specifically, but the curse is no better at figuring it out than a human...so it just kills at random, hoping to get the extra at some point.
18	*** It's because as long as the Extra exists, the universe is out of balance, so people keeps dying as a result of that. The phenomenon doesn't 'try' to do anything. It has no will.
19	*** I believe it's because the class, per the English subtitles, is "closer to death." The presence of a dead person in the class brings the class closer to death, therefore death happens to them. The line between life and death is blurred or something, so that things that wouldn't necessarily result in death or occur, do occur and and/or result in death. Like the probability of dying is now increased.
20	* Why would Mei's sister Misaki be counted as a death due to the curse? Was she counted as being part of Class 3-3?
21	** Family members up to two degrees of separation are affected by the curse.
22	* So who was the student who stabbed Reiko? I thought that it looked like Kouichi himself with hair over his eyes, but this wasn't referred to in any way after the scene. So was it just some random lunatic, or did Kouichi commit a murder that the curse prevented him from remembering?
23	** Random lunatic.
24	** So why did Misaki fail to report a murder that she witnessed firsthand to the police?
25	*** Was it said anywhere that she didn't report it? She'd only have a vague description of him and he'd have time to get away since he's on the opposite side of the river, so it's possible she reported it and he just escaped.
26	* So is the reason why the counter measure didn't work this year because the extra wasn't a student but a teacher/family member? Has something like this happened in other years too? Is this the reason why the counter measure only works some of the time? How does the curse know the difference?
27	** It could be that the countermeasures didn't work this year for the same unknown reason that they don't work some other years. Hell, the countermeasure this year ''was'' working for a while, but stopped in April for some reason. Maybe the curse is just more persistent in getting rid of the extra person in certain years.
28	** The Japanese school year starts in April rather than September so the countermeasures did not work at all since Mei's sister died that month. Presumably they would have to ignore one of their teachers for the countermeasures to work since there was one less seat in the staff room rather than the classroom.
29	*** The countermeasure didn't work because it had started too late. They didn't realize they had an extra since it wasn't a student this year, so they put off choosing a Talisman. They didn't choose Mei as the Talisman until after her sister died, and the Talisman only has an effect if it's instated before the process starts. After the death of Misaki, everything was already set in stone. Ignoring Mei was already pointless before it began.
30	* If they pretend one student doesn't exist to balance out the numbers, wouldn't maintaining that same balance require that they start ignoring ''two'' students as soon as an extra student transferred in?
31	** No; the curse works because one ''dead'' person is added to the class each year. Having a ''live'' student transfer in shouldn't upset the charm because the curse only works according to the number of dead students: which is always just one.
32	** And remember, they tried to do that by ignoring Kouichi ''and'' Mei, but it didn't help.
33	* Wouldn't the students from the other classes have realized that there was one student in 9-3 who the rest of the class was ignoring? I mean, students do visit other classrooms during breaks, and hang out together during lunch, right?
34	** Not necessarily. They mention that they keep class 3-3 rather isolated from the rest of the classes, no PE lessons shared between two classes and similar.
35	* Lots of students in 9-3 dying seems to be just a rumor outside of 9-3, and not known outside of the school, but wouldn't so many deaths in one school have been noticed by the whole town?
36	** We know that the curse has the power to affect people's reasoning, memory and perceptions. I'm going out on a limb here, but I reckon the curse is affecting the amount of attention people pay to the deaths in class 9-3 the same way that it makes them think a dead person is alive. The curse makes people perceive the number of deaths as nothing unusual in the same way that it also makes them perceive their dead acquaintances walking around as natural, or makes them fail to see the deceased's name on previous class registers.
37	* Isn't there a chance that the curse could be broken, if the class from 1972 came together and openly acknowledged that Misaki was dead and they should never have pretended otherwise? Or was something like that tried during the 26 years since the curse started and it turned out to be pointless?
38	** Given the curse alters memories and perceptions, it's possible they tried this but the living students from 1972 disbelieve the present students are in any danger, and don't see why they should return. That, and the logistics of it may be too complicated if many have left town, or more likely, several have died to the curse thanks to the two-degree effect targeting relatives, making such an exorcism impossible.
39	** In similar fashion, we learn that changing classrooms doesn't help against the curse because it's the ''class itself'' that creates the incident. What about dissolving Class 3-3? Weird, since there would still be Class 3-4 and 3-5, but they could give a 'soft' version of the truth by saying that Class 3-3 is permanently dissolved, due to it being 'accident prone'.
40	*** Likely wouldn't work unless there were literally only 2 classes for that grade. Per the show, "disappearing" Class 3-3 by renaming didn't work, and Class 3-4 would be the new 3-3, as it is ''numerically'' the third even if nominally it is called something else. Reducing things to 2 classes would also likely only work if they were bloated to 50% more students a piece, which is probably not allowed since it'd require remodeling two extra-large classrooms, which the school district may scoff at for a number of reasons (funds, student to teacher ratio, etc). Doing something like moving every student out of town would do nothing to protect their family members in town, who would then bear the brunt of the curse in their absence. Keeping everyone connected with class 3-3 safe would probably require significantly depopulating the town every year. (And even that might not work, as seen with the student who died out of town due to an injury suffered while inside of town).
41	* In the beginning, Sakuragi and Kazami visit Kouichi in the hospital and ask him whether he's ever been to Yomiyama before. Obviously, they asked this to see whether he could be the Extra Person of that year. But Kouichi says something that makes them think that he isn't the Extra Person... what would they have done, if his answer would have somehow made him seem like the Extra Person? At that point, they didn't know that the curse could be stopped for the year if they managed to kill the Extra Person. [[FridgeHorror What would they have done?]]
42	** It was already set in motion. Kazami thought that he was The Extra student based on the logic of having a sick kid of all people, being the last to transfer into the class. As the desks on opening ceremony were perfect as well as the calamity seemingly starting in May. He didn't count on the faculty being a desk short or Mei Misaki having a dead relative in April.
43	*** Saying it was already set in motion doesn't answer the question at all.
44	*** Sure it does. Since no one knew killing the Extra was the solution, the preferred method was to ignore the extra. Even though Sakuragi had her doubts, Kazami suspected Koichi and had already begun {{Unperson}}ing him when he arrived in class. The question "what would they have done if Koichi gave them reason to suspect him in the hospital?" is pointless. Presumably they would've immediately turned around, left the hospital room, and started ignoring him in exactly the same way, but slightly earlier.
45	*** It actually still doesn't answer the question at all. The class had already decided to ignore Mei. Does a belief that Kouichi is Another mean they would do anything different? There's absolutely no evidence of that. They only ended up ignoring Kouichi because he was interacting with Mei, a last-ditch-effort to keep up the rule. Knowing who is Another wouldn't have done them any good at that point.
46	*** If we're that dead set on answering the question so specifically, the answer would likely be that, right there and then, they would elect to ignore him and tell him as such, and then the class would proceed to pretend he doesnt exist. He would have had to learn the story from the other classes, would have been able to speak to Misaki Mei earlier than the anime, and we would've had a different story altogether.
47	* So the class thought Sakakibara was the extra, but does it have anything to do with his surname? In the first episode, one of them refuses to say it and Mei sings it as if taunting him. Just a curiosity.
48	** Sakakibara is the surname of a real life serial killer, but no, it has nothing to do with the curse.
49	* So how was Reiko able to just come back to life and be a walking dead person? Or how did she get "chosen"?
50	** The original death that started it all was the result of the class acting as if Misaki was still alive. Many of the other Extras probably got the same treatment in death as part of the curse, but in actual corporeal form. As another result of the Calamity her death, much like her second death was wiped from memory so no one could identify her as the Extra.
51	* Where did that insane old lady come from and why was she insane?
52	** She and her husband owned the house that the students were staying in; Chibiki mentions that she and her husband were Ikuo's grandparents (the kid that died of a heart attack) and that his death had left them emotionally depressed, which is probably what lead to the insanity part.
53	* When they are on the beach, one of the kids gets run over by a boat. However it's revealed that he died prior to getting hit by the boat because of a brain tumor, which was presumably caused by the curse. This is supposed to explain why he died outside of the town's proximity. So what was the point in him being hit by a boat? Was that just an unlucky incident that happened regardless of the curse?
54	** Episode 9 revealed that Nakao had suffered an accident as he was leaving before the trip. His death was caused by an aneurysm gained from that accident bursting, killing him before the boat hit him. Therefore the death could be counted as still being in Yomiyama because that's where the (eventual) fatal event occurred, and therefore was still part of the curse. Getting hit by the boat was presumably meant to throw the viewer off before this is revealed.
55	* Why does the curse affect relatives if the Extra Person has to be someone in the classroom?
56	** The curse is noted as affecting anyone connected to class 3-3 in some way. As mentioned above, relatives are affected for up to two degrees of separation.
57	* Does Kazami die in the anime? Because Chibiki stopped Akazawa from harming him further, but he seemed pretty messed up by then.
58	** Given Teshigawara's reaction, it's a safe bet that he died, probably due to blood loss.
59	* Why hasn't this particular class section simply been ''discontinued?'' They know there's a curse, they know that students die a whole hell of a lot in this class, and the curse only attacks students in 3-3 and the people they associate with. So ''why'' hasn't the school simply discontinued Class 3-3?
60	** In the official English subtitles on Crunchyroll at least, the curse is described as affecting "the third class" in one scene. This is probably a translation quirk, but does present an interesting idea. If Class-3 was disbanded, what is currently Class-4 would now be the third class, no matter what they actually call it. We already know changing the name didn't help, nor did the classrooms moving to a new building, so nothing about disbanding Class-3 actually changes anything.
61	*** If the problem is only the third class, why wouldn't they disband all the classes but 3-1 and 3-2 and just stuff all the students into either class? It'll be hard but its still better than kids dying.
62	*** Even better, why don't they just reduce the student capacity to double class amount only? Like, stop accepting that many students each year since grade 1.
63	*** Probably because that would take years to actually affect anything? Plus, iirc, the principle and school staff are aware of the curse, that doesn't mean the school board is. Trying to explain to the school board that they need to axe the number of students they have to avoid having three middle school classes would make them all seem insane. Could also be related to the curse - it's a curse. It doesn't have to make sense or abide by logic.
64	* Here's a question. Why is it that Mei's Doll Eye can see death on the people she looks at? I mean there was nothing mechanical about it, nor where their hints of witchcraft on it.
65	** There's no logical reason why she should be able to see out of that eye at all, much less have a special form of vision. However, "magic" (such as it is) in this story seems to operate as something of a "living metaphor." The curse is a result of class 3-3 "inviting death into their midst." Presumably there's a similar explanation for the eye. The problems with Misaki's original eye almost killed her, presumably her vision comes from the connection to death this fake eye represents.
66	*** The novel explains this further, making it clear Mei is as blind in her left eye as anyone with an empty socket. But when that eye is uncovered she can see 'The Color of Death' regardless. Just that, nothing else. As to why, she isn't sure, but theorizes it's equal parts her life-threatening cancer surgery, and also that dolls are empty and draw in life to fill their void. So her eye, being a doll's eye, does the same.
67	*** This is from the troper that asked the question: So judging by what is going on and I am just guessing here. The Trauma from her surgery in combination with the Doll's "Natural" ability to draw life to fill it's empty void are what cause her to see death? Not drawing any conclusions here because I would save that for WMG, but wouldn't that also mean that everyone she's around she's sucking the life out of?
68	*** Probably no more than any doll would.
69	* So, after the entire disaster that happened as a result of the tape being found and people panicking, the surviving students choose to help future classes by... making a new recording with the exact same information? Sure it works well as a sort of narrative bookend, but wouldn't it be better to just sic Mei on future class 3-3s and then take care of things discreetly? Even forgetting about how to solve the curse could be fixed by keeping a recorded summary on hand instead of hiding it and then forgetting where.
70	** One thing to keep in mind about the curse is just what lengths will be gone to to keep continuing the cycle. The curse as we see it finds all number of loopholes to prevail. Perhaps the memory loss would affect Mei and those close to her the most, preventing them from easily using this solution. Any records they leave for themselves might be more censored because of how easy it would be. Mei herself could be made to think something like her eye is completely useless, and will not question it due to the curse's contrivance.
71	* Since family members, as well as other people connected to the class, are subject to the curse, isn't it possible that one of them becomes the extra? The fact that the curse strikes at random and includes these people seems to point to this direction (after all the reality tries to remove the dead by killing them, so family members must be among the "suspects" to be affected). Yet, nobody points it out. Is it because the characters' understanding of the curse is incomplete, or are family members actually never the extra, yet they are affected for some reason?
72	** Given the information learned throughout the story, it's likely that a family member (or in this story's case, a teacher) ''has'' been the Extra before, since there were years where the ignoring of a student didn't work, but nobody recalls it well enough due to the {{RetGone}}d memories resulting in them not remembering that this specific family member was the Extra in connection with the class.
73	* When Koichi asks Mei why the doll looks a lot like her, Mei tells him her mom based it off her sister who died a stillborn. But we later find out Kirika didn't have any children and that Mei was adopted. So what exactly was Kirika basing the looks off of? Considering they are not blood related, it's strange that it looks a lot like Mei.
74	** Kirika is Mei's aunt, so they are blood-related, but not closely.
75	*** Actually it mentions that Kirika had a stillbirth before adopting Mei
76	* In both this year and the event from 15 years ago, why did the deaths suddenly spike? Wasn't it supposed to be once a month?
77	** It's established early that it's a ''minimum'' of one death per month.
78	* If people within Yomiyama are affected by it (which was further proven true by the beach episode), why was Koichi's dad memories also altered? Isn't he in India? He's completely out of the country.
79	** The easier answer could well be that Koichi's dad is still connected to Yomiyama through his son, who's still residing there. It may well be that he would never have been affected had Koichi not been attending or even part of Class 3. Though, from a narrative standpoint, you could also say that it prevents his father outright going "what? Your aunt is dead, kiddo" and breaking the mystery wide open in two seconds flat.
80	** In the phone call where Koichi asks about his aunt, his dad seems to be audibly suffering from an ice-cream headache. It's entirely possible his memory was fine thanks to being in India, but the "connection" with Koichi and from the phone call triggered an on-the-fly bout of selective amnesia and memory rewriting from the curse.
81	* How did Reiko leave Yomimori in the beach episode?
82	** There's nothing saying she couldn't. It doesn't seem like there's an established rule that the Extra person is unable to leave town. For all intents and purposes, they're just like any other person who's allowed to live their daily lives and do things that they like. She may simply have had no urge or desire to leave town unless she had been previously requested by someone else.
83	* If the Curse only affects a certain school, and a certain classroom, when not just bulldoze or torch the school. If the entire friggin' school is gone, wouldn't that solve the problem?
84	** Probably, but imagine trying to explain the Curse to the city council or whatever civic board is in charge of the schools as a reason to destroy a structure worth millions of dollars. Of course, an enterprising person could try arson to so so, but the Curse may try and stop them. For all we know, someone has tried to destroy the building and failed.
85	* The {{Asspull}} of Mei's Doll Eye somehow being able to see The Color Of Death, which she says makes it easier for her to recognize who the dead/Extra Person is. If she can tell it so easily, why didn't she take her eyepatch off, look at everyone in the classroom and [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim tell them that Ms Reiko had the Color Of Death around her, so she was likely the Extra Person]]? Yes, it was alluded to this maybe being a thing earlier (with Mei taking her eyepatch off while saying goodbye to Kouichi, implying she was using this to check on him), but if this was something she knew, why wasn't it used earlier? Of course, it would have severely shortened the suspense and plot, but if they don't want this to be mentioned, don't add something like this.
86	** Also, why doesn't she just tell everyone who the Extra is? Is it simply not to hurt Kouichi's feelings? Or is it because she thinks that the students won't believe her? Her reasoning behind Reiko being the Extra is sound and very thought-out, implying that she had been suspicious of her for some time.
87	** It feels as though Mei's always been in a bit of a precarious position in the class even without the whole eye thing. She's a quiet, subdued girl with a known physical deformity who doesn't have many friends. In the first place, who would believe her without knowing her for a long time that she can somehow "see the color of death". Secondly, Mei may not have had reason to suspect that there was even a need to try the analysis using her eye until her sister died. And by that point it was too late. People may have already been in panic mode by the time she made up her mind to speak up, and she either didn't have the chance to bring up the possibility or she did and people brushed her off. Plus the fact that the poor girl was already ''mourning her newly dead sister''. By the time she managed to think of it through her grief, it was possibly already too late and lost her opportunity once everyone started ignoring her. Additionally, she may have been hesitant to use her eye on anyone, given that, chronologically the last time she used her eye was when she saw the color of death on her sister, who died shortly after''.
88	* How does not telling Kouichi about what's really going on with Class 3-3 help anything? How can you expect him to follow rules or conditions that he doesn't know about? Wouldn't it have been better to tell him everything day one so that he wouldn't put the plan in jeopardy?
89	** It's a Catch-22 for the students. In order to explain whats going on, they would have to explain the curse. And if they explained the curse, they might have to explain how they counteract it. And at that point they come into danger of openly having to acknowledge the existence of the person they are ignoring. Which could put the class in danger of their Talisman failing and beginning the deaths. They put themselves in danger if they do or don't tell him. They were in a panic trying to quickly institute the Talisman and curse prevention that year, and thus might still be a bit frazzled and worried about making any one wrong step to topple the whole supernatural jenga tower. So to them, their safest action is likely to hope for the best and pray the new kid isnt too curious and nosy.
90	* If the extra this year was a teacher, then why were they still a desk short? They should have had the exact number of desk needed this time since there was no extra student.
91	** They weren't, at least not at first. The class was full with all needed desks in the room up until Kouichi transferred in later in the year. And they realized that when he joined them, they would become a desk short. Which is why they panicked and scrambled to find and institute a Talisman when a new kid was set to be transferred in.
92	* When Reiko tells Kouichi about his new school, she says that in that school, the group's interests take precedence over any individual, as if that's news to him. I get that Yomimori has some... unique circumstances, but since Japan is a highly collectivist society, wouldn't he already understand and live by that principle?

Context Headscratchers / Another