Talk:Izumi Akazawa/@comment-25409301-20140911182738/@comment-397235-20140912010707

But on the other hand she's kind of a justifiable one. That's a lot of responsibility, and I'm firmly convinced she's not a bad person 90% of the time (she has several other genuinely nice people, such as Aya and Yukari, who vouch for her character).

She doesn't know why Mei's doing what she's doing, and while she never asks, neither does anyone ever make the attempt to truly explain things to her before it all goes to hell at the Inn. All she really knows going into that situation is:

The Curse is active.

Mei has broken the rules by talking to Kouichi (having never explained things to him and further being infatuated with him means Izumi doesn't hold him responsible but the same doesn't go for Mei who did know better).

Takako "remembers" Mei from growing up, but she didn't used to have an eye patch (this is a combination of her being massively FUBAR and the Curse playing games with her memories, but Izumi's too focused on other things to realize this).

The best way to end the Curse is to kill the Extra.

Takako decides Mei is the Extra and tries to kill her. Izumi isn't up for that and tries to find her friend, but instead finds Mei, standing underneath her body, holding a bloody knife, with a visibly injured Kouichi nearby. As far as Izumi knows, Mei strangled Takako (let's forget for the moment this is not really a physical possibility) and stabbed Kouichi when he tried to intervene. Izumi, of course, manages to put the facts she knows together with the facts she thinks she knows together, and concludes, somewhat logically, Mei must be the Extra.

No matter how much she hated Mei up until then, Izumi wasn't interested in killing her. Look at her face when she hears Takako's broadcast. She's horrified, at least as much as Kouichi.

On top of that she still takes a detour from her Mei hunt to kill Tomohiko and avenge her other classmates, while protecting Kouichi. This is again a sign she's not a bad person: she could've just as easily walked right on by, since both, A she knows he'll protect Mei, and B, as far as she knows Kouichi didn't try to help Takako (which is true, but that's mostly her fault). At this one moment she has the opportunity to make killing Mei 15x easier and get revenge on one of the people who killed her friend...and she doesn't. It's the one time Izumi is the better person.

Now, all that said, I was never a huge fan of Izumi either. I preferred her incarnation in the anime to the others, but that doesn't make her one of my favorites by any stretch of the imagination. She's a selfish and somewhat vindictive person who makes things worse more often than not.

But like everyone else, she didn't deserve to die. I firmly believe had she survived, she'd have grown up and been a better person. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't ever get that chance.