Thread:Shanethefilmmaker/@comment-397235-20140722012358/@comment-397235-20140722034045

I like it. I know of The Usual Suspects but it's on my list of films I'd love to see but haven't yet. "The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he doesn't exist." I mean, that's gold.

I'd handle Mei's relationship with Misaki in two ways. Lost gave most characters at least one episode a season, but more major characters got two. For Mei I'd start the first with her already knowing Misaki and being chosen as the extra. The flashbacks would mostly revolve around them having fun together, and Misaki explaining to Mei she thinks the entire idea of ignoring her is stupid. The episode would culminate with Misaki's death, and Mei, being ignored, literally having no one to talk to about losing her best friend. We see Mei at Misaki's funeral and we see Amane for the first time. Mei knows who she is and goes to approach her. The penultimate flashback is the day before Kouichi's first day of school, with Kubodera telling the class to make sure they give their new student a warm welcome, as he's been ill the past week.

We get another scene of Mei and Kouichi in the present. Kouichi's hit rock bottom because he thinks Yukari and Ikuo's deaths are his fault and by talking to Mei, he's started the curse. Mei tells him that's not true and he doesn't need to feel bad, because the curse had started before he arrived. She'd mentioned Misaki to him once already, when he saw a picture of them together at her house. Mei explains to Kouichi Misaki died because of the curse, but Kouichi remembers what she'd already told him about it only affecting direct family members. He asks her if she's sure Misaki died because of the curse, to which she replies she is. He asks her how she knows, but she refuses to be pressed.

The second Mei episode would focus more on her family life. It starts with dirt being thrown on Misaki's casket, but back tracks to Mei when she was much younger, her parents' not especially stellar marriage, and her first meeting with Misaki. Mostly the episode would focus on what a horrible life Mei's had, and toward the end, following the funeral, would have Mei asking Amane about Misaki, as Mei is desperate to know more about her cousin, who in this universe she hasn't known as long. Amane tells her some stories, but ends up letting slip Misaki was Mei's sister. This would be the last scene.

Later on, Mei tries to talk to Yumi about her own problems. Yumi, who's just lost her best friend, isn't particularly interested in hearing about this, but Mei explains she knows exactly what that's like. This conversation occurs before Amane's revelation, so we don't realize until the end what she means, only that whatever she told Yumi made her feel better, and causes her to encourage some of the others to start talking to Mei. It's been a few months since their last conversation about the subject, but Kouichi brings Misaki up to Mei again. At first Mei acts evasively by saying she's going to tell him a story about another family, but it soon becomes clear she means her own, and one of the two girls in the story is her, and the other can only be Misaki. Kouichi puts two and two together, and tells Mei he's sorry for pushing her.

Yuuya's episode is the second one following Ikuo's death. It'd mostly deal with his relationship with Ikuo, who Yuuya looked up to as the bravest kid he knows. We'd see Ikuo buck the system twice more: once when the class selects the student to ignore, and again when Izumi determines they're going to ignore Kouichi as well (this scene I have very firmly envisioned in my mind: you see the shocked looks on the entire class; Tomohiko angrily shouts "We're what now?" the first sign he's not okay with things). Ikuo is the only person to directly challenge Izumi, and after school Yuuya tells him that was a mistake and he needs to be more careful. Ikuo just tells him it's not worth worrying over, and tells him they need to hurry to meet someone...that someone being Kouichi. The episode would end with Yuuya slipping a copy of the seating chart into Kouichi's locker, something which until now had been a mystery.

I'd put Tomohiko's flashbacks in the episode where the kids go looking for the tape. He doesn't go with the group to the beach in the previous episode, which Izumi explains away by saying he had other things to do, which in turn led to Junta going instead. In reality he's no longer sure Izumi's approach is the best, and gets mad when she refuses to deviate and tells her he won't help anymore. He feels guilty for Junta's death as well (a lot of guilt, this guy). Toward the end, Kouichi asks him why he's suddenly being so helpful, to which Tomohiko replies it's the right thing to do. He also suggests Kouichi cut Izumi some slack, because misguided as she is she's trying to do the right thing.

Izumi would end up hunting down Mei at the inn, because she feels like Mei has done everything in her power to make sure she fails by talking to Kouichi. She'd also neutralized or turned every single person who's been helping Izumi, leaving her bitter and alone. Mei tells her she's not the extra and basically all her misery is her own fault, but Izumi won't have it.

She tells Mei she's got to protect the class to make up for the things her brother did the previous year. Mei tells her no one blames her for that, and the only reason Izumi's alone is because she's pushed away everyone who cares about her, but it doesn't have to be that way. This just makes Izumi madder, but she's pinned down by part of the building as it begins to collapse. Mei looks at her in pity, shaking her head and telling her its her own fault for being in the position she's in, before explaining she actually knows what will end the curse and all this could've been prevented if Izumi hadn't been so bent on turning everyone against her. Then she leaves to go take care of Reiko. Takako finds her and helps her to safety, but the two are attacked by Keiko. Before she can kill Izumi, Naoya shows up and saves her.

Two other characters I forgot to mention:

Takeru Mizuno's episode is one or two after Sanae's death. It mostly deals with how distant he and his sister have become, and how he's come to resent Kouichi following her death. The last present scene is him showing up at Izumi's house and telling her he wants to talk. The two go for a walk, and he tells her what he knows about Sanae's death and Kouichi's involvement. He further tells her he's willing to do whatever it takes to keep anyone else from dying. This is what leads to Izumi announcing to the others they're going to ignore Kouichi as well. We saw this scene before in Yuuya's episode, but we mostly saw the reactions of the main characters introduced to this point (Yuuya, Ikuo, Tomohiko, Yumi, and Takako). We didn't see Takeru, who's sitting near the back. The camera closes in on him now, though. He's smiling.

Takeru more or less takes over Tomohiko's role as Izumi's other main assistant following Tomohiko's defection to Kouichi. He would show up as part of the mob Yumi defuses toward the end. She reasons with him that Sanae's death wasn't Kouichi and Mei's fault, anymore than any of the other deaths, and even so, killing them won't make things better. Takeru is later killed protecting Yumi and Yuuya from Keiko.

Oda, the police officer, gets involved in the calamity after Sanae's death. He interviews Kouichi as a matter of course, and notes he's from the same school one kid went crazy at the year before. As more people connected to the class start to die, he comes tantalizingly close to putting two and two together. We'd see him from time to time at work, talking to his fellow officers about the case(s; he's assigned to the Kubodera murder/suicide later on) and his crazy idea all the deaths are linked. Reiko dies before he can make the final connection, though, and the last scene we have of him is him putting away a file marked with the class's number on it.