Thread:Swedigimon/@comment-397235-20140730225744/@comment-397235-20140730232949

Also, something I really enjoyed about the opening is the character portraits being replaced as people die. I'd do one better, however, by showing which group each character is affiliated with.

For instance, in the first episode we'd see:

Izumi's group, which consists of herself, Takako, Tomohiko, and Yumi.

We'd see Kouichi with Naoya, Yuuya, Ikuo, Aya, and Yukari.

We'd see Takeru with Kenzou, Noboru, Manabu, Yokito, Daisuke, Sayuri, Matsuko, and...the other characters who don't really matter.

Then we'd see Mei all alone.

Once Kouichi and Mei become friends, we'd see them together with the other groups ignoring them. Once Yukari dies, we see her in a third group, with Misaki. This is the group of death.

When the other stop ignoring Kouichi and Mei, Naoya and Yuuya both rejoin them, and Yumi goes over to their side, with Takeru having moved up from the last listed to third, behind Takako and ahead of Tomohiko. Likewise, when Tomohiko leaves for Kouichi's group, Junta gets bumped up.

By the end of the series, Izumi's group would've shrunk to just herself, Takeru, and Takako in the next to last episode, and in the season finale would just consist of herself, with Takako standing with Tomohiko in Kouichi's group and Takeru off on his own.

I'd also play around with the opening for the second season, which wouldn't be as faction heavy. The main things I can think of is showing Izumi shaking hands with the head of countermeasures for the current year, before the camera rotates around to show Mei giving a hug to the student who's to be ignored. Meanwhile, I'd show the other main survivors (Kouichi, Naoya, Yuuya, Yumi, and Takako) standing behind a severe looking Tomohiko (whose little sister is the main character for this arc). I'd show Tomohiko's sister, who I think of as Sarah, and her group of friends, along with the other main group (which includes the head of countermeasures, Javan, though he's not the main character). The two groups' interactions would come from Sarah being offered a hand by Isaac, one of the boys in the main group, who she has a crush on as the series progresses.

The third season's (and in my mind, final) season intro would show the current class, but also the other survivors from the previous two years, paired together (the one which immediately springs to my mind is Sarah and Alexandria/Takako). Unlike previous seasons, which showed scenes later relevant to the season in question (lots of shots of the inn in the first season; the second season, whose climax occurs on the way back from a class trip, often cuts back to a highway), season three uses shots of places where tragedies have already occurred (the stairwell Yukari fell to her death in, the library where Aya's sister was shot, a memorial placed on the side of the road...) while showing the school itself on fire. It turns out that isn't a red herring after all, as the school does burn in the end.

What do you think?