Talk:Episode 7 - Sphere Joint/@comment-25874225-20141218064207/@comment-397235-20141220062938

I dunno, I tend to see Kouichi more of a story device than anything else. The fact he's a transfer student to a small-town school means he's automatically an outsider amongst a group of people who've known each other their entire lives. Everyone else has had time to build relationships, but Kouichi never really has that chance.

Izumi's probably a good example of this. A lot of people make it a point to stick up for her and defend her actions; granted, some of them do it for fairly basic reasons (Naoya and Junta both hang out with her because she's hot; Takako sticks around because she has no other friends), but Aya and Yukari also both make a point of at least asking Kouichi to cut her some slack, which suggests she's actually a fairly decent person; Kouichi just never has the chance to experience her nice side because he only knew her during the worst year of her life.

Yumi and Takako also slide into this category.

Kouichi interacts with Yumi precisely twice, the second time being when she attempted to kill Mei. However, Yumi is obviously close to Aya, who Kouichi is on fairly friendly terms with (and is, by all accounts, one of the nicest people in the class). When she's attacking Mei, Yumi has, in the space of just a couple weeks, lost her best friend, her brother, and her home (and depending on how you read the relationship, she was also close enough to Junta for Takako to get jealous), and then someone else told her all these horrible things would stop if she kills someone she barely knows. Let's be honest: most of us would at least consider that option. She's not a monster: she's just been run through the ringer and no one really cares enough to help her. She's as much a victim as everyone else.

Takako is the only person in the class other than Kouichi to see Yukari die, and this was traumatic enough to put him in the hospital; we don't know what it did to her, but it probably wasn't good. Two months later, she watches one of her two best friends (who, depending on how you read the relationship she has a crush on) get violently eviscerated; watching her teacher gorily kill himself didn't concerned her less than most of the class, but this is enough to make her scream, and since it's her job to help Izumi make sure things like this don't happen, she probably feels responsible (and unlike Izumi, she's never shown focusing any of that elsewhere; the worst she does is agree Mei broke the rules and should apologize for it, and as we talked about, knowing what only the class knows, this is 100% justifiable). About an hour after this she learns how to make it all stop, and then at least one person violently tries to kill her. Now deranged, she comes to the conclusion Mei is the Extra, tries to kill her fails, and then turns the rest of the class against her, which we can all agree was not the way to go. However, you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep: she hangs around Izumi, who like I said is a decent person trying to make the best of a bad situation, and Junta, who is an idiot but a standup guy. Further, even though she sends the entire class after her, it's not because she has anything personal against her (like Izumi, who very clearly has a grudge the size of a small mountain); she never does anything even marginally hostile toward her prior to this and actually sticks up for Kouichi earlier on when Izumi suggests this is partially his fault (she tries the same tact for Mei in the film, which nearly gets her killed as a result). She also seems like she's a good friend, since she tries to console Izumi Yukari's death wasn't her fault, and she's the only person overtly concerned for Junta from the get go; Izumi cries twice in the anime, once for her dead brother and once for Takako. Kouichi, of course, never has the chance to notice any of this, since for the most part she's only ever that weird girl who's always attached to Izumi who tries to kill his best friend.

So no, I don't really think it's fair to say Kouichi brings out a person's true colors. As in real life, he only ever sees a small side of everyone, even Mei, who he's probably the closest to. He sees some people at their best and some at their worst. That's all there is to it.