Summary
After Nakao’s funeral, Chibiki tells Kouichi, Mei, and Mikami that he talked to one of the police detectives about what happened. The latter said that upon examination, Nakao had a head injury that occurred before he was hit by the boat; he was probably dead already when that happened. His family confirms that they heard a loud noise that morning, and when they investigated they saw him running out the door. In other words, he died of an injury that occurred in Yomiyama.
After a nightmare where the dead tell Kouichi it’s all his fault, he makes plans with Teshigawara and Mochizuki to investigate the old Class 3 room, the one where Matsunaga would have left the clue. They meet at the art club room the following afternoon, only to find Mei there. Since they can’t talk her out of coming along the four sneak into the old classroom, which is on the sealed-off second floor of the old school building. After a few close calls they manage to find the clue, a cassette tape hidden in a closet.
They sneak into the A/V room to play the tape, which is a recording done by Matsunaga. He says he is both confessing a sin and giving advice to future Class 3 students. Fifteen years ago, Class 3 cleaned up the old shrine on Mt. Yomiyama and prayed there together. The teacher asserted that this had freed them from the curse, but then it started to rain and two students were killed as everyone hurried down the mountain. At this point the group barely avoids getting caught by one of the teachers. In the process Teshigawara accidentally rips the tape, but Mochizuki thinks he can fix it.
Elsewhere, more people related to Class 3 die.
Thoughts
Well whadda ya know, there was actually a tiny bit of suspense this time. It helped that the ones putting themselves at risk were the interesting characters (well, Mochizuki’s still pretty bland, but I’ve gotten used to him being around), and with the two girls who were seen splitting up and walking home, each set up a possible opportunity alongside those exploring the classroom, so there was some uncertainty as to when and where something was going to happen. Granted, the former was more of a good setup than anything truly suspenseful (I strongly suspect I was just tense about something unrelated when I was watching the episode), and with the latter keeping us guessing was kinda moot since something happened in both cases, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Really, this episode was basically a lot of hints at things that should’ve been the case from the start. In addition to the above there’s the guilt Kouichi’s feeling over his role in what happened – hence the nightmare and why he only asked Teshigawara and Mochizuki to help him, to minimize the number of people at risk – and the glare Akazawa gave Mei after the funeral, hinting at the exact kind of resentment she’d warned her and Kouichi about. Emotional responses and interpersonal conflict like this would’ve made it much easier to get invested in the characters and done a better job of creating tension and ambiguity. Characters keep referring to how senseless the curse is, and that’s true. It seems to target people purely because they’re in or connected to Class 3, not because of anything they did, which is hardly fair. What can you justify doing to fight that – does it make ostracizing someone to the point of denying they exist okay, if it saves everyone else in the process? Is it better to hunker down and try to weather the storm or actively try to find out what’s going on and maybe stop it, knowing that doing so might put a lot of people at risk?
Questions like these and the potential for ambiguity the show’s premise has, like any emotional conflict on the characters’ part, has only been hinted at so far, and while it looks to slowly be coming to the fore I’m not sure how much can be done with them when there’s only three episodes left. Hopefully it can at least pull off a good finish.
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