Another Episode 2 Discussion

nicole_zzz said:


You know, this crossed my mind as well. Ghosts and vengeful spirits are scary and all, but I'd find it much creepier if Mei was actually still alive and shunned by her peers. Human behaviour is usually what makes my skin crawl, moreso than any supernatural beasties.

I don't completely subscribe to this theory though, just because of all the effort that's gone into suggesting that Mei is dead. But if it all turns out to be a nice big red herring, I wouldn't mind at all.

sunfall said:

and am i the only one who thinks that misaki is cute? lol xD

Persius said:
And i wanted to clear a doubt - Is misaki dead or alive ? read at other sites comments that she is alive , can anyone confirm it who has read manga / novel ?

Appel_stroop said:


It might have something to do with the heterochromia, there are different forms of it the one we usually see in Anime is a very rare form about 1 in 250.000 that is inheritable but harmless. Then you've got other forms which can be harmfull it's possible to basically become blind on one eye because of heterchromia. So maybe she has to wear the eyepatch because of some kind of medical reason (even though she might already be death.).

lobkestar said:
I never wanted to see a eye so badly xD

spigot said:
The conversation in the art class was so ridiculously awkward and poorly directed. Stupid creepy music and the screenplay really drag this kinda interesting anime down.

Persius said:

No sunfall me too , she is indeed cute .
And i wanted to clear a doubt - Is misaki dead or alive ? read at other sites comments that she is alive , can anyone confirm it who has read manga / novel ?

Daikichi said:
It's possible I just missed this, but WHAT gave Sakakibara the idea/thought to go to the hospital and ask if someone had died that Monday?

What made him think Mei was possibly dead?

Kittybear29 said:

And those dolls need to be burned! D:

Loose or improper use of the word stalker and he isn't a necrophile because...

Magito said:
Kouichi and Mei looks so cute each other. I'm hoping there's a bit of romance between them.

DuskGolem said:
All things to think about.

Edefrem said:
trololol, what lighthearted thoughts for such a dark and creep series

Yumekichi11 said:
There is dark love or something along the lines. Creepy love.

akutasame94 said:

This is where author found material for his story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seito_Sakakibara

Seito Sakakibara (酒鬼薔薇聖斗, Sakakibara Seito?) is the moniker of a then-14-year-old student from Kobe, Japan who murdered an 11-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl between March and May of 1997. Also identified as Onibara (due to an error in reporting by the Japanese media), his real name has not been released to the press as per Japanese legal procedures prohibiting the identification of juvenile offenders, and he is officially referred to as "Boy A" in Japanese legal documentation.

On May 27, 1997, the head of Jun Hase (土師 淳, Hase Jun?, ca. 1986 - May 27, 1997), a special education student at Tainohata Elementary School, was found in front of the school gate hours before students arrived for classes. Hase had been beheaded with a knife, with further mutilations being done before being left in front of the school, for students to discover when they arrived in the morning. A note, written in red pen, was found stuffed in his mouth, identifying the killer as "Sakakibara." The note read:

"This is the beginning of the game... You police guys stop me if you can... I desperately want to see people die, it is a thrill for me to commit murder. A bloody judgment is needed for my years of great bitterness."

Additionally, some English was on the note as well: "shooll [sic] kill".

Police commented that the style of Hase's killing and the note was reminiscent of that of the Zodiac murders in the San Francisco area during the late 1960s.

On June 6, a letter was sent to the newspaper Kobe Shimbun, in which Sakakibara claimed responsibility for the slaying and decapitation of Jun Hase, and threatened that more killings would follow. This second letter, delivered in a brown envelope postmarked June 3, had no return address or name. Enclosed was a three-page, 1400-word letter, also written in red ink, which included a six-character name that can be pronounced as "Sakakibara Seito." The same characters, which mean alcohol, devil, rose, saint and fight, were used in the first message that was inserted into the boy's mouth.

Beginning with the phrase "Now, it's the beginning of a game," the letter stated that "I am putting my life at stake for the sake of this game... If I'm caught, I'll probably be hanged... police should be angrier and more tenacious in pursuing me.... It's only when I kill that I am liberated from the constant hatred that I suffer and that I am able to attain peace. It is only when I give pain to people that I can ease my own pain." The letter also lashed out against the Japanese educational system, calling it "compulsory education that formed me, an invisible person."

In the initial panic, the Japanese media misreported the name as "Onibara" - Demon's Rose, though the killer insisted it was as he gave it. Infuriated by the mixup, Sakakibara later wrote to the station, "From now on, if you misread my name or spoil my mood I will kill three vegetables a week.... If you think I can only kill children you are greatly mistaken."

A 14-year-old junior high school student was arrested as a suspect in the Hase murder on June 28. Shortly after his arrest, "Boy A" also confessed to the murder of 10-year-old Ayaka Yamashita (山下彩花 Yamashita Ayaka) on March 16, as well as the assaults of three other girls on and around that same date.

The personality profile of Sakakibara is seen to be a classic case of hikikomori syndrome. In an analysis of the case, journalist Gamal Nkrumah wrote:

The worst thing about the Sakakibara case is that one might have seen it coming. Yet neither his family — nor Japan — heeded the tell-tale signs. Japanese children are confronted with an extremely difficult examination at the tender age of six. Their performance effectively determines their whole future, for it decides whether they will go to a good elementary school, or one of the despised state schools. Parents have no faith in the state system, and Sakakibara's mother was no exception. She pressured her first-born to excel at school, even though social workers warned her that her son was mentally unstable. He was already torturing and killing young animals as a 'hobby'. Soon after, he began physically attacking girls as he walked to school.

In addition to the hikikomori angle, analysts and psychologists have found a number of disturbing similarities to serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki. Like the 1989 "Otaku Murderer," Sakakibara was apparently set on a violent path from the very beginning. He began carrying cutting weapons while still in elementary school, writing in his diary that "I can ease my irritation when I'm holding a survival knife or spinning scissors like a pistol." At age 12, he exhibited extreme cruelty to animals, lining up a row of frogs in a street and riding over them with his bicycle, as well as mutilating cats and decapitating pigeons.

After the March 16 attack, he wrote in his diary: "I carried out sacred experiments today to confirm how fragile human beings are... I brought the hammer down, when the girl turned to face me. I think I hit her a few times but I was too excited to remember." The following week, on March 23, he added: "This morning my mom told me, 'Poor girl. The girl attacked seems to have died.' There is no sign of my being caught... I thank you, God (Bamoidōki), for this... Please continue to protect me."

Additionally, a search of Sakakibara's room turned up thousands of H manga volumes and pornographic videos and anime, enough so that Japanese politician Shizuka Kamei called for restricting objectionable content, stating, "Movies lacking any literary or educational merit made for just showing cruel scenes... Adults should be blamed for this," and that "[t]he incident gives adults the chance to rethink the policy of self-imposed restrictions on these films and whether they should allow them just because they are profitable."