School-Live! | Episode 3
Paranoia Gent: Man, I’m enjoying this show. The mixture of cutesy with horrific is disturbingly effectivve. The way some of the video footage of the xombie attackes was handled was really creepy. I still believe Megu-nee is toast although I sincerely hope I’m wrong. The writers may just be cruelly toying with us. It seems like she at least survived the first day, but I suspect that she got zapped sometime later, probably saving the girls, or at least Yuki. This is one of my most eagerly anticipated titles every week.
EmperorBrandon: Really interesting to get the background on Megu-nee and her issues as a teacher before this all happened, or rather, right when it was starting to happen. Showing things from here perspective worked well there. I like how they sprinkled the signs of impending doom there for a little while, building up until it was right there upon them. A very interesting origin story, and there is still more we have yet to get. Mii-kun was not yet there, they were trapped on the roof without having established the “safe zone” we see in the present, and still some other questions left to be answered.
Asrialys: Hm. So all the girls in Yuki’s class still have the same uniforms even before the chaos. So maybe the theory about the uniforms was incorrect. Maybe instead of ribbons of different colors for each separate year, this school actually has different uniform colors. lol Doesn’t sound very cost-effective…
Anyway, Megumi’s existence is still in question. At least we know that she is, or was, a real person. If she’s still alive, she chose an unusual time to start distancing herself from her students…
davesimmons: And they keep teasing us with whether or not Megu-nee is still alive in present day. The tent sleeps four, enough for everyone . . . .
Great show so far.
bctaris: It’s entertaining storytelling, jumping around like this. The first two episodes Megumi is not there. The first half of this episode, she’s most certainly alive (she’s critical: being once again torn about being a “friend” teacher, she brought Yuki to the roof; which protected Yuuri; and then she got Kurumi’s attention–maybe only because she was, again, a “friend”–just in time).
The second half of the episode, however, is where things get confusing, because we’re not sure when it is. The girls acknowledge her even more than the scene in the library, and it all seems to fit as something before the events of the first two episodes–but then they did something strange, beyond the four-person tent gag: only Yuki noticed that she was coming, and only through Yuki’s perspective do we see her flashlight come through the tent and then down the hall. So it becomes pretty unclear, but I’d hedge that the camping scene takes place after Megumi is no longer there.
But I think it leads to an intriguing wrinkle: only Yuki has the full illusion (and, what do you know, Yuki was pretty strange even before the apocalypse), but I think it’s the one illusion that all the other girls sincerely believe in, even if they can’t see her. And they rely on Yuki to “tell” them when Megumi’s around. Because Megumi seems, or seemed to be very, very important to all of them and they’ll do anything to continue to believe in her, as much for their own survival as anything. Even if it means enabling Yuki’s delusions.
The interesting thing, though, is that none of this means that Megumi is necessarily dead. It could be that part of the reason the other girls are able to play into the fantasy of her is that she merely left the school at some point for help.
On the other hand, there is that cross on the roof. And what Megumi wears around her neck.
Sensuifu: The weird thing is, Megumi admitted being ‘dead’- “I’m a casualty!” back episode 1. I think she might’ve meant that literally too. From the way Kurumi expresses relief that Taroumaru’s ruckus didn’t end in some accident/death and pointing out “we didn’t have any casualties, it’s all good” seems to imply that Megumi is really dead, despite her comedic reaction with “I’m a casualty”. Unless that wasn’t supposed to be taken literally and she was just implying she was already dead for some strange reason. More interestingly too, is Kurumi’s exchange between all this where the girls were concerned over Taroumaru’s capabilities and the risk they take by trying to leave him off-leash.
But yeah, these overlapping flashbacks done in ‘realtime’ is pretty engaging. This technique works pretty effectively with the way they’ve cut the particular scenes focused on Megumi using the ending-reel effect.
Paranoia Gent: I’m mentally bracing myself for an episode titled, “Yuki, Didn’t You Know…?” (Anyone who has seen Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 will probably understand that reference.)
