The Missing Student
Episode 2 of JU-ON: Origins begins with the horrific attackers inside the mansion having their way with Kiyomi. Yudai strips down, giggling, while one of the girls snaps photos and humiliates Kiyomi. Mai meanwhile hears strange cat noises coming from the second floor and disappears from view. Alone and humiliated, Kiyomi heads upstairs and follows the meows to a black cat in the closet. Shutting the door behind her, Hakura cradles the cat and weeps. Only, above her is the ghostly presence of the girl we saw before and when Yudai heads up to investigate, he comes across Kiyomi who asks Yudai to walk her home. Meanwhile, Haruka dozes off at the kitchen table but upon awakening, receives a shocking call regarding Tetsuya – he’s dead. Yasuo arrives on the scene as we cut forward to the wake, greeting Haruka and apologizing for her loss. However, their conversation is cut short when Tetsuya’s mother requests her presence. Opening the coffin, Haruka looks in shock at Tetsuya’s distorted and shocked face, questioning just what he may have seen. Back at school, Mai is still missing and no one seems to know where she is. Kiyomi arrives just as the teacher leaves though and demands the photos be handed over from the mansion. With them in hand, she snubs the girl and tells her she has plans with Yudai, her attacker. Kiyomi leads Yudai back to her house where they overhear Kiyomi’s mother sleeping with Takumi, her teacher. Something deep inside Kiyomi snaps and she encourages Yudai to murder her Mother. In the wake of this, a straight-faced Kiyomi tells Yudai to wipe his fingerprints and proceeds to set up the crime scene ahead to implicate their teacher as the one responsible. While the news catch wind of this and arrests Kiyomi’s teacher, Haruka awakens in the middle of the night to find Tetsuya sitting against the wall. Approaching him, he stands up silently and walks away.
The Review Write-Up
Unless I’m missing something, the decision for Kiyomi to embrace Yudai after everything he’s done feels a little ill-placed and out of character. If she’s being possessed by the ghostly entity we’ve seen before then it may make sense but it just seems weird right now. Of course, given I haven’t actually watched ahead and I’m writing these recaps in-the-moment, then there may be more clues later on surrounding what’s going on. Despite that though, the show is clearly building up slowly and there’s a nice layer of dread with this one that should make the remaining 4 episodes quite the wild ride!
