The mystery pulls you in clean, but the deaths are what keep you watching. They're not jump scares or cheap shocks, they're inevitable, graphically cruel, and drawn with animation so deliberate it feels like watching something collapse in slow motion. Mei exists in a space between present and absent, and the show trusts you to feel the wrongness before anyone explains it. The second half doesn't stick the landing, but by then you're already committed to understanding what the Calamity is, even if the answer disappoints you.

Kouichi Sakakibara joins class 3-3 at Yomiyama North Junior High in the spring of 1998, a month late after time spent on sick leave. He walks into a classroom gripped by an unspoken dread that nobody will acknowledge. Then he notices Mei Misaki, a quiet girl with an eyepatch who keeps to herself and whom no one else in the class seems to recognize. His classmates warn him away from her, but Kouichi befriends Mei anyway and begins to learn why everyone is so afraid. Rumors tie the dread to a student from the same class decades earlier, and soon a chain of deaths, known as the Calamity, begins to claim students. Kouichi sets out to learn how the curse connects to Mei, and getting to the truth will demand a steep price from him and his classmates. Based on a novel by Ayatsuji Yukito, the series blends horror, mystery and supernatural suspense.