My last ER viewing was a while ago - I'm still on part 130-ish on this one - so I might have forgotten something, but something's bugging me about the first two murders. Every single murder/kidnapping follows the trend of "person is on TV and then shows up on the Midnight Channel," right? At the end, there's something about how the Midnight Channel reflects the public's desire to see famous people, or listen to rumors, or whatnot. For most of the kidnappings, the chain goes: Person gets famous => Person goes on Midnight Channel => Namatame sees them => Namatame kidnaps them. However, what happened in Mayumi Yamano's and Saki's case? Adachi killed them both, but IIRC, he didn't kill them because they were on the Midnight Channel - he had other motives for doing so.

In particular, he killed Yamano because he's a creepy raper guy. So, why did Adachi just happen to have motives for killing the two people who showed up on TV? Was it just a coincidence, combined with Adachi having some sort of attraction to famous people? Was Izanami somehow influencing him, in addition to giving him the initial power? I was left with the impression that Izanami gave Charlie/Adachi/Namatame their power and then left it at that....

Adachi put the first two in, so that's why they don't follow the pattern. Although they probably would since they were both on the media. We just didn't get see Yamano on the midnight channel. According to the dialogue she did appear there. The only difference in the first two is that the person throwing them in didn't do it because of the midnight channel. Bitches and whores, in his opinion. They denied him when he made moves on them, and he found out he had these powers to punish them. So he did. That's how I took it at least. Then he recognized the potential for entertainment in a boring town/life so he tricked Namatame into continuing to toss people in when Namatame called the police about the midnight channel.

I don't think Izanami had any influence aside from giving them the potential.

Yeah, it was mostly just co-incidence that Adachi TVed (can you use that as a verb?) the first two people who had been on the Midnight channel and then died. The slightly weirder part was if Saki hadn't been on the Midnight channel, she might not have died. If she hadn't appeared, Namatame wouldn't have tried to warn her and in turn, Adachi wouldn't have called her into the station again to ask her why she'd been speaking to Namatame.

It gets a bit messy, now that I think about it.

Coincidence, but remember that Namatame realized the coincidence which inspired him to throw people in to begin with. It makes total sense as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy thing. It's not coincidence for the sake of moving the plot forward, there's a direct cause-and-effect between the first two murders and Namatame's actions.

@Seaborgium said:

My last ER viewing was a while ago - I'm still on part 130-ish on this one - so I might have forgotten something, but something's bugging me about the first two murders. Every single murder/kidnapping follows the trend of "person is on TV and then shows up on the Midnight Channel," right? At the end, there's something about how the Midnight Channel reflects the public's desire to see famous people, or listen to rumors, or whatnot. For most of the kidnappings, the chain goes: Person gets famous => Person goes on Midnight Channel => Namatame sees them => Namatame kidnaps them. However, what happened in Mayumi Yamano's and Saki's case? Adachi killed them both, but IIRC, he didn't kill them because they were on the Midnight Channel - he had other motives for doing so.

In particular, he killed Yamano because he's a creepy raper guy. So, why did Adachi just happen to have motives for killing the two people who showed up on TV? Was it just a coincidence, combined with Adachi having some sort of attraction to famous people? Was Izanami somehow influencing him, in addition to giving him the initial power? I was left with the impression that Izanami gave Charlie/Adachi/Namatame their power and then left it at that....

what are you talking about?

Yamano and Saki were killed by Adachi because he was a creep and tried to use his position to get some, and when they both refused to they got thrown in. Yamano was pushed in on accident, as while Adachi knew of the rumors, he didn't know it would actually work. It just happened that at the place at the Amagi Inn that the conversation between Adachi and Yamano happened there was a big TV behind her. When Saki found the body, she was questioned multiple times by Adachi with the last time he being thrown into a TV after turning Adachi down causing him to throw her in since he knew that A) no one would actually believe that she was thrown in the TV and B) he's a cop and who would believe he did it (his thoughts).

Namatame saw both Yamano and Saki on the TV and after first seeing Yamano on and finding out she was killed tried to then warn Saki that she was in danger. Saki ignored him and was killed causing Namatame to believe that the people that became famous on TV were going to be killed (hence why Yukiko was next). Namatame tried to warn the police but it was Adachi was the one who answered and told him the police wouldn't believe it, but encouraged him to try to help them on his own. And since he believed that the people he saw on the Midnight Channel were trying to tell him that it was safe in the TV (which he knew he could go in the TV as he reached out for Yamano when she was on) he then went out to try and "save" those he saw on TV.

Izanami only gave both Adachi and Namatame the power to go into the TV, as she even admits that she didn't make them do it and that it was a matter of chance that they did. She did start the rumor of the Midnight Channel which caused the possibility of something to happen to be possible, probably knowing what kind of person Adachi and Namatami were, but what would happen was only chance (at least that's what she leads you to believe). So yes, she gave them the power, and let them do with it what came to be. Basically, Adachi was just a bad guy and Namatame was mentally weak at the time because of his affair and life falling apart because of it and the things played out the way they did.