A little speculation about Corpse Disposal and J-horror
But I'm a little bored so sharing a part-theory, part-headcanon on Muu and Rei
So we unfortunately don't see much of Rei in "Its not my fault" but I want to point out three key times we do
The first time we see Rei in the MV, is her wet sleeve (we know its not Muu because Muu wears a pink jumper under her blazer)
Then, after a lot of bug stuff, we're finally back in the real world, where Muu has just killed her Post-After Pain. In INMF, we don't see the surroundings as well, just the dirt track and bushes. But in AP, we see this is right next to a rushing river (Muu's undercover card also features a bridge as a landmark)
The next time we see Rei after her corpse, is a flashback to the start where she turns the hourglass over.
Then it cuts just further back to before Rei stood up - as she pulls herself up off the floor
She's alive and absolutely soaked after a session of intense bullying (which we saw Muu insert herself into in AP)
However, I want to now switch a little to talk about cinematography and a concept called the Kuleshov effect
The video I linked is pretty concise but the gist is that if you put two shots next to each other, even if they were filmed separately, the brain interprets it as a continuous scene
(so if you film a character looking off screen, then a picture of an apple on a table, we're going to assume they're looking at the apple)
Therefore while we understand chronologically that the sequence of events is
Rei (wet and alive) -> Rei's murder on dry land ↺ Flashback to Rei still wet and alive
Which I think everyone understood as a commentary on how this power struggle was a constant cycle of the hourglass being turned over
I think visually, it also implies a sequence like
Rei was bullied -> Muu kills her -> Sopping wet, Rei crawls back to the classroom
But wait!
That sequence suggests a missing step
How did Rei get wet again?
Well, we know Muu killed her next to a river
And if you were a scrawny teenage murderer with a body on your hands,
would you leave it there where someone could see it while you grab a shovel and stand in broad daylight digging a hole in tough ground???
Or try lighting a fire in public???
Of course not!
It'd be much easier for Muu to, in a panic, just roll her body into the convenient river and let all the evidence wash away!
(Of course, if Muu was panicking, she might not have been very careful.
Given she ended up in MILGRAM, there must've been something tying Muu to Rei's death and in T2 Muu seems to have finally remembered losing her left shoe...)
Fun fact: this is the same shoe Cinderella loses in the animated Disney film (and the best known version of that story came into English from France)
Shoe break over, back to the Endless Queen's Game
So, if we assume Rei's corpse was thrown in the river, what does it matter? Its just a pointless headcanon
But I speculate the meaning goes deeper!
So that image of Rei, soaking wet, crawling off the floor reminded me of something:
J-horror ghost girls!
Specifically the most famous of ghost girls Samara/Sadako
Who became a vengeful spirit after being thrown in a well and now crawls out of TVs to kill people who watched her VHS tape
Her story too is a cyclical one (its called 'Ring' for a reason), the only way to break the curse is to copy the tape and have someone else watch it, who will then become the victim unless they can themselves copy the tape and show it to another unsuspecting patsy
The story goes back further because this movie is based on a novel, which is based on the legend of 番町皿屋敷 Banchou Sara Yashiki.
There are many versions but generally a maid girl Okiku is proposed to, and when she rejects the proposal, her master breaks one of ten plates and promises to forgive her if she marries him.
When she declines again, he beats her to near death then throws her into a well
(sometimes it's a jealous mistress instead of a master)
Interestingly, Atrophaneura alcinous (swallowtail butterfly) larvae found in Japanese wells became known as Okikumushi お菊虫 (Okiku bugs), tying back to the whole insect thing...
It's been said a bunch now, but the name 'Rei' can be read as 霊 meaning ghost (seen in words like Yuurei 幽霊, a more common word for ghost than Rei on its own)
We know Muu is afraid of ghosts too (though I must admit she says Obake, not yuurei, but both words refer to ghosts)
Remembers the i/井 in Sakurai/櫻井 can be read as 'well'
I'm sure that has nothing to do with anything
Uh, I can't think of a conclusion because its 1 am and I had to look up a bunch of spooky images
TL;DR:
I think Muu may have quickly shoved Rei's body into the river next to where the murder happened (maybe forgot her shoe at the scene of the crime) and now she's scared by the cycle continuing and Rei coming back to haunt her
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It's a small detail amidst the craziness that is the rest of 252, but I'm losing my absolute mind at the fact that Past Allen was apparently soldier.
We just had it confirmed that our protagonist, our child soldier protagonist, had a whole previous life that he lived and completely forgot about. He had a whole first life where, until he was at least an older teenager, he had nothing to do with the inescapable holy war that's taken over his existence the second time around. He was just some kid with no connection to the battle between the Noah and the Black Order.
But what was he instead? Was he free to actually have a childhood in this other life?
Nope! He was just a normal soldier in some non-spiritual, completely mundane war, and he would have died in battle if Nea hadn't swept in and drafted him into the holy war instead. There is no life in which the young Allen is not a soldier.
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