Transferring into a new class at Yomiyama North Middle School, Kouichi Sakakibara (voiced by Atsushi Abe) quickly notices that his classmates avoid speaking about one desk, one empty chair, and one unsettlingly quiet girl named Mei Misaki (Natsumi Takamori). What he uncovers is a decades-old curse that has claimed a student and a family member every year since 1972, and no one will explain the rules that might stop it. Based on Yukito Ayatsuji's novel, the anime trades jump scares for a slow, dread-soaked atmosphere and some of the genre's most gruesomely inventive death sequences. It remains a defining entry in Japanese horror animation precisely because it never rushes to explain itself.