Kafuka Fuura is cheerily walking to school one April morning when she suddenly spots a man trying to hang himself in a fit of despair. Kafuka manages to use her weight to snap the rope, thus saving his life. Nozomu Itoshiki, the man, eventually cannot take anymore of the girl's ridiculous ramblings, and runs off to school to start homeroom at the beginning of a new school year. When Nozomu walks in the door, he finds Kafuka is one of his students.

This episode begins with Usui Kagerou lamenting about how he never gets noticed by anyone, when he nearly gets run over by a truck who does not notice him. He runs into Nozomu in the shadows, who begins to talk about how some people are destined to be overshadowed by others, no matter how hard they work. The second part of the episode has the class undergo criticism training. Usui continues to be ignored until a divine wind blows away his hair, revealing his bald head and allowing everyone in the class to see him. He fears that people in the class will begin mocking him, but Kafuka suggests that Chie insults him instead, which he seems to enjoy.

The episode begins with Nozomu announcing there will be a cultural festival, which he decides to not participate and explains that they are not cultured people, believing that they will grow to be bad people if they do pretend they are. The second part of the episode starts with the class taking a field trip preview, where Chiri make a large itinerary guide of the place. They move quickly all over Kyoto until they come to a temple. There the monk enlightens them about the use of preview. The episode ends with Nozomu take Chiri to visit his preview funeral and gravesite, where she gets angry and hits him, sending him to the hospital and putting him in a coma (which Kafuka calls a "preview of the afterlife").