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.

After confiding in his latest despairs to Ms. Arai, she asks Nozomu to visit one of his students who hasn't shown up to school — Kiri Komori, a hikikomori. In the end Kiri goes to school but decides to be a hikimori there. The next day, Nozomu notes that another of his students, Matoi Tsunetsuki, didn't show up that day. Ms. Arai brings Nozomu to the counseling room, where she explains Matoi's obsessive-stalker tendencies to Nozomu. That night, he attempts to dissuade her from bothering her last boyfriend; however, his strategy backfires on him. This turns him into Matoi's latest object of affection.

This episode is a pastiche of parodies about foreigners and Japanese attitudes concerning them. A foreign student named Kaere Kimura transfers into the class. Kimura is a blonde girl with multiple personality disorder stemming from cultural identity confusion. Nozumu prevents her from committing suicide but sees her underwear and is sued. While Nozomu is absent from school Chiri investigates his students and discovers that Maria is an illegal immigrant.

Chie dispatches Nozomu to investigate rumors that the invariably injured Abiru Kobushi is suffering from domestic violence. He pursues Abiru's father while he shops, causing him a great deal of inconvenience, before discovering Abiru's obsession with pulling the tails of dangerous animals. The latter half of the episode concerns Meru Otonashi, who is silent and shy in person, but remarkably abusive via text-messaging, her only means of communication.

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").

The first part of this episode introduces Ai Kaga, a girl who always takes blame for everything, even though it is not her fault. Nozomu takes the class to a "guilt scramble" to explain that history has led to the "guilt complex" such as Kaga's becoming the Japanese mentality. After being overcome with guilt himself, Nozomu and Kaga travel the world to try to stop burdening others. The second part introduces another girl, Mayo Mitama. Her evil-looking eyes have led to her being misunderstood - that is, she actually is evil, but people try not to prejudge her and assume she is actually good. She commits several cruel acts that Nozomu bears witness to and is blamed for, being the only other nearby party. He becomes so concerned with not prejudging that he doesn't blame her when she hits Majiru over the head with an aluminum bat or when she drops a brick onto Nozomu's head.