I was guessing An-chan let them survive on the basis that they don't say anything. I really can't say if he was seriously going to kill them, but to the mob, they must have thought every breath would be their last, the way they were getting smashed. I can just imagine them yelling "Don't kill me. I won't tell anyone. Just don't kill me!!"
That part perplexed me as well. I'm guessing it was all necessary to get the food to An-chan. It can't be that easy to maneuver in a compound undetected, and from memory An-chan's held in a separate compound to them all together (Compound 1-8 vs 2-6). Compound 1 might have been a place where they deal out all the punishment, so the only way Turtle was going to get there was break some rules, get escorted and escape somehow.Why was Turtle hurt so bad when he sneaked the food to Sakuragi? I imagine that's what he was going to look like after the guards found him, but if they had beat him before, he probably wouldn't have been able to fool them and run off.
I never expected An-chan to make it out alive. Watching the OP every week, I only see the six near the tree, and the scenes with An-chan had a very "memory" feel to them like he's no longer around (in the future). So with that thinking in mind, this episode actually gave me some hope that he might actually make it out alive.So Sakuragi has two weeks left. Ishihara is never going to let him out alive. Up until this episode it has been all about humiliating Sakuragi to the point that he kills himself like Hinagi. It's now that we see Ishihara's starting to lose it because Sakuragi won't break. However the prison doesn't appear to have any problems covering up "accidents" so unless Kumagai intervenes I really don't see our beloved An-chan getting out of that place with his life.
edit: Frozen - Episode 06 (mkv version)