Another - Reviews

When I started this anime I was like " omg ! this would definitely take a spot on my top 5 ".

I was expecting a clever plot , mystery, suspence and drama.

Well, I can't say I didn't had these, especially on the first half of the anime but as I kept going my expectetions gone lower and lower.

I found the ending a little bit silly just to be a "plot twist" and something that we couldn't see coming.Not that I was so mad about it cause there are only 12 episodes so you don't feel like you waste your time on it.

I was going to rate this with 4,5 or a 5 but looking back on it I found myself remembering the good sides of it more.

The animation was so perfect for my style, the characters were okay, the story was interesting , dark and fun to watch, you want to see what will come next and who will die next.

So, if you want to check it out and give it a chance ,I suggest you not to expect a mindblowing anime or something outstanding as the fist episode imply. Also, my opinion is not to try to solve the mystery and come up with possible endings cause there is a great chance your idea will be better than the actual ending...

See it for what it is and enjoy it :)

"Another" is quite a change from most other school life anime, being very dark and having a gothic style to match. WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS FOR THE MAIN PLOT OF THE ANIME "ANOTHER" PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

This show is often put down, as it is confusing, contains a few plot holes, and may not be considered as good as some other in its genre. Nevertheless it is quite enjoyable as a survival gory horror anime, despite some of its flaws.

This anime has a story that isn't unheard of, namely, this:

A girl called Misaki died 26 years ago, but one day a boy looked at her desk and said "she isn't dead, she's right here!" and for whatever reason, (trauma, shock, denial, e.t.c.) everybody believed him while they were all in the class, they acted as if Misaki never died, as if she was still a student.

Fast forward 26 years later to a sickly boy called Kouichi moving to a new town and a new school, but he is being treated weirdly by the other students, and they don't seem to notice the strange girl with an eyepatch at the back of the class.

Kouichi, being confused, talks to the girl. And thus starts the carnage.

Turns out, the class has a curse that causes many of its members to get killed in various horrible ways, from the suspension on a lift/elevator snapping causing them to fall, to falling down the stairs with an umbrella (I'm not going to describe what happened, but you get the idea), to suicide.

The students and teachers have been trying various things to prevent the deaths and end the curse, and when Kouichi arrived at the school they were ignoring one member of the class.

The reasoning behind this is they seem to have one extra person in the class who isn't meant to be there, who is dead, and they think if they act as if the dead person isn't there things will be put on hold and return to normal. They believed that the strange girl, namely Mei, was the dead person, and now that Kouichi has talked to her, they believe that it's his fault!

Kouichi, Mei and other students who don't believe it to be all his fault decide to look into whats going on, learning more and more gradually about the curse, it's rules and most importantly, how to end it!

This anime is quite enjoyable, especially the last few episodes where things really plunge into insanity

It is very dark, so if you don't like dark stuff or want something with any comedy or lightness then I suggest you go to a different anime. It is also very gory, like, really gory, it doesn't sugar coat anything and it isn't cencored I think, so if you are bad with gore I suggest you either do what I previously said and find something else to watch, or at least cover your eyes during the death scenes.

Now for evaluation.

The animation is something I can honestly praise this anime for, having a unique style and sticking to it, and giving off a gothic vibe,  and also for it's well animated death scenes.

The sound I wouldn't normally evaluate but I must say I am in love with "Another"'s opening "Kyoumu Desen" by Ali Project. It's fantastic and fits the anime very well. I watched the dub as I had no other option at the time, and I can say it is pretty decent and didn't hinder the creepiness or dramaticness of this anime, although it took me a couple of episodes to get used to it. Greg Ayers as Kouichi was great casting in my opinion.

The characters are great, mainly Kouichi and Mei for their relationship that makes them nicely shippable with eachother. They are also very nice and people you want to suceed in whatever task they come across.

The story is good and enthralling, but not that original.

Overall I would give this anime a 7/10. It is very enjoyable in my opinion and is creepy and interesting, despite some plot holes and possibly confusing moments. I personally really enjoyed it, along with its unique and dark style, although, it's not something everybody will feel the same way about.

Another is in many aspects a classic horror tale.The music, the setting, the mysterious and secretive inhabitants, and death. These aspects are nothing new, but used right it can result in an effective scary story. Surprisingly, the end result turned out quite well.

The first half of the series was honestly very creepy. Now, while it wasn't actually downright scary, it is still among the scariest anime I've seen. And that is ...kinda sad actually when you think about it. However, it's not just some creepy and gory scenes spread out over 12 episodes. There's also a mystery, a couple of romantic moments and some decent character development.

...But it's mainly creepy and gory scenes.

The cast is quite stereotypical for anime, but I still felt that they handled the characters very well. Despite being modeled after stereotypes, they managed to not become giant walking clichés and some of them turned out to be kind of interesting. The female lead - Misaki - turned out to be the most interesting character in the series.

While the dialogue was usually well written, the exposition could be a bit too lazy at times. I'm mainly referring to when they add in bits of dialog (audio only) gossipping about plot-related topics, revealing shit all too simply.

There were two episodes in the middle of the series I hated. Why? Because they were filler. And guess what - one of them was a F***ING BEACH EPISODE! Yeah, that's right, they actually managed to squeeze in a beach episode into this, into a goddamn horror story! Do they get like a huge bonus if they add a beach/hotspring/general bikini episode. I have a hard time believing that was in the original novel.

As for the technical side of things - the artwork was a bad fit. Way too "cutesy" and bright for a horror story of this type. Although the animation itself wasn't bad.

The sound was hit and miss. Mainly hit, but unfortunately it was a bit loud at times - which made it distracting and they used background music far too often. Outside of those aspects though, it was terrific. Classic creepy minimalistic scores which fit the show very well.

OP sucked balls. On it's own it wasn't very memorable nor catchy, and the fast pace of the song didn't fit in with the anime at all. The editing was also far too fast to properly represent the tone and content of the series.

I feel they somewhat dropped the ball on the ending. It's not terrible and it could have been a lot worse - which I expected it to be. But they went too over-the-top with the conclusion and threw in a "twist" that honestly could have been quite effective, but as it is, it didn't amount to much story-wise or emotionally.

I am however, very glad it didn't take a cheesy, childish route - which I expected it to, considering how many promising anime have fallen down that hole.

Overall it's not amazing. I can't even call it great, but it certainly was good. Very interesting at times and pretty damn creepy other times.

The good:

Creepy/scary

Inrtiguing mystery

Well paced

Pretty good dialogue

Not a crap ending

Effective background music

The bad: 

Too much background music

Unfitting character designs

Unfitting OP

Over-the-top ending

Beach episode...

Chosing a final verdict for Another is tough. Because while I felt that I enjoyed it overall enough to give it an 8, I also thought that it had too many minor flaws for me to give that high of a score. So I'm going with 7.5.

**This review contains (some) SPOILERS since I feel I need to mention some plot points** If you don’t want any spoilers read below:

Another has a pretty slow start that doesn’t start to get interesting until five episodes in since it’s explaining the show’s “curse”. Even though the show promises some pretty sweet gore porn it doesn’t deliver very much of it, although the ending is not what most people will be expecting it’s somewhat contrived. The animation has high quality, but not really inspired; however, what delivers the killing blow is that only one character is even somewhat interesting, Mei, but she’s actually pretty unrealistic if you think about the actions she takes. Even worse about the show is that as a horror anime it's not scary, and only slightly creepy. It creates an intresting premise and gives a suprising ending which is why I give it a 6.6/10 (this is also the short verson of the review).

Here’s another review—which is pretty much another opinion—on another anime using another language than I usually watch (I usually watch dubs)…ugh, I couldn’t resist stupid Another puns could I?

 

Story

Another’s story is a great excuse for gore porn we basically have a cursed classroom where every three, or something, years the classroom at hand gets to have their students killed off until they kill the actual dead person…I mean that was dead before the curse was killing them...but then the only reason there is a dead person is because a class from long ago pretended that a dead person was alive…and now they all die because of it. Confusing? I thought so too.

I will have to bring up that Another isn’t really scary for a horror anime though. It has creepy dolls, although the writers seem to use the dolls as nothing else other than some cheap way to be creepy.

But I digress, the plot to Another is like Final Destination, except this show "tries" to make it a little more interesting by having the curse’s background contain enough details to write a novel, and when the show is done spending the first 4 or 5 episodes explaining the god damn thing the show actually starts to get fun.

I do have one problem with the way the show pulls this off, there’s only (about) four major death scenes that attempt to have the same creative nature of the deaths seen in Final Destination, except not quite as fun to watch since the camera gets its ass out of the death scene so fast it’s as if it was a paranoid socially awkward pervert that got caught peeping.

Alright, but maybe the show isn’t gore porn like I said at first, maybe it’s trying to tell a thought provoking mystery story with the curse. Except that it does take pride in its death scenes since it tries to build up tension before every death (only thing it needed was the Jaws theme). Not to mention the fact that the last two episodes went for the all-out approach that’s so god damned ridicules that it almost turned into an action-comedy at that point. But before that let’s not forget (even though it’s easy to) an elderly couple are the first ones to be axe-crazy…and for no reason—I’m not even kidding. Ok sure, the teacher says one sentence about them having mental problems after the fact, but that’s just lazy writing if I’ve ever seen it before.

On a positive note, at least the mystery was surprising I mean you probably won’t guess it, unless someone spoils it for you.

Animation/Art

Not much to say about this section really, I’ve mentioned how the camera seems to run away from the death scenes a lot, but that’s not necessarily a problem being that it could be doing that so that your imagination fills in the rest. What I do know is spoilers; i.e. the concept of the color of death that is introduced by Mei she describes it as something that doesn’t necessarily have a familiar color that we all know…except fuck that, when the show does show it, it just shows a dark blue color. We’ve all seen dark blue before; if the show really wanted to keep the mystery it shouldn’t have shown the color in the first place

As for the show’s animation, there’s a lot of money thrown at it, but there’s nothing really interesting outside of the intro, Kouichi’s (main character) dreams, and the fucking dolls. Seriously, it’s like the show has its own crew for the dolls…that got fired after the fifth episode.

Sound

A lot like the animation, it’s not bad by any means but not great either it just has a lot of money thrown at it making it half descent. Although the intro sequence music is somewhat interesting, but again, so was the art in the intro.

Characters

Alright (what’s his fucking name again?!), Kouichi is about as interesting as watching a naked man doing jumping jacks…at a nudist gym, solving a Rubik’s cube after entering all of its sides on a cheat program, or finding more useless fucking dolls on this show. He’s boring! His design is nothing to really shout at, His whole character is ran entirely on reactions to what’s going on around him. He’s basically the perfect example of “nothing special”.

Mei, on the other hand at least isn’t boring; even though she is the most unrealistically passive person that ever existed, rivaling that of a rock. Mei at least becomes very important because when her *spoiler tag* power is pulled out of the writer’s asses it’s all up to her to stop the gigantic quagmire that happens at the end…except she doesn’t do anything until almost everyone’s dead THEN she announces the big shocker at the end. Is it me, or is she a little messed up? I mean even when you look past the creepy dolls that surround her, or even the fact that she doesn’t really seem to have a problem when everyone in the class pretends that she doesn’t exist, it’s the fact that she waits till everyone’s dead to stop the madness (then again, maybe that's her revenge for the previous thing).

Going back to her passiveness, when someone is chasing you with a knife, your first reaction is to run from that crazy psychopath, but not Mei, she’s too smart for that, she innovative enough to know that everything will be better if you just dodge the slices with a blank expression in your face—so remember kids: if someone is trying to kill you, don’t lose your cool - even if that's pretty much impossible!

Alright, but are the other characters any good? Well, I’ll be happy to let you know that, they really aren’t. Teshigawara (doofus friend of the main character) has one interesting moment where he really tries to legitimately end it all, but apparently he ends up to be wrong and his reaction to his failure feels genuine, and you end up feeling sorry for the poor sucker. That’s about it, though.

Overall

However, from the sound of this review you’d probably think I’d rather kill the show by firing a Dora at it than anything else, although prepare to be raped in the ear, because I did actually enjoy Another while I was watching it. It was somewhat entertaining and the last two episodes are jack full of some pretty good thrills and pulls a decent “unexpected twist” at the end (regardless of whether or not it was somewhat contrived).  It wasn’t really scary, perhaps somewhat creepy, or dark, but not really horrifying, but never too light hearted.

Which is pretty disappointing since the whole reason I watched Another was because it was a horror anime and I’ve yet to find one that’s legitimately scary for me (‘course I’m the kind of person that watches The Exorcist and finds it hilarious). For a horror…anything if it’s not scary that’s a pretty bad thing; like if a comedy isn’t funny.

I can see why this anime is mildly famous since it has a pretty interesting premise, some fucking awesome looking gore porn (what little of it there is), and I could imagine people liking Mei too (even though I don’t). It's closeist resembleance I could see to this show is probably When They Cry. On a side note, at least Another doesn’t degrade itself to pulling off soft-core porn...because that's what the OVA episode is for.

DISCLAIMER: If you don't like horror or gore, this anime is probably not for you; This review contains HINTS not spoilers. I am writing this a couple of weeks after ive seen it so it may not be as detailed.

 First off, this anime was so damn good, i couldnt take my eyes of the screen the entire time - i was in constant suspense and constantly guessing about the clues, twists and turns of the story.

The story line -  I really enjoyed the plot of the story - however my only complaint - i found it didnt really make sense and was quite confusing for me at the start of the anime; I couldn't see why students would begin to die because of a new student?. Juxtsaposed to this, i found this just made the story more interesting as i was always guessing what would happen next - beware of cliff hangers. The length of the anime makes it perfect to marathon in a day, i doubt you will be able to stop watching haha.

The deaths were my favourite part of the whole anime! They were carried out amazingly -  the first one was the best in my opinion - i'm not squemish but even i had to look away. All i will say is when i stopped watching this anime i was left with a fear of umbrellas on stairs.

What i really found interetsing was the curse -  and how it all worked and linked with an individual student. It's quite confusing at the begining but you learn more clues as the series goes on. I really thought that one of the characters was dead since no one achknolged her as well as all the characters acting strange but when you learn more about the curse you understand the situation between all the students.

The ending was really good and definitely didnt turn out the way i thought it would! Although, the deaths at the end were quite rushed and i felt like they were just trying to kill off all the irellevent characters and i couldnt understand why. The students were all sort of driven crazy however, there was some characters who i didnt understand why the situation was relevant to them, like this old woman who was also driven crazy but the situation wouldnt have made her be like that in reality? sounds confusing buy if you watch it you will know what i mean. 

The killer/ cause of the curse was not who i thought it was at all! I was trying to go for the person i thought would be plausible but unexpected at the same time, yet it still wasnt her! There were some obvious cluses which i couldnt believe i hadnt noticed before!

Animation: Pretty average stuff, there are scenes in a doll shop and i thought the art for the dolls was really pretty as well as the animation done for the deaths - really creepy and graphic!

Sound: The sound was good for adding suspense, you always knew when shit was gonna go down haha!

Characters : I really liked the female main, i can't remember her name but i thought she was so fascinating to watch - the rest of the characters were good and pretty interesting but also average and I wasnt that attached to them so when they died it didnt really effect me until the last one which was pretty emotional.

overall, if you are a lover of horror, thriller and gore you will love this anime, i reccomend to people who like the suspense and a less obvious ending.