Another

Another One Bites the Dust: Review of Another by TravioliPrime

Horror is a genre in anime that is not often covered and rarely ever done right. Another is another (I swear that wasn’t intentional) addition to the list of horror shows that bring nothing new to the genre. That isn’t to say that Another isn’t a good show. In fact, it’s one of the better horror shows that I’ve attempted to watch in my brief time (about five years at the time of writing this) as an anime fan. Let’s get started, shall we?

Things that I focus on for horror: plot, tension, art and animation.

SPOILER WARNING

Story

Another presents such a mixed bag in terms of the story and plot progression. The concept of the story itself, a classroom cursed by the soul of a deceased former classmate and other dead spirits, is engaging and interesting, even if it is overdone. The biggest problem this show suffered from is a lack of concise direction and overuse of convenient tropes to slow the progression of the story down. Before the details, here’s a quick synopsis to jog anyone’s memory.

The story starts with the arrival and immediate hospitalization of Kouichi Sakakibara to the city of Yomiyama. Sakakibara notices that his classmates all act strange and seem to talk behind his back about a phenomenon that he doesn’t understand. He also meets a strange girl named Mei Misaki, who wears an eyepatch and doesn’t interact with her classmates at all. Soon, Sakakibara is enveloped into the calamity of Class 3, where students and family members die in rapid fashion. The deaths of classmates Sakuragi and Takabayashi, as well as Sakakibara’s nurse and confidant Mizuno, throw the entire class into a panic. The calamity of Class 3 has begun.

The plot continues to keep going strong into the middle of the story, where the emphasis should be on the mystery of the situation and the attempts by the students of Class 3 to stop the numerous deaths occurring around them. Akazawa, head of countermeasures for the class, decides to essentially excommunicate Sakakibara to try and bring the curse to a halt. Sakakibara and Misaki, who suffered the same fate, work together to find more details about the calamity. All that changes when Kubodera-sensei, the teacher of the ill-fated class, kills his mother and then brutally commits suicide in front of the entire class. This encourages Akazawa, Teshigawara and Mochizuki, among others, to work with Sakakibara and Misaki to solve the curse. Eventually, they learn that a man named Matsunaga stopped the curse in a previous year and find his hidden clue to stop the curse- to kill the dead soul among the living.

This culminates in a three-episode finale at a resort outside of town where Matsunaga had killed his classmate to dispel the curse. Eventually, the students, led by a crazed Sugiura, hear the tape and turn on Misaki, convinced that she is the dead soul. Two episodes of absolute mayhem occur, culminating in the brutal deaths of over half of the class and, finally, the murder of the dead soul: assistant homeroom teacher Reiko Mikami, Sakakibara’s aunt. Thus, the curse ends, and life returns to normal for the remaining members of Class 3.

The… Horror?

The biggest problem that Another runs into is its failed use of jump-scares and gore to create tension. The plot created a lot of natural tension and provided a good basis for a horror story, but this show never was able to properly capitalize on that tension outside of a few moments.

First off, the gore was… hilarious. Everyone reading this review has probably seen the scene of Sakuragi falling down the stairs and dying by being pierced in the throat with her umbrella. You’ve probably seen the hysterical blood physics when Kubodera-sensei stabs himself in the throat in front of the classroom and lives for over thirty seconds for the sole purpose of making gurgling noises as blood splatters across the ENTIRE classroom from his wound. How about the scene of Nakao passing out in the water and then getting chopped up by a boat propeller? How about pretty much every death in the finale, some by a murderous old woman, some by a falling column and some by the hands of other members of Class 3?

The gore in this show is used so horribly nearly every time a death occurs in this show, but the staff of the show clearly know how to do it right. To show you, I’m first going to focus on a death scene that I thought was done well by director Tsutomu Mizushima: the death of Mizuno.

Mizuno’s death happens early in the show and is one of the few deaths that is shocking for something other than blood. After a phone conversation with Sakakibara, Mizuno enters an elevator, which proceeds to free-fall until it hits the ground over ten stories down, crushing her in the process. This worked for me because there was a massive shift in tension from the phone call between Mizuno and Sakakibara, which was serious but relaxed, and the free-fall of the elevator. Mizuno wasn’t a main character by any means, but she still had a lot of screen-time up to this point. After all that investment, we now get to see her plummeting to her demise while Sakakibara listens on. The gore towards the end was brief and violent, as you would expect from a 10-story fall. Instead of watching the impact for thirty seconds, we got a dramatic shift in tension without excessive blood needed to make an emotional impact.

Contrast that with the death of Nakao. We go from a fun beach scene to a darker mood with the entrance of Matsunaga towards the end of the episode. After Matsunaga has told the kids that he remembers nothing, wind blows the group’s beach ball into the ocean and Nakao decides to swim light years out to retrieve it. He passes out in the water and suddenly a large boat drives over him and shreds him up in the propeller. This has so many problems that it’s laughable. We never cared about Nakao- I honestly didn’t even know he was in any part of the show outside of the beach trip. The tension didn’t spike, which was a combination of directorial choices, the score, and the previous five minutes of dialogue already lifting the tension up. Add this horrible setup to a gore scene that looked like a kindergarten student drew and you get the useless death of Nakao.
Another forgets that horror is never supposed to drive a good show. Jump scare movies like Nightmare on Elm Street and the Halloween franchise are never going to be remembered as good movies outside of their genres. Instead, recent American horror films like Get Out and It show us that you have to have more than horror and gore to compel audiences to consume this type of media. There will always be people who want to go see a scary movie just to get scared, but that type of product should never be the goal of a production team.

Despite my criticism, I don’t think the gory scenes and brutal deaths make this show unwatchable. All they do is prevent it from being great. You just have to know what you’re getting yourself into when you start this show. The cheesy horror was much more bearable for me on my rewatch, even though my overall opinion on the show was lower than my first viewing.

Cutting Corners

The plot, which I previously said I liked a lot, was severely limited by the writing of this show. The interesting design of the show was not able to thrive because the writers spent too much time with useless nonsense and the direction was jumbled and distracted. All of this leads to plot inconsistencies and boring excuses for plot progression.

Unlike most shows that utilize memory loss as a tool for plot progression, Another gives us a legitimate reason for memory loss that is built into the very fundamentals of the calamity. The problem is that having a legitimate excuse gives the writers a free pass to say “MeMoRy LoSs” whenever an issue comes up or whenever the students get close to finding a clue. Why does Matsunaga blurt out that he saved the school when drunk, but then can’t remember anything when convenient until Nakao dies and he suddenly remembers that he left a clue at the school? Why do we ever have to talk to Reiko when she doesn’t remember anything the entire show until it’s convenient? Why is Chibiki-sensei a genius until he gets asked a relevant question? Because, dear viewer, memory loss has afflicted them! It’s incredibly annoying to watch this excuse be one of the sole reasons this show is even twelve episodes in length.

You want cutoffs right before important plot information? Don’t worry, this show has got you covered. Every time an important piece of information is about to come out, someone cuts them off or some random person dies. Takabayashi finally becomes willing to reveal the secrets of Class 3 to Sakakibara, but then he dies from a heart attack! Misaki knows who the dead soul is (more on this in a bit), but right before she tells Sakakibara, Teshigawara bursts through the door because he pushed someone out a window! Reiko telling Sakakibara that she is Mikami-sensei? Cut her off too! Lazy writing like this is incredibly frustrating to watch because they are trying to create suspense when we need plot progression. Suspense should be natural, not forced by awful writing.

Now for a plot-hole that may not be significant, but bothered the living hell out of me. Why does every single 14-year old in 1998 rural Japan have a cell phone? This doesn’t seem significant, but when you pay attention to how important cell phones are for conveying information in this story, it doesn’t make any sense. Another example of lazy writing.

If that wasn’t important to you, this one has to be. How about Mei having the ability to see who the dead soul is and not using it? That seems pretty damn important. She writes “who is dead” on her desk even though she can literally take off her eyepatch, look at each person in her class and tell if they are the dead soul or not. Maybe she didn’t think it was important towards the beginning of the show and she didn’t think it was worth revealing her discolored eye for. Sure, that makes sense for the first few episodes. But you would think that once people started dying, she would figure out who the dead soul is and tell people. She figured it out but told no one. You can probably even justify that by saying that she didn’t think it was useful information. However, once they find out that killing the soul ends the calamity, she waits over an episode to TRY to tell Sakakibara. WHY? Her actions lead to the deaths of many of her classmates in the finale for the sole reason of making it interesting. Maybe she should tell Sakakibara and have him not believe her, which is totally feasible since she is his aunt. Maybe she should tell Teshigawara or Mochizuki but keep it secret from Sakakibara so that he doesn’t get in the way of her murder. The approach the writers took here is so incredibly lackluster, lazy, and overall inexplicable that it ruins the “epic” ending of the show.

I’m done rambling about the little things, but just remember that this story does not always care about being consistent or compelling.

Characters

I’m going to keep this brief since the characters in this show don’t matter. I can give pretty brief descriptions of the ones that matter:

Sakakibara- bland, but at least he’s not an isekai protagonist.

Misaki- useless.

Teshigawara, Mochizuki, and nearly every other classmate- little to no personality.

Every adult in the show except Mizuno- useless.

Akazawa- I actually liked that they thought about giving her a backstory and that she had a strong moral compass, but then they ruined her by the end.

Mizuno- pretty damn cool, died way too early.

And there you go, my deep character dive for Another! Truth be told, characters don’t matter nearly as much in horror as in other genres. Normally, characters make or break a show, but this show was rarely hurt by the boring nature of its characters. If only some of them could be a little smarter…

Art and Animation

I’ve spent a vast majority of this review complaining about the problems that I had with this show, but don’t worry, this won’t be another (I swear, that’s the last pun. I won’t do… another). P.A. Works and Chief Animation Director Yuriko Ishii did a phenomenal job with this show outside of the gore and a few bad CG shots.

The first thing I’m going to talk about is shot composition and framing. Good thriller/horror shows spend a lot of time in scenes with little to no movement and with a lot of dialogue. Another is no exception. To make these scenes interesting and keep an audience engaged, having great shot composition is important to help avoid the show feeling repetitive and keep the audience from getting bored and looking away. Dialogue scenes in this show feel deep and intense but never get stale. The direction in this show clearly knows how to space characters, how to create depth within scenes, and how to create a variety of angles within very defined and similar spaces (classrooms). Depth and unique angles enable directors in this genre to distort images when details get revealed to accent the emotions of the characters. During my rewatch of this show, the shot composition immediately stood out to me and made the show more enjoyable.

The art in this show isn’t extraordinary, but it gets the job done. The artistic decisions made in this show make the game feel very much like a visual novel. The backgrounds are fairly mediocre and bland. Most of the background scenes are buildings or classroom walls, but when the show gets a chance to create complex backgrounds in nature, it shies away. The dull feeling of the backgrounds is contrasted by a fairly sharp art style for the characters in a way that makes them almost pop out of the background. This never gets to the point of being unnatural, but it does add to the visual novel or video game style I mentioned earlier.

Finally, I’ll touch briefly again on the death scenes, which were the only artistic part of the show that I thought were bad. This show does not understand how wounds work and clearly prioritized the effects of blood splatter more on the scene than the actual physics and logic of the death itself. I did, however, enjoy the way that blood was incorporated into these scenes after the gore had taken place. Blood scarred the scene just like the death scarred the characters, even if the way the blood arrived made no sense. These definitely could have been done better.

Enjoyment

Something that I think gets left out of reviews too often is the overall enjoyment of the show. I spent most of this review bashing on the show, but that doesn’t change the fact that I enjoyed it both times that I watched it. The first time, I enjoyed it enough to binge almost all of it in one sitting. This show, while not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, has the benefit of being a fun watch. That matters.

Final Thoughts

Another has a way of frustrating me without making me want to stop watching the show. Despite its failures in script and direction, it manages to keep viewers engaged with an interesting plot and good art. I truly believe that the concept and talent over at P.A. Works could have made this into one of the best horror anime of the last several decades. Instead, it will die in the depths of mediocrity.

Score: 7/10
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