Having seen The Future Diary, I thought I would explore Another horror anime and its story surrounding a mysterious classroom and why the class is unaware of one of the student’s presence.
I will just briefly run through the series without actually mentioning too much specifics or any character interactions. I think this approach would be effective for anyone who just wants a grasp for the type of anime it is. The reason why I am taking this approach is because you can easily find a great episode by episode review online but it isn't easy to find a short, general description of the entire anime.
Executing a profitable, popular and effective horror / thriller anime series is a difficult thing. Another does a very good job from the beginning to engage the user and keep them engaged. The mystery surrounding the anime starts off very thin and quickly gets tick. Eventually when the suspense creeps in and climaxes, the story suddenly grabs you and just wants to be your friend.
Things go sideways very early on but in such a subtle way that as soon you realize what’s happening, everything subsides very quickly. It’s almost as if the writer is teasing the viewers, it’s quite brilliant. As the story progresses and things begin to get worse, I definitely think the persons in charge are to blame. It’s quite obvious humans are very curious creatures by nature and having established such a personality trait one should prepare for it.
Even after those in charge realize what is taking place, they still refuse to take the logical form of action. But as the reason to their relent begins to take form, the I began to understand why a logical approach will not work. What a great story they proceed to tell.
Moving along even further, I begin to realise, there is absolutely NO connection between characters who have the ability to reconnect after all communication barriers are severed. It’s quite obvious that if anyone goes to class for their entire life with a group of people and they are neglected by them for 2 months; they may once again make an effort to express either how hurt they feel or attempt to rekindle any lost friendships if the opportunity arises. However, this is not the case and this is where my disappoints begin.
Some Key Frustrating Elements:
- The major plot device goes missing yet everyone remains absolutely and completely calm.
- A character gets cut on his leg, absolutely no tendons cut and he becomes totally unable to walk.
- A character takes a knee to the groin, he falls to the ground for literally (and I counted) 3 seconds and he stands up like if nothing happened.
- A character goes ‘anime psycho’ (you know what I mean) and tries to kill another character and once her weapon is taken away, she walks away calmly.
Later on, coming down to the end, the anime really does remind me of typical films, using weak plot twists to drive the story forward. The characters display such lack of emotion, lack of expression and lack of emergency. People are literally dying and everyone is calm all the time, except when someone is actually dying.
The writer fails to display proper character progression in the latter half of the anime. There is absolutely no display of maturity or development amongst the characters except for the two main characters. There is no scripted position when friendships are strongly tested and I think it needs to be. Everyone is just going with the flow and just accepting everything the way it is. Even when characters make the stupidest mistakes, the writer fails to allow visual cues that enable characters to express some type of strain on the friendship’s of those involved and only simply allows a character to utter, “you are stupid”.
The main female character is the only logically thinking person in this entire anime. She is the only one who is ‘realistic’ and has not been given the writers slap of stupidity.
Having written all of this, I’ve now come to the possible conclusion that I personally don’t really like the methods they used to drive the story along. The writer uses the ‘old school’ method where someone says, “His name is…” and then something happens that prevents that person from actually finishing their sentence. Generally there is nothing wrong with this method, the problem that frustrates me is eventually when the hidden secret is revealed; most times (especially in typical films) it’s done in such a dry way that you can’t help but just be frustrated and just say “really? that’s it?”.
Summary
Another is a fantastic anime, definitely worth watching if you enjoy anything horror. The story has an amazing beginning but around the latter half it begins to show weakness and falls very short of expectations for any hardcore critic of TV shows, movies or anime. To the average person looking for a horror or thriller flick, it is easily a 9/10 but for the more hardcore audience it is a 7/10 but definitely worth watching.
The series bosts excellent BGM and expert visual moments. It does quite an amazing job of painting a very dull atmosphere that compliments the type of horror that beholds it.
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