Always uphold the class rules...
(Note: Contains extremely minor spoilers, mostly with regards to the exposition of the story.)
Another is a 12 episode adaptation of the mystery horror novel by Yukito Ayatsuji produced by P.A. Works. In 1998, Kouichi Sakakibara moves from Tokyo to the town of Yomiyama. His mother died shortly after his birth and his father is a college professor doing research in India, so Kouichi is sent to live with his maternal grandparents and attend the ninth grade at his mother's old junior high. Kouichi is assigned to class 9-3, which turns out to be quite unfortunate.
26 years prior, in 1972, a beloved popular student in class 9-3 died suddenly, causing great distress to everyone at the school. As a way to cope with the death, the students and faculty of class 9-3 decided to collectively act as though the student was still alive, even having a special seat arranged for them at graduation. However, this seemingly touching display triggered something wholly unsavory...
I enjoy the horror genre in general, primarily books, which is why I am not a big fan of so-called "cheap scares" – those fake scary moments that are forced upon you with silence followed by a startling loud audio cue and occasionally a shocking image (unless it is a false cheap scare, which is even worse. Oh look, it was just a cat. Fuck you). This is why I am always very impressed by horror that manages to scare you without resorting to such parlor tricks. I mean, let's face it, I can jump out from behind your couch and scare the shit out of you, but that doesn't make me a master of horror – just an asshole. Properly scaring someone takes skill, and I can tell you that Another properly scared me. It played into a couple of themes that I enjoy a lot in horror.
The first theme is normalcy in the face of pure madness. Think about Village of the Damned, or the It's a Good Life episode of The Twilight Zone, or a more obscure example that I find particularly fitting – the Stephen King novel From a Buick 8 (Stephen King is even directly referenced in the show). In all of these examples, characters are faced with a life of pure horror, and their utter insanity is coated by a thin veneer of normalcy. The parents in Village of the Damned, or Anthony's family in It's a Good Life know that a single slip can and will lead to unimaginable terror, and their struggle to maintain composure is, as the genre name would imply, horrifying to me.
The second theme is normal people being pushed into abnormal behavior. A good example of this theme is the Saw movies, but they all stink except for the first one, so let's focus on that for a second. Saw is all about seeing what it takes to get an average person to do something utterly insane. I can tell you with absolute certainty that I am incapable of killing someone with an axe, but is that really true? If someone held a gun to my mother's head and said they'd shoot her if I didn't do it, what then?
As I've mentioned before repeatedly, I am very resistant to spoilers, so all I'll say that the students of class 9-3 experience both these themes in a major way. This show manages to tackle fairly standard school-oriented topics like bullying or spreading rumors in a very clever way, and while not the most novel of ideas, the story has several original and interesting parts to it, and the mystery plays out extremely well. There is plenty of misdirection, as well as clues that you won't catch initially but will later beat yourself up for missing.
Which brings me to my next point – presentation.
Another could easily have been adapted into a below average American horror movie starring Robert Pattinson and Krysten Stewart (there actually is a live-action Japanese movie adaptation that I haven't seen), but the script, the art, and the general vibe here are all so good that it really stands out. Effective horror is often more about the journey than the destination. Not that the destination here isn't worth getting to...
One thing that really blew me away about Another was the art and backdrops. I would probably put it in the top three best that I've ever seen in that department for one reason – they weathered everything properly. Anime is so often too clean, but not here. They absolutely nailed it. Yomiyama in general and the school in particular look like real places – the banisters are all old and rusted, there are water stains on the walls, the pavements are all cracked and there are vines and piles of leaves everywhere. The refrigerator at Kouichi's house is old and dirty and the wood floor is scuffed and scratched. There are even torn scraps of paper and plastic bags stuck in the school's chain link fences. I wouldn't be surprised if the locations were modeled after real places, because they absolutely feel real. Making a dark, abandoned castle on a stormy night feel scary is one thing. Making a school playground in broad daylight feel scary is quite another. Most of the images I added to this review are of the absolutely stellar backgrounds and locations (I recommend opening the images in a new tab to see them at full size).
The animation is also superb, and there is incredible attention to detail. I especially like the way they treat static scenes. Long portions of dialogue, or other types of scenes with little to no action that are routinely fodder for cutting corners are all utilized in very smart ways, and it all plays into the same creepy atmosphere. It is also extremely graphically violent, but they don't overdo it in terms of quantity. It isn't gory to the point of disinterest. When the violence comes, it really makes an impact.
The character designs are a bit standard, but given the extreme scenario involved, it almost works better to have fairly common archetypes. They also have a couple of clever twists on the standard class ensemble dynamic.
I recently watched the entire Higurashi no Naku Koro ni saga, and there are many similarities between the two (including several things that I have to assume are nods to Higurashi. Even the lead character names sound similar - Keichi Maebara and Kouichi Sakakibara), so if you've seen and enjoyed that, you should absolutely check this out. The only bad thing I can say about it is that I didn't like the theme song. I think they could have found something more fitting for the vibe of the show, so just skip over that fucker and enjoy.
