Synopsis
When Kōichi Sasakibara transfers to his new school, he can sense something frightening in the atmosphere of his new class, a secret none of them will talk about. At the center is the beautiful girl Mei Misaki. Kōichi is immediately drawn to her mysterious aura, but then he begins to realize that no one else in the class is aware of her presence.

• Title: Another
• Series: Series
• Episodes: 12
• Status: Finished Airing
• Release Date: Jan 9, 2012 – Mar 26, 2012
• Producers:PA Works
• Genre: Horror, Drama, Tragedy
• Rating: PG

Even though it is no longer October, I don’t see the harm in going over one more horror/thriller type of anime to review. The anime for today was one that aired earlier in the year that this was written, at the start of 2012. That makes it relatively new compared to what I usually do, but it should prove interesting to go over at any rate.

This show was produced by PA Works, who have a bit of a reputation lately thanks to their work on shows such as Cannan, Angel Beats, and Hanasaku Iroha. The character designs are pretty standard in this series, so there is nothing real outstanding in this department. The show does try to be ambitious in its direction, what with there being numerous shots of seemingly random objects and dolls in the early episodes that, unfortunately, seems to have no real bearing to the actual plot for the most part, other than some vague foreshadowing for events later in the series. As for the music, the background and incidental music seems to fit things, as does the Ending song, but the Opening seems pretty bad, though that is probably my own bias towards Ali Project showing and may not apply to others.

The story in this show is part horror, part mystery, and part Final Destination. The horror aspect comes into play with the sense of dread that one gets as the series progresses and things only get worse. The mystery aspect comes in as Koichi and Misaki try to find out what exactly is wrong with their class and why this phenomenon is happening to them. The Final Destination aspect comes from, well, the deaths that happen in this series. The way they happen and how they are done suggests a style similar to it, which means that it can either be horrific for people to see or unintentionally hilarious, whatever your disposition towards those films are. I guess one minus is that the story does take some time to get going. I understand that they can’t explain what’s going on right away, but you are left in the dark for a good chunk of time, which can discourage those that aren’t very patient.

As with Shiki, this series does have a large amount of characters, since Koichi’s whole class is involved. However, also like Shiki, only a few of the people in the class are important in the grand scheme of things, and they would be Koichi, Misaki, Izumi, Mochizuki, and Teshigawara. I guess I can still use Shiki as a comparing point, but unlike Natsuno, Koichi doesn’t hate being in his new school and actually wants to integrate and make new friends and would probably succeed if it wasn’t for the occurrences that befall him and his class. Misaki is a character in the mold of Rei Ayanami, being cold and emotionless on the surface, though there is more to her than she first lets on. Izumi is a real stickler for the rules and seems very strict, though there are circumstances to that, which again ties back to the class. Mochizuki is rather…artistic, one could say? He is rather kind, though seems odd at first. Teshigawara is probably the closest thing to a jock among the group, but he is still rather friendly with Koichi. There are also many other characters, like Yukari Sakuragi, who seem like they could be main characters, but are not, either because their personalities are not expanded upon or through “other” circumstances.

Yukari has a pretty prominent appearance in the first episode and what befalls her sets the tone for what you can expect in this series.

Due to the nature of the show, there isn’t any real antagonist to deal with, as a lot of the show’s antagonism comes from the paranoia that the students feel from the circumstances they are subjected too, which in turn causes them to lash out at each other. There is a root cause to all the phenomenon for these particular events, but that isn’t naturally taken care of until the final episode. Some of the students do go quite mad in trying to “fix” the problem, especially near the end of the series when all hell breaks loose.

Another is a series that I’m a bit wary to recommend. It does have its good points, but they are mired by a slow start and some really out there leaps in logic, not to mention the over the top deaths, though that might be a plus to some. Still, if this show is your sort of thing, then give it a shot. As of this writing, you can watch it online in the states and perhaps there will be a DVD release at some point next year for it.