The anime “Another” is suitable for a mature audience due to its horror and mystery themes, making it more appropriate for older viewers. The story has an exclusive take on gruesome deaths and supernatural elements, which may not be suitable for younger audiences.
For the targeted age of 16 and above it’s a good watch indeed.
Taking a single incident and spinning the thread of suspense around it while keeping the flow of the story smooth and crisp is quite appreciable in this series.
Without any further delay, let’s start to discuss some of the important parts of the story to keep an eye out for.
Synopsis
Let’s first learn what the story of “Another” is about. After that, we will go into the discussion of the important parts of the story.
The protagonist of this story “Another”, Sakakibara Kouichi transferred schools from Tokyo to Yomiyama in 1998.
The school he enrolled in was Yomiyama North Junior High.
But, due to his sickness “pneumothorax”, he was unable to attend school from the beginning. He had to join school for a month later.
Three class representatives came and visited him in the hospital. They were, the class rep Tomohiko Kazami, Sakuragi Yukari, and in charge of countermeasures, Akazawa Izumi.
Countermeasures, this certain post had him curious about it, but he didn’t ponder on it.
Encounter
In the story of “Another”, during Kouichi’s stay at the hospital, Sakakibara Kouichi met a mysterious girl with an eye patch on her left eye. She was wearing the uniform of the school he enrolled in.
He learned her name, it was Misaki Mei.
He felt drawn towards her as she piqued his curiosity.
After he started to go to school, he started to approach Misaki Mei repeatedly. He did so, even though his classmates had forbidden him.
As he gets closer to her, he discovers the unsettling truth behind the curse of his class 3 of 3rd grade.
The incomplete information about the rumored curse was revealed to him by Mei.
He became curious about the curse which was centered around a former student of his class 26 years ago.
None of his classmates was willing to reveal the remaining details about the curse. He decided to uncover the truth behind the curse himself.
In the process, he found some connections between Mei and the curse.
But the events take a turn for the worse in the story of “Another”. Kouichi and Mei were left with some of their classmates to understand the paradox.
Their endeavor may come with a terrible price.
About the curse in the story of “Another”
In the story of “Another”, class 3 of 3rd grade had a special disposition about the curse.
All of the students take the ominous existence of the curse very seriously.
The curse originated in the year of 1972.
Class 3 of the 3rd grade of Yomiyama North Junior High had an excellent student in both study and sports named Misaki Yomiyama.
At the beginning of the story of “Another”, this student is mentioned as a girl, but in actuality, he is a boy.
Being excellent, he was popular among both the students and teachers.
He died suddenly, due to a fire that occurred at his home.
His death affected the class so much that the student of class 3 of grade 3, acted as if the boy never died.
Then for the rest of the year with the help of the Principal, students managed to keep a seat empty in the class in the name of Yomiyama.
Up till now, it’s seemed like a story of friendship and bond between classmates being cherished. In short, a good and memorable ending.
But the incident doesn’t end here.
Initiation of the curse in the story of “Another”
The real incident of “Another” starts from here.
Finally, during graduation, the whole class was shocked to see the class picture that Misaki Yomiyama, the student who died was in the picture too.
From then on every year in class 3 of 3rd grade, an extra student without his/her name on the class roster appears.
Whenever this happened, the death of students, teachers of the class, and immediate family members started to die off one by one, in every month of that year.
One extra seat also appears during this period.
To everyone’s speculation, this student is a dead person, because, at the end of the year, this person always disappears along with his/her record and memory about his/her altered.
To prevent such incidents, that class established a post known as countermeasures.
According to the decision taken by the whole class and the person in countermeasures, the students in the class would select a student to ignore as the extra or the dead person.
This had a 50-50 chance of preventing all the deaths according to the Tatsuji Chibiki. He was the homeroom teacher of class 3 of 3rd grade in the year 1972.
It was the year in which Misaki Yomiyama died.
All these details felt like that of an urban legend of a Japanese school, just like any other ghost story popular among students.
However, the undertone of the story of “Another”, and the presentation made it different from any other ghost story.
Curiosity
Sakakibara Kouichi is a curious individual in nature. He can’t put his mind to rest until he learns about the facts, that piqued his interest.
He first met Misaki Mei at the hospital, in the lift.
She was going to Basement 2 with a unique doll hanging from her hand.
When he met her, her mysterious demeanor attracted his attention.
He asked his attendant nurse who was friendly with him, Mizuno Sanae about her and the one who was at the morgue.
He later learned that the dead person was a single daughter named Misaki.
When Kouichi started going to school, he met with Mei again.
Here he found out that, nobody was noticing her existence.
He acted according to his interests and attempted to approach her, but his classmates tried to stop him.
But as for the reason, they weren’t ready to tell him yet.
In the meantime, one of his classmates Teshigawara Naoya accidentally mentioned that their class was cursed but didn’t say anything more.
Clarification
All those unknown factors increased the level of curiosity inside him, so he had to follow Misaki Mei on her way home.
He followed her up to a doll shop and as he entered the doll shop a welcoming but mysterious shop attendant welcomed him.
The shop attendant welcomed him saying he was the only customer present, but as he met with Mei, he became perplexed about finding her there.
He also found a life-sized doll with a similar look, just as Mei.
He started to think of her as a ghostly existence.
Three reasons were there for him to think this way.
One, nobody in the class seemed to notice her.
Two, the shop attendant never mentioned the other customer, Mei’s existence.
Three, the dead person in the hospital morgue was also named Misaki and she was a single daughter.
But his doubt soon came to a rest as he learned that the doll shop was her home, so he couldn’t be a customer there.
He also learned from Mei that the Misaki who died was her cousin and her name is Misaki Fujioka.
Later he learned the story of the curse, at least the first half of it, up till the appearance of the dead student in the graduation photo.
Outcome
Curiosity isn’t always a good thing. It may hurt others.
The same was the case in the story of “Another”.
The immense curiosity of Sakakibara was detrimental to his classmates.
As he started to dig deeper into the mystery of the curse his surrounding classmates started to be cautious of him.
He also started to be involved with Mei more and more even though Teshigawara Naoya advised him against that. He said, don’t deal with someone who doesn’t exist.
But, Sakakibara continued with his pursuit, both about the mystery of the curse and Misaki Mei.
Due to his actions, the curse started to take effect.
Deaths of the students started one after another.
The deaths occurring had a reason, he broke the rule of ignoring Mei, at least that was the conclusion his classmates came to.
After that, the whole class changed his status to an ignored one, just like Misaki Mei.
Logics behind some of the deaths
At first glance, it may look like all the deaths are too frequent to be a coincidence in the story of “Another”, but there are some logical explanations to prove the reasons for those deaths.
The first death
The first victim in the story of “Another” was claimed in the view of the class students in May.
Sakuragi Yukari was already in disturbed mind about her mother’s accidental death.
While returning early from her class was shocked to see Koichi conversing with Mei who was supposed to be ignored, outside of the class.
Yukari ran to the other side and slipped on the stairs, where she was accidentally impaled by her umbrella.
After analyzing the incident with given information, it can be a curse, it can also be an accident.
The second death
The second death of the series “Another” was in June. the nurse who was friendly with Koichi, Mizuno Sanae, who after a call with Koichi said her brother, Takeru who was Koichi’s classmate, adamantly claims Mei does not exist.
She dies when the elevator malfunctions and falls. Logically it can be an accident due to it’s an old elevator in an old building.
The third death
The third victim was also in June right after the death of Sanae was the death of Takabayashi Ikuo, a boy with a heart problem, who wanted to reveal anything related to the curse to Sakakibara Kouichi, but he had a heart attack.
So, pre-existing heart problems, added to stress and anxiety could be the cause of death, which is quite logical.
The fourth death
The victim was their homeroom teacher, Mr. Kubodera.
He brought a knife to school, claiming no one could escape the curse, and killed himself in front of the class.
It was revealed that he killed his sick and dying mother too.
This murder-suicide can be explained logically too.
The teacher was stressed, to the point he could not cope anymore, doing both, taking care of his mother and being a school teacher of a rumored cursed class.
The fifth death
Nakao Junta died in August.
It happened when he was trying to get back a ball blown to the sea.
A boat crossed his path and tore his limbs in its propeller.
The event scared the class more as the curse happened outside of the town(according to the rumors, the curse only applies to the related people inside Yomiyama).
But further police investigation shows that Junta died before the boat hit him. As for the reason, when he was still at home, he hit his head and caused internal damage. So the reason for death happened inside Yomiyama.
By logic only, the incident can be chalked up to negligence and accident.
The sixth and seventh death
Ayano Aya’s family was running away, and the car slid off the road during the heavy rain.
While Oguro Yumi’s brother died after an excavator parked at a slope moved towards and crashed into the Ogura’s home.
This happened in July.
Both of the deaths can be chalked up as accidental deaths.
As Ayano’s car slid onto the road due to the slippery road conditions for the road.
While Yumi’s brother died due to the negligence of the driver who parked wrong.
There are many more details to discuss about, but that would make this post long, very long.
So let’s limit the discussion of the deaths up to this point.
Changes due to deaths
First change
After the start of the death, Koichi was chosen to be “ignored” in the class.
His condition was similar to Mei’s because he broke the rule of ignoring Mei.
In the process, Koichi and Mei developed a friendship and finally, the rules and story were properly explained to Kouichi.
Mei reveals that the person she went to visit went they first met was her cousin, Misaki Fujioka.
who later was revealed as her twin, and Mei’s mother is her aunt.
It was set up by both families.
The reason was Mei’s family couldn’t afford to have 2 kids, while the aunt had just had a miscarriage.
So the arrangement was of advantage for both of the families.
This reveals that the deaths started in April(Misaki Fujioka died in April).
Mei also has one fake eye that she covers, which she claims could see the colour of dead people and people who are going to die.
Second change
After the fourth death, the death of their homeroom teacher Mr. Kubodera, the class realized that ignoring Mei and Kouichi wasn’t working at all.
Some of the students decided to crack the mystery of the curse.
They found a lead from the memory of the school days of their assistant homeroom teacher and Kouichi’s aunt Mikami Reiko.
She was in the same class as them in her school days.
There was a student in her year in the same class, who did put an end to that curse that year during a summer vacation trip.
That student, later in adulthood worked in a resort, named Matsunaga.
The team of Kouichi, Reiko, Teshigawara Naoya, Mochizuki Yuya, Izumi, Takako Sugiura, and Nakao Junta went to a resort outside of the city to find Matsunaga.
An additional rumour about the curse was that, it doesn’t follow outside Yomiyama.
The team accidentally met Mei there too, as her family went on a holiday trip there.
Third change
After the fifth death, the death of the Nakao Junta, The team of Koichi, Naoya, and Yuya decided to search for the clue to stop the curse left by Matsunaga.
They went to school and first met Ogura Yumi and Ayano Aya of the theatre club and explained what they were doing.
After that, they bumped into Mei in the arts club room.
The three boys and Mei went exploring in the old classroom and found a recording tape.
They played the tape, where the young Matsunaga was the narrator, saying the trip to an old shrine did not lift the curse. Visit to that old shrine was
also the plan of the current class.
Matsunaga then describes two more deaths.
The first one was by lightning, where the boy was the only one with an umbrella, and became a lightning rod.
The second one was a girl who was in shock by the death of that boy, ran and slipped up and fell from a mountain to her death. Both of these deaths can also be chalked up to logic rather than a curse. They had to stop the tape before Matsunaga explained how the curse was lifted and the tape broke.
Yuya took the tape home to fix it.
Finale
The whole classroom went to an inn, just below the mountain where the old shrine is.
The class hoped to lift the curse there.
Yuya fixed the tape and it was revealed Matsunaga accidentally killed the ‘extra’ student in the class, which stopped the curse.
After which other students don’t remember that student at all.
Showing that the killed student was the dead person/extra person.
He also says the only way to lift the curse is by killing the already dead which became an extra in the class.
This is where the finale happens, a lot of killings, a lot of blame went on, and assumptions of who is the dead person due to lack of information.
In the end, it was revealed to Mei by her left eye that, the extra person was not a student, but an assistant homeroom teacher, Ms Mikami Reiko, Koichi’s aunt.
There was evidence such as other classes do not have an assistant homeroom teacher.
There is also the extra table this time was actually in the teacher’s room, rather than the class.
Koichi kills Reiko and lifts the curse.
Discrepancies regarding Reiko
The clues about Reiko’s real identity were always there, in previous episodes of “Another”.
Reiko never communicated with her parents or the grandparents of Kouichi in the whole series.
Kouichi’s grandfather kept saying poor Risuko, who is Kouichi’s mother along with poor Reiko.
One may assume it was a generalized speech.
But, when Ritsuko Or Kouichi’s mother died 15 years ago, Reiko was in the same grade and same class as Kouichi.
Being in the same school and same class and grade she was also a part of the people who were affected by the curse of class 3 of 3rd grade of The Yomiyama North Junior High.
Memory tampering, where Koichi can’t remember he was in the city a year and a half ago visiting his aunt’s funeral.
Conclusion
An exclusive take on this anime “Another” is that every incident can be described logically, but there is an exception.
In short, the whole curse hypothesis took shape by the self-hypnosis of each of the students in class 3 of 3rd grade.
Just like 26 years ago in 1972, everyone forced themselves to believe in the existence of Misaki Yomiyama even after his death.
In the next years, the also respective students and teachers self-hypnotized themselves unknowingly as a chain reaction of the incident of 1972.
So, as a result, everyone started to believe the deaths were related to the curse.
Up till here, we can prove it logically, but there remains a question regarding the second death of Mikami Reiko and her existence even after her first death.
If you are interested in the anime of the paranormal genre, check my Blog Post on Chainsaw Man.
