I watched Perfect Blue and the first release of Neon Genesis Evangelion the series as a teenager, and didn’t bat an eyelash. Another made me want to turn out my brain, and my heart. It also sent me off to sleep with nightmares.
Don’t let the bright colors and moe-moe fool you. You’re in for a ride. There’s also a live action movie and a manga if you prefer something “real”, but I hear the anime is especially gruesome.
When recommending Another to me, Nikki built up the legend around it. It started with a high school class in a town outside of Tokyo. The class mourned the sudden death of one of their classmates, a girl. In memoriam, her desk was left empty and unoccupied.
Then one day, one classmate looked at her desk and said, “Oh, she’s still with us! She’s not dead!” Whether he was joking or not, the rest of the class started to act as if She had never left. Come class picture day, her desk was even made part of their school picture.
When the picture was developed, it revealed the dead student, in her seat, as if she had never left.
Then one by one, strange things started to happen to the class. More deaths followed. The class has become cursed. What started it? What can end it? That’s where the series takes off.
Another is not just another ghost story. The ghosts of Another are demons we can only really outlive but never exorcise: high school alienation and bullying. If anything, bad behavior for being kids is even more justified by fear of dying young in the series. Sadly, while done in “good conscience”, it doesn’t lift the curse. The curse storms on. More people, innocent or not, die.
Much like high school, we can only watch, horrified and helpless, as it all unfolds.