Another
アナザー
Another (2012) is a horror-mystery and survival thriller anime series spanning 12 episodes, produced by P.A. Works and based on the novel by Yukito Ayatsuji. One of the most atmospherically effective horror anime of its era, it builds its dread slowly and methodically before unleashing it in a cascade of increasingly grotesque deaths — a school mystery thriller with one of the most memorable and genuinely unsettling premises in the genre.
- Aired
- Jan 10, 2012 to Mar 27, 2012
- Premiered
- Winter 2012
- Source
- Light novel
- Rating
- R - 17+ (violence & profanity)
The Story
Koichi Sakakibara transfers to Yomiyama North Middle School midway through the year and immediately senses something wrong with Class 3-3. The atmosphere is brittle with unspoken anxiety. His classmates flinch at questions. And one student — the pale, eyepatch-wearing Mei Misaki — appears to be treated as though she does not exist at all, ignored so completely and consistently that Koichi begins to wonder whether he is the only one who can see her.
He is not. But the truth is more complicated and more terrible than simple invisibility.
Twenty-six years ago, a beloved student in Class 3-3 died mid-year. The class, refusing to accept the loss, pretended he was still alive — and something in the fabric of reality bent to accommodate them. Ever since, every year Class 3-3 has been afflicted by a curse: students and their family members begin dying in violent, inexplicable accidents, one after another, until the school year ends. The class has developed countermeasures — rituals of collective denial — but this year something has gone wrong, and the deaths have already begun.
The horror mystery at the series' center — identifying which student in the class is the anomaly that triggers the curse — is a genuine and carefully constructed whodunit, and the atmospheric dread the series builds around its isolated coastal town setting, its perpetual grey skies, and its cast of frightened adolescents is sustained with impressive discipline until the final episodes.
Themes
Denial and Consequence — The curse originates in an act of collective refusal to accept death, and every subsequent death is its compounding interest
Isolation and Paranoia — The class's self-protective silence creates the same social horror as Higurashi — a community that has weaponized ignorance against itself
The Weight of History — Twenty-six years of accumulated tragedy press down on every interaction in the present
Fate and Futility — Whether knowing the rules of a curse actually provides any protection against it
Legacy
Another sits comfortably alongside Higurashi and Shiki as essential atmospheric horror-mystery anime — a series that understands the specific dread of a small, closed community with a terrible secret it has spent decades learning to live with. Its central mystery is satisfyingly constructed, its horror imagery is striking, and its final act delivers the kind of escalating, blood-soaked catharsis that horror thriller anime fans return to it for repeatedly.