After receiving some interesting feedback and comments and studying people’s thoughts and impressions, I’ve decided to reanalyze the first episode of Another to see if I misinterpreted or, more accurately, misjudged the horror elements employed in the first episode. Now, after reviewing some scenes and giving the anime more thought, I believe I missed a lot of foreshadows, subtle hints, and even the first death of the series. Whoops.
Let’s start with what I noticed first when rewatching the most notable parts of the first episode. The opening sequence shows various clips like a body hanging, a splash in the river, a speeding car’s tires, glass shattering on the sidewalk, and a crashing chandelier among other imagery which I believe are foreshadows of student deaths that will soon occur. The reason I believe this is because I’ve seen the same technique employed before in other anime like xxxHOLiC and Future Diary. If that’s the case, we might have a good idea how some of these kids will die but not who or why. I also believe the series is trying to hint that the dolls are actually students although I’m not sure since all the dolls we’ve seen are female so far. Not sure what to make of that but perhaps the clothing (or lack thereof) might be more telling than the anatomy of the dolls. Going to keep an eye out on the dolls, when they appear, and see if there is any indication if they line up to students or not. And if that turns out to be true in the end, then we probably already had the first death of the series with Izumi Akazawa. Her shaking Kouichi’s hand drew a surprised almost ghastly reaction from Yukari and Kazami, almost like something went horrifically wrong. Follow that up with Misaki taking the nude and blindfolded doll to the morgue, Izumi being absent in school the next day, and Kazami quickly changing the subject when Kouichi questions her presence. Strange, isn’t it? But then I could be also reading too much into everything since she is in the ending sequence. Who knows then at this point but I’m willing to guess she is already dead. Also strange to note that Yukari sprained her ankle so quickly, especially when she had normal socks and shoes on in the classroom that morning. And it’s not like she sprained her ankle during PE since she was still in her school uniform and not a PE one. Wonder if something will happen to her soon. Should be fun to slowly dissect these mysteries and figure out what exactly is going on with Another. I might fall in love with analyzing this anime every week.
