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Horror Manga 101: Another
I must say up front that delving into the Horror manga genre is very new to me. I’ve simply never paid any attention. But since I’m doing these blogs for WWEnd and the site covers SF, Fantasy, and Horror, I feel that I must expand my own horizons.
And I’m very glad that I’ve done so.
Here is what Yen Press has to say about Another:
In the spring of 1998, Koichi Sakakibara transfers into Class 3-3 at Yomiyama North Middle School. But little does he know…his new class has a horrible secret. When he takes his seat in class for the first day of school, Koichi is unsettled by his fearful classmates. Despite this atmosphere and warnings from fellow students, Koichi is drawn to the beautiful, distant Mei Misaki, another classmate. But the closer he tries to get to her, the more mysterious she and their class become. And when a fellow student dies a disturbing death—the first of a long chain of deaths—Koichi seeks to learn the truth behind the curse of Class 3-3. But can he get answers before the curse kills him?
Right from the start line we have some horror standards: young people and young people dying. These are interacting with manga standards: young people and a school setting. So the plot equation looks like this: young people, plus a school setting, plus a curse, plus secrets, equals lots of people dying.
It certainly doesn’t sound nearly as scary when I put it like that, during the middle of a bright sunny afternoon, where all the lights happen to be on.
I found the gradual decent into the strangeness of the story as a good way to build tension. We know from the intro blurp all kinds of stuff is going to cut loose, so gradually building towards it is like a slow tease, with plenty of payoff by the time it’s over.
As horror ideas go, this is intriguing: the curse is attached to a certain group of people, Class 3-3, and it’s always them, or direct blood relations. When new students come in at the start of the new year, the curse transfers to them; letting any for the old students, who have survived, go free. It’s always just that one class and those who are in that class, just for that year. And it’s not every year the curse is active. Some years it takes off, others, it’s an “on” year.
The second intriguing thing is that it’s almost like you can’t say for certain something is going on. If, say, a police detective would look at this class, and it’s history, going back 20 plus years now in the story, one could draw the conclusion that something strange is happening with this class. People in and around this class have a much higher rate of mortality than normal, but it’s still not something one could take into the office of a police commissioner and expect anything positive to happen. It’s still at the level of being easily dismissed.
So what emerges over time, is that the students have to pull together and deal with this by developing their own strategies to increase survivability rates for “on” years. To try and prevent “on” years from happening in the first place is the usual goal. Part of this is silence. We all know you don’t talk about Fight Club. Same thing: you don’t talk about class, the curse, the strategies, anything. Nothing is to be said beyond the bland and teen appropriate “class was fine” response.
Silence in this case, always a prerequisite to survival, works to their disadvantage since the new guy, Koichi, doesn’t get the briefing. Isn’t brought up to speed. Is kept in the dark and things turn into an “on” year very quickly. And once people start dying, silence then becomes an active hindrance to understanding and formulating a planned response.
It’s easy for me to write “planned response” as I sit here at my computer, as if it’s a thing the characters can accomplish without to much trouble. But then I have to remind myself that this is a story centered around Middle Schoolers, sick with fear that at any moment they or a family member is going to be killed in a nasty accidental way. And obviously, this fear has been building in them since the moment they knew they’d been assigned to class 3-3. Since rumor and gossip are Japanese national pastimes, knowing something about the goings on in class 3-3 are common knowledge. It’s just urban folklore and gossip, until, of course, one is actually in class 3-3 and you’re confronted with the reality of the situation.
So when Koichi, Mei, and some of the others finally start talking to each other, to a former teacher of class 3-3 and to adults who survived their year, they learn the whole history of this curse. They pool their knowledge and come up with a plan which mirrors the history of a year when the “on” year was suddenly stopped, turned off, brought to a screeching halt, mid-term. Unprecedented. Shutting the thing down mid-term. If it can happen once, maybe it can be made to happen again. The only problem then is what’s required.
Once Yukito Ayatsuji and Hiro Kiyohara have laid out where this curse comes from, what it’s doing and why, the ending seems unavoidable. The atmospheric creepiness that characterized the work, which has spurts of violence, will end with fire and lots more violence. It’s very clear. “The way to stop the disasters is to return the casualty to Death. Then order will be restored for the year. Got it?”
They got it.
And some survived when the curse was canceled out for the year.
But next year…it all starts again.
Since this was my first foray into Japanese Horror Manga, I’m very impressed. I can’t wait to explore this new-to-me wide open genre. I’ll be looking for more treasures to bring to your attention.
Another is in print from Yen Press and is readily available. It’s cross-platform with several books, the manga, and an anime series. There is also a short manga prologue, which isn’t available in print. It can be found at mangatraders.com, mangahere.com, or mangawall.com. If you happen to need a free copy, those sites also have a full online version of Another available.
2 Comments
Another is my favorite horror manga. I saw the anime first, maybe a year or two ago, and fell head over heels for it. The order of events in the anime is a little different, but the creepy pregnant pauses and cliffhangers at the end of episodes only add to the tension!
I think there is almost something David Lynchian about the anime and how it builds tension and weirdness. The Another novel is coming out this fall in print. It’s already on my to get list. Great first foray into horror manga for me.
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