Another

Fans of gore, horror and light mystery, look no further! WARNING: Mimi says that spoiler tags don’t seem to work anymore, so the spoilers are in the blacked-out text.

Originating from a 600 page novel written by non other than the husband of 2010′s horror blockbuster, Shiki, Another follows the paths set out before it by telling a story of a curse which has befallen a seemingly innocent class.And it was quite a roller-coaster ride from start to finish, even though  it may have been have for a different reason for everyone.

See, when I heard everything about it and read the trailer, I was expecting a full-blown mystery, or a fully blown horror. And I remember thinking that it was failing rather spectacular at both of them, ending up as some show which the anime fans like but I disliked. It would be fair to say that up until the latter part of this episode, I found this show to be rather ridiculous.Allow me to explain why.

Firstly, the mystery. The entire concept spins around finding a ghost among the class, yet the clues were just too obvious, by the end of episode 2 or 3 it was obvious Reiko  was the Another, from, well, common sense. Animals are said to sense the unknown and the supernatural, and it’s been proven several times. So when that annoying-as-hell parrot kept chanting her name and throwing a fit whenever she was around, I put two and two together and slowly started to form my theory. Mystery? Failed. I did make a post a week or so ago about Knox and Van Dine being applied to Another, and that was when it clicked in my mind that it didn’t break the rules of mystery, but it made the mystery too easy. A good mystery should make the challenger keep thinking and never stop thinking, and keep thinking until the very end.

The second major draw of the show was meant to be the horror. I didn’t actually see the appeal of the horror for a very long time, with it showing random shots of dolls just for the sake of being creepy. I get that they were foreshadowing everything, but not only does that seem stupidly impossible to happen, the dolls…just weren’t scary. Infact, it became annoying after one or two episodes. They served no real purpose apart from to creep the viewer out. To be honest, I was much more creeped out by the atmosphere and the buildings, with how rotten and dilapidated they were. Horror? Failed.

It wasn’t after a while until I noticed that this anime was trying to do something completely different. This anime was trying to mentally scare you, with it’s weird atmospheres and over the top, gruesome deaths that everyone suffered. I think at around the halfway point I noticed this, and if it wasn’t for that bloomin beach episode, I would have enjoyed this anime a lot more. It got confused about what direction it wanted to take at first, and by the time it had found where it wanted to go, it was already past the halfway point. Or; at least, that’s what I think happened.

I still don’t think that it was a coincidence that the moment the weird, over the top dolls were being shown was when my enjoyment of this show sky-rocketed. They slowly started to rotate around the idea and the concept of psychological horror and terror, and as the members of the class slowly started to go insane and eventually snap, the latter part of the series and the climax became a real treat among horror shows, even freaking me out at some points and managing to make me jump. It’s for that reason along that I think the show isn’t half bad.

See, now that the show has almost ended, i’ve started wondering if i’m been slightly too harsh in judging it. As you can see from my post Another, Knox and Van Dine’s rules of a mystery, my opinion of Another did change the more I sat and thought about just what the show had been trying to do, and stopped judging it on the almost pathetic mystery it had presented everyone. The horror did work after all, even though it did take a very very very very long time to work, and involved sitting through quite a terrible first part. So, in summary. Terrible first part with horror that’s almost too tame and a mystery that feels lackluster, and an amazing second part with gripping edge horror and a near perfect atmosphere.

Shakugan No Shana FINAL

 When you say “Sleeper hit” to me, you’re not talking about Chihayafuru, because that’s been given the attention it deserves(just not in sales). You’re talking about Shakugan No Shana’s final season, because it’s turned into something that’s hardly recognizable when compared to the first two seasons. Gone is the useless male lead, the angsty Shana who doesn’t know what to do about love and the school antics, and they’ve been replaced with moral battles over who’s right and wrong and a large scale war between the Flame Haze and the Tomagora.

See, many of you started your anime watching life with stuff like Fruits Basket or stuff on Toonami, but I was really late to the picture. I didn’t start watching anime until I was about 15, when my best friend got absorbed in the fantasy world Shana created. So I will admit that I may be biased by saying that the fantasy setting in Shana has always been something that’s captured my interests, yet the second season turned into high school antics and a stupid love triangle. With the male lead having disappeared at the end of S2, S3 tells the end of this story, and what Shana does after Yuuji’s vanished into nowhere.

So, like many of you probably heard, Yuuji has switched over to the side of Bal Masque, to create a world where humans, monsters and the Flame Haze can all live together, using the power of the Reiji Maigo and the Silver which sleeps within it. Yes, it’s cliched to make your two lead characters fight each other…but man, I never expected it to turn out this well. See, a world of equality sounds perfect, right? And that’s what the baddies want to create, with no strings attached. And in creating this world, all the baddies will leave the human world to go there, so peace exists in two worlds. This…doesn’t actually sound like the motive of a criminal nor a typical badguy, and this is what’s happened because that wimpy male lead became the leader.

So, interesting moral side. Do the Flame Haze continue to fight, or do they accept the peaceful new world? Shana decided to fight, and that’s what I liked. The heroin of this show effectively turned into the bad-guy, where the bad-guy became the heroin. Shana 3 managed this with flair, with style and with grace, and whilst telling the story of the rest of the Flame Haze population as they declared an all-out war on the Tomagora and Bal Masque.

The love interest and stuff is still there, but it’s played right this time. She loves him and he loves her, and they can admit that now, but they can’t agree with each other. It’s not as bad or as cheesy as it could have been, but that doesn’t make it good. It’s probably borderline average. But luckily, Shana’s got a lot of characters to make up for it, each with their charms and unique quirks to carry the show forward. And there’s a lot of action. Lots of action.

Ultimately, I end up very devided over the show. My inner self tells me that it’s just my nostalgia and fanboy-ism liking this show, and the show’s terrible, but my mind decides to ignore that and just go with the flow and accept that it IS an enjoyable show for lovers of fantasy, and it’s a perfect way to close off a series. However, there are those who aren’t going to be able to read between the lines, and to them, Shana 3 will just be a mess. I, however, love it when a show forces you to do that, and I love the political and moral undertones which replace all the bad elements of Shana.

Alex’s Score: 8.5 Meeps out of 10 (Very Good)

Dusk’s Score: 8 Meeps out of 10 (Very Good)