Another

In the spring of 1998, 15-year-old Kouichi Sakakibara has just moved to the town of Yomiyama, where he is set to attend the local middle school Yomiyama North. However, when a past injury resurfaces, he is placed in hospital, leading him to miss the first week of school. Though he recovers quickly, before leaving he meets Mei Misaki, a strange, eye-patched girl whose cryptic mannerisms spark a subtle interest within the boy.

At Yomiyama North, Kouichi is placed in Class 3-3. However, beneath the innocent atmosphere, he finds the class' behavior odd: everyone seems to be on edge and watchful of Kouichi's actions. Moreover, Mei is a student in the class, yet both classmates and teachers do not show any regard for her, as if she is simply not there. Though more oddities arise and more questions spring forth, no one is willing to give Kouichi any answers. With little choice but to ease his growing curiosity, Kouichi starts to pursue Mei for help, against both the class' and her own warnings.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Another was originally serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's literary magazine Yasei Jidai (野性時代) intermittently from the July 2006 issue to the May 2009 issue. It was published as a 677-page hardcover novel on October 29, 2009. It was later published in two-volume format and again under Kadokawa's Sneaker Bunko label with illustrations by Noizi Itou. The original cover art was created by Enta Shiho (遠田志帆).

The novel ranked third in the 2010 Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! and the 2010 Honkaku Mystery Award.

Another was published digitally in English by Yen Press under the Yen On imprint on March 19, 2013. The publisher released the series in print as a hardcover omnibus on October 28, 2014. It was also published in Brazilian Portuguese by Editora JBC in 2015.

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Characters

Misaki, Mei

Main

Sakakibara, Kouichi

Main

Akazawa, Izumi

Supporting

Teshigawara, Naoya

Supporting

Mochizuki, Yuuya

Supporting

Fujioka, Misaki

Supporting

Sakuragi, Yukari

Supporting

Mikami, Reiko

Supporting

Kazami, Tomohiko

Supporting

Mizuno, Sanae

Supporting

Reviews

Jan 19, 2016

ren6

Recommended

"Another" is that kind of work that has several of the most different adaptations, so you probably already heard of the anime, the manga or the live action.
Here I'll talk a little bit about the work that originated all these different versions of the story: the original novel written by Yukito Ayatsuji.

The story starts with a series of events leading our main character to be transferred to a school in the countryside. Because of some complications he had to start the classes a month after their beginning, and that's how things will start to go downhill not only for Koichi, but for all ... the members of the class 3-3.
To begin with, his school is surrounded by many horror stories, but they're all just stories, and no one really believes in it. The only one that everyone feels a shiver down the spine is the story about the class 3-3: a frightening ghost story with his roots in the past, exactly 26 years ago, where a picture of the group was taken, and "someone", the ghost of a dead classmate, that shouldn't be in the picture, was there; followed by a lot of strange deaths involving the class 3-3 in the next years, leading everyone to believe a curse had fallen upon the group after the death of this classmate.
Some years after the phenomenon started, they discovered that the "curse" can be avoided if someone "don't exist", or at least if they pretend someone of the class don't exist. Around this we still have a very important question, the question that can end with this phenomenon, but the hardest to be answered, "who is the another?", "who is the dead?", the extra classmate, the one that came back from death and is infiltrated between the other students.
With all those mysteries, the important figure of Mei Misaki enters in the scene, she was already someone that had a very strange meeting with Koichi in the beginning of our story, and he meets her again in class 3-3. Mei is a very interesting character, mostly in the first part of the story, she is an existence that you don't really know what it is. It intrigued me the whole first part who and what Mei was, but only in the second part and in the last chapters we start discover who this girl really is. A thing we can say for sure is, Mei is probably the only one Koichi can trust, and she will play a very important role in the story together with our main character.
In the beginning we might feel very confused because the story show us lot of content, it feels like there is a lot of mysteries and you might caught yourself trying to associate every information that is given. This is very important actually, because lot of things will only make sense in the last part of the story, so all the details matter.

As for the story, what you need to know is that it's divided in two parts besides the chapters; these parts have important questions that will be solved during it. The first one is "What?....Why?" and the second one is "How?....Who?". Well, only saying it you can almost imagine about what which part is about. The first one is mostly regarding the doubts of Koichi about what's happening in the class, why these things happen and why his classmates act the way they act. As for the second part, it has relation with how to break the events of the phenomenon, and who is the dead.
What really called my attention, talking about the narration of the story, is that it's told in the first person, with Koichi being the one telling all the events. I personally thought it was a very interesting way of writing because like this we can see HIS point of view of the story, and not by an external narrator, it also feels a little bit more like a "horror" story, like, sometimes you see Koichi is really nervous when his hearing about something and you start feeling his nervousness too.

The characters are mostly very interesting, there are some I would like to know more, like Izumi, which, for me, had a very short role in the story, but mostly the side characters are very interesting and we get to know more about the ones that are close to Koichi, which is a good amount of characters. Of course Mei and Koichi get the special treatment, Mei being the highlight, as I said before, she's a very enigmatic character and you get yourself questioning her existence a lot in the first part of the novel. Koichi feels kinda like the our everyday main character, but I got to see a little bit of me in him, especially the "bookworm" personality, and we get to see his true emotions in many parts of the novel, so it feels like a very realist portrayal.
A thing that can be noted too is that all characters are important. You might think "it's just a side character", but he or she will definitely do something important in the story, so pay attention to every single character while reading.
Another thing about the characters is that we get to see MANY deaths in this novel, some of them (ok, most of them) are very crazy, so crazy that it feels kinda unreal. Well, I guess one of the things about this story is that all the events are already unimagined, so even the deaths need to be unimaginable coincidences or accidents, but the only thing I know is that while I was reading, I started questioning myself: could this weird death really happen in the real world?

Overall, I think "Another" was a very good reading; I really liked the mysteries and the way they were shown, as well as the narrativ., The characters have interesting roles during the story and they fit the atmosphere created by the author. All the questions he makes in the beginning and the way he starts answering them during the story, everything leading to an unimaginable ending. It's the kind of story that even if you start reading and don't like it, you'll at least finish because you just can't stop without knowing who is the culprit, or in this case, who is the dead.
I would totally recommend it for fans of mystery, not really horror fans, because I can't say this novel gets to the point of being classified as horror, but it's a very good mystery novel that will give you some shivers and make you question everything.
So, what are you waiting to start reading "Another" and discover who the dead is? But better read now, or will forget about everything when the phenomenon ends.

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Aug 9, 2016

HousekiGirl

Recommended

I'll keep this review short, do not fear.

The first thing I would like to say is that this novel is very clever, absolutely perfectly planned out, and its story is told very well.

Story: 10/10

This novel is one with a dark atmosphere, as it is about a chain of deaths which occur once Kouichi Sakakibara transfers into the school.

I became hooked as soon as I started reading it. Sure, the beginning may be slow at first, but as you progress deeper into the story, all of the pieces come to light and connect together beautifully. Everything is so well connected, as I said earlier, and ...

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Dec 31, 2021

abystoma2

Not Recommended

„What?…………Why?“
- Another, volume 1, introduction chapter, page 1, line 1

Why indeed... why have I picked this up even though I hated the series? Maybe some hope that perhaps the novel is actually is good, maybe it’s just the series that sucks. I mean, it could be the case… it is not the case.

I’ll try to not go into specifics to let you go through the disappointment without spoilers. If you don’t count it being disappointing a spoiler by itself, of course.

Another feels almost insulting. The story doesn’t attempt to get you interested in the setting or the story. It’s boring the whole time until ...

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