Another's attempts at unnerving the audience are clunky, to say the least. Creepy dolls, dark colors, dreary music (which actually sounds a bit boring and sometimes ridiculous) – it's too cliche to take seriously. The atmosphere created wasn't outright terrible, but it certainly didn't achieve what it was going for. Next, we have the gore, and this is where the anime borders on (read: damn near spills over into) hilarious, parodic elements. To call the bloody deaths over-the-top would be an understatement. It seems that P.A.Works exaggerated the brutality of the deaths in order to up the shock factor, but this achieved almost the opposite effect. The deaths are, simply put, funny, in sort of a campy way. Despite how explicit it was, a scene in which the teacher of Class 3-3 spazzes out like crazy while making weird noises before he viciously stabs himself, complemented by a musical piece that almost sounds like it's TRYING to make fun of the creepy feel that Another is going for, is a perfect example of how overdone the gore can be in this show.
What about the mystery? Firstly, what's the mystery even about? Well, 26 years ago, a student named Misaki died partway through the school year – this student attended the same middle school and the same class as the main characters of Another, but the students and faculty refused to believe it, and acted as though Misaki was still alive. Ever since then, every year, a strange phenomenon occurs in which students of Class 3-3 and their relatives die mysteriously every year. So, the class is cursed. Enter the protagonist, Koichi Sakakibara, who is a transfer student and works to solve the mystery behind Class 3-3.
...Except that he doesn't. The rules of the curse are infodumped to the audience early on, erasing any tension for the duration of the show. The audience knows what the curse is as well why it's happening (for the most part...), so any attempts to surprise the audience or put them on edge falls flat. The story plays out predictably and character deaths can be seen coming from a mile away. The character deaths, incidentally, are what the show focuses on the most since the mystery aspect of the show is eviscerated early on.
There are only two things that have any sort of mystery-feel to them. First, there's the identity and purpose of the mysterious eyepatch-chick, Mei Misaki, who sits in the corner of the class, ignored by others, and is oft accompanied by a spooky backdrop of shadows and dolls. A little bit of time is dedicated to figuring out who she is, but the result of this mystery is ultimately underwhelming, and so the time allocated to this portion of the series feels like a waste.
Secondly, we have the identity of the "Another" – an extra person in Class 3-3 who is actually dead, but has kinda come back to life for some reason and is the driving force behind the curse (there's also the question of how to stop this driving force, to which the answer is fairly obvious – get rid of it, so to speak).
The problem with this part of the mystery is that, aside from being just a small chunk of what could've been something more, it wasn't handled as a mystery at all. There's hardly any semblance of piecing clues together to deduce who the culprit is. In fact, Mei knew who it was all along, and yet Koichi never really tried to pull an answer out of her. After showing us a bunch of gruesome character deaths and dedicating maybe two or three scenes to (barely) advancing the plot, Mei just tells Koichi who the extra is after some shit hits the fan towards the end of the show. One of her explanations was actually that she SAW the extra die before this person actually came to be the extra – a random, coincidental occurrence thrown in in order to conveniently sway Koichi into believing her, while slapping the so-called "mystery" of the show in the face.
The biggest problem with all this is the fact that Mei said nothing for 12 episodes. Now, could she have prevented all the deaths that occurred? Probably not all of them, no. Would the class have believed her? Maybe not immediately, no. But is it accurate to say, as Mei put it, that it "wouldn't have done any good"? No. Her reasoning behind not saying anything to Koichi or the class is somewhat understandable, I'll admit, but it's very much a handwave and overly dismissive, and she's let off the hook way too easily. In essence, one of the only mysteries the show had to offer was solved from the start – the only thing left to figure out was how to stop the curse, and the answer to that was conveniently presented randomly to our protagonists in one episode after several others full of little more than gaudy deaths.
What about the characters? They're not much to speak of. The vast majority of the animated humanoid beings in this show could not be called characters, as they resemble cardboard more than they do people. I don't expect the supporting cast or all the dead people to be well-developed, but at least some personality (beyond the occasional idiocy) would've done them some justice. Koichi, the protagonist, is as bland as it gets. All the audience ever really learns about him is that he's frail and kind. The show could've had at least one decent moment towards the end when an internal conflict arises in his character, but this was glossed over and there's no real aftermath to speak of. Mei was a bit more interesting, as she came off as a bit mysterious at the start, but she ultimately doesn't do much besides talk cryptically to Koichi early on, infodump to him occasionally, and withhold other information. She has a bit of a backstory, but it doesn't do much for her and it's hard to think of her as anything more than a bland character who falls under the Rei Ayanami Expy.
Another isn't worth watching. It's not a creepy, scary, or unnerving horror. It fails on every level as a mystery. Even the silliness of the deaths doesn't quite make it worth slogging through this tripe, since it's so out of place, but if you did want to watch it then that'd pretty much be the only reason to. As mentioned a little here and there, the music didn't do much to help, as it either came off as generic or too over-the-top just like the deaths, often sounding like it'd be more fitting in a haunted house attraction for kids than a horror show. I award Another with 2 pie slices out of 10, and I'm afraid that it doesn't deserve much more than that.
