So, Another: the season’s horror series. Let me put a fair warning
out first, because for the past months I have seen a few people
unpleasantly surprised by its true nature: this show is brutal. If you
don’t want to watch gore, then stay as far away from this show as
possible, because it contains a number of very graphic death scenes.
This is particularly nasty, because it takes a while for it to reveal
this nature.
A lot of the airtime in this series is spent on building up. It’s
nowhere as extreme as with Blood-C, but still this show really puts
emphasis on creating an atmosphere to draw the viewer in, only to toy
with this in a gruesome manner. This is also what makes this show great:
the contrast between surprisingly relatable characters, and the really
dark and intense scenes.
With a lot of the bad horror flicks, the creators spend little time
on the characters themselves, however this series avoids this very well.
This goes in particular through a very solid lead couple: the two of
them have creative backgrounds, they’re well fleshed out, and this
series also allows the two of them to play off each other really well
whenever they are together. There really is a lot of detail in their
acting and dialogue.
The show also rocks in terms of mystery. The show evolves quite
nicely as we learn more and more about what’s going on and the
characters. The series loves to drop random hints and red herrings
everywhere, which really spice up its scenario. This isn’t the series
that answers everything, but the closure it gives at the end does wrap
things up.
However, this series also is far from perfect. By far the biggest
flaw is that it’s trying too hard at times. This series really wants to
be atmospheric and haunting, but the twists it pulls at times are just
to forced or obvious to take serious. Think of being in an art class,
with one of the students suddenly painting “The Scream” of all things. I
like symbolism, but there is a line for everything. What also seems to
plague this series, especially in its second half, is that it tends to
pull very convenient plot twists, just for the sake of wrapping
everything up.
It’s understandable that this series wanted to get everything done in
just 12 episodes, but that comes with a sacrifice. The cast of this
series is huge, and unfortunately it just doesn’t have the time to flesh
every single character out, even though this really could have improved
this series considering the nature of the story. The same goes with the
plot: with more episodes it could have wrapped things up more
naturally, but that would have been at the expense of a few boring
episodes. And really: the way Another is now, it’s a quick bite-sized
horror show that despite its quiet moment never has a part that drags.