Another

A horror/mystery novel by Yukito Ayatsuji, adapted into manga and an anime for the Winter 2012 anime season.

Twenty-six years ago, in a third-year classroom of Yomiyama North Middle School, there was a student named Misaki. As an honors student who was also good at sports, the charming boy was popular with his classmates. When he suddenly died, his classmates decided to carry on as if he were still alive until graduation. Then, in the spring of 1998, a boy named Kouichi Sakakibara transfers to that classroom, and he grows suspicious of the fearful atmosphere in that classroom. In particular, he becomes curious about an aloof girl with doll-like beauty named Mei Misaki who wears an eyepatch and is always alone, drawing pictures.

For those in the US, the series can be watched legally at Crunchyroll.

This series contains the following tropes:

 * A House Divided:  By counting students only, the curse doubled the number of all victims that year just in one day of it.
 * Accidental Murder:
 * Katsumi Matsunaga accidentally killed a student in his class when they were fighting during the summer trip.
 * Adult Fear: Any of the kids can violently die at any given moment, as well as any family members.
 * Adults Are Useless:
 * Mei's mother. Mei confirms that her mother wouldn't care even if she was aware of how her daughter was being treated at school  Justified,
 * The school administration is not very helpful with preventing the curse, putting a transfer student in class 3-3 (resulting in the class's initial Poor Communication Kills problem) and making Ms. Mikami the assistant homeroom teacher (she had already had a harrowing experience as class 3-3's homeroom teacher two years prior). Justified for the latter;.
 * Alliterative Name: Mei Misaki.
 * Almost-Dead Guy: Subverted in the death of
 * Alternate Continuity: All the versions are this to each other, to various degrees. The anime has some deaths either occurring differently, happening to different people, or not happening at all compared to the light novel and manga versions, while sometimes it covers parts of the original novel which the manga skips or changes.
 * Animation Bump: Episodes 7 and 12.
 * Note that since this is an anime out of P.A. Works, the animation quality is already sky-high, so receiving an AB on top of that is damn impressive.
 * Anti-Villain:
 * The curse is a Type III. It tries to get rid of the dead person in Class 3 just like the humans are trying to do. The problem is it's non-sentient and therefore has no qualms with indiscriminately killing the other children until it guesses right.
 * The dead person is also one of the Type V variety. They're never really antagonist, it's just that their very presence causes other people to die.
 * Anyone Can Die: Played straight after the first two introductory episodes. Especially so in the last two episodes when bodies start falling left and right.
 * Apocalyptic Log: In the form of a cassette, detailing the doomed expedition to Yomiyama Shrine. Unfortunately, circumstance conspires to screw said cassette before Sakakibara and co. get to the most important part.
 * Ax Crazy/Well-Intentioned Extremist:
 * Zigzagged.
 * Beach Episode: Episode 8.
 * Bishounen: Kouichi, Teshigawara, Mochizuki, Kazami, and almost all of Kouichi's classmates. See how they are ranked? Yeah, since it's Noizi Ito who designed them.
 * Bittersweet Ending:
 * The manga.
 * The anime has a similar ending,  The ending of the original novel is on par with this, as
 * Blood-Splattered Innocents: stabbing himself in the neck leads to this.
 * Body Horror: Some of the Creepy Dolls invoke this; one has an open skull with roses spilling out, while another has tentacles emerging from her eye sockets.
 * Bottle Fairy: Reiko.
 * Breather Episode: Invoked example with the anime's episode 8, which is also a Beach Episode. . Everyone is exhausted by the events in Yomiyama, and the downplayed soundtrack and the emptiness of the beach make the entire affair feel like a rather futile attempt to relax in the wake of the recent disasters..
 * Broken Masquerade:
 * By the Eyes of the Blind: Initially implied that only Kouichi and those near death can see Mei..
 * Can You Hear Me Now: One of the first signs that the curse is manifesting is when nearby phone signals start breaking up. Given that the curse is apparently sentient, these outbursts of static tend to be perfectly timed to hide important information from listeners.
 * Catapult Nightmare: Kouichi has one in episode 7 and 9.
 * Censor Shadow:
 * Used somewhat in 's death. There's plenty of blood shown quite explicitly but the images are noticeably darker than Kouichi's reaction shots and the wound is totally dark in wide shots.
 * The same technique is used just after.
 * And again when
 * Classroom With A Dark Secret: In 1972, a popular student from class 3-3 named Misaki died. However, the rest of class 3-3 chose to pretend that he was still alive until graduation.
 * Class Representative: Yukari Sakuragi and Tomohiko Kazami. Izumi Akazawa isn't really one, but acts the part the most.
 * Conspicuous CG: A few scenes with cars in episode 8 have this.
 * Contrived Coincidence: One actually happens in episode 8. Misaki couldn't help Sakakibara and friends because she went on vacations with her family. They went to the hotel Matsunaga worked to ask him about the curse, the exact same hotel where Misaki was taking vacations.
 * Conveniently Seated: Mei is seated in the back row by the window so she can daydream and easily exit if she so feels.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: No-one seems to be all that inconvenienced by the fire of the vacation resort in the last episodes unless they actually touch the flames or end up under falling rubble. People walk around and talk normally even as the walls blaze all around them.
 * Cruel and Unusual Death: The curse doesn't bother with killing its victims either nicely or plausibly, most of the time.
 * Creepy Doll: All over the anime's opening sequence... and then there's an entire doll shop/gallery full of them. Mei implies that the dolls will attempt to draw out the souls of the living. Also, in certain parts of the episodes, there are short half second cuts to creepy shots of dolls.
 * Curtains Match the Window: A lot of characters in the anime.
 * Cute Clumsy Girl/The Ditz: Mizuno.
 * Cutting the Electronic Leash: Mei invokes this sometime after the, although she realizes her mother will probably just buy her another phone.
 * Darkskinned Blonde: One of the dolls.
 * Dead All Along:
 * Demoted to Extra: Kazami in the anime. Despite being one of Kouchi's friends and a member of the mystery-solving gang in the manga, he's pretty much sent off-screen after the beginning of the anime.
 * Despair Event Horizon: Poor Mr. Kubodera hits one, due to the stress of having to both taking care of his very ill, very old mother (and he is a single) and fighting the curse that befalls his class. The result is gruesome; . Talk about Adult Fear...
 * Derailing Love Interests: The anime teases us with two possible options of love for Kouichi - Mei and Izumi.
 * Dude Looks Like a Lady: Mochizuki.
 * The End - or Is It?: The end of the manga gives us . Also, all of the continuities make clear that
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: An occupational hazard for Class 3 students. The entire mansion in the last two episodes tries the hardest.
 * Eye Scream:
 * Happens during Kouichi's dream sequence in episode 7.
 * And in the manga,  tries to kill Mei by stabbing her in the eye.
 * Eyepatch of Power: Mei.
 * Eyes Do Not Belong There: The opening features a chandelier with eyeballs instead of lights.
 * Fake Memories: Why nobody notices anything odd about.
 * Falling Chandelier of Doom: In the anime's opening.
 * Fling a Light Into the Future: The current Class 3-3 finds out that a student from a previous class figured out how to stop the curse and left behind an audio tape to record his discovery in case his memories were rewritten.
 * Foreshadowing: The first minute and a half of the anime's first episode is a montage of seemingly random and unconnected imagery. They are actually subtle hints at things to come.
 * Gender Blender Name: The Misaki from 1972 was a boy. Although it should be noted that for 1972!Misaki it's his given name, while for 1998!Misaki it's her family name.
 * Genre Savvy:
 * Everyone becomes visibly tense in episode 8 as they approach the city limits and a huge tanker truck passes them on the highway, as if they expect the curse to suddenly flare up the second before they leave Yomiyama.
 * Kouichi's also quick to adapt to the circumstances around the curse and even wonders very early on if Mei is a ghost or not. This gets mixed in with a bit of Wrong Genre Savvy, but he never wastes time thinking "This is impossible."
 * Girlish Pigtails: Izumi.
 * Gratuitous English: The anime's episode titles.
 * Groin Attack: Kouichi gets one from  in episode 11.
 * Heterosexual Life Partners:
 * Kazami and Teshigawara. Sakuragi and Izumi.
 * More like Teshigawara and Mochizuki, and Izumi and Sugiura in the anime (due to Kazami being Demoted to Extra ).
 * High-Pressure Blood:
 * Hope Spot: One student manages to survive episode 12's Falling Chandelier of Doom only to be crushed by a pillar as he tries to run.
 * Hot Teacher: Ms. Mikami.
 * Idiosyncratic Wipes: Creepy Dolls are shown between scenes in the anime. Later episodes stop doing this.
 * Idiot Ball: Many of the characters at some point. The group who get an idea of warning the class by politely visiting every room and telling them instead of using an (existent) radio system in Episode 11 deserves a special mention.
 * Ill Boy: Kouichi is introduced as this, his left lung having been punctured on the day of his fifteenth birthday. Takabayashi is also one, explained as some sort of heart condition.
 * Imagine Spot: Kouichi's daydreaming about dancing with Mei while the rest of the class can't give a damn about them.
 * Impromptu Tracheotomy:
 * gets this through the neck of all things. And with an umbrella, to make it worse.
 * does this to himself with a kitchen knife in the neck.
 * In-Series Nickname: The nurse Mizuno calls Kouichi "Horror Teen" due to him reading horror novels. Teshigawara calls him Sakaki.
 * Irony: Semi-meta example. The perpetually-cloudy setting and morbid students let off an atmosphere of Nothing Is Scarier, but the ending credits provide a stark contrast: everyone is in a beautiful mansion with large windows that let in the light of the sunny day outside. They're all smiling and seem to be relaxed, and Mei is outside on a balcony, looking at the Ghibli Hills that surround the mansion.
 * It Can Think: The curse. Oh, and it is one sadistic little bastard.
 * It Gets Worse: Pretty much until the very end.
 * Kick the Dog: basically turns the whole class against Mei with their speech in episode 10. To be fair, nobody had any idea
 * Killed Off for Real:
 * Kill It with Fire:
 * Knight Templar: Instead of the fear-fueled ax-craziness some of the characters give in to, Izumi's and Kazami's actions fall under this trope in the last episode.
 * Kazami Granted, he did fall from the balcony in the previous episode...
 * ...But Akazawa has no such excuse, when she tries to
 * Laser-Guided Amnesia: Information that would help later victims of the curse seems to end up forgotten.
 * The curse modifies the memories of people related to Class 3 and any kind of record that may help others figure out how to break the curse, ensuring that it will continue to claim lives.
 * Laser-Guided Karma: One student who becomes trapped under the fallen chandelier in episode 12 manages to free himself and bolts for the door without helping the others.
 * Let Them Die Happy: Subverted.
 * Limp and Livid: spends a few seconds flailing and waving his knife around before plunging it into his own neck. It's implied that he's trying to fight the curse off.
 * Love Dodecahedron: The chain of attraction within the group of main characters is hinted in the anime: Teshigawara -> Izumi -> Kouichi -> Mei. The last one maybe reciprocated. Sakuragi seemed to be interested in Kouichi too, and Kazami apparently had a thing for her,
 * Madness Mantra:
 * Magic A Is Magic A: After two and a half decades of dealing with the curse, those involved with class 3 have worked out most of the rules involving the curse, such as the fact that it can't harm you outside Yomiyama (the one time it looked like it had was a Time-Delayed Death).
 * Make It Look Like an Accident: Subverted. A lot of the deaths could actually be counted as accidents, bizarre and unlikely as they are, if they had happened individually. But the fact that these deaths occur so alarmingly frequently, and sometimes even simultaneously, is what makes it obvious that this is not the case.
 * Male Gaze: Ms. Mikami practically has a panty line in episode 3.
 * Maybe Ever After: The anime ends on heavy Ship Tease for Mei/Kouichi.
 * Megane: Tomohiko Kazami.
 * Meganekko: Yukari Sakuragi and Takako Sugiura. Ms. Mikami in the manga and aunt Reiko in the anime.
 * Mismatched Eyes:
 * Mauve Shirt: A whole wardrove of them.
 * Murder Is the Best Solution:.
 * Names to Know In Anime: We have Atsushi Abe as Kouichi Sakakibara,Natsumi Takamori as Mei Misaki,Ai Nonaka as Yukari Sakuragi,Madoka Yonezawa as Izumi Akazawa,and few other seiyu....
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: "Mei" is written with the character 鳴 ("to sing, cry"), which is innocuous on its own, but she herself points out that it's used in 悲鳴 ("scream").
 * Necro Non Sequitur:
 * How  dies. You will never look at umbrellas the same way again.
 * The backhoe in Episode 9.
 * death in the anime. It involves a fire from earlier in the episode to well up and create an explosion from the backdraft, which destroys some of the building's foundations.
 * From episode 12,
 * New Transfer Student: Kouichi. It gets him and his class into a whole lot of trouble.
 * Nice Girl: The Misaki from twenty-six years ago was basically the pinnacle of perfection in both personality and academics before her death. Turns out that Misaki was actually a Nice Guy.
 * Nightmare Dreams: Kouichi has a nightmare about being the dead student himself in episode 7. It involved melting faces and bleeding eye sockets.
 * Nothing Is Scarier: The oppressive atmosphere and the way everyone dances around mentioning the incident from 1972 is creepy enough on its own.
 * Oh Crap: Mochizuki and Teshigawara have this well justified reaction when in search for Ms. Mikami they find instead.
 * One Steve Limit: Averted with Misaki the current student and Misaki the infamous dead student (and Misaki Fujioka, 1998!Misaki's cousin and the otherwise inconsequential girl who dies in the hospital at the beginning of the story). Kouichi Sakakibara is also implied to be an example given other students' immediate reactions to hearing his name, curious questions of whether he had really never been in Yomiyama before, and Mei's statement that the rest of the class associates his name with death.
 * Old School Building: Still in active use for art lessons etc., but the classrooms moved to the newer part of the school some time after Reiko was in class 3.
 * Parental Abandonment: Kouichi's father is a professor who's currently in India (leaving him in the care of his grandmother) while his mother passed away while giving birth to him. Mei stays at her aunt's house while her father's in Germany.
 * Perpetual Molt: See page image.
 * Poor Communication Kills: Many times:
 * Justified by a really nasty Catch-22. Class 3's continued survival depends . On the other hand, explaining that to Kouichi would require them to, which would trigger the events they're trying to prevent. Needless to say, things go to hell very quickly indeed. They probably could have gotten away with it if they'd told him before he officially started attending class, but by the time they got around to it Kouichi had already
 * Mei has, but her classmates just have to
 * If Mei has told anyone that Misaki was in reality, people wouldn't be left in the dark about the progress of that year's Calamity and she wouldn't have . And there wouldn't be any theories about
 * There's also Mei's not telling anybody but Kouichi about her ability earlier than she did. Though given how everyone responded to . Also, in the manga version Mei tells Kouichi that her ability explicitly does not allow her . This means that she couldn't necessarily save anyone or prevent their death anymore than anybody else in her position could, and could still get her blamed for failure because of it. Plus, the ability to
 * Finally, in episode 12, Mei finally reveals to Kouichi who the extra was (she did try earlier, but was interrupted by Teshigawa). When he asks her why she didn't tell him sooner, she says that he wouldn't of believed her anyway. Probably could've saved a lot of deaths had she of communicated this sooner, but everything fits together once they replay all the clues sprinkled out throughout the series at once for anyone who missed it.
 * Power Perversion Potential: As mentioned above, Kouichi and Mei could get away with dancing in the middle of class, since Imagine what else they could get away with.
 * Oh, someone already has. (Warning: Images are NSFW)
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: Chibiki in Episode 12, who stops  and points out that needlessly killing other students is not the best way to go about things.
 * Red Eye, Take Warning: Mei.
 * Red Herring:
 * Rei Ayanami Expy: Mei Misaki.
 * Retconjuration: An effect of the curse is its ability to hide the "Extra's" existence with both False Memories and false official paperwork. Only handwritten or handmade records seem anything close to immune.
 * Repetitive Name:.
 * The Reveal:
 * Sadistic Choice:
 * Sanity Slippage: Happens to multiple people as the story continues and the body count rises. Gets really bad in the last two episodes, as desperate students take matters into their own hands.
 * Scare Chord: The anime is particularly fond of this.
 * Scary Shiny Glasses: Mr. Kubodera and the doll shopkeeper.
 * School Swimsuit: Worn by Mei in episode 8.
 * Separated at Birth:.
 * The Seven Mysteries: Kouichi wonders aloud if there's a set of these related to class 3. There isn't, although the school as a whole apparently has seven mysteries that no one seems to really care about.
 * Ship Tease:
 * Increasingly between Mei and Kouichi. Not much else to happen when they have no one else to talk to.
 * There's a bit of Kouichi/Izumi teasing in episode 7 as well. And again when she decides to ride in whichever car Kouichi is in to the beach in episode 8.
 * Kazami/Yukari is teased in episode 12;.
 * Also Izumi/Teshigawara in the last chapter of the manga.
 * Izumi/Teshigawara is sort of faked out ship teased in episode 8 as well (Izumi originally told Teshi that he was to ride in her car, momentarily giving him the impression she wanted to be together for the ride to the beach, to which he seems rather surprised/happy). It's quickly revealed that she did this to free up a spot in the car Koichi was riding in, thus the fake out.
 * Shout-Out: Various pieces of horror fiction and their authors are often alluded to, thanks to Kouichi's interest in horror stories and Mizuno's calling attention to it. Among the name-drops are Stephen King, John Saul, and HP Lovecraft. Stories include The Omen.
 * The dance scene to Pulp Fiction as this video shows.
 * Slashers Prefer Blondes: The anime gives us three blondes; Sakuragi, Ayano and Sugiura.
 * Somebody Else's Problem: The school seems to at least be aware that something is wrong with Class 3-3, which is why they are kept separate from the other classes as much as possible. However, besides that, the school does not really do much to try and figure out or prevent the accidental deaths that plague the class.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance: The "On the Next..." preview for episode 8 (which is a Beach Episode) still uses the disturbing tune for other episodes' next week preview.
 * Spooky Photographs: The dead student is eventually revealed in this manner when they turn out blurred-out and smoky in photos.
 * Stealth Hi Bye: Mei pulls one on Kouichi in the doll shop in episode 3.
 * The Stinger: In the anime,  are shown putting away a   that explains how to stop the calamity for the next class 3 to find.
 * Suddenly Sober: Reiko comes home drunk and slurring in episode 3 but is somewhat alarmed and completely loses the slur when Kouichi brings up the incident from 1972.
 * The Wiki Rule: Another Wiki
 * Those Two Guys: Teshigawara and Mochizuki, the jock and the feminine one, respectively.
 * Time-Delayed Death:
 * Too Dumb to Live: Nakao is afflicted with this in episode 8 when he goes way too far into the ocean to retrieve a beach ball.
 * There's also one Bishounen student in episode 11.
 * Tsundere: Izumi Akazawa. And you can really spot it by her twintails and facial expression alone.
 * Umbrella of Togetherness: Kouichi and Sakuragi in episode 3 (although it's not shown onscreen).
 * Understatement: "This is not normal."
 * Unperson:
 * Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Sakakibara. He just had to transfer into thick of things, unaware of the unspeakable rules.
 * Vomit Discretion Shot:
 * After  one of the students throws up - we don't see it but the audio is still there.
 * Comedic example in episode 8 with the carsick Nakao.
 * Wham! Episode
 * Subverted at first in episode 3 when Mei removes her eyepatch  (note that episode 2 before it played this as a huge Cliff Hanger). Then played straight at the end of the episode when   is impaled by an umbrella.
 * Again in episode 6..
 * In a grand subversion of the Breather Episode, episode 8 demonstrates that.
 * In episode 10, we discover that the only known way to stop the curse is to . Also, Mei.
 * When She Smiles: The stern, serious Akazawa really comes out of her shell during the Beach Episode, and even Mei lightens up a bit. The latter is even seen giggling in the background of one scene.
 * The dream in episode 6 also has some Mei related adorableness.
 * Again from Mei in the final episode, when it's all over (for that year, at least).
 * Yandere:
 * Akazawa has signs of being a very mild example. Were her actions not clearly spiteful, she'd be classified as a downplayed Clingy Jealous Girl. In episode 10 she randomly decides to blame Mei  When Sakakibara attempts to defend Mei, the camera focuses on her angrily biting her lower lip. On top of that, the episode opened with Akazawa having a dream about Sakakibara that exemplified her growing feelings for him. Clearly, Akazawa is very jealous of Mei for how close she and Sakakibara have become. In episode 12, she seems almost excited in getting rid of her "rival" for him, and hated how he keeps interrupting her. Then she seems to simply give up and considers killing him as well.
 * Kazami shows signs of being a Yandere for, also in Episode 12.
 * You Don't Look Like You: Some of the character designs were changed quite a bit between the manga and anime. Compare Mochizuki and Teshigawara from the manga to the anime.
 * Zettai Ryouiki:
 * Some of the girls invoke this to varying degrees, but a special mention goes to S-grade Akazawa.
 * Mei herself sported this in Episode 7.
 * Akazawa has signs of being a very mild example. Were her actions not clearly spiteful, she'd be classified as a downplayed Clingy Jealous Girl. In episode 10 she randomly decides to blame Mei  When Sakakibara attempts to defend Mei, the camera focuses on her angrily biting her lower lip. On top of that, the episode opened with Akazawa having a dream about Sakakibara that exemplified her growing feelings for him. Clearly, Akazawa is very jealous of Mei for how close she and Sakakibara have become. In episode 12, she seems almost excited in getting rid of her "rival" for him, and hated how he keeps interrupting her. Then she seems to simply give up and considers killing him as well.
 * Kazami shows signs of being a Yandere for, also in Episode 12.
 * You Don't Look Like You: Some of the character designs were changed quite a bit between the manga and anime. Compare Mochizuki and Teshigawara from the manga to the anime.
 * Zettai Ryouiki:
 * Some of the girls invoke this to varying degrees, but a special mention goes to S-grade Akazawa.
 * Mei herself sported this in Episode 7.