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A review by gjamesmoses
Another, Volume 1 by Yukito Ayatsuji
3.0
Be aware first of all, this volume ends with Chapter 9; Volume 2 picks up with Chapter 10. This is not a two-book series, this is one 487-page novel that has been broken into two. Apparently this is a thing in Japanese publishing (called a bunkobon edition). The book was at one point illustrated by Noizi Ito (the character designer of the anime adaption) but those are not included in the Kobe ebook version.
With all that out of the way. A teenager moves in with his aunt after his dad gets sent to India for his work; as part of that, he has to transfer schools. Something is weird at his new school, though. His classmates are obviously keeping some sort of secret, and there’s a strange girl, Mei Misaki, never interacts with anyone, and who he becomes fascinated with (in ways that would be wildly unacceptable in real life, e.g. secretly following her after school; maybe it’s just the first person narration, but the novel, or at least this volume, never comes to grips with how weird the narrator is being).
Another is very fast-paced, and the writing/translation are functional enough not to get in the way. It has some creepy moments and one scene of effective gore. Its cutest trick is the way it controls information; it’s told in the first person, but there are third-person interludes of other students talking to each other, meaning that we always know just a little more than the narrator. So when Mei Misaki introduces herself, we know that twenty-six years ago, a student named Misaki died in an accident, and that his (her?) ghost apparently showed up in a class photo, but the narrator does not. Something the novel handles much less gracefully, is scenes where the narrator is just about to learn something important, but something happens at the last minute to interrupt. You can do that maybe once per novel, and even then, it’s kind of a cliche; it happens far too often here.
There's no getting around the fact that, as half a novel, this volume does not end in a very satisfying way. We learn what's going on, but it's not a frightening climax, it's just one person explaining stuff to the narrator for thirty pages. It's a fast enough read that I'll probably pick up the second volume, although it hardly feels like the story can support 240 more pages.
With all that out of the way. A teenager moves in with his aunt after his dad gets sent to India for his work; as part of that, he has to transfer schools. Something is weird at his new school, though. His classmates are obviously keeping some sort of secret, and there’s a strange girl, Mei Misaki, never interacts with anyone, and who he becomes fascinated with (in ways that would be wildly unacceptable in real life, e.g. secretly following her after school; maybe it’s just the first person narration, but the novel, or at least this volume, never comes to grips with how weird the narrator is being).
Another is very fast-paced, and the writing/translation are functional enough not to get in the way. It has some creepy moments and one scene of effective gore. Its cutest trick is the way it controls information; it’s told in the first person, but there are third-person interludes of other students talking to each other, meaning that we always know just a little more than the narrator. So when Mei Misaki introduces herself, we know that twenty-six years ago, a student named Misaki died in an accident, and that his (her?) ghost apparently showed up in a class photo, but the narrator does not. Something the novel handles much less gracefully, is scenes where the narrator is just about to learn something important, but something happens at the last minute to interrupt. You can do that maybe once per novel, and even then, it’s kind of a cliche; it happens far too often here.
There's no getting around the fact that, as half a novel, this volume does not end in a very satisfying way. We learn what's going on, but it's not a frightening climax, it's just one person explaining stuff to the narrator for thirty pages. It's a fast enough read that I'll probably pick up the second volume, although it hardly feels like the story can support 240 more pages.