How to survive the calamity of "Another"
You have more chances than you think, but you have to be smart.
You're a student or a teacher of class 3-3 at Yomiyama North Middle School and, this school year, it's your turn to face the yearly curse that haunts this class since 1973. What would you do in order to have the best chances of survival?
Let's find out together by analyzing the deaths and the mistakes made in the anime "Another".
Before continuing, I want to warn you from spoilers. Also, this article includes graphic descriptions so, if you're sensitive to that, I won't mind if you decide to click off.
To start this analysis, I'll provide some context. In 1972, the student Misaki Yomiyama and his family died in a fire at his house. He was a very popular boy, known for his looks as well as his great results at school and in sports, and he was so beloved that some of his classmates refused to accept his fate, thus pretending that he was still alive. The whole school got so invested that they even set up a seat for him at the graduation cerimony. In the class photo, Misaki could be seen among his classmates, even if he was already dead.
The following year, six students from that class and ten of their relatives died. Later on, the survivors found out that there was an extra student, namely a dead person (a student or a teacher who died within class 3-3) living among alive people as if nothing happened, who disappears at the end of the school year.
From this moment on, the students of class 3-3 have tried different solutions to fight the curse, ranging from praying at a shrine to renaming the class 3-C, with limited success. To make things more difficults, survivors tend to have vague memories from that year, so asking former students is not guaranteed to bring any results.
Which brings us to 1998, where the anime mostly takes place. Generally speaking, the response to the curse has become more structured, as they now elect a student as a head of countermeasures in charge of tackling the curse (although they are not always the most competent people, and we'll soon see why). Since 1988, the main countermeasure has been to elect a student as the "extra" and acting like they didn't exist for the entire year, although this didn't always work well. The arrival of a new student, Kouichi Sakakibara, completely unaware of what is going on, will be the nail on the coffin for the class of 1998.
Phew, what a long introduction! So, what do we know, so far? Every year, the class 3-3 is haunted by a curse that kills off the students of that class, their teachers and/or their family members. This is caused by the presence of an "extra", a person who died within the same class. As a countermeasure, the students have chosen an unofficial "non-existing student" for ten years. Consider those your "rules" of the curse.
With that out of the way, what are your probabilities of surviving? Let's examine the class of 1998, since it's the one we have the most information about.
In that class there were 30 students and 2 teachers. Considering that their relatives can also be struck by the curse, we will assume that every student has 2 parents or people with an equivalent role, so, other 60 people. This last count, however, is a simplification, and there might be more or less people according to the class you consider (this year itself, some characters only had one parent). Moving on, according the anime, 3 students have one alive sibling each, so we'll add 3 siblings to our count, and the parents of the two teachers (the mother and father of Mikami-Sensei and the mother of Kubodera-Sensei). This makes a rough total of 98 people. Out of these, we can see the death rate by category:
- 12/30 students (40%);
- 2/2 teachers (although one of them was the "extra") (100%);
- 2/3 siblings (66%);
- 4/63 parents/parental figures (6%).
With 20 deaths out of 98 people, the death rate is still pretty low (around 20%), which is quite encouraging. However, I think that the characters could have worked better to lower their odds of dying even more. So what could you do to lower those numbers?
If you're a staff member at school, DO NOT add new students to class 3-3.
When watching the reviews to this anime on Youtube, I saw many people bringing up a fair point in the comments: why not adding Sakakibara, the new student I mentioned before, to another class?
The choice they made honestly set him up for failure on so many levels. He was completely unaware of what was happening and he even was in a disadvantaging health condition, since he was recovering from a collapsed lung.
His lack of awareness also causes great difficulties to his classmates and the heads of countermeasures, because he has to be informed about the whole thing quickly, hoping that he will believe it and comply to the countermeasures no matter how nonsense they seem.
Do not be skeptical.
Speaking of skepticism, this attitude won't help you survive for a variety of reasons, the first being lack of sense of risk. If your risk-detecting skills are at normal levels during the curse, you're most likely to do things that are considered harmless but might be lethal, such as taking the elevator, running down the stairs, or driving during rainy days.
Being more aware of the potential risks of every decision you make will only benefit you, regardless if the curse actually happens or not.
Learn what to do in case of emergency.
This is extremely basic advice, but it could be useful in so many situations, from a classmate feeling sick to an earthquake. Learn the emergency routes of your walking places by heart, learn what to do during an emergency, such as a fire, an earthquake, a flood, a tornado, you name it.
These basic notions could have saved Makoto Ouji. During the fire at the inn, he and Noboru Saruta were almost out of the inn - they were in the hall, next to the cafeteria. Makoto opened the cafeteria's door and got killed by a backdraft caused by the flames bursting out.
Makoto could have easily survived if he hadn't done two things: the first, checking out the cafeteria, and, the second, trying to open a door when the handle was scalding hot, which is a notion that is frequently taught in emergency training.
Don't leave Yomiyama.
I get it, the calamity is terrifying and you might get killed at any moment, but it's really not worth it. First of all, leaving the school to move away is not guaranteed to protect you. Aya Ayano and her family died in a car accident while they were trying to flee.
Moreover, every time the characters went away from the town, at least one person was killed. Let's see more in depth the three main "out-of-town" moments of 1998, namely Aya Ayano fleeing the town, the beach episode, and the school trip.
- When Aya Ayano fled with her family, none of them survived (3/3 dead people or 100% death rate);
- During the beach episode, 1 out of 7 students died (14% death rate);
- During the class trip, 9 out of 20 people died, with a 45% death rate making this the most deadly event in the anime.
If this still doesn't convince you, consider that these casualties, summed together, make up 13 out of the total 20 victims, namely 65% of all the deaths occurred in 1998.
Do you need another reason? Consider that leaving the town means leaving a familiar place, probably the most familiar for you, which means that you're not profiting of an important advantage: it's an environment you probably know almost perfectly, you've had almost 15 years of your life to learn about all the potential dangers and the safest areas and activities. Just knowing the streets well could be a huge advantage, shall you encounter a classmate that went on a killing spree "just in case" (cough, cough, Kazami, cough, cough).
With this in mind, going on a school trip means putting yourself at an insane risk. We see this ourselves in multiple occasions. During the trip of 1998, the host of their inn kills her husband and sets the structure on fire, which only helped to increase the number of victims. Now, such a situation lowers your odds of survival by a lot, as you'd have to pay attention to so many factors, from the fire in itself, with all its consequences, to people trying to kill you. In addition, you don't know the inn well, so there is also a chance that you get lost while looking for an exit.
During the trip of 1983, the class went to a shrine in the mountains. After praying, they walked back to their inn and a storm started. In that occasion, two students died because of the weather - a boy got electrocuted by a lightning that struck his umbrella, his classmates freaked out and started running, and a girl slipped on the wet rocks and fell down a precipice. Now, aside from tripping and falling, there is also a chance that someone might unwillingly push you down said precipice and a chance to get lost in the woods because, again, you probably don't know that place very well.
Generally speaking, making activities out of the ordinary only means adding a ton of dangers that you have to watch out for. Leading a monotone and uneventful life means that you might be able to reduce your range of worst case scenarios by a lot in comparison to someone who lives more randomly.
Another important factor to consider is that Yomiyama also has a hospital, which means that, if you spend the curse year there, you can get treatments quickly, shall you ever need them. Which brings us to the next point.
Don't underestimate your symptoms and put your health first.
Since we are talking about the "out-of-town" deaths and the importance of having an hospital nearby, let's talk about the case of Junta Nakao. Junta died during the beach episode: as the other students were playing beach volley, the ball fell into the water, so he jumped into the sea and swam in an attempt to catch it. While doing so, he was hit by a speedboat which chopped one of his arms off.
Shocking, right? Still, this isn't the reason why he died. In the following episodes, it was revealed that he had hit his head when he was still at home, which caused an aneurysm. Such aneurysm later burst while he was swimming, meaning that he was already dead when the boat hit him.
With this in mind, and considering other deaths linked to health issues, such as Ikuo Takabayashi's, who died from an heart attack, taking care of your health is fundamental. It always is, but in this case, you need to pay extreme attention to your body and always assume the worst. Junta Nakao's aneurysm caused him to feel car sickness during the trip. Had the other characters hospitalized him when that symptom first appeared, he might have survived. Also, keep in mind that his aneurysm burst while swimming, which is not uncommon, since the pressure is different underwater.
As of Takabayashi's condition, he mentioned that it is chronic, indeed, he is exempted from P.E. classes. Despite this, his death could have also been prevented. As I mentioned before, he died of an heart attack, which occurred after he tried to tell Sakakibara the truth about the calamity. Which tells us that, if you have a similar condition, you should avoid stress at all costs, even if, normally, you are willing to speak up. Mind your business, and try to care about your classmates and the atmosphere in your class as least as possible.
What if you don't know that you have a particular health condition? Simply get check-ups for the worst case scenario(s) every time you feel some pain or somewhat differently. Yes, you might be considered too dramatic, but finding out the truth will definitely help you not only with your personal survival strategy, but also with eventual exemptions from potentially dangerous activities.
If you're somewhat in charge of forming classes, why would you add people with serious health conditions in class 3-3? Assuming that the calamity is going to happen, it is almost 100% sure that their situation is guaranteed to worsen and lead to their death. Let's look at the numbers for 1998: that year, there were 3 students with compromising health conditions. The only one who survived was Sakakibara, and, to be honest, he only did because of plot armor. Any other character recovering from a collapsed lung would definitely have died in that fire. If you imagine the air quality of a burning building, combined with the physical fatigue of running out and the overall stress typical of such a traumatizing situation, you can only get a lethal combination.
This also applies to teachers as well. Why assign class 3-3 to Kubodera-sensei, who was in a horrible mental state? According to Another Wiki, his mental health started deteriorating after the beginning of the curse, but that's no excuse to put him in such a stressful situation. Indeed, he was a caregiver long before the whole calamity started.
If you're in charge of countermeasures, communicate clearly and openly to everyone.
Speaking of Sakakibara, his health condition and the incompetence of the school staff weren't the only factors that could have killed him. Indeed, the people in charge of the countermeasures have proven to be extremely incompetent throughout the anime.
From the very beginning, when Izumi Akazawa, Yukari Sakuragi and Tomohiko Kazami visit him at the hospital, they don't bother telling Sakakibara anything about the special rules, nor the reasons behind them. While explaining the whole situation right away could have been too stressful of an experience for someone in his condition, they could at least have explained him the basic countermeasures and, when he was back to school, the whole story about the calamity. But no, he has to unknowingly mess up the countermeasures for someone to tell him something. And that one is none of the three, but Mei Misaki, the girl who volunteered to be the non-existing student that year. Even when the class officers decided to make Sakakibara the second non-existing students, they didn't tell him.
This whole silence on the situation is extremely counterproductive, not only because Sakakibara understandably ruins plans he's not aware of, but also because it narrows his chances of survival, since his awareness levels are too low and, as a consequence, he cannot take individual countermeasures to protect himself. Telling him the truth means putting him in the right mindset to handle what's about to happen.
As the head of countermeasures, your main and only goal must be the survival of as many classmates as possible.
Why am I telling you this? Because that's another thing they failed to do in 1998. Once the "non-existing student" strategy failed, part of class 3-3 focused on finding the actual "extra" and killing them in order to end the calamity sooner.
This is a good idea plot-wise, but a terrible one in real life. You don't have any evidence about who the "extra" is, so it would most likely result in a lot of petty drama and random finger-pointing with your classmates (or colleagues if you're a teacher), which would make you lose focus on your own survival. We can see how damaging this gets when multiple students end up dying while trying to kill Mei, who was believed to be the extra. It shows that such a task can obsess you to the point that you might stop being cautious and die because of a person that might be the extra. It's really not worth it.
This is the core point that the students in charge of countermeasures failed to keep in mind. Instead of ensuring that most of their classmates survived (which includes preventing them from organizing a school trip), not only did they allow them to leave the town, but Izumi also fueled a pointless, blood-thirsty witch hunt against Mei, leading to a lot of deaths, including her own. If she and Tomohiko had just cared about the class' survival, she wouldn't have started all this and fleeing the burning inn would have been a lot easier because, again, everyone would have focused on their own survival instead of killing people.
Personally, I find Izumi extremely incompetent, but Tomohiko and Yukari are no better, really. During the fire at the inn, Tomohiko completely forgets about his role as a class officer, arms himself with a knife and starts stabbing random classmates hoping to catch the undead one. This idea is horrible not only for the reasons we mentioned previously, but also because it is a completely individual initiative carried out by a person who should be a reference to the class.
Yukari is the first student of class 3-3 to die, so she didn't have as much "screentime" as the other two officers. However, besides telling Sakakibara the truth, she could have probably avoided her own death. She left the class earlier because her mother had died in a car accident and, once outside the room, she saw Kouichi and Mei, the two non-existing students. She started panicking, grabbed her pointy umbrella and started running down the staircase nearby. She slipped on the steps, her umbrella opened during the fall and impaled her.
Her mother's death could have been the sign that the calamity had started, but still, her behaviour makes no sense. If I had sensed that the calamity had started, I wouldn't have rushed downstairs in the first place. This only demonstrates how important it is to rise our awareness levels from the very beginning of the school year, even if nothing has happened yet.
Moreover, like I said earlier, a class officer should be capable of communicating with all the students, which she clearly can't do since she freaks out when she sees Mei and Kouichi in the corridor.
Now, these guys are clearly unfit for their role, but they're still 15-year-olds after all. Realistically, it's hard to find people their age who could carry out such a task. That's why the school staff should train class officers to tackle this specific situation. I have already mentioned that the school staff could have done so much more to prevent certain deaths, and this is no exception. In this school, the people somewhat in power have literally no clue about how to improve their own students' (and their own) odds of surviving the calamity. Said calamity has been going on for almost 30 years when the anime begins, and nobody has even thought of preparing the school staff for this event.
Final thoughts
Here you have some tips on how to increase your chances of surviving the calamity from "Another". Looking at it as a whole, there are some recurring key points:
- Clear and effective communication;
- Predictability and routine;
- Gather as much information as you can, be it about your health, your surroundings or something else.
This was my take on how to survive in the anime "Another". I hope you enjoyed my article and, if you want to support me, leave a heart and subscribe, it will be much appreciated!
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Source: https://another.fandom.com/
About the Creator
Simona Rosso
She/her. I write about pop culture, and I love dissecting every single medium I come across.
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