Another: The dark and terrifying true story behind this anime

How are you people, and I welcome you to a new article from me, this time I come to present a rather unusual topic on my part and that is that today I will bring you something very interesting.

As we all know there are animes based on true stories, events whose stories occurred in real life and that have been captured in the pages of a manga and then brought to animation.

In the case of today I bring you an anime based on real events but that few know, and it is obvious since everything that Another presents us in its history seems simply a Science Fiction anime of the Horror Genre with a story invented by Faithful style of the “Final Destination” saga.

As it is always said “Reality is stranger than fiction” and today this article deals with this phrase precisely because Another, the Horror anime that almost all of us know… It is based on real events!

WARNING: This article may contain disturbing and traumatizing scenes and stories, reading this article is at your sole discretion.

Another Synopsis:

In the year 1972 a student named Misaki who attended class 3-3 of North Yomiyama High School died suddenly.

His classmates shocked at this great loss decide to act as if nothing had happened and decide to pretend that Misaki was still alive, reserving his place in the class and always taking him into account on every possible occasion, as if he were alive.

Graduation time arrives and as always, reserving Misaki's place, the group photo of the class is taken but the strangest thing is that... Misaki's ghost appeared in the photo! In his reserved place and smiling with a dead look and with an almost lost face looking at nothing.

Since then class 3-3 was classified as cursed. Time passes and we reach the year 1998 where the new student Kōichi Sakakibara (Remember surname) arrives at his new class, class 3-3 but something strange happened, The behavior of his new classmates was somber and quite strange, so proposes to discover the behind of this.

As the chapters pass, the curse begins to establish its domain and thus, death knocks on the door of each student in the class, killing each one of them in horrible ways and even causing suicides and injuries to those who belonged to this unfortunate class. .

The main crime that inspired the author of Another: Yukito Ayatsuji

May 27, 1997 was a normal day like any other in the small city of Kobe. The janitor arrives an hour early at the Tainohata School to welcome the elementary school children.

Everything was routine and perfect for the concierge until a macabre discovery at the door of the establishment left him frozen and surely, a trauma that marked him for life... And it is not for less since there was the impaled head of a student of that school, without eyes and his mouth cut from ear to ear.

His headless body was found by police on a hill near the school building.

Inside the mouth of that unlucky student named Jun Hase who met his death at the age of 11, was a note written with a red pen on which the killer had written his pseudonym as Seito Sakakibara (remember the last name?).

The note in question read:

“This is the beginning of the game, try to stop me if you can stupid policemen. I desperately want to see people die, it is a challenge to commit murder. It will take a bloody trial for my years of bitterness."

This crime shocked all of Japan, but the threatening killer continued to send messages through letters to the police, with chilling texts such as threatening to kill people with disabilities like his previous victim.

We go back to March 10 of that same year. Ayaka Yamashita, 10 years old, was walking to school when suddenly she was attacked by a boy a little older than her, perpetuating several hammer blows to her head until leaving her in a coma on the street.

An hour later in the same neighborhood, a 9-year-old girl was stabbed multiple times until she fell unconscious.

On March 16, the first girl died 6 days later from head injuries while the unidentified stabbed girl managed to survive.

These crimes had the same author, Seito Sakakibara, who on July 28 was arrested by the Japanese authorities after his last crime at school, surprising himself that this cruel murderer had only…. 14 years.

More crimes that inspired Another

A shocking scene from Another, based on a true event according to eyewitnesses.

The author of Another Yukito Ayatsuji was so surprised that he decided to investigate, putting himself in the shoes of a detective, the whole event behind the crimes perpetrated by Seito Sakakibara.

But to his unpleasant surprise, this was not an isolated event, since the city of Kobe had already suffered several cruel and bloody events in its educational institutions in previous years, counting among the neighbors that the city was CURSED.

Between suicides and murders, Yukito Ayatsuji came across a particular and very terrifying fact that caught his attention so much that he decided to capture it in a consistent way as it was told in one of the most emblematic and exciting scenes of Another.

After questioning several students who witnessed this event, he was able to obtain the information that a few years ago in 1997, a rather creepy and macabre suicide occurred.

In a school which was not mentioned by the author of Another Yukito, there was a teacher who had been in his profession for several years, obsessively committed to teaching, taught quietly, but with a quite altered personality for some students.

A day like any other on a warm spring morning, the teacher enters his class with highly incomprehensible movements and cursing under his breath in a voice as if possessed by a demonic entity, the students shocked at this strange behavior decide to get up from their seats. seats to escape from the classroom...

But in a matter of seconds and before a student has even been able to get up from his bench, the professor takes a knife from his suitcase and ends his life with a stab to his throat, dying instantly.

The macabre thing about this fact is that according to the students who were in a state of shock they told the authorities

“The professor seemed not to want to commit suicide and was struggling against his hand so that the knife did not enter his throat”

Fact that finally happened.

Suicides that plague Kobe, Another's "plus"

Between fact and fact, several more macabre suicides hit the city of Kobe around those times. The legend of the curse grew stronger and stronger and this was not lost on Yukito Ayatsuji's curiosity. It was known that suicide in students was normal in Kobe schools, whether hanging from a rope in the school corridors or jumping from balconies, the author of Another decided to relate these events to specific scenes of the series.

End of Another

At the end of the investigation that took him on a bloody path plagued by suicides and murders, Yukito Ayatsuji decided to associate all the content of his investigation and reproduce these macabre scenes in his work called "Another".

Although this is the only thing we know, we cannot say for sure if all the deaths in the series have occurred in reality or that the author has not told us the complete story in his own words, what he discovered in his investigations for the Kobe city but if it has told us through these majestic scenes.

Could the umbrella scene be a true story that we will never know?

We will not know and this is due to the great conservatism that Japanese society has regarding facts that for them it is better to bury and never talk about what happened again.

For the Japanese, these facts represent the bad side of Japan that should never be brought to light, and this was demonstrated to us by the politician Shizuka Kamei (former Minister of the Environment, transport, infrastructure and tourism of Japan) calling for the establishment of a law that prohibits talking about these facts and restricting making series or movies about this since "It lacks educational or literary value for Japanese society".

Today it is impossible to hide things like this in the age of technology and social media, the information age. But at that time, if the newspaper did not inform, nobody knew.

For that reason it was quite difficult for me to find articles related to the subject and it was a full day to make this article.

Finally my friends! With nothing more to say about Another, I hope you liked it and take care to read my next article!