Another - Episode 2

Despite finding creepiness in every corner in its opening instalment, it's school life as usual as Another's second episode begins, with the students of the fated class 3 carrying on with art classes and the like as you'd expect from any normal school.

Despite this however, there's clearly still plenty that our protagonist Sakakibara hasn't been told, with mentions of the class "curse" slipping out while other individuals continue to press him about his history in Yomiyama and whether he really isn't a regular visitor there in years gone by.  What's more, the eyepatch-sporting Mei proves to be as enigmatic as ever, being ignored by everyone else around the school while chatting dryly to Koichi from time to time.

It's Mei's strange aura, and perhaps more importantly her trip to the hospital's morgue while he was in said institution with his collapsed lung, that leads him to do a little digging as to whether any girls died in the hospital during his stay.  By the end of the episode he has an answer to this question with the news that there was indeed a death around the time of a junior high school girl - a girl named Misaki.  Couple that with a decidedly strange shop selling dolls in which Mei is loitering as she offers to show Sakakibara what's under her eye patch (what a flirtatious girl), and we can consider the creepiness factor very much ramped up in this episode.

For all of these weird goings-on, Another is certainly working hard to keep its powder dry at this point, letting out information (or misinformation perhaps, who knows?) a slither at a time, relying instead on its atmosphere and our constant questioning of everything that's going on to drive the series over and above any major revelations.  Certainly, the show's audio in particular has to be commended for powering that feeling of unease, perhaps even more so than its visuals, and for now I'm more than happy to simply find myself along on this discomfiting ride until it finally decides to show its hand - and surely it must do exactly that sooner rather than later.