Another - Episode 6

After filling its early episodes with mystery, much of what we needed to know was revealed by the end of last week's episode thanks to Kouichi finding himself set aside from the rest of class three as another "non-existent" student, thus bringing forth the full story from Misaki about her own experiences.

For the vast majority of this episode, this pair of characters share and discuss information and spend their time together in lieu of any contact or attention from anybody else - the kind of scenario that might ordinarily be sweet if it wasn't so melancholy on this occasion.  Despite having played witness to several deaths, Kouichi simply can't stop picking at the scan that is the so-called curse, continuing to investigate its history as it seems to dig even deeper into his family, seemingly claiming his mother as one of its victims in the process.

Of course, the one mystery which is still in place is who the "extra" student who shouldn't be there might be - Misaki's odd relationship with her mother and general demeanour still marks her out as an oddball, while there are some heavy hints this week that there's something not quite right about Kouich's own story and his memories of his life to date.  Then again, thanks to the end of this episode we have to wonder whether there will be many students left at all to see us through to the end of the series.

With so much revealed last week, this was always going to be a bit of a slow-burner of an episode, and so it proved - its story is certainly be laid out carefully and almost meticulously, that's for sure.  The trouble is, that we're still wading through things so slowly doesn't always prove to be particularly entertaining, with this instalment in particular proving to be very dialogue heavy but with little to show for it aside from a seemingly random madcap cliff-hanger which was pulled out of nowhere.  I absolutely admire Another's presentation in terms of visuals, audio and even some aspects of its story-telling, but at the moment it feels like it's struggling to hold up a story that perhaps isn't quite worthy of that much attention to detail.  My fingers are still very much crossed that it'll prove me wrong, however.