When you think about August, it’s usually a month that represents getting away from the normal routine of your lives. It’s a time of rest and vacation. For the students of Class 3-3 of Yomiyama North Middle School, their normal routine revolves around a curse that haunts them every year. It is one that is filled with constant death. To break the curse, the class would go on a summer trip in August to find a solution. What they didn’t expect were some shocking revelations, drama, and a multitude of deaths. Welcome to the world of Yukito Ayatsuji’s much-hyped horror series, Another, where non-existence and death continuously impose an iron will on a community. Do the events of the summer trip necessarily imply August is not a month viewed highly by a majority of people? Let’s find out, shall we? *HUGE SPOILER ALERT AFTER THE JUMP FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN’T SEEN/READ ANOTHER* The curse that plagued Class 3-3 originated during an incident in 1972 where a  student from that class died, but the school still reported him as “present” and “alive”. A graduation photo was taken of that same class and the dead student student mysteriously included in it. The following year, an extra student was added to the class, but one desk was missing. Many deaths began to occur around those affiliated to Class 3-3. The school learned that there was a “dead one” that triggers random deaths and to stop it, someone in Class 3-3 would have to be “non-existent” to counteract the “dead one” every year. Fast forward to 1998, where a naive young man named Kouichi Sakakibara joins Class 3-3 and acknowledges the current “non-existent” student, Mei Misaki. Deaths begin to occur every month after their initial meeting and the two would team up to find a permanent solution to ending the curse, which was to find and kill the current “dead one”. Their quest culminated on August 1998 during a summer trip to Yomiyama Shrine. Before finally finding the “dead one”, 10 people died (7 in the novel) as tension became heavily escalated among Class 3-3. The death toll in August was the largest in a given month during the current story. Despite August’s reputation of being the month of relaxing, many folks think of it as a terrible month. Summer’s about to end. There are no holidays. Hell, World War I, Hitler invading Poland, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki all happened in August. Elvis Presley, Princess Diana, and Marilyn Monroe died on that month as well. You can consider August to be a month that shouldn’t exist.  Let’s go back for “Another” for a second. What else happened in August 1998 during that summer trip? Much drama occurred after the revelation of how to officially break the curse of the “dead one”, which only happened once in 1983. Both Mei and Kouichi were almost killed by students who accused them of being the “dead one”. One student even pushed another student off a hotel balcony out of suspicion. The hotel Class 3-3 stayed in was also set on fire. Nothing says student bonding like violent engagement on a school trip.  Perhaps the weather has a great effect to why people may cause crazy events in August. Heat waves have been known to cause emotional distress and anger in individuals. While August may not be the hottest month of the summer, heat waves can still happen. Combine that with the sluggishness of folks during the dog days of summer and you have a recipe for disaster before the start of Fall. Murders also tend to be very common around August as well. You can argue that temperature can’t be the main cause and that it’s a combination of it plus other environmental stressors that lead to possible mayhem in warm weather.  I wonder if Ayatsuji realized that a lot of significant events can happen around August. Can we really fault people for treating it as a month to slack off? Do certain individuals need to take August more seriously? Kouichi and Mei certainly did, even though they had to go through so much to achieve their goal. Alongside a couple of other others, our two heroes would leave an audio message for future classes if the curse rears its ugly head again. If you think about it, shouldn’t we be sending more positive messages to future generations so that certain tragedies can be prevented? Maybe we should go with the the definition of “august” instead of the flow of the month. After all, isn’t it always a good time to inspire others and create action?
Read the rest of this entry Entry meta