Wednesday 29 October 2014

Anime Review: Dusk Maiden Of Amnesia

...You know, it's really rare that I pick up something purely for review work. The way my thought process usually works when I get something that is purely for review work is that it's something I've heard so much bad stuff about that I really have to check it out myself just to check that it IS as bad as I've heard it is or is something that I think will be an easy target to write a review about.

That's what I thought this anime would be. From the back of the DVD case, I was expecting a well animated, but ridiculously cliché anime involving a group of people investigating encounters with violent ghosts which only slightly relate to the memories of the Paranormal Investigations Club's president and which would end with the revelation that the club's president was responsible for all of the ghostly activity in the school.

In other words, I was expecting a formulaic monster of the week kind of anime with a conclusion that would be easy to riff on. Bish bash bosh, review written just after seeing the first episode, nothing more to worry about, sorted in time for Halloween, moving on. Even my brief bit of research before watching the anime indicated that the first episode would be so easy to riff on that I just thought "This'll be easy to review!"

Then I actually started to watch the anime.

...Let's just say that I got far more than I bargained for. In fact, I dare say that what I got was actually pretty good!

Let me run through the questions that you're no doubt already asking:
  1. Does this anime involve women with large breasts?
  2. Will this anime make any sense to you if you're not already familiar with Japanese culture when you start watching it?
  3. Does the romance make any sense?
  4. What the heck is this all about?
  5. Would you like to play a game?
And here are my answers:
  1. Yes, and I'm surprised that you even needed to ask that question!
  2. Yes.
  3. ...Arguably, yes. It's complicated to explain, keep reading on.
  4. Keep reading.
  5. No thanks, I'm still regretting the last time I agreed to play chess with someone...
So, now I've cleared the obvious questions out of the air, let's start by discussing Dusk Maiden of Amnesia. Well, it's actually a rather recent anime, compared to the ones I've been watching in recent times, as the manga which inspired the anime first started being published in April 2009 and concluding in November 2013, producing 10 books containing the manga along with an anthology and a guidebook. Also, it's not actually called Dusk Maiden of Amnesia: that's a translated version of the original title, Tasogare Otome x Amunejia, which is what the series is known as in Japan. I don't think the manga has officially been released in English yet (at the very least, my brief research into the manga brought up mentions of volumes in French, but I didn't see any in English), so you're going to have to rely on translations by fans if you want to read the manga. The anime adaption of the manga was announced in Japan in January 2012 and was broadcast between the 8th of April 2012 to the 24th of June 2012, with an OVA included in the 6th DVD of the series that was released on the 28th of November 2012. It was simultaneously broadcast on the website Crunchyroll, but it wasn't dubbed (I haven't found out whether it was subbed or not, but I imagine it wasn't). The anime got dubbed and released on DVD and Blu-Ray in America on the 4th of June, but the UK didn't get the anime released until the 10th of February of this year (this is a bit of a trend in the anime industry when it comes to the UK, apparently: there are actually anime which have English dubs made and available in the US which haven't made it to the UK! So yeah, US readers complaining about how hard it is to get anime in the US, go look up what it's like in the UK, you might be surprised how much better off you guys are than we are across the pond! It's also pretty bad if you're a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: we've STILL not got a full season of the show available for home media release AND we only got the first Equestria Girls film on the 28th of July...OF THIS YEAR! Oh yeah, and I don't think a release date for the home media release date of the second film in the UK has been announced yet and it was only in UK cinemas for TWO DAYS (and it wasn't even promoted anywhere, so I didn't realised I'd missed it until I was researching it casually while writing this!)...even if you're not a fan of the show, you have to admit that it sucks to be a fan of the show in the UK!). I've heard that a few things were cut from the manga for inclusion in the anime, but most of them have little impact on the actual story (at least, I didn't notice their absence in the anime).

Anyway, let us move past the history connected to this anime (and minor rant) and move on to the anime itself.

Well, the first thing you'll notice is that the animation is really good! The darker style of animation might be a bit of a cliché for anything which has a connection to horror, but it's very nicely done and I don't think it hurts the anime in any way to have it like that. In fact, some parts of it go for a really weird way of doing things that would have you wondering whether you're watching a really unsettling surreal film, which would feel out of place if it weren't for the fact that it only does it at points where it actually WORKS in the anime's favour (usually at points where something really creepy and unhinged is going on). Good animation in anime is hardly a rare thing, but I have to say that Dusk Maiden of Amnesia feels almost like it's working with a far larger budget than any of the other anime I've been looking at to date, as the animation feels better than that of the other two anime I've looked at on this blog. In fact, I date say that the animation almost feels like what you'd expect from a big budget anime horror film! There is a bit of an issue that I did notice in the last episode (I'm not counting the OVA as the last episode) that seemed like the screen was struggling to keep up with everything, which is a bit concerning when you realise that the scene is not a particularly complex scene, but it didn't bug me a huge amount and it was mostly restricted to the background, so I don't think it would have a huge impact on the viewing experience unless you're watching the episode on a large screen (which I was).

The anime itself is a bit of an very interesting collection of odds and sods (for the benefit of international readers, that's an expression in the UK that means "bits and pieces" in this case: it is also used in connection to groups of people who all have a connection to each other, such as a bunch of people who have a wargaming club, the people who make up a meeting of a company and stuff like that), as it includes elements of various different types of anime and puts them together into one twelve episode show (and an OVA). While it doesn't include action tropes (sadly, nobody tries to do a Kamehameha or a Spirit Bomb, attack a Hollow with a sword large enough to have you wondering whether the user has an inferiority issue that they're trying to make up for (even if it's just on a subconscious level) or transform themselves into multiple versions of themselves...well, technically Yuko does, but not in the way that I'm on about here!), it DOES include romance tropes, horror tropes, comedy tropes, supernatural tropes, a few fanservice ones and, surprisingly, a few tragedy tropes. On paper, that sounds like a really weird collection of stuff to include in a single anime, but, in practice, the only one which is constantly present (for fairly obvious reasons, considering one of the main characters is a ghost!) is the supernatural tropes: the romance certainly makes up a good amount of the anime, but the horror, comedy and fanservice tropes seem to get added more to add flavour to the various episodes of the show and the tragedy tropes only start to really hit in the last few episodes of it (although, when they do hit, you're going to want to have tissues on standby: the last episode actually nearly got tears from me, which is something which next to never happens to me when I watch stuff!). While the components of the anime are hardly original, the overall result is surprisingly unique, telling a story that is not as uncommon as you might expect (investigating the circumstances behind a ghost's death) and managing to make it surprisingly fresh!

The cast of the show is actually rather small for an anime like this, with only four main characters (technically five, but I'm getting to that) and a collection of extra characters who mostly appear for only one episode of the show. One of the things about having a small cast for any show (not necessarily just anime) is that, if you dislike any of the characters, you're going to have an issue with the whole show, as you're going to struggle to avoid the character you don't like. And I'm not gonna lie: some of the characters have the potential to grate on your nerves, although I didn't have that issue with any of them myself. Kirie Kanoe (who is Yuko's...grandniece, I think it is?) spends a large amount of the anime in a bad mood and seems somewhat confrontational compared to the rest of the cast, but a lot of her anger is somewhat justified and the moments when she drops those factors do make you realise that there is more to her than just that. I personally liked her a lot as a character once she started showing the emotional depth she actually has, but I can understand why some people wouldn't like her, as she isn't a character who will appeal to most people. On the other hand, Momoe Okonogi is, if anything, a bit too overbearing at points. She basically sums up the "kawaii" (that's "cute" in Japanese, for those not in the know) side of the anime, and she WILL grate on you if you can't tolerate that kind of thing in the slightest, while also being like an overexcited schoolgirl (which, in fairness, she IS: the characters are in their first few years of Japanese high school, so they aren't exactly the most mature people). Both of them are characters who I found tolerable at minimum (and I'm not going to lie, both of them got some good laughs from me at points in the anime), but I can understand why people would have issues with them as characters. Yuko (who is the ghost in the series) is a character who I personally really liked for quite a few reasons, but the thing that I think really turns her from a character who could be ignored to one who becomes very interesting is the decision to have TWO version of Yuko in the anime: one of them is the Yuko who looks like...well, how Yuko looked when she was alive, who has all of the positive aspects of Yuko's personality, and the other is Shadow Yuko, who is made up of all of the aspects of Yuko's personality which she has denied from her actual personality as a ghost and has become it's own version of her. It's very cliché, but the fact that the real Yuko cannot bear to be reminded of her death and the creation of Shadow Yuko constantly haunts her does give the whole show a vibe that reminds me more than a bit of Jekyll and Hyde...only with Hyde being their own person and not part of Jekyll, of course! Yuko could actually be an excellent case study on human nature as a whole, if you think about it hard enough: the good part of Yuko keeps trying to deny that the bad part of Yuko is part of her, but the truth is that both are the same person and that it is only when she finally accepts that fact that she is able to be able to be at peace with her past and move on. I highly doubt that what the anime was going for, but still, food for thought! Last up, we have Teiichi Niiya, who is the token male of the anime (yes, he's the only male main character in this anime...why do I get the feeling that there is fan art out there which has noticed this fact already and has ran with this line of logic into places which would have me losing my last meal if I were to be informed about them?) and (you might want to grab your buckets now) is also Yuko's love interest throughout the course of the anime.

...I swear to God, I didn't make that fact up! Teiichi is in love with a girl who is a ghost.

...Oh yeah, and, from my research, he's only twelve (as is Momoe: Kirie is thirteen) while Yuko is technically fifteen (she died at that age: if you want me to be completely honest, she's sixty five, but, as you don't age at all if you're a ghost, I think it's just easier to say she's fifteen and that she's been that age for fifty years!). If you remember my discussion related to the age of consent in Japan from my review of Dance In The Vampire Bund (which can be read here, if you missed it), you'll already know that the age of consent in Japan is thirteen, so...yeah, even in Japan, some of the nudity in this anime is going to raise eyebrows! Luckily, very little of the actual fanservice in the anime (outside of the OVA) involves anyone except Yuko (who you could TECHNICALLY argue is above the legal age in every country due to being 65 years old overall), so it's nowhere near as bad as it might be sounding on first glance, but you might still want to keep that fact in mind before you bring this anime to your local anime viewing meet up!

Anyway, Teiichi is a fairly good character. His romance for Yuko comes across surprisingly realistically, despite how awkward it sounds to be in love with a ghost on paper, and, as a character, he does have some very noticeable depth throughout the series. On the other hand, he could be argued as being a bit bland, as he can come across as a bit forgettable compared to everyone else around him. Which isn't exactly a good sign when you're the second most important character in the anime!

The pacing of the anime is fairly good, although I do have to ask why episode 1 of the anime feels like it should actually be episode 4 of it, since episode 2 explains how Teiichi met Yuko and got Momoe interested in becoming interested in exploring ghostly activity and episode 3 explains how Kirie became involved in the Paranormal Investigations Club while episode 1 has all four of them meeting up to examine one of the mysterious stories connected to Yuko's past. I know complaining about anime opening up in ways that don't quite match up with how the anime actually goes is a bit pointless now, as I didn't do it for my last two reviews (Dance In The Vampire Bund had the first episode be like an episode of a Japanese TV show while Highschool Of The Dead had narration that made it sound like it was being told from a good while in the future from when the anime is actually happening), but neither of them did it quite like this! I could at least go "Yeah, this makes sense as a first episode of the show!" for them: here, I feel like I've accidentally watched the show out of sequence! I will give credit for the fact that they do at least manage to make the first episode interesting, but you could feasibly skip it and not miss anything important. Aside from that, though, I never felt like any of the episodes lacked a development to them: if anything, the last half surprisingly feels a bit crowded due to how many developments it has in it, despite the first half not feeling underdone at all! The last episode can almost count as mood whiplash as, not even five minutes after Yuko fades away from existence, the anime reveals that she didn't actually pass on and is going to stay with Teiichi because of how powerful his love for her is. Maybe I'm unfairly complaining, but that should have been a twist at the end of the NEXT episode, after having an episode when Teiichi is getting used to Yuko being gone and clearly struggling to do it! However, I do think the pacing is actually rather good, aside from a few nitpicks, so take my complaints here as me just being grumpy for the sake of being grumpy!

The music...my God, the music! I don't like to describe something as perfect, as it would imply that I do not expect to see anything better than what I've given such praise to, but I would certainly mark this anime as having one of the best soundtracks I've heard for an anime! The music just hits every emotional moment perfectly: it's sinister when it needs to be, it's cheerful when it needs to be...there is no point when I thought the music was inappropriate for what was being shown on screen! The ONLY point I would have to raise is that the vocalist singing is clearly struggling with some of the highest notes in the song in episode 12, but, even then, she still does a pretty good job. Aside from that, though? No complaints in the slightest. Huge credit to Keigo Hoashi and Ryuuichi Takada for that, you did a fantastic job!

The original Japanese voice acting deserves some credit (especially for the fact that it nearly got me to break down into tears when watching the final episode of the main anime). The English dub, from my watch of the first three episodes compared to watching the Japanese version (I know, I've not watched the whole show in English: I only have enough free time to watch most anime once due to everything else I do in my life, but I have a fairly good memory for what I see, so I don't really need to see most anime more than once!), is...I don't dislike it, but I do have to say that I prefer the Japanese version overall. There are some issues with the quality of the dub being a bit iffy (there are just a few points where I'm going "This worked better in the original Japanese" in connection to the dialogue...also, why is everyone using Japanese honourifics when it's meant to be in English?), but I honestly don't want to detract from the hard work of the voice actors in the English versions: their performances are still very good!

It's when we move to the DVD of the anime that you'll spot me making my biggest complaints. For a start, the DVD case makes the rather weird decision of having a different way of storing each of the two discs of the anime. The first disc has this weird system which requires you push a tiny part of the disc thing into the centre of the holder and then rotating the disc out of the holder, which is probably meant to be more secure than the traditional "press down on the centre to pop it out" system, but which is confusing as all hell to take discs out of it, put them back in (because you have to do the same thing to put it back in the case) and you feel like you're at risk of accidentally breaking the disc while removing it. Now, I wouldn't normally make too big a deal about this, but here's the thing: the second disc is in the usual system that we're all used to. Protip for anyone who wants to run their own company: if you're releasing a DVD or Blu-Ray with more than one disc, do try to at least be consistent with which holders you have for your discs!

...That's not my only complaints, however. On the discs themselves, there are FOUR things which I have to bring up (and one which is a hold over from the last few reviews). First of all, the extras (which are only available on disc two) are pretty bear: you have a bunch of advertisements for several other anime released by the company, clean versions of the opening and closing of the anime...and that's it. Now, to be fair, there IS a commentary track from the makers of the anime in Japanese (with English subs)...but you can't access that from the extras menu. This is my second complaint: if you want to have the Japanese commentary on, you have to put it on from the set up menu (which is where you select what language you want to watch the anime in and whether you want the subtitles on or not), not the extras menu, which would be a far more logical place to have that. My DVD player does allow me to run the commentary subtitles without the Japanese commentary happening over it, but you can't do that through the menu itself. My third complaint is that the English subtitles do not match up with what is actually said in the English dub, which is going to be annoying if you like having the subtitles on while watching the show in English. It also means that, if you're deaf, you're going to find watching it with someone who isn't deaf is going to result in some very interesting comments. That said, I do think it's cool that you can watch the show in Japanese without the subtitles on screen if you want to! My final complaint purely towards this anime is the decision to keep the ending credits and opening credits the same, as both of them have Yuko singing along to the songs at those points in the anime...in a Japanese voice. I'm not going to say that they should have gotten completely new music for it, but surely a decision to re-record the vocals in English by the English voice actor portraying Yuko (Emily Neves) or someone who sounds a lot like her would have been a far more sensible decision?

My final complaint is related to the subtitles when covering the songs in every anime I've reviewed so far to date: they alternate between being subtitled into English and being subtitled into transliterated Japanese. The lack on consistency on this is just anger inducing: if I've put the subtitles on in English, I want to have the song translated as well, with transliterated being an acceptable substitute if it's done consistently. Flipping between the two, though, just doesn't work for me at all, as it just looks lazy and like nobody took the time to check through the DVD before they released it! Seriously, if there's an anime company reading this, take this lesson to heart: either translate the song or transliterate the song, don't do both...unless you provide an option to allow you to pick which of the two will happen while watching the DVD with the subtitles, in which case, I'll let that slide and actually give praise because you've actually thought about providing a choice for people who might not want one option!

Another complaint is that the anime does have a extended version of episode 12 available...but the material that was cut is so little that I actually fail to see the point in having the extended version of the episode, as it's about a minute of cut footage AT MOST. And the cut footage actually causes a minor issue in and of itself, as the footage ends with Yuko looking sad and then jumps to back to the original episode...which is when she's acting really happy. Some people might like the extended version of the episode, but I'm personally just going "That was a waste of disc space which could have been used for some better extras, HINT HINT!". That said, it's nice that it doesn't automatically play when the OVA is finished and goes back to the episode select screen instead, so I can't hold that against it too much!

While I don't particularly like the home media release of the anime much when I break it down, I still would hesitate to call it badly done. Poorly thought out and lazily done in some areas, yes, but outright bad? Not really, no! The best word for it seems to be "functional": it gets the job done, which is to get the anime out there, but it does leave a lot to be desired in terms of how it's done. I'm not exactly asking for a lavish box set for the purpose of getting the anime out there, but I do find myself vaguely going "What's the point of buying the physical release of this anime if there's so little extra to the release of it?", so a bit more effort to make the whole product worth purchasing would be much appreciated.

So, overall, what do I think of this anime? Well, aside from my complains related to factors outside of the actual anime itself, it's overall a fairly good (although not exceptional) anime that really is worth seeking out if you want an anime which is a bit different from the norm. It's probably not going to be any any anime fan's favourite anime by any measure, but, for what it's worth, it's certainly worth a watch if you're an anime fan. If you're not an anime fan...I don't know, the clichés of Japanese anime are very noticeable here, but it's certainly not a bad watch in and of itself!

Final Rating: 7 Out Of 10

...Also, I swear that I'm not picking anime which involve characters in the nude who are under the legal age in the UK deliberately! All of the anime I've reviewed so far are ones which I picked up because they looked interesting and on no other merit, so I've gone into them completely blind! I really hope Nightwalker bucks that trend when I finally get around to watching it...although the fact it's apparently based on a eroge (erotic game) doesn't inspire much hope in me!

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