Review for Amnesia Collection

Introduction

Didn’t MVM already release this? Oh, that was Dusk Maiden of Amnesia... I must have forgotten. If your sides haven’t split, we’ll continue with the review. Stupid joke aside, it’s a tad confusing to have two completely different shows with similar names, especially when they come from the same distributors, Sentai in the US, Hanabee in the AU, and MVM in the UK. A cynic might think that they’re trying to cash in on Dusk Maiden of Amnesia’s awesomeness, the way that Media Blasters once tried with Ah My Buddha following Ah My Goddess, although in that case, Media Blasters deliberately changed the name of the former property. That isn’t the case here, as this show was called Amnesia in Japan as well.


It will have to go some way to impress me if it’s going to be as good as Dusk Maiden of Amnesia though, one show that I liked so much on DVD that I went and imported the Blu-ray. MVM have staved off that little problem here, as for Amnesia, they’re releasing it on both DVD and Blu-ray in the UK.


After an unsettling dream, a young girl wakes up in a cafe, dressed in a waitress uniform, but with no idea of whom or where she is. Before she can say anything, a sprite named Orion appears floating in mid-air, a sprite that only she can see or hear. Orion warns her to keep quiet about her memory loss, that her amnesia is special, and that the only way she can get her memories back is to interact with the people around her, re-discover who she is, and jog those memories. But it’s hard to pretend not to have amnesia yet talk to people in a way that elicits information, without making them suspicious. It turns out that her relationships are complex, and some people she apparently knows aren’t who they appear to be. What’s worse, the memories that she does recover might make sense at the moment she remembers, but the next day they might make no sense at all.

12 episodes of Amnesia are presented across 2 DVD discs from MVM, 6 to each disc, and just like the story’s protagonist, they remain nameless.

Picture

Amnesia gets the by now usual anamorphic 1.78:1 native PAL transfer, and once again the image is clear and sharp, the colours come across well, as does the artwork, and there are very few signs of compression visible. Amnesia has a pretty nice design aesthetic, especially when it comes to character design and the clothes they wear, while the world design is consistent and well realised. This is another show that will benefit from the HD format, and as mentioned, Amnesia is also available on Blu-ray. This DVD release is good enough to be getting on with though, and scales up to an HD panel without issue.

Sound

Amnesia gets a perfectly serviceable DD 2.0 Japanese track with subtitles, and it also gets a DD 2.0 English dub from Sentai. So Japanese it is then! The dialogue is clear, the subtitles are accurately timed and free of typos, and it all works as it should, other than an ill-placed layer change on disc 2.

Extras

The discs present their contents with static menus, and the language default is Japanese with English subtitles. Each episode is followed by a silent translated English credit reel.

The only extras are on disc 2, and are the Lost Diary Entries, the English dub actors taking a more comedic look at some of the characters and events in the series, in a 2:37 reel.

Otherwise you’ll find trailers for Familiar of Zero Season 1, Majestic Prince, Medaka Box, and Gatchaman Crowds.

Conclusion

Would you believe that Amnesia reminds me of Red Dwarf? There’s an episode in series 2 called Parallel Universe, where the ship crosses over to find another Red Dwarf, this time populated with their female counterparts (except for the Cat, who finds a Dog). Naturally, having found people of the opposite gender, there’s only one thing on their minds, only Arlene Rimmer comes on a little too strongly for Arnold Rimmer's tastes. At one point he complains that she thinks that showing him a video of two men having sex would turn him on...


And that’s what came into my mind as I watched Amnesia. It’s one of those anime based on a dating simulation, a popular entertainment in Japan for males of a certain inclination. The point is to work your way through a harem of females, dating them one at a time to conquer them to varying degrees depending on the age rating of the game. There are plenty of these games, and some have even spun-off anime like Kanon, Rumbling Hearts, Fate/Stay Night, Shuffle, and Tsukihime, and even been sent up in shows like The World God Only Knows.


Someone decided that what works for male audiences will work for female audiences too; all they have to do is switch the gender of the characters. Amnesia is based on one of those simulations. I have my doubts as to how such a concept would appeal to the target audience, that of a nondescript central female character dating her way through a harem of men. Anecdotally, there’s a fundamental dislike of such characters from the very audience that they’re trying to sell this concept to.


Amnesia tries to get around this by giving the main character the memory loss of the title. Not only does this make her the non-descript cipher for the audience to relate to, but since she doesn’t even know who she is, let alone the men around her, it’s all a blank slate, especially given the other conceit of the story which literally allows for no consequences at all of whatever relationship she might try on for size. Every couple of episodes, the story contrives a reset button for her to begin again with the next boy in the harem.


So far so good, except that every male she dates is patently bad news, the control freak, the popular guy (surrounded by lethal, bullying groupies), the socially inept one, the psychopath (who drugs her and puts her in a cage), and the killer with multiple personality disorder. But it’s all okay, as they’re all devilishly elegant and handsome and pretty boy tropes, dressed like they’re out of a CLAMP manga. After going through five variations of hell, I actually wanted her to end up with Orion, the fairy that is the one constant through her adventures in dating. It eventually does get interesting towards the end, after a fashion, as the reason behind her amnesia and all the reset buttons is addressed, but it does so by ripping off Final Destination, and ladling in a multiple personality disorder farce (one arm stopping the other from stabbing).


The ultimate insult comes in the conclusion. In a show like this, you need some closure, you need to know that she has her memories back, you need to know her name at least, and above all, you need to know which of the five pretty boy social defectives she ends up with. Not in Amnesia, all you get here is a delicate fade to white. Sorry to spoil it for you, but if I’d known at the start where this show would have ended up, I would have binned the discs.


Technically, Amnesia is fine. The discs are fine, the image quality and the audio is fine. No doubt it will be finer on the Blu-ray. The content on the other hand... Let me put it this way, if you buy one anime called Amnesia, make sure there’s a “Dusk Maiden Of” at the front.