Amnesia – 04

After last time with the cliff, you’d think Shin would learn not to bring her to dark, forested areas.

Whee and it’s been a week already?! With school gradually picking up its busy pace once again, time seems to fly by. It’s just the beginning though, and although I’m not stressed yet, I’m starting to get really sleepy and tired. I also happen to be suffering from a slight case of Amnesia with anything that has to do with Math…

Just in case you weren’t aware, Nagi’s single for Zoetrope (the OP to Amnesia) is out~! …I can’t claim that I’ve had amnesia over math, my classes have suddenly upped their stress level. I hate presentations. I hate talking in front of other people. OTL Let’s move on to (somewhat) less depressing topics.

Miyu || One thing I’ve noticed about Amnesia is that it likes to tell, rather than show. Many things like Shin’s past with his dad could’ve been done much better by showing it through a flashback of sorts, but nooooo he just has to tell us the whole damn thing word by word. It’s dry that way, and it also leaves less of an emotional impact than a visual scene would have done. I don’t know what they’re trying to do here, perhaps leave it all the way until the heroine gets back all her memories and then dump us with an episode-long flashback of everything that really happened, but this is causing these few episodes to be really boring. There is so much talking going on in the show that I really have to struggle to stay awake, and it’s not like the heroine’s voice is particularly invigorating either. Please, Amnesia, there are so many other ways to tell a story instead of having one of your characters read it all out.

Kara || Well, this episode was definitely an improvement over last weeks. Without Orion there to tell the heroine what to do, she’s actually taking initiative and learning to trust Shin on her own! There weren’t any memories recovered, but at least there wasn’t any reintroduction to things we already knew. The heroine actually had a good reason for keeping quiet about the murder thing and it turns out that it was a misunderstanding in the first place. I’m not going to say that her reaction to the murder thing is 100% Orion’s fault, but it certainly does look like the heroine is better off without him there… Oh, which brings us to the fact that she remembered the conversation happening, and yet, it hadn’t happened yet. She had memories of the conversation before it took place. They’re giving the viewer all of the hints about what’s actually going on and they’re doing it really nicely without giving too much away. I was iffy about the whole thing before, but now I’m really enjoying how they’re showing the story.

Damn, those thigh-high, mismatched boots are fabulous. 

Miyu || And what was with the whole repeating the same time period again and again thing? I guessed that it would’ve been something to do with parallel worlds, but didn’t really think that they’d try to pull a Kagerou Days on us. Well it’s alright I guess, as long as they handle it well. At this point in time the heroine just seems to be confused and overwhelmed, talk to somebody (in this case, Shin) and start to understand some things, and then get trolled by fate and has the entire cycle repeat again. I do think that she was less annoying this episode though, maybe because she actually tried to be considerate instead of just being all afraid all the time and hurting tsundere Shin’s feelings. Not that she’s made any significant improvement in terms of being less timid, but hey, that’s at least some progress. Shin was better this week too, in my opinion! He’s finally manning up and knocking some sense into the heroine – even if you don’t like it, imma comeatcha.

Kara || So large improvements to the heroine this week, but also a better look into Shin’s personality. …Er, an even better look than what they gave us even last episode. So the cliff thing was his fault (or at least he blamed himself), which clears up that mystery. He also apologized for being impatient too and we had a better look as to how the two got together. It was kind of hard to imagine the two of them being a couple before (especially since the heroine had the personality of a cardboard box), but this episode, you could see that both were willing to at least try to make it work. …And then of course, the truck came out of nowhere. I hope that through all of the jumps in routes, the heroine gets more confident. I’d hate for her to start all the way back from square one each time she’s dating a new guy. Oh, and I neglected to mention this above, but they cut out a HUGE portion of angst in Shin’s story here. That’s okay though, since I think they got the main points of the route across and they still have the overlying mystery to go over. I’ve included it below (in a spoiler tag because who knows if they’ll go back to it) in case you were curious.

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Miyu || On the other hand, Ikki looks like he’s going to be a much sexier boyfriend. Although I like Shin’s gentle concern and kindness, there’s nothing like someone confident enough of himself to pave the way. (Sorry, I tend to fall for these types. *shot*) The heroine’s memories are starting to overlap, and it seems as if the different “flashbacks” that she’s been getting aren’t really from the past, but more of from one of the parallel timelines. This means that if these glimpses continue, she’ll probably be able to predict what may happen in the future as she continues to jump between the parallel worlds – of course, that if she can get over her confusion and bewilderedness. But the thought of being able to foretell what’s coming next is cool indeed, except that what’s coming up probably isn’t pretty. Ikki’s fangirls look like they’re ready to eat any possible rivals up. And to make matters worse, now it seems as if we have a third wheel in Ikki and the heroine’s relationship. Her clothing style eerily reminds me of that of the Ice Princess in Mawaru Penguindrum, although I suppose she’s nothing like her. Sigh, as if things weren’t complicated and confusing enough.

Kara || Aaaaand now on to Ikki’s route. Yeah, I’m not sure how they’re planning to do this, but I know that no matter what, there is going to be suffering. Ikki is a great guy, don’t get me wrong, but the fangirls… Well, you saw them. They’re just a tiiiiiny bit psychotic and hair cutting is only the tip of the iceberg. I like Rika’s character a bit more after the sequel to Amnesia (or to be more accurate, I can’t take her seriously anymore), but in the first game she was a total bitch. … Rika is the blonde woman at the end of the episode, if you were wondering. Things should be interesting now, but I hope that the heroine doesn’t recede back into not talking again after the events of dating Ikki. I think she made a lot of progress over patching things up with Shin, so it would be a shame if she went back to how she was episode one. Oh well, at least Waka should be entertaining whenever he pops up. I’m pretty sure that Ikki’s route contains my favourite version of him.

In short, I disliked the presentation of the content that they tried to put through in this episode, but I’m glad that our characters are actually getting somewhere. I honestly do not have much hope that the heroine will grow any much more of a personality, but at least we’re getting a variety of personalities from the guys, and that’s really still what’s keeping going for this show. Also, Ukyou had zero screentime this episode, which makes me sad as he’s probably the most intriguing character out of all of them. Ah well, there’s always next episode—oh wait, that’s what I said last week too?

This may be the first otome game adaptation I’ve seen where I’ve legitimately enjoyed how they’ve adapted it (UtaPri doesn’t count because I didn’t play the game beforehand, so I couldn’t say anything about the way they adapted it). The things they’ve taken out weren’t really necessary, they’ve added in an overlaying plot/ mystery and they’re not telling anyone anything, but they are including hints along the way so when the reveal comes, it won’t be out of nowhere. It’s actually really clever. Though it’s not to say that Amnesia doesn’t have it’s share of problems. There weren’t any flashbacks in the game unless they were part of the heroine’s memories, so I’ve just been writing off the long bouts of dialogue as part of that. Miyu brought up a good point with the lack of actually showing us anything though. Why don’t they do that? I can think of a few reasons… Like how it makes us reliant on what the characters tell the heroine, where they could be lying, thus adding to the whole element of mystery/ not being able to trust what the characters say. But for some things, like the heroine using the same words with Shin twice, I don’t see why they couldn’t have had a mini flashback there. Oh well, I’m still looking forward to the upcoming events.

Third wheeling in style

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.