Memories Off

Ok so straight to the review. This anime really sucks. I am a major romance anime lover and if you have seen any anime like Bokura ga Ita, Itazura na Kiss, Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien, or even OVAs like Ajimu or Iriya no Sora you will hate this. The story was confusing and it was terrible.

Story:
Overall it was bad. Seems like there was no new ideas put into it. They stuffed the drama into this anime like it was nothing. The story went at a pace 10x faster than anything I have seen before. Also the relationships between the main character and the girls is ... really rushed. VERY CLICHE.

Art:
Art is decent not very good art quality but its worse than probably 80% of the other anime out there released in 2003 and later.

Sound:
Didn't pay attention so I guess that means it was just background music with not much meaning. The music fit the scenes but wasn't anything special

Character:
already stated very rushed. the main characters story is confusing at the beginning and the watcher has to fill in the blanks. Characters are much like any other romance/drama. boy likes girl, girl likes boy. thats all.

Enjoyment:
only thing pulling me through this was the fact it is only 3 episodes. Like i said almost no enjoyment compared to the listed anime above.

Overall:
Could have been MUCH better but it feels like the company just wanted some extra cash or something. not much depth to the characters and the story was terrible.

This anime was kind of boring the music was teribble it sounded like it was skipping.. the story is bout a guy who girlfriend dies in a car accident and how he blames himself for her death because he asked her to come and pick him up and so the story is bout how he over comes this by meeting gurls that all have some of her traits

This series absolutely epitomizes sub par quality.

Reading the synopsis I assumed "hey, this might actually be a decent watch given that it is 3 episodes and I just want something quick to watch out of the corner of my eye while I do other stuff."

Yeah, no. the series was utterly cliche, but in fairness I did kind of expect that.

The art? Looked like something out of a low budget adult animated series.

The sound? Honestly, that was probably the best bit out of the whole thing, I quite enjoyed the music. Though I usually enjoy the music in every series simply because I ... enjoy music.

Character development. Oh. HERE we go. It's 3 episodes long. Character development? No such thing. The first episode was basically 12 episodes of a similar romance series crammed into one rushed low quality episode with awful art, and what may be the worst voice acting I've heard since the Bible Black dub.

As something to watch because you have no time and just want a quick 3 episodes or something, I would tell you to watch this, but then I would remember you might as well watch 3 episodes of a series that is actually halfway decent and then finish it later.

So as a romance anime lover this was pretty bad. Each episodes was hard to follow. The MC and his romances were weak or strangely rushed. Then the past girlfriend trying to assist the MC with his "new" romances were also cringy and strange. I understand each episode were separate stories (or I hope they were) so it doesnt really pertain to one another. Even so it was hard to follow and truly understand.

Story: weak, hard to follow, and not very intresting. It had some intresting moments though.

Art: older style, which I dont mind, but could be better used with some scenes becoming 16fps or ... something like a stop motion.

Sound: nothing special

Characters: MC is strange a lot of times, and the girls arent very special but they are different with interesting connections.

Enjoyment: it was bad, but not to hard to finish. Not going to continue to watch though.

Overall: give it a try, some others may like this but in general it was pretty bad, maybe the other seasons get better.

Some context is necessary before diving into the review proper. This is a 3 episode OVA adaptation of a multi-route visual novel, with each of the three episodes covering one route from the game. The characters are the same each time, but each episode is standalone and there is no continuity between them by design.

From that preamble, you can probably guess the main issue with this series, right? The OVAs lop off a large chunk of the game's story (released as a separate game called Memories Off Pure) and have to condense hours worth of content in each route to a crisp 30 minutes that ... also includes all the necessary exposition that was skipped over. At best, we're getting a survey of each route, and it's difficult to be invested in Tomoya's relationship with each girl in such a short period of time.

The accelerated pace hurts this series more than most because of its premise. The series begins an undetermined length of time after the death of Tomoya's girlfriend Ayaka, and her absence and Tomoya's attempts to reckon with her death are a core part of it. Her life and death is covered in Memories Off Pure, but we only get the aftermath in the OVAs. With only a few very brief flashbacks depicting her, we hardly get to know Ayaka at all, which makes it hard to care all that much about her. In fact, her absence is deeply tied into the events in 2 of the episodes, and that works to its detriment as the tragedy of her death feels purely theoretical rather than something you feel along with the characters.

Another factor working against it is the visual presentation. The animation quality can generously be called "sub-hentai", and this manifests most negatively in the lack of expressive faces. This is a series where characters are constantly going through Big Emotions, but blank faced stares when a character should be anguished or overjoyed and mouth movements that don't match the voice dubbing create a disconnect with the audience. Many dramatic developments come across flatly because of the poor character acting animation.

This all sounds very bad, and to an extent it is, but there are a few redeeming qualities. The 3 girls, while largely adhering to common VN tropes, are varied in personality and tone, and their routes don't always go the way you would expect. One is even downright tragic, in a way that surprised me positively. The plot is pretty basic and short, but what we get is generally solid. While I would normally say you should just play the VN given that it greatly expands the plot, that is unfortunately not possible for most as the game is not translated into English as of 2023 (and given that it was released in 1999, is unlikely to ever be translated at this point). You're probably better off skipping this one, but if you're intrigued by the premise and aren't fluent in Japanese, this is likely the only way you'll be able to experience the story.