Tasogare Otome x Amnesia (Dusk Maiden of Amnesia)

Seikyou Private Academy, built on the intrigue of traditional occult myths, bears a dark past—for 60 years, it has been haunted by a ghost known as Yuuko, a young woman who mysteriously died in the basement of the old school building. With no memory of her life or death, Yuuko discreetly finds and heads the Paranormal Investigations Club in search of answers.

A chance meeting leads Yuuko to cling to diligent freshman Teiichi Niiya, who can see the quirky ghost, they quickly grow close, and he decides to help her. Along with Kirie Kanoe, Yuuko's relative, and the oblivious second year Momoe Okonogi, they delve deep into the infamous Seven Mysteries of the storied school.

Tasogare Otome x Amnesia tells a unique tale of students who work together to shed light on their school's paranormal happenings, all the while inching closer to the truth behind Yuuko's death.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	Tasogare Otome x Amnesia
Sequel:	Tasogare Otome x Amnesia: Taima Otome

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Kanoe, Yuuko

Main

Hara, Yumi
Japanese

Niiya, Teiichi

Main

Yonaga, Tsubasa
Japanese

Kanoe, Kirie

Main

Kitamura, Eri
Japanese

Okonogi, Momoe

Main

Fukuen, Misato
Japanese

Kanoe, Yukariko

Supporting

Takashima, Gara
Japanese

Kirishima, Yuuko

Supporting

Koshimizu, Ami
Japanese

Sonchou

Supporting

Naka, Hiroshi
Japanese

Female Teacher

Supporting

Shiraishi, Youko
Japanese

Waitress

Supporting

Suzuki, Konomi
Japanese

Kawatou, Manako

Supporting

Ogasawara, Saki
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Kaneko, Hayato

Producer, Planning

Nakagawa, Jirou

Producer

Oonuma, Shin

Director

Sakamoto, Takashi

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

"CHOIR JAIL (クワイアジェイル)" by Konomi Suzuki

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Ending Theme

	1: "CHOIR JAIL (クワイアジェイル)" by Konomi Suzuki (eps 1, 12)
	2: "Calendrier (カランドリエ)" by Aki Okui (eps 2-10)
	3: "Calendrier -Yuuko- (カランドリエ ―夕子―)" by Yumi Hara (eps 11)

Reviews

Jul 8, 2023

SammyBisOli

Recommended

A sensational anime. With a dark footprint, this narrative of romance and mystery is truly extraordinary. In this anime we have Niiya Teiichi, a student who after meeting a ghost that has haunted his school for decades decides to open a paranormal investigation club to unravel the mysteries that surround the school and help Yuuko, the ghost, to recover her memories. I really love anime with a dark atmosphere. All the tension caused by the atmosphere and the soundtrack makes everything better. I really liked the anime - I don't know why, but I have a fascination with ghost novels -, the novel progresses a ...

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Nov 14, 2022

Myrmiderp

Mixed Feelings

Spoiler-free should-you-watch review:

The title of this series is, unquestionably, very cool. It's intriguing. I would even argue that the idea the anime is named after is also very cool. Dusk Maiden has some provocative and attractive imagery, and the atmosphere is pretty distinct, but it loves to ruin it with thoughtless use of what I'm going to call "anime nonsense" to rope in a more casual audience. I was initially inspired by some of its concepts, but ultimately Dusk Maiden durdles with them for 12 episodes to poor effect, telling a weak story amid a sea of potential. In much the same way that people ... can't see Yuuko the ghost, the creators of this anime seem to be totally blind to the compelling elements around them, satisfied with the staggering adequacy of their work. The overwhelming positivity of these reviews is kind of shocking to me.

The good? Dusk maiden has a cool art direction. It may technically be a "high school anime", but the setting is unusually ominous, and its abandoned appearance is fairly unsettling. It isn't my favorite artstyle, but it's cohesive, and there are some pretty striking shots. The general premise is also pretty strong, even if they don't do their best to showcase it. It starts off kind of aloof, but develops into something that has me asking a lot of questions and making a lot of guesses, in a good way. I'm also just a big fan of somewhat overt metaphors in anime, especially physical manifestations of a character's emotional or mental ideas. It's an avenue that opens up some fun ways to tell a story, and I'm always happy to see it.

Now, I'm well aware that this sounds crazy, but for a 12 episode series Dusk Maiden has way too much filler. The creators confuse plot and character development with seeing characters do silly little things, and you're left with a plot that doesn't actually go anywhere for a long time. Now, don't get me wrong, it all comes down to the kind of story you want to tell; if Dusk Maiden were a slice of life series, I wouldn't have the same critique. But it's not, and I say that pretty confidently for two reasons: 1) it clearly has a story it's focused on instead, and 2) it's just not good at the slice of life content, there's no way that's the point. That said, the first episode has a great structure and is the only filler-ish episode I thought was executed well. When the plot finally does start up, the show assumes all the filler made you care about the characters, but that's just not how it works; the filler doesn't have the emotional depth to develop those feelings on its own, and there wasn't a lot to care about before the filler started. Now, for clarity, most episodes have tiny bits of information that will be relevant later--the "filler" is padding within the episode, not the episode as a whole. That's kind of worse, though. All in all, there are maybe four or five episodes worth of content total. The OVA, if you're wondering, is filler.

So that's not great, but can you still salvage some value from the filler? The answer: eh. If you're desperate for fanservice, this series loves to give the ghost excuses to disrobe, and the the protagonist follows the lucky pervert trope, accidentally grabbing the ghost's boobs all the time. When the filler isn't fanservice, it's one of two jokes: 1) the main character freaking out because of fanservice, or 2) the ghost is a quirky prankster. I wouldn't call this series funny because the humor is generally pretty weak, and I wouldn't call it sexy because the fanservice is transparent and eye-roll-inducing.

Don't get your hopes up, though--once the filler is over, they don't do their own themes justice. The show needs a little more self-awareness, a little more sense carved into the plot, something to ground this strange world to ours. Dusk Maiden does an okay job with its setup-and-reveal style of mystery, where early details that resemble unassuming anime tropes are later explained through the plot. But it's sort of a weird effect, since it starts you off with the uninteresting part. Sure, that's a weird choice, but the worst thing about Dusk Maiden is that it squanders its premise; such a small amount of its interesting concept is explored that you can only be left with disappointment. This is not to say that the show is obtuse, because it's quite the opposite; Dusk Maiden revels in overexplaining its incredibly simple plot. Hell, it spends an entire "story-focused" episode on what amounts to like one minute's-worth of new information. Watching Dusk Maiden is like experiencing a bizarre form of sleep paralysis; you just have to sit there and watch great ideas stagnate. Imagine giving someone a ride in your luxury sports car, but instead of letting them explore any of its luxury features, you keep pointing out basic features that every other car also has. Dusk Maiden's many inspired concepts are staring you down, but the director keeps shoving played-out anime tropes in your face. Again, there are about 4 episodes-worth of an interesting story in there, and they do prod at some compelling ideas, they just don't do anything great with them.

Lack of character development isn't the only problem; they're also pretty uninspired to begin with. You tell me, though, which genre does this sound like? An unremarkable guy with very little personality gets put into a situation where he is surrounded by group of pretty girls (and only girls) that are all romantically interested in him for no good reason. Surprise, it's a harem anime! The girls also fail the Bechdel test pretty hard, and the majority of the show is either the ghost behaving lewdly and flirting with the main character, or the side characters being jealous and wishing their bodies were different to attract a guy. There isn't much that makes them feel like people, let alone different from the side characters in every generic anime ever. The one exception is Yuuko, the ghost. She is the reason this anime exists, and is the only one with an actual story to tell. I don't love her character, but it was easily the best in the series.

Speaking of the romance aspect, would you like to know a big pet peeve of mine that Dusk Maiden suffers from? When a show spends no time developing a romance, but then they want the romantic payoff to happen, so they outsource all the missing character development to something quick and easy like evocative imagery or a loaded phrase. The romance had incredible potential because of the premise, and they seemed to be aware of this when building up the plot. Unfortunately, like I said earlier, the creators seem totally blind to what makes their own plot compelling, and it leaves the series feeling like a weird cash-grab. Why else would they abandon their own ideas for regurgitated content from other profitable anime? The other option is that they genuinely didn't understand their own story, which I find hard to believe. The plot is so weakly justified on a romantic level that it leaves the character motivations as a whole feeling unrelatable.

So yeah. Some cool ideas left by the wayside in favor of boring anime nonsense. Are the 12 episodes worth a watch for what little interesting story there is hidden away in there? No, not really. It is entirely adequate, but I wouldn't say "good", and I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone.

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Nov 13, 2020

Pancakesyum

Not Recommended

Tasogare Otome X Amnesia is, ironically, a series that is fractured and torn apart by its desire to have as many genres as possible stuffed into it. This unfortunately leads to a much weaker, distracted story that leaves much to be desired, and a lot of potential unfilled.

Genre dissonance

Tasogare Otome X Amnesia considers itself a horror, mystery, romance, and at times, a comedy. The show attempts to be all of these genres at once, but suffers horribly in its attempts to make all these genres work smoothly together. The Horror aspect in this show is pitiful, at best. The humor and jokes are well ... written and made me laugh, but end up taking any tension or fear away from the rest of the plot. The mystery presented can barely be called a mystery; when you are presented with pieces of the puzzle the main character immediately explains how it fits into the whole picture. The show leaves little room for the viewer to come to their own conclusions. The romance between Yukko and Teiichi is enjoyable, and the primary reason I continued to watch the show to the end. The romance is believable and interesting, but this is probably because their romance is given more attention than almost any other aspect of the show, and the other parts suffer for it. I really think this story would have shined if the horror and comedy aspects had been dropped entirely, and instead focused on the mystery of what happened to Yukko and the romance between her and Teiichi.

Thematic and episodic discontinuity

The multiple genres are not the only things that clash in this show. Throughout the show a consistent theme appears in almost all the episodes. All the horrible and bad things that happen in this show can be traced back to people. Peoples fears, and superstitions take hold and lead them to horrible actions and conclusions. All the ghost stories can be explained by people's fears and superstitions blinding them from the truth. All the terrible crimes committed in this show are because of people’s fear and superstitions leading them to hysteria. In the end, there's nothing supernatural, it's all just fear and paranoia…

Except…for Yukko.

Yukko is decidedly a ghost, and supernatural. So it seems silly to me that this theme about how nothing supernatural is occurring and it's just people's fear is being pushed when THERE IS SOMETHING supernatural occurring. While this is a minor gripe for me, it just adds to this show’s overall lack of cohesion. A Bigger problem for me was the cohesion between episodes. Especially in the early episodes, entire episodes would pass without advancing the plot or characters at all. Often episodes would end, and the next episode would begin as if the previous events just never happened. This show has a horrible habit of introducing side characters in an episode and then NEVER mentioning them again. I can think of 4 side characters off the top of my head that literally appear for an episode and have no consequence on the story as a whole. I really only felt like the main plot was advanced in the first two and last 3 episodes, and the rest of the episodes could’ve been reordered without consequence.

Art and Character

After all of this complaining I would like to take a moment to shine a light on the best parts of this show. The art design for this show is absolutely stunning.The show is unafraid of using bright vibrant colors, that are often contrasted by shadows and darkness. I adore the way the art was done in this show, and I’m glad that risks were taken as it definitely paid off. While personally I did not find Teiichi interesting, I found the interactions between him, and the other three characters, to be an enjoyable experience. I found the romance between Teiichi and Yukko to be touching and sweet. I wish more focus had been put on these two, and also the friendships of the three living club members. The interactions between all these characters is really what drives the show forward, and is what kept me watching to the end.

I would like to take a moment to mention the ending of this show. I will try not to spoil it, but the final episode of the series is basically a 20 minute interaction between Yukko and Teiichi. It is sweet, heartfelt, and believable. It was a beautifully crafted moment between two lovers and was definitely the highlight of the show...

Until the last two minutes of that episode. Look, I’m all for happy endings, but the last two minutes of that episode was a punch to the gut. It made the rest of the episode mute, it felt like a prank. Why have all that setup and emotional tender moments when you were just gonna pull a “SIKE” at the end? It honestly felt like the writer was forced to make the ending happier. It just doesn't seem like that's how the story was supposed to go out.

I think this show was so close to being something really nice. But overall this show has the worst lack of focus I have ever seen. It is fractured, it doesn’t gel nicely with itself, and it just seems confused. A real shame too, with a little more focus and direction I think this story would’ve been a hidden gem, but instead it’s an unfortunate mess. That gets completely carried by its character interactions and art.

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Poll: Tasogare Otome x Amnesia Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Jun 24, 2012	562 replies	by amagirinomikoto »» Nov 11, 4:58 PM
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Tasogare Otome x Amnesia

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Kanoe, Yuuko

Niiya, Teiichi

Kanoe, Kirie

Okonogi, Momoe

Kanoe, Yukariko

Kirishima, Yuuko

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