Tasogare Otome X Amnesia
I first heard of it from a YouTube playlist that I chose for studying. One of the songs caught my ear so I looked it up. Its genres include Horror, among other things, so I did not dare watch it.
After a few months of occasionally thinking of it, I thought about searching "Is [copypasted title] scary?" All the replies said 'no' except one, making me think twice. Around two weeks later, I started watching.
It was good and here's why
Its story started out introducing the characters and set up expectations of the type of anime it'll be in a fairly interesting way, making it out to be pretty light hearted. It mostly is. Fun things happen and characters are developed somewhat up to around one-third in. Then the mystery deepens and the female lead gets fleshed out.
The story is well paced throughout, starting with a problem, working towards fixing it up to a climax and then a resolution. Every arc follows this properly and feels neither rushed nor dragged out. The mystery feels normal at first and takes a back seat while the characters are characterised, a part of human nature is explored and key supernatural mechanics are demonstrated. After that, the main plot takes over. Events occur that change the female lead's behaviour and the plot thickens. The plot doesn't have very many twists in it yet tension is maintained as layers are peeled off one at a time.
Two things really stood out to me. I like this episode that, while the plot is going on, it uses a sound, shows an object, followed by the appearance of something. It repeats this a few times such that whenever you hear the sound, you know what's going to appear, triggering a little alarm in your head. Another little touch I really like is in a different episode. Most of the episode is from the first person perspective, creating a very different... feel? [This won't spoil much] When the person stretched and yawned, the edges of the screen flashed white a bit, mimicking the feeling when doing so. I thought that was really cool. When the person gradually started to worry, the visual effect started out subtle, then escalated with each heartbeat, showing the emotions of the person without showing the face. I thought that was pretty neat too.
Unfortunately, after the main plot starts, one of the supporting characters appears a few times but only to encourage the male lead to do the obvious. For someone given so much significance to the plot, her lack of character and involvement is disappointing. The male leads also starts to feel like merely a device to drive the story and be indecisive to keep things interesting.
Something that stands out a lot when watching is the visuals. The show likes to use heavily saturated colours, stark contrasts, extremely dark shadows and spatial distortions in important scenes. When the scene depicts evil, it uses dark colours and distorts the screen.
The opening and ending songs were good stuff but I felt a bit betrayed by the song intro, which both sounded like something great before switching gears, so it ended up just 'good'. The song that introduced me to the anime was great though. "Requiem"
Overall, it was great. Engaging. It is also spooky but not scary: no jumpscares or any spooks that'll stick to you after watching.
8/10
