Gothicism rode on that. You had people writing stories of Vampires, as paragons of unbridled and destructively rapturous desire. You had people writing about the abject failures of Science, and the creation of otherworldly monstrosities, like Jekyll & Hyde, or Frankenstein, and yet, the notion that all these abject failures were born solely and surely from the human self. Poets wrote about Damnation, Spooky Moon-lit Nights, and (for the French side) fucking a lot of whores.
Yet, this was the Western side of the equation. On the other hand, in the Eastern side, there was already an enamored interest in the otherworldly, ghosts and their ilk. Perhaps it was because the Eastern culture was more accepting of contradictions, or that the Buddhist mindset had conveyed to them the sense that everything was a dream, and thus they were closer to dreams than their Puritan counterparts (then again, this is a kind of stereotyping. Especially given that Germanic cultures, with their strange fairy tales and magic spells, was such a huge influence on the poet Goethe. I'm less acquainted with that aspect, so let's just take it as the West were pretty damn 'kvlt' in certain areas beforehand as well". Pu Songling's famous Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio depicted a host of spirits intermingling, and, even, fornicating with humans. Japan had their Youkai, and the animism of Shinto. Our current trends of harem & romance genres consisting of human protagonists chasing after strange and otherworldly females, gods, aliens, and all that, is merely a form of Pop-Romanticism. An extension of the tendencies that existed in the long past.
So when Gothicism came to the East, it flourished beyond measure. The most famous art-work, wrapped in this kind of mentality, would be the Muzan-e prints. Famous prints depicting violent scenes from various Kabuki plays and myths. Later you had writers like Edogawa Rampo and Yumeno Kyusaku seeing the Gothic Erotic sensibility in full bloom. They wrote darker and more twisted, visceral and surreal tales. Similarly, in the West, the Surrealists were attaining their bloom, with the most heinously abject of them being the French Writer George Bataille.
This was just a brief sketch, and the whole movement is probably too dense to go into in a brief review. It stretches into Manga Artists like Suehiro Maruo and Shintaro Kago, and, directors like Takashi Miike. And, Edogawa Rampo treaded the same path as his primary influence, Edgar Allen Poe, to mix the mystery genre in as well.
Infectiously, such manic sensibilities became intermixed into the culture as well. You have the famous urban myths of dead school-girls, and seven school mysteries, and other assorted charms and spells. We can see how such otherworldly taboo captures and tingles the deepest roots of our imagination, especially our adolescent fancy. Not too far back, the 'Charlie Charlie' fad was spreading on Youtube and in schools.
Tasogare Otome X Amnesia, is a celebration of all these things. It's a celebration of the reasons why paranormal clubs go to abandoned locations with cameras and other strange equipment in search of a dare or a fancy. It's a celebration, but it's also a warning. It's a warning about how such things, when taken too far, becomes, more than just a love, or an aesthetic, into a violent and virulent superstitious sensibility. It is quite telling that, in Amnesia, the scariest creatures are humans.
The main heroine of Amnesia is a benevolent ghost. This is not a new trope, of course, and, as I mentioned, it has its roots from Pu Songling, to, even Takahashi Rumiko, with some chapters of Urusei Yatsura. The most interesting thing about Yuuko though, is that she changes appearance depending on the perception of others. This is reminiscent of Kubrick's The Shining, where Jack makes out with a beautiful woman, only to find out he's been making out with a corpse. Yet, importantly, this is not done for horror reasons, but, rather, as an apt metaphor for how people in the world perceive such things. There are those who are enamored, and there are those who are freaked out, and there are those who are addicted solely to the thrill of being scared. The moral, though, is Gothicism in its truest sense. If you learn to love the night, and if you find the night beautiful, and if you go beyond the mere primal instincts and cheap thrills wrapped up in the whole deal, you will gain the treasures of the night.
Being directed by Shaft-influenced Director Oonuma Shin, Amnesia takes another great cue from Bakemonogatari, which is the whittling down of everything other than the main characters. This is done to great benefit, and, although there are some others that come into play, for the most part everything is focused on the 4 members of the mystery club, and, even more, on the protagonist and the heroine. The result is a poetic and hallucinogenic quality for the most part, almost akin to the first half of Hitchcock's Vertigo. A boy and a beautiful ghost walk throughout the dusk-tinged old quarters of a school, and talk about mysteries, and she speaks poetically about things like Amnesia and the nature of Superstitions.
Yet, when other characters come in, and, at an especially climactic point in the series, the warning is raised. You've been given the Night, and you've been captured into its spell, but less you think that the Night is your friend, watch closely at how the Night emerges within other Men. When the thrill of fear is intermixed with Gothic enamor, you have mysteries going haywire, and people driven by a desperate sense of curiosity. These are the condemned. In the end, the Night is for the lonely, and the Night is for those who need to be understood, and the Night is not your whimsical domain.
Finally, in contrast with the Night, we come to the concept of Life. Unlike your by-the-numbers harem, flesh plays a very important role in Amnesia. Besides fanservice (I admit it has that sensibility), the idea of touch is very important. Yuuko's reaction to being touched by Niiya, or not being touched, feels more important when it stands on the borderline of decay. The fruits of her flesh are suspect when other people see her as a rotten corpse, and yet, this is not the Shining, so which is the real flesh? For that reason, when fanservice occurs in the closed quarters of the abandoned and otherworldly poetic Gothic universe of Amnesia, the juxtaposition becomes all the more essential. It plays in with that very Freudian idea that Sex and Death are two sides of the same coin, and much of Gothic Romanticism focuses on this aspect as well.
Still, there is a narrative to be unwrapped, and things need to be solved. In the end, when everything falls away, and returns back to the daylight, and simple loves, and rational answers, and Hollywood marriages, then, it all plays out like a quite long, and quite unforgotten, lingering dream.
