Unnamed Memory is an adventure-romance-fantasy, thematically speaking. It makes several major narrative promises, such as the aforementioned aspects of wish-fulfillment (to break a curse) and the prospect of marriage, as well as the prospect of meeting the other wicked witch who was responsible for the curse in the first place, and juggles some background elements of mystery and intrigue, showing characters outside of the main cast who skulk about in the wake of their events discussing their plots and schemes, or doing something evil to inform the viewer that the roses in the garden also have some thorns accompanying them.
The first episodes are mostly promising, showing fluidity in the action scenes, a high attention to detail in character designs, and playful dialogues. The writing is simply fine, if not good. But then something terrible happens, and it is somewhat subtle at first, but the anime begins to show quiet signs of erratic pacing - of important details being glossed over and of character development being rushed through, if not outright skipped. By episode 6 the narrative has spiraled out of control and in full decline as character relationships change without any reasoning or rationale provided to the viewer, and by episode 7 it becomes clear that neither the source material for this series nor the audience are going to be treated with any semblance of respect.
What began as a very promising anime this season has rapidly devolved into something reminiscent of an expedited shipment, handled without care, and arriving broken and lame to its destination post-transit. I do not recommend this series to anyone - it is abundantly clear even as a preliminary viewing that the series is unable to adequately fulfill any of its themes.
