Review of Amnesia

Amnesia is what you would call "self insertion romance" I suppose, except don't go in without protection. After watching Spice and Wolf for the first time, I was pining for a good romance fix. This was not it. :( As a lonely alcoholic 30-something chick, it's normally easy for me to live and love vicariously through the characters in these kinds of shows, but this one was different. Maybe it was the thought of being surrounded by oddly dressed emaciated youths. Or maybe the guys just weren't all that great. Maybe it's the fact that they never gave the MC a name,poor girl. (That's analogous to not drawing the eyes in hentai, by the way.) Either way, this one just didn't draw me in. She is totally unrelatable to me. Besides, I'm not half as cute as she is. And that hair of hers---always perfect, always in that perfect little flower bun. She can sleep for days on end and still looks fucking perfect. Bitch. Also, those socks do NOT go with that dress.

The only guy I didn't find any hangups with was Kent. He was really weird, but adorable. ("Adorkable?") I would totally hang out in his office all day just because. By the way, that boy is no grad student. That is a young professor's office if I've ever seen one. All he needs is another 20 years of refusing to be moved out of the same office, and things will begin to take (lose?) shape.

I gave the story a 2 because they managed to get the structure right for one of these kinds of shows. i.e.: Establish a "blank slate" MC as a substrate for insertion of viewer's self, enumerate all of the boys, and then contrive a situation where the MC gets to learn more about each of them individually---their fears, flaws, secrets, heal their hearts, whatever. It's almost forgivable if the overarching story doesn't make any goddamned sense, but in this show there are some really glaring plot holes even within the span of a single scene that made impossible the suspension of disbelief. And honestly, this kind of thing works way better for otome games than it does for anime or manga.

Art gets a 4, because the cards motif was a passable (but likely) metaphor for all the plot shuffling this show does. However, the delivery was kind of messy, almost like they weren't confident in their idea of what playing cards actually are. Hmm.

Sound gets a 4. I watched the English dub, which was...well, I don't want to call it "bad" because I respect the work of the VAs on this project. It's almost like the dub was an independent satire of the original work. It was hilariously bad, because the characters were bad. It was like watching Samsung's video on how to return your exploding Galaxy Note 7. If you are an English speaker then I recommend that you watch the English dub, or else you will be missing out.

Characters get a 2....Kent scores a single point here for the whole team. I really liked Kent. Minus him, everyone else makes it a 1. The ones who are supposed to be likable are creepy or insane. Everyone else is bland. This series is way too short to have this many characters. I would prefer to see more depth with fewer characters.

Enjoyment gets a 4, in the same way that terrible movies can be enjoyable to gawk at.

Overall, I think the story and the characters create the maximum score for this show, in spite of the somewhat more amusing things going on with the art and the voice acting.

If-and-only-if you're the kind of person who's into watching bad movies or shows just to make fun of them, then I would recommend Amnesia.