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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Unevaluated |
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[series:4803#628] | ||||||
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(Five episodes watched): Now here's a show which does right something that countless other ones do wrong: it thoroughly introduces the main characters and makes them into interesting people who we can care about. We see that Oscar is courageous, determined, brash and impatient. While a witch, Tinasha has no evil intentions and even those who fail her tests do not wind up dead as was commonly believed. She's actually several centuries old but her body has stopped aging (she cares about what others say about her looks). I could not help but be intensely curious about how her stay at the capital (with the fact that she is a witch known only to Oscar) would work out. I cut this review of episode one short so that I could go download any additional episodes of Unnamed Memory that had become available. I was really looking forward to episode two, but it wasn't as good as I had hoped. Rather than Tinasha settling into life in the palace, and meeting important people and getting an idea of whether they are supportive or hostile to her, she quickly needs to go solve an old problem by magically fighting a demonic beast (a giant wolf). Oscar and some close allies insist on accompanying her, and the aides quickly discover her secret, which kills a lot of potential tension. Oscar should have explicitly ordered them not to tell anyone what they had learned, and since Tinasha basically saved their lives you'd think they would obey. It was enjoyable but I was left uncomfortable with the possibility that this might turn out to be be a magical fight-of-the-week show rather than something more deep. In episode three another witch puts another curse of sorts on Oscar, one that was difficult to understand yet could supposedly have killed him by putting his libido into overdrive or something like that. And it was all little more than a prank, apparently. But again, this show was not going in the direction I had been hoping for. We aren't learning any more about what really makes Tinasha and Oscar tick, and without that info it's hard to care how their romance works out. I noticed that in the usual poll at ANN Unnamed Memory scores pretty low on the list of favorite anime, which, since it covers several episodes I haven't watched yet, suggests it isn't going to get much better. In episode four Tinasha decides that what she and Oscar need is more practice in swordfighting or magical hand-to-hand combat, which again suggests that fighting rather than politics or romance is the direction this show will go. She hints that she wants Oscar to be capable of killing her if something goes wrong, but not enough detail is provided. It is learned that a minor country is building a small army of mages and had hoped to recruit Tinasha (they refer to her as 'Aika'). Tinasha mentions that she has been looking for someone for a long while. But in general this show continues to disappoint me. I don't detect a main theme of the plot, instead it wobbles about between bad guys who need to be punished and monsters that need to be destroyed and weak romance. Why did the Witch of Silence curse Oscar? We may never get an answer to that question. While watching episode five I got the impression that largely as a result of apathy, I had lost track of what was going on--or maybe I had missed an episode. The amount of attention and concentration I pay to a show is directly proportional to the amount of entertainment I get in return, and this show was not seeming to be worth a large investment. Somehow one of Oscar's maids is now being considered as a potential wife for him--she has some sort of latent magical capability which would be useful, or something like that. It all leads to a fight with (another) big wolf. But I was throughly bored and definitively decided that I was wasting my time on Unnamed Memory and should dispense with it. This show seemed to have great potential at first, but turned out to be not even of ordinary quality. That sometimes happens. Last updated Saturday, January 04 2025. Created Wednesday, April 17 2024. | ||||||||
