Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Unforgettable.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 30, 2013

Friends and acquaintances who know I work for Blu-ray.com often express envy for a job which entails sitting around watching movies all day—that is, until they see the huge stack of product I have assigned to me (something shared by all the reviewers at the site). At this point, their response is almost always, “Oh, good lord! You have to watch all of that?” (And then they realize, watching is only half the game—we then have to sit down and write hopefully cogently about what we’ve seen.) Because of the huge amounts of product I have to shuffle through on any given day, it’s rare for me to actually watch something for pure pleasure, another aspect to this line of work that friends sometimes don't realize is often part of the job. This situation has been exacerbated recently by a number of labels releasing a lot of product more or less simultaneously and unfortunately not getting review product to me much before street date (if in fact before street date at all). But because of these delays (which frankly only cause more stress since I then have a ton of titles to get through as quickly as possible in order for our coverage to be as timely as possible), I actually had a day when I didn’t have any review copies to watch, and for whatever reason settled down to view the recent Blu-ray release of the 2011 ghost thriller The Awakening. This fitfully entertaining film tried a bit too hard to achieve a shattering twist a la The Sixth Sense or perhaps more appropriately The Others, but it had the relatively unusual aspect of featuring a leading female character whose raison d’être was debunking charlatans who were foisting so-called Spiritualism (divining ghosts through séances and the like) off on unsuspecting innocents who were desperate to contact deceased love ones. Without posting any major spoilers about the film, the heroine turns out to have a few secrets in her past, some of which she may not even have any memory of. There’s something at least slightly similar going on in Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, an anime that might have been more effective had it concentrated more on the spooky element of paranormal activity and less on the goofy exploits of some of its characters.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is one of those anime that might seem to be easily classifiable in one genre, but which resists that easy pigeonholing with a more diverse set of objectives and approaches that may mean the series never quite “fits” a given categorization. On its surface, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia has many elements of a traditional harem series, with a sometimes clueless young man named Teiichi surrounded by a gaggle of females, including one rather voluptuous female ghost. Teiichi is a student at the private Seikyou Academy, a school that has been built up over the years from a variety of formerly separate buildings, leaving the resulting structure something of a labyrinth. That chaotic atmosphere may be one reason that ghost stories have run rampant at the school, including a recurring tale of a girl named Yuko who died decades ago and whose spirit is rumored to haunt the Academy. That tale turns out to be more than simply a legend, however, as Teiichi discovers one day when he wanders into a room long thought to be abandoned, but where Yuko appears to the young man.

It turns out that Yuko cannot actually remember the circumstances of her own demise, and has founded a club at the Academy called the Paranormal Investigations Club. One of the other members of the club is the kind of dunderheaded young girl Momoe, a girl who compiles the many ghost stories told around the school but who seems spectacularly unaware that there is at least one spirit, namely Yuko, often within easy reach. Momoe’s manic reactions to paranormal phenomena offer many of the series’ most pronounced comedic elements, and in fact Momoe’s character may prove to be an annoyance for some viewers who might prefer Dusk Maiden of Amnesia to concentrate more fully on the mystery surrounding Yuko’s death as well as the developing relationship between the spectral entity and Teiichi.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is structurally kind of interesting from at least a couple of standpoints. We join the story in media res in the first episode, and even that episode gives us a Rashômon-esque replay of events from a slightly different perspective. The actual story gets started in the second episode as we see Teiichi meeting Yuko and Yuko trying to piece together whatever happened to her years ago. We also ultimately meet the third female to orbit Teiichi, Kirie, another member of the Paranormal Investigations Club who turns out to have a more personal connection to Yuko than might be expected. There are some fairly traditional shōnen elements in several of the episodes, as we’re introduced to some of the other kids in the school, but there’s also an underlying subtext of the supernatural which, if it doesn’t explicitly recall yōkai and other beasties of folklore, at least adds a decidedly spooky element to the series.

The second piece of structural sleight of hand occurs more toward the end of this short form series, when Teiichi ends up kind of reliving (or redying, as the case may be) Yuko’s final days on earth sixty years previously. This is where Dusk Maiden of Amnesia has some surprising emotional heft. If one basic conceit is a horror movie trope (a structure built on top of a religious site), it’s handled in a really interesting way in the series, and Yuko’s actual fate is a really disturbing experience.

There is a rather unexpected profundity to Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, especially after Yuko’s past is completely revealed and the series begins to enter its endgame, one where the ghostly love story between Yuko and Teiichi finally wends its way toward a bittersweet denouement. One of the central lessons of Yuko’s story was an implied resignation when events unspool in an unexpected, even tragic, way, but the series has the courage to hint that sometimes those who seem to be well adjusted to the vagaries of fate aren’t necessarily. That in turn opens the series up to a fairly weepy climax that manages to nicely weave together the supernatural and romance elements of this story. “Till death do us part” may be a famous line from the wedding vows, but when one of the partners is already dead, who’s to say what can keep true lovers from touching each other?

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is by and large a very nice looking high definition presentation, one that glories in tones of orange, black and amber (a subliminal tip of the hat to Hallowe'en, perhaps?). The series also tends to exploit different animation styles, with some cutaways to some distinctive versions of the main characters (see the fifth screenshot for one good example). While line detail is quite crisp, and colors are essentially well rendered and nicely robust, this transfer has a few minor issues, including fairly prevalent banding (especially noticeable in fade outs), as well as some passing stability issues that resemble motion judder (keep your eyes on Teiichi and Yuko in the first episode when they're by Yuko's supposed grave and the camera pans up—it's like the characters are doing a jitterbug all of a sudden). These are relatively minor issues, however, and do not detract from what is otherwise a very pleasing high definition experience.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mixes in both English and Japanese (for the record, I received a message from a member asking about a reported 5.1 mix, but there is no surround mix on these Blu- rays, unless it's really well hidden). Fidelity is excellent, with voice work in both languages coming through loudly and clearly. The series' interesting score (which is also provided via two soundtrack CDs in this deluxe set) also sounds great.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Japanese Commentaries for all 13 Episodes. These commentaries feature a voice actress who never introduces herself (at least in the spot checking I did), but who might be Yumi Hara (Yuko).


• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 1:32)


• Clean Closing Animation (1080p; 1:32)

I'm including the following as part of my official score for the supplements, even though these are probably not "real" supplements according to some:

• Two Soundtrack CDs. The score to this series is rather odd at times. Some of it sounds positively Celtic, while other cues more closely resemble more traditional mystery or even horror music.


• OVA: Ghost Girl (1080p; 24:59)


• Episode 12 The Dusk Maiden Extended Version (1080p; 24:50)