ANIME REVIEW: Dusk Maiden of Amnesia

I decided I shouldn’t bury the lede when it comes to this review: over time and several repeated viewings, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia has gradually become my all-time favorite anime. That’s no small statement to make for an “old-taku” like myself who has indulged in this hobby for 20 years and counting, but it’s an honor I don’t feel ambivalent about awarding it. Through a combination of its wonderful characters and engaging plot, its gorgeous and creative visuals, its heartfelt soundtrack, and the way it plays to some of my subjective favorite fictional themes, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia claimed the very top spot on my personal list of favorite anime and still holds that position today.

I started the first draft of this review quite some time ago when the series was much newer to me, which is probably a good thing when it comes to objectivity, but even then, I had already decided Dusk Maiden was pretty special. Now, with Halloween approaching and the series getting a new physical re-release from Sentai Filmworks, this seemed like the perfect time to share my thoughts on this sweet and spooky classic.

Sometimes you need to read to the second line of an anime’s synopsis to get to the hook, and Dusk Maiden of Amnesia certainly falls into this category. It’s about a young guy and three girls who form a club dedicated to investigating paranormal phenomena at their high school. Decent start, right? But how about adding in the fact that one of the girls, the founder and president of the club, is actually the high school’s only known ghost and has been dead for nearly 60 years? Aha, now that’s more like it!

The experience of watching Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is a lot like reading the synopsis, in that it gets more interesting as it goes by gradually feeding you new information that casts a fresh light on what you already knew. Despite its many supernatural elements, this series is more of a mystery/romance hybrid than a horror anime, and once all of its puzzle pieces fall into place, the portrait it creates a love that endures through pain, difficulty, and even death itself is truly beautiful to behold.

The action of Dusk Maiden begins when Teiichi Niiya wanders into the dilapidated, abandoned old school wing of his high school and gets a scare from a beautiful girl suddenly appearing behind him in a room he thought was empty. The girl laughs at his shock and assures him that she meant no harm. However, as they walk down the hall together moments later, she shocks him again with the blunt admission that she is Yuko Kanoe, the spectral “Yuko-San” who features in almost every ghost story told at the school. Whatever doubts Teiichi may have harbored about Yuko’s ghostly credentials are dispelled once he discovers that almost no one else can see her… and after he finds Yuko’s skeletal remains hidden in a basement room. Yuko, a happy-go-lucky sort of ghost, also reveals that she has lost almost all memory of her past and would be interested to learn more—almost as interested as she is in learning more about Teiichi, who she quickly develops a crush on. To aid with both goals, Yuko decides to start a Paranormal Investigation Club that Teiichi becomes responsible for representing.

The club soon acquires new members in Momoe Okonogi, a ditzy ghost story enthusiast who can’t see Yuko at all, and Kirie Kanoe, Yuko’s tomboyish great-niece who can see Yuko and doesn’t completely trust her. The club’s carefree early days take a grim turn with the appearance of a second, considerably more menacing ghost at the school and by clues that Yuko’s final days among the living may have been anything but serene. With the threat of the second ghost, new attacks of amnesia, and the shadows of a dark past looming ever greater, can Yuko get a happy ending the second time around? Or will it all end in darkness for her and Teiichi?

There’s a lot to dive into with this anime, but I’d like to start with the outstanding visuals and music. Dusk Maiden was produced by Silver Link, the anime studio that also produced Watamote, C³, and a number of other anime that are notable for their creative artistic direction. Like C³, Dusk Maiden loves to paint beautiful scenes using the odd, vibrant colors generated by night and sunset lighting, and the results can be truly gorgeous at times, as seen in the poolside scene above. Its visual similarities with Watamote relate to how what we see as viewers is influenced by what the emotional state of the characters. You’ll see things like the backgrounds being physically crushed into wreckage (in the mind’s eye) to represent characters on the verge of a panic attack, warping and distortion to represent surreal moments, or dark and troubled coloring leeching across lines and shapes to represent simmering anger. Dusk Maiden engages in this to an even greater degree than most of its peers, though, and perhaps more than any other anime I have ever watched except Maria-Holic and the Monogatari series.

One of my favorite visual moments in Dusk Maiden was a moment where Yuko suddenly felt a crushing sense of loneliness at being left by herself in the evening, and the frame of the screen grew smaller, and smaller, and smaller as her anxiety at her isolation increased. It was a startling effect that heightened the moment’s emotional impact, and the whole series is full of neat little visual tricks like that. The music is atmospheric and always appropriate to the scene, and the opening and ending (“Choir Jail” and “Calendrier”) are both memorable and intense. There is also a single vocal track that is only played twice in the series, “Requiem”, and it’s such an emotionally powerful standout that I guarantee you will know it when you hear it.

I usually watch Dusk Maiden in its English dub, and I can highly recommend that version. Teiichi’s actor (Clint Bickham) has been hit-or-miss with me on some Sentai shows, more as a matter of casting than of the quality of his performances, but he does a fantastic job here and is a great fit for Teiichi. Jessica Boone sounds extremely natural as Kirie, and Brittney Karbwoski put in one of the best, funniest, and sweetest performances of the series as Momoe. Emily Neves did an absolutely outstanding job as Yuko, and there’s an unusual quality to her performance here that I really wish I knew whether was intentional or not.

Different generations have different vocal quirks – modern American women sometimes have a touch of “vocal fry” as they speak, and American women in the 1930s to early 1950s often had a very slight quaver in their voice, especially during laughs or giggles. As a ghost who grew up in the 1940s and died in the early 1950s, Yuko should (and actually does) sound a bit different than Kirie or Momoe, and I noticed that Neves’ performance includes a teensy bit of quaver in the character’s laughter. Again, I have no way of knowing if this was intentional, but if it was, it was a really cool touch. I also appreciated how lifelike and vibrant the English script localization was in general. While being very true to the subtitled Japanese script, the English dub dialogue feels completely natural and unstilted throughout.

It is worth mentioning that the series is not all scares and tears; it contains quite a few funny moments, with Momoe in particular always being good for a laugh or eight. Combined with her tendency to easily flip out, Momoe’s inability to perceive Yuko and her total misunderstanding of Teiichi’s interactions with her provide frequent opportunities for comedy. Yuko herself will also cause some grins, as she’s a bit of a prankster, and her occasional attempts to play the part of a “scary” ghost are amusingly lame.

For good or for bad, it should probably be mentioned that this series occasionally gets heavy-handed with “fan service” moments, especially in the lighthearted first half. Yuko is stacked like a (haunted) brick house and is virtually shameless when it comes to her spiritual body, so although the show never features graphic nudity, you should expect lots of cleavage on display and semi-frequent states of undress. Veterans of raunchier harem anime won’t even bat an eye, but it is something to bear in mind if that bothers you.

One of my favorite things about this series is the way it treats the “rules” of life as a ghost, which I would describe as ¾ Beetlejuice and ¼ Casper. Other than being placebound, ageless, invisible to most people, and immune to the needs for food and sleep, Yuko is very much a normal girl with a normal person’s limited capabilities. At one point, Teiichi expects her to start floating or phase through a wall, and she gives him an annoyed look and snaps, “I can’t do anything you can’t do.” Dusk Maiden presents a picture of the afterlife as a stunningly mundane affair where the similarities to mortal life are more striking than the differences. Much like with the unfortunate newlyweds from Beetlejuice, Yuko’s ghostly state presents more limitations than advantages, and it makes unraveling the mysteries of her past that much more challenging and engaging.

Another thing that I loved about Dusk Maiden was the maturity it treated several topics with. Being emotionally honest with people, learning to be kind and forgiving to oneself, falling in love, letting go, sticking with people through “for worse” as well as “for better”… all of those themes are present in this anime. Our cast handles them in ways that are realistic and age-appropriate for high schoolers, but they grow up fast and make the viewer proud to root for them. I’m terribly tempted to start gushing about how certain plot points illustrate these themes, and equally tempted to discuss how emotionally-satisfying I found all aspects of the ending… but that would be unfair to you as viewers. It’s worth experiencing how things unfold firsthand.

In terms of things I would have liked to see done differently, my only regret regarding this series is that it wasn’t a few episodes longer. In particular, I wish the first arc where the Paranormal Investigation Club was checking into different rumors at the school had been expanded on just a bit. With that said, since most modern anime come in episode-count multiples of 13, it might be for the best that things were left as-is. It’s possible they could have doubled the series’ length and kept the story just as tight, but that’s not a given. Ideally, I think something along the lines of 16-18 episodes would have been perfect for this show, but if my only complaint about an anime is that “I wish there was more of it,” that’s not a bad problem to have.

You have several options when it comes to experiencing Dusk Maiden. It’s available to stream on HiDive, which features both the subbed and dubbed versions and the 30-minute OVA sequel. It’s also available to purchase as an excellent physical release on Blu-ray from Sentai Filmworks, which in addition to the standard clean opening and ending also includes a bevvy of extras like commentary tracks for every episode, Japanese commercials, and a slightly-extended version of the final episode. However, if you find yourself a mega-fan of this series like I am, the 2013 first-edition Blu-ray and DVD releases of this series (now out-of-print) contained one other very cool bonus as a pack-in: a two-CD original soundtrack! This OST contains all of the series BGM, two versions of “Requiem” (instrumental and vocal/original), and three versions of “Calendrier” (TV edit, full-sized vocal, and instrumental; however, instrumentation differs slightly from the version found in-series). The only notable absence from the CDs was a vocal rendition of “Choir Jail”, which I assume was excluded for licensing reasons. The 2021 re-release is identical to the 2013 version in every way except for the missing bonus soundtrack, so if you can’t find the older edition or if the price is too rich for your blood, the 2021 re-release is still an excellent product you’ll be very proud to have in your anime collection.

To sum it up, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is a multi-category winner. It is one of the best romance anime I have ever watched, with Teiichi and Yuko ranking behind only Ryuji and Taiga (ToraDora) as my all-time favorite anime couple. Although not a horror anime in the traditional sense, it is also my favorite ghost-themed anime series, with only Ghost Hunt and Requiem from the Darkness even in a similar league. The only reasons I can think of that a viewer might not like this series are if you have a strong distaste for its fan-service elements or if its particular mashup of genres (mystery, horror, supernatural, and romance) simply don’t appeal to you. Other than that, I can give this one a virtually unqualified “highly recommend.”

This Halloween, don’t forget or overlook this hidden gem. Whether you watch it an episode at a time or all at once, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is worth pulling from the anime graveyard to watch again and again.