Tasogare Otome x Amnesia – 04

Over summer vacation, Kirie spearheads a training camp for the club, which involves swimming in the pool, sleeping in the abandoned night duty room, and investigating school legends, like the ghost of said room. Yuuko is upset that Teiichi ignored her, and pulls several pranks to punish him, but at the same time shows him the “other side” of the school.

After four weeks, this series’ dilly-dallying is growing tiresome. For yet another episode, we’re teased by suggestions of darker elements, only to have them utterly deflated by Yuuko’s silly antics. She’s basically just messing with Teiichi the whole time, and as a result, we feel like the series is messing with us. It doesn’t know what it wants to be, which is why it’s trying to be everything…and not succeeding. Yuuko has potential as a character, but that has yet to be realized and there was no urgency to correct that this week. She seems content in her amnesia, as long as she has Teiichi to play with.

As for the rest of the cast, the whole reason everyone was together at all was Kirie’s desire to have a training camp. There wasn’t a strong reason why Kirie joined the club at all, and there’s no reason at all why she would organize such a camp. The only reason there was a pool scene is so the girls could be in swimsuits, which has nothing to do with anything. As for Okonagi Momoe, she’s officially the most annoying character of the season (yes, more than that blue-haired girl in Medaka Box). If we don’t see some improvement next week, it will be hard to not drop this.

Rating: 4 (Fair)

Mirai Nikki – 03

Keigo, a detective and the fourth diary user, sends Amano and Yuno off on a fun-filled, romantic date to serve as bait for Minene Uryuu, whom they have to finish off. She’s sneaking around the city, staying in the shadows and suffering from the pain of losing her eye. A mystery dude who turns out to be another diary user carries her to a secluded cabin where he drugs her in hopes of gaining intel on the other users she knows. Just when Amano’s fears about Yuno are allayed, she brings him to her house, where he pokes around and finds rotting corpses, making him flee from her in terror.

For some reason, we kept noticing unintentional references to other series this week. Like Deadman Wonderland, you have your girly-sounding guy (Amano, actually voiced by a girl); your seemingly harmless, cute girl (Yuno); amusement park complete with ferris wheel; and the pretty but psycho bitch with a horrible, pain-filled childhood (Minene Uryuu), who gets more depth this week. Like Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, there was your sexy pool scene. Like Blood-C, you have things starting out all happy and bubbly, but with hints of unease, and then it gets real dark real fast, and our whelpish hero is in a very bad way. We have to say, while we were somewhat convinced Yuno was helping Amano out of love, we had no idea it would be “I want to use your entrails as hair ties and eat your face” love. Poor Amano…

With Minene – the would-be top threat – neutralized this week by the man with the bag on his head, Yuno is our wolf in sheep’s clothing this week. What’s so scary about her is that she’s really capable of anything; but hasn’t yet to come out and said what she wants or what she’ll do, which is good for a horror story, because what’s more fearsome than the unknown? Creepier still is the fact Amano will have a very hard time avoiding her, since her diary is basically set up to stalk him. So kudos to the show for starting out with a bafflingly placid date complete with acute bikini top loss, and taking it in the complete opposite direction. Now Amano needs to grow some bullocks.

Rating: 3.5