Series Review: Tasogare Otome X Amnesia (8/10)


Instant summary: Male high school student falls in love with a ghost.

Tasogare is chock full of fanservice. Well, that my first impression of the title. I got off a late start, so my image of this title comes mostly from the blogosphere. And as you would expect, people's choice of screencaps are pretty saucy... and all the T&A forms a general idea of what the show would be about. I usually avoid shows like these, but the many positive reviews prompt me to give it a try... and I found out that Tasogare isn't all about hard-selling the fan-service.

But that's actually not too far from what the show is about. Yuuko has some outrageous curves, and the director would not miss a chance to shove Yuuko's tits into your face every chance he gets. And there's the fact that Yuuko is completely shameless in front of our protagonist, so she has no qualms with being seen naked or having her boobs grabbed by him, which seems to happen once every episode.

There's one thing I love about Tasogare. Facial expressions!


I love it when an anime is able to show a wide myriad of expressions, because they always seem to work well in comedic situations. In fact, I'd like to think that the facial expression helped make "comedy" into one of Tasogare's primary genres. Without it, Tasogare would just be an ecchi drama, and that probably won't be very exciting.

Tasogare is one of my favourite shows this season. One of the reasons is, well, it was one of the most underwhelming seasons I've ever seen, and this is one of the few titles that manage to shine. It was also, of course, a delicious mix of cuteness, sexiness and comedy, which develops into a fairly good drama towards the end. The ending is a subject of a bit of debate, but I guess I'm quite satisfied with how it ended, as I dreaded the supposed outcome. I would call it a little predictable though; stories like these usually end in one of two ways, but Tasogare kinda did both... with a surprise twist at the very end. THAT I didn't quite expect.

Aside from the brilliance in character expression, the production quality isn't what you would call awesome. The consistently dark tones aren't very interesting, Kirie's trying way to hard to be a Bakemonogatari heroine with all the unfitting poses she does, and I can think of no less than ten seiyuus who would fit the character of Yuuko better than Hara Yumi. She's new, after all.

At least, in my opinion, this is the best Silver Link production by far.

Plot/Concept: Good
Story Style: Great!
Audio/Visual: Good
Value: 8