In every Japanese high school there are clubs ran by diligent students who wish to share their passions with others. While there are of course some unique clubs out there just about every school has at least one club dedicated to the paranormal be they ghost hunters researchers or plain old horror buffs. But theres one school cobbled together from both new and old buildings alike where their Paranormal Research Club is quite unique compared to the others. Not only is it situated in the farthest reaches of the oldest section of the building but its leader is nowhere to be found. Try as you might youll probably never see her... That is unless you catch her moving items out of the corner of your eye or if you should happen to stumble on her remains. You see this clubs mysterious Ghost President is in fact a ghost and her club was formed on the idea of figuring out the truth about her past... Her young life as well as her untimely death. Should you join this club dont be scared. Shes nice. At least shell try not to hurt you. Heres a funny story for you... I went into this series blind knowing no information outside of what I could remember about it from a previous viewing back before it had a dub and for the longest time I was convinced that it was a Shaft title most likely directed by Akiyuki Shino as it had his style all over it. There are quite a few anime out there that have an eclectic feel to their visuals with a bizarre sort of cinematography that makes each shot transition feel random and disjointed enough to leave a jarring feeling behind and while not all of them are by Shinbou I generally feel the creepier ones tend to come from him and this series had its creep flag raised high and proud but where most of Shinbos work feels creepy in a skeevy perverted sort of way... Even when its presented with some degree of subtlety like it was in Madoka Magika... This one was creepy in a way that felt more appropriate to the horror genre. I thought hey I guess this means its one of his better projects where he used his weird penchants to achieve a greater effect right? Well no but I wasnt too far off. This anime was actually produced by Silver Links and it was directed by its most prolific and prominent employee Shin Onuma. Want to guess where Onuma worked before he jumped ship to the newly founded Silver Link? Thats right he previously worked at Shaft and worked very closely with Shinbou. Theres so much overlap between them before 2009 that I actually found conflicting information each of which gave one or the other credit for directing the second Negima series. I looked through Onumas filmography and I was pretty impressed by what I saw there... Out of the titles that Id seen a lot of them were in fact titles that used a Shinbou sort of visual style but with a smarter and more thoughtful approach. Thats not to say he shies away from the male gaze or never accentuates the assets of his female characters but he at least feels like he has the ability to turn such proclivities off whenever theyre not called for which is a quality I dont think Shinbou had very often. Since Dusk Maiden is a horror title at least partially Onuma does crank up the weirdness of his visual style to establish mood and create an unsettling atmosphere or even to symbolically express the relationships between characters and while it can get annoying once or twice thats more a reflection on the content itself rather than the way its being presentedmore on this later. It doesnt always work but it at least consistently feels creative and ambitious which I sadly cant say for the character designs. The characters are drawn extremely to type surpassing generic and moving all the way into cliche territory even if it works in some cases like in the design of the title character Yuuko who looks like the archetypal Japanese beauty with pale skin and long black hair and a school uniform that Blood C had just made fun of a few years prior. It works in her case as youd expect a ghost to feel oldfashioned but her love interest looks like every bland harem lead ever the tsundere looks like your typical short hair breastenvy tsundere and dont get me started on the genki girl. Ive done quite a few reviews where my access to a soundtrack has been limited or outright nonexistent CoughYurionicecough but with Dusk Maiden I dont have the problem at all because the official DVD set comes with two soundtrack CDs in the case. There are now 45 tracks haunting my Itunes but unfortunately there isnt much I can say about the soundtrack as a whole because its kind of all over the place. Thats not to say any of its bad but its about as varied and unrestrained as the shows visual style so there really arent any common features to discuss. Its a bunch of different kinds of tunes and they all sound good. Composers Kiego Hoashi and Ryuichi Takada clearly had a large order to fill and I have to imagine that they exhausted themselves doing it. I guess three of the biggest trends across the collection would be that most of them either go for a traditional Japanese sound a tense feeling of dread and urgency or the kind of perky and upbeat melodies that youd usually hear during casual scenes in any slice of life anime but of a higher quality and less repetitive nature than your typical dating game background track. There are a few standouts such as the theme for the mysterious villain Shadow Yuuko which is both terrifying and full of very subtle foreshadowing. Despair is an aptly titled tune that sounds like a violin playing heavily along to a somber music box and its also one of the few tunes I actually remembered from its use in the series before checking out the soundtrack CDs. This is also the case for Altar one of the songs I noted as objectively terrifying during my viewing as it can only be described as the theme to an upcoming blood ritual with its mixture of ominous ceremonial noises and childish accompanying choir. I didnt really care much for the opening at least on a visual scale as it looks just as eclectic and offbeat as the show itself but without nearly as much inspiration or direction so it just feels like a bunch of random clips set to music. I do think the song Choir Jail by Konomi Suzuki is very nice as its intense and emotional and is able to lyrically capture some of the darker elements of Yuukos situation. I actually liked the ending theme better as it was a much prettier song with beautiful visuals that are actually allowed to linger and you get to see Yuuko herself singing it which is a nice tough. The cast of characters was really small being that they didnt even introduce a fifth speaking role until episode 5 so Sentai Filmworks didnt have a very tough job to do when it came time to cast the dub. Im pretty sure they knew what they were doing though because they put four of their best talents in the main roles with a small group of other well known names floating in from time to time as either small guest roles or nameless extras. They gave the title role to Emily Neves one of the most indemand voice actors in the industry and in my opinion the best new actor to debut in the 2010s. She has a very wide range as well as a chameleonic quality that easily puts her in a prime spot for numerous different roles and itd be an understatement to say that Yuuko was a complex enough character to give Neves a lot to work with. Shes able to put her talents on full display with this character to the point that she could honestly just submit this series as her demo reel if she ever needed one. Clint Bickham hasnt done a whole lot of acting in his career with his only consistently active years being in 2013 and 2014 but hes shown in other titles that he can play boring or generic harem leads while still sounding genuine and expressing believable emotion which he does a fine job of here. Brittney Karbowski was of course the perfect choice to play Momoe the energetic carefree and somewhat dimwitted comedy relief character as she was basically able to cut loose and overact like a psycho in all of her melodramatic loud upbeat genki girl glory. As for Jessica Boone in the role of Kirie... Well... I have nothing but respect for her but my enjoyment of her performance in this series bears a direct correlation to my fondness for her character and to put it nicely I wasnt fond of her very often. She does play another character briefly but I cant really say who for spoilery reasons but I like her better there. Its a great dub that Id highly recommend even if its just for Emily Neves fans. Sigh... Here we go again. Its another damned school club anime. Ever since it was established that this particular subgenre of Slice of Life was marketable and that they could make a successful and popular one through little to no creativity or effort theyve been popping up everywhere as excuses for storytellers to cram a colorcoded collection of waifus or just a small harem into one room so they could spend a season or two putting them through random stories. Dusk Maiden isnt the first anime of its ilk to base its school club around an edgy sort of theme hell I dont even think its the first one to use a paranormal theme but that doesnt mean that it cant take the formula and do something bold and new with it. I dont believe theres any sort of idea or subject matter thats doomed to failure from the start and a good team can spin gold out of any sort of material you can imagine so what exactly does this series bring to the table? Well actually it has quite a few things going for it. I dont think ive ever said this about any other anime before but I absolutely love the setting here. Dusk Maiden takes place in a Japanese High School thats cobbled together in a makeshift fashion with old historic buildings as well as new construction to make something of a Frankenstein school. Im the type of guy who likes to explore whenever he enters new buildings I always get into the video game frame of mind and start looking for loot or whatever the real life equivalent of easter eggs would be and one of my favorite things for a school life anime to do is to set a few episodes in the old abandoned school house. Well in Dusk Maiden the old abandoned schoolhouse is part of the school itself and it sets an atmosphere that wouldnt be out of place in the Winchester mansion a place Ive always wanted to visit. The school is mazelike its full of secrets and the way its shot is so dark and creepy that I get excited at the possibility of what might happen in there. But thats not even its best feature. Yuuka herself is by far one of the best characters Ive ever seen in an anime at least from a writing standpoint. Theres a lot I cant say about her for fear of giving away some pretty heavy spoilers and the whole show is basically a character study on hereven though I dont think it was trying to be that almost every element of the story and plot are in some way connected to her. For the sake of comparison shes fleshed out and interconnected even more thoroughly than Haruhi Suzumiya was and thats quite a feat. Shes introduced to us as a bored happy go lucky ghost girl living her life lackadaisically in her clubroom which was formed for the sake of recovering all of her lost memories and there are far more layers in that sentence alone than you could possibly guess. Theres only one thing about her I wasnt really fond of and that unfortunately leads me to the shows greatest failing. While theres a lot to like about Dusk Maiden it is ultimately a slave to its genre. To be fair the first four episodes get off to a great start. The pilot is written in an extremely clever way setting up pretty much everything it has to and introducing every single character at their best. The following three episodes are backstory as to how Yuuka and Teiichi met as well as how Momoe and Kirie entered into the picture and the dynamics between them. These episodes didnt feature anyone outside of the main four so it was able to spend a lot of time on them building up their relationship as a club and as friends and dropping a ton of really smart clues about Yuukos past and the identity of the mysterious enemy stalking them from the shadows. Of course the good times cant last forever because this is a harem anime and it just had to move into love triangle territory eventually. Granted the culture fest story ar does introduce a pretty relatable villain but she doesnt stick around leaving our little harem to its own devices. Being that this is a harem we get all of the worst harem cliches. The main male character is a boring unremarkable wet sock but all three of his costars are in love with him and somehow the one with no explanation gets off the easiest. Yuukos love for him basically boils down to the fact that hes the first person in the school to see and openly acknowledge her which is kind of a low bar when you think about it although it does make sense when you take the decades shes spent alone into account. Theres another reason thats eventually revealed but its kind of pointless outside of the fact that it IS a reveal. Momoe is in love with him because as she puts it hes really capable and knows how to take action which kind of floats between vague bullshit and a complete misunderstanding as she probably got that impression from all of the ghostly mysteries that Yuuko allowed him to solve. Kirie doesnt even have an explanation as she just starts getting jealous of his relationship with Yuuko in episode 5 and from there she spends the rest of the series either acting like a lovestruck tsundere or dumping exposition and explaining things that most viewers would have been able to figure out on their own. This is in spite of the fact that she was a much more interesting character up until that point and her relationship to her ancestor Yuuko had far more promise to it. Momoe at least stays consistent throughout this process as she never stops being the comic relief dumbass of the group but her love for Teiichi is so uninspired that at one point she actually proclaims out loud her joy over being useful to him. As you might expect all of this is peppered with the usual harem fare like barbiedoll nudity a swimsuit episode and girls cooking for Teiichi with a heavy emphasis on the importance of feeding him with their chopsticksSay ahh Christ Ill never understand the romantic appeal of feeding someone like theyre a fucking baby but there is kind of a silver lining at the end of it all. Once the willtheywontthey hurdles are cleared the actual romance between Yuuko and Teiichi is a really lovely one and its not hard to get invested in it. Granted theres very little substance to the romance and some of the more obvious issues with a human loving a ghost are largely avoided and a poignant beautiful ending is immediately retconned by the post credits sequence and the two rejected romance options never let go of their obsession after hes officially off the table but its still very effective for what it is. The harem elements absolutely cripple Dusk Maidens potential and the romance may be weaker than it seems on the surface but thankfully these elements are never placed front and center and Yuukos story is still strong enough to make the series worth watching. If you squint hard enough you could even see some messages hidden in the text like that most people only see what they want to believe you cant be a complete person if you cast aside negative emotions and labyrinthian school buildings are fucking awesome. Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is available from Sentai Filmworks. The original manga is not available stateside but the DVD does come with two OVA episodes... One thats pure comedy and pg13 nudity and one thats an extended version of the final episode but I have no idea whats supposed to be extended about it. The CD soundtrack as I mentioned is also included. I know a lot of this review came out more negatively than I wanted it to but thats because all of this animes best qualities are either subjective on my part or mired in deep spoilers which made its worst qualities so much easier to talk about. I did however have a mostly positive experience with it as behind all of the groanworthy harem nonsense theres an engaging story surrounding a really complex and interesting character. The comedy is also largely effective although it never quite reaches the precedent set by the pilot episode. There are parts of it that remind me of Robert Westalls The Promise and the animated movie Paranorman which can never be a bad thing and its strongly constructed mystery is far more memorable than its cringeworthy harem elements. I wish the ending had stuck to its guns rather than resorting to a cheap copout especially since it never got a sequel to justify it but I still really enjoyed the story up until that point for the most part. I give Dusk Maiden of Amnesia a 7/10.