Dusk Maiden of Amnesia

It's really an unexpected pleasure to accidentally stumble upon such an anime. In times when you consider Hollywood to be almost unbearable to watch, an art-house unbearable to watch in principle, while anime tightly walled up within its target age audience, cliches and quotations. Don't get me wrong, in the "Dusk Maiden" all of the above shortcomings are present: here are notorious "fan service", "a school" (however, it is present here only nominally, by mention, because there are no "school days" in the anime), a hint on a "harem", a pushover protagonist, a style reminiscing a mix of Bakemonogatari with Another, and much more, including obvious allusions to beloved by the undemanding teenage audience, which is prone to all kinds of extremes, a snotty-grotesque melodramatic ending which I expected with sluggish contempt.

I thought I've "deconstructed" it, but the "Maiden" had a lot more in it and, as it should be (about this - below), deceived me. Behind all the garbage was something unexpectedly worthy. Firstly - good music and the aforementioned Bakemonogatari style, which was applied moderately and tastefully here. Moreover, while referring to the play Momijigari (it's about a demon in a form of a beautiful woman seducing a warrior who kills her in the end) by creating the "right" mood with all those scarlet colored maple leafs, the "Dusk Maiden" not only becomes aesthetically appealing but deliberately deceives audience about Yuuko's nature and the plot's development. In general, the verbs "to deceive", "to mischief", "to tease" are the best suited for Yuuko, who, although is a spirit, but is not an oni-demon from Momijigari neither a succubus, but a trickster - a mischievous kitsune, a beauty who seduces young man in order to marry him and to be faithful, but not to destroy him. The heroine's looks and behavior, her love to mischievous tricks and jokes, are hints to her archetypal nature. And the way she teases and seduces Teiichi are also parts of the kitsune's trickster game. In this light, the elements of "ecchi" can be seen not as a "fan service", but as a reference to an mythological archetype. Actually, a reference to this archetype immediately, from the first series, makes an audience to sympathize with Yuuko's spirit, whose story has not yet been revealed, but whose character seems "vaguely familiar." The mystical-comedic first series set the tone for the whole anime. And a bit of knowledge about Japanese mythology should suggest that not always romantic relationships between young men and kitsune spirits end tragically.

In addition to the trickster heroine, there is a young man helping her to gain integrity through reconciliation with herself. He shows the heroine that no matter how painful the experience is and how bitter memories are, no matter how unpleasant are some feelings, without them she will not become a full-fledged person, she will not be able to truly love and to enjoy life. Here you can see the fashionable Manichaean psychological mantra about "accepting the dark side of yourself", or you can look deeper and perceive how to overcome your fear with the strength gained through love and support of a loved one. As Carl Jung puts it, analyzing trickster's archetype, the recognition and inevitable mental integration of the shadow creates such a painful situation that no one but the Savior can unleash this tangled knot of fate. Thus Teiichi is Yuuko's Savior but not only because he helps her to accept her dark self, but also because he helps her to find a new meaning (Logos), a new life through his love, like Jesus Christ, giving through His Love a new life for everyone, who accepts His Logos. It is unlikely that such a sense was controlled by the authors (manga and anime), but this reading all the more interesting from the standpoint of theological symbolism, which claims that the history of Logos (Christ) is the archetype of all stories, since He, as Creator of the world, ordering chaos laid a certain logic in it (hence He is Logos), which manifested in all aspects of being and in all stories. It is here the "Dusk Maiden" reveals itself as a psychological drama and as another archetypal idea - love conquers fear.

Regarding love, "love" and female characters. "Harem" is only nominal here, since Teiichi from the very beginning denotes his affection, not responding to advances of other female characters. Which are two. One is the opposite of the heroine, this is her prejudiced relative Kirie, whose dubious femininity is played in every possible way in the anime and contrasted with Yuuko's emphasized femininity. I'll describe this in details. One of the modern tropes of popular Western culture and ideology is the so-called "inversion of roles", where a "strong, independent woman" is stronger, smarter, more just and overall more masculine than men. Women are now main protagonists of movies, animation, games and other forms of popular culture where they fill masculine "roles". Yuuko, on the other hand, is also a main character of the story, which is deep and interesting, extremely fascinating for me, though as a man I do not identify myself with the main character. Unlike modern heroines, Yuuko is truly feminine, with recognizable roots in mythology and in deep, supranational cultural layers - she is beautiful and mysterious, alluringly playful and practical, virulent and tender. As Tolkien puts it in Galadriel's example: "beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning!". That's why Yuuko's story is so fascinating - it is not a propaganda, but real art where the creators are mediums, mediators between the audience and the story which, being true to archetype meanings, is able to duly structure reality. Everything what dominant ideology does by filling in the masculine roles with women, is stripping women of their femininity, since the ultimate idea of such ideology is that women should get rid of their womanhood and act as men. It suggests that "the best women are men." Women are thus proclaimed not "Others" to men, but their inferior copies, ridiculous imitators who don't have their own worth, as they only gain worth as impersonators of men. Not so with Yuuko who doesn't try to impersonate men, enjoying her own worth as a wonderful young woman. Beside Yuuko and Kirie there is some kind of kawaii mascot, absolutely goofy, enthusiastically stupid Momoe, introduced into the plot for the sake of comic lolz and as an another contrast with the virtues of Yuuko. And if Kirie doesn't even try to "recapture" Teiichi, realizing her incapability to compete with Yuuko, the Momoe, by virtue of her limitations and mascotism, simply serves as a comedic element in a romantic story.

In addition to the mythological, cultural and psychological strata, I would also note completely not explicit one - philosophical, and (as was mentioned before) even theological. For pagan cultures in which Logos with Christian rational inquisitiveness has not blazed out all of the weeds of vulgar mysticism with its deification of stones, insects, rivers and with other ancient superstitions, ghosts are something "inanimate", "disappearing", and inferior. Almost everyone learned for himself through the popular, even Western, culture, which absorbed a lot of pagan ideas that "dead" are supposed to disappear, to go into the world of the dead and to be erased from memory. In some cases to "go into the light" into a world of spirits. For the Japanese, this has been taken to an extreme in which spiritual world is so unreal that it disappears from memory along with spirits. However, this is not the case in Christianity, where Lazarus lived quite normally after his resurrection from the dead, not to mention Jesus Himself. Where to all faithful eternal life after death is promised - real life, not "herbivore-spiritual", but such, in comparison with which present carnal life is hardly life at all, if not just a pale, inferior shadow, a mere existence. For a Christian, some radical rational skeptic like the staunch Catholic Rene Descartes, things are devoid of mysticism and spirits, superstitions are futile, but the real spiritual world is "more real than reality". In the philosophy of antiquity Plato echoes this aspect of Christianity with his "cave", where the physical world is only an imperfect shadow of the real, ideal world. Not so in Japanese culture, where spiritual world is the shadow. And therefore, the more surprising is the ending, which really pleased me insofar as it did not indulge the public's vulgar passion for cheap melodrama and didn't exploit stereotypical pagan cultural pattern of "going into the light" or other irrational disappearances, but turned out to be rational and life-affirming, like the Dusk Maiden Yuuko herself, although a spirit, but very rational girl who does not believe in Asian mysticism with all kinds of "curses" and "monsters" (which are often ridiculed by her in the anime) and in pagan fatalism. Vice verse to the pagan fatalism the ending is, using the Tolkien's words, eucatastrophic.

In general, if you pay attention to the symbolism and cultural strata of the Dusk Maiden, discarding all surface tinsel like anime cliches (which, in the essence, are mere conventions, because there are no "school", "harem", and other nonsense here - only names and hints, "silver grass", which otaku, exhausted by their limitations and self-hypnosis, mistook for a "monster"), then along with good directing, interesting art and music, as well as fascinating archetypal story, the "Dusk Maiden", though not without flaws, is one of the few exceptions that make anime real art.