Quick Glance: A Wind Named Amnesia

     Time for my first Quick Glance!  A Quick Glance isn't really a full review, but rather me typing out my thoughts on something as they come, definitely taking a more casual approach.  They'll be done while a piece of media is rather fresh in my mind, if not right after I finish something.  This article right here is an exception since I watched it 2 days ago, but hush, daddy's talking.

     To begin my look into 90's anime as mentioned in my previous post, I decided to look into a movie that caught my eye just under a year ago: a little known work called A Wind Named Amnesia.  I looked at the concept with intrigued eyes and thought, "Huh, why isn't this remembered by anybody?" After finally watching it, I realized that there was a reason for that.

Well, let's get started with this.

     A Wind Named Amnesia is a film that starts off with a lot of promise due to its premise.  In the 80's and 90's, there was a seemingly large obsession with post-apocalyptic settings, but this film's version of said setting stood out to me.  In the year 1990, a wind suddenly blew through the world, causing everybody to forget everything.  Now, as implausible as this is, it leads to some realistic outcomes: people become unable to remember how cars work, or how planes work, or who their families are (or even what a civilization is).  Even forgetting how to speak.  In this world, there are two exceptions (at the beginning at least) named Wataru and Sophia, who then travel along a post-apocalyptic USA to bring Sophia to New York for reasons unknown.

     The rest of the film plays out rather shoddily while still being watchable and entertaining for the most part.  The checklist of tropes for this era could definitely be filled out here, featuring all of the following:

• A giant robot.
• A post-apocalyptic setting.
• Life run by supercomputers.
• Complacency in life due to these supercomputers.
• Needless nudity.
• Overly large amounts of exposition.
• A plucky male protagonist who keeps his head held high and is always trying to be in the moral right.

     The most egregious of these problems are the needless nudity and high amounts of exposition, for sure.  The topless females come at awkward points, when he film does not feel like it would benefit (for some) from having them on screen.  This includes a poorly-positioned sex scene less than ten minutes before the end of the film, which feels more than out of place.  The exposition, however, is a rather major problem with the storytelling, as it tends to be how the story presents its plot twists, just by talking at the viewer about them instead of giving them actual context.  The major twist of the film has much less impact due to this, since we're never given any visual reason to care, only textual.

Occasionally, I forgot the robot was a thing.  Oops.

     The story in general just has a problem of being unfocused, showcasing quite a few short asides to portray the post-apocalyptic world and what put America into this state.  While it sounds like it would be nice, the film decides to cram in several disjointed, barely-connected segments over the course of its 80 minute runtime.  A few of these longer elements are told through flashback, as well, meaning a good portion of the film is just told in flashback.  I felt like the film was wasting its time at points by not developing itself all that well and not better piecing together these segments, especially when they take on different tonal connotations.  Basically: the film's story is messy.

     What I can praise A Wind Named Amnesia for, however, is its background art and non-character animation.  While the animation of the characters is pretty sloppy (early Madhouse was really not that great with character animation), the backgrounds and design of post-apocalyptic America is genuinely quite pretty, showing that a lot of detail went into those, at least.  There is a scene early on in the film where a plane crashes into a library, and that is, shockingly, one of the best-animated scenes in the film, with a lot of great motion and detail.

I understand it's hard to fly a plane, but...

     Overall, A Wind Named Amnesia is a bit of a strange beast.  It's quite the messy film, but I can't help but say I did not waste my time when I was watching it.  It's got a lot of interesting scenarios associated with its post-apocalyptic setting and the backgrounds are nice to marvel at.  Furthermore, the pacing is brisk, going along at a rather quick pace.  I wish the payoff was better than it was, but oh well.  A messy, interesting 80 minutes.