Dusk Maiden of Amnesia by Maybe

I spooked up the blog a little, I hope its not too cluttered now! I was glad to find a manga I liked this time, but I had hoped for something spookier. I'm not much for the horror genre in the first place and it is so hard to find one that suits my tastes completely. The journey continues on, though, the month is far from over.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia (Tasogare Otome x Amnesia) by Maybe

Art and story (c) Maybe

Genre: Supernatural, Shonen

Length: 10 Volumes – 45 Chapters

            There's a lot of things in this manga that remind me of Sankarea, and the art is one of them, though, only in small ways. It has the same sort of open faced look to the fresh

faces, with wide expressive mouths and eyes. The body shapes are slim mostly but overall they don't really seem age appropriate when it comes down to it, I assumed I had read wrong when I was told the characters were junior high age instead of high school, especially considering the main girl's physique of a large bust and thighs, I was wrong. Apparently the main character is twelve….? I'm still disbelieving, but these things have happened before, so I soldiered on. The eyes are large and angled, with a deep, dark look, then there are the eyebrows, always visible through people's hair. The brows also have interesting shapes, but I found them distracting more than anything. The clothes are well fitted, and the school uniforms ride the line of traditional while still looking interesting. There is a very modern look to the haircuts, even the old fashioned ones, and they have intriguing shapes, too. Also, it doesn't really matter much to me, but the way the, uh, how to put it delicately, "flesh" of this manga was really well done. The supernatural character of this manga liked to show off her body a lot, and I applauded the way it looked, very natural in a manga sort of way. There was just a little too much of it than was necessary. There were a few times I noticed the hands looking a little out of place, though, either just plain awkward or out of proportion. Still, beyond the cute look the characters project, there is a definite creepy factor to the art. The story isn't particularly creepy, but the ambiance of the whole thing still made it work for this season. The darkly drawn hallways and deeply shadowed classrooms really give the feeling of "creepy school" with out too much gore. Often the eyes looked scary and dramatic, too, though sometimes that seemed out of place with what was actually happening. All together his manga is visually appealing.

            It seems almost bizarre that such a prestigious and hard working school would have so many ghost stories, but the strange eclectic architecture of the grounds leads to many of the sightings and gossip. In it's 60 years of being around, there are even a few rumors that date all the way back to the school's origins. The most well known? That a girl died on the grounds and if you see her ghost, she will haunt you and curse you. Teiichi is a first year student at this school, and has heard the many stories but he doesn't really pay them mind until the maze-like structures get him lost in the oldest building. There, he finds an old mirror, where his reflection looks empty at first, but a girl suddenly appears behind him. She's beautiful, friendly, and... the ghost?!?
            Its hard finding a manga like this one, and, like I mentioned before, Sankarea, where the supernatural elements are treated in a different way than is typically seen. Dusk Maiden may be a little more generic than Sankarea was, but it was still original in a lot of ways I didn't expect. It is an ecchi manga, which I have mentioned several times are not particularly my favorite, and I was also worried it would become a harem manga as well, another genre I don't have much interest in (though it turned out not to really be a harem manga). As I was going about the second volume, a score settled in my head that I thought the manga would be in the end, and that didn't budge the whole time. That doesn't happen often, this manga is what you see in the first volume, and it is consistently that. Of course, that isn't all good, the plot is a bit stagnant at times, a whopping ten volumes when all you need to know is really given to you around the third or fourth and then the status quo is maintained for the rest of it. Some how, that didn't bother me, the plot perpetuated it's self, really. There is the fact that the tenth volume is basically useless, though and I almost knocked this manga down a full number for the ending, as well, but I

suppose there could have been a good following for it or something and so everyone involved decided the end of the ninth volume just wasn't the best time to end it. Either that, or, they were milking for more money, and the ending really feels like the latter here, unfortunately. All the same, I enjoyed Dusk Maiden a lot, even during the slow parts because another facet of the school or of the characters would come through during them. Yuuko the ghost is a fun character all by herself, at once vulnerable and lonely, she also knows her place as a dead being and wants to enjoy the time she has with a person who can actually see her. She is childish and world weary rolled together so that you see so many different sides of her through out the manga. Teiichi isn't as clear of a character, but his easy embarrassment and Yuuko's need to tease him makes for a lot of good times. The two main side characters are fun as well, butting their way into the story, along with a myriad of weird classmates and the like. I laughed, though I didn't cry, I think the story could have leaned more traumatic and still have held up. I really recommend this for manga fans who like cute stories instead of the gory horror ones to color their Halloween.

4/5 Cute but with a nice supernatural darkness to it.

The color pages were really nice, too...