(12 episodes)
What’s it about ?
A high school detective club who investigate ghost stories. And the club’s president is a ghost.
Characters
Okonogi, our point of view character for the first half of this episode. She seems to be the secretary of the club. She’s really, really stupid, and completely fails to pick up the numerous clues that there’s a ghost just next to her. Half of her interior monologue is devoted to how much she likes…
Teiichi, the vice-president of the club. He’s apparently got a sixth sense for paranormal events (although reading Okonogi’s thoughts is just a string of coincidences and misunderstandings). At the very least, he’s the only person who can see AND touch…
Yuuko, the club president, and a famous ghost haunting the school. It’s just that Okonogi is too dumb to make the connection. Since she’s invisible to most, she spends a lot of her time trolling people and flirting with Teiichi. She’s got some memory problems, hence the series’ title.
Kirie, the fourth member of the club. Somehow she can see Yuuko (the reason why isn’t explained in this episode, but becomes obvious once I did three seconds of research), and thus she spends most of her screentime being annoyed by her antics.
The gimmick in this episode is that you see the exact same sequence of events twice (down to the specific camera angles), first without and then with Yuuko and her dialogue. It’s not as successful as it could be, as most of it was perfectly obvious the first time around ; but there’s enough new material (especially Yuuko’s body language) for it not to feel like a waste of time.
Production Values
Impressive. The animation team goes out of its way to make even a simple corridor look cool, and the episode’s gimmick wouldn’t work without a great attention to detail and body language. There’s also some good use of colour for atmospheric effect. That said, there are some points later on where Okonogi’s hysterics devolve into SD shorthand.
Overall Impression
Hum. This is a decent setup episode ; the joke isn’t subtle, but it works. And of course, it looks great.
The problem is that, while we’ve now got a good handle on the characters, there’s no indication about where the show itself is going. Is the gang going to have random slice-of-life adventures ? Or is there a wider plot coming ? This episode doesn’t tell us, and so it’s hard to say yet whether the series can sustain 11 more episodes. (I really hope the gimmick was a one-shot, because otherwise it’s going to be bloody annoying.)
Well, at least I’m intrigued enough to check a couple more episodes out.
