Unnamed Memory - Episodes 1-6 Review

Summary

Suffering a curse that prevents him from bearing children, Oscar defeats the trial of Azure Tower to get a wish granted by The Witch of the Azure Moon. When he learns she cannot break the curse on him, he wishes her to be his Wife, as a Witch should be able to bear his child. From here, she becomes his Protector, refusing to wed him, and will attempt to break the curse over a year.

At its core, the show seems to be a romantic story as Oscar has decided he wants to be with this witch, and it goes beyond her ability to bear his child. And she is a character with a dark past who is going to end up working through that. The question is, how well does this show manage this?

A lot of Great Moments, But Barely Any Character

In a show where you start to care about the characters, there are a lot of really charming moments to be had here. The sheer dedication Oscar has to wanting to make Tinasha his wife is both funny and endearing. And they never go so overboard with Tinasha to kill the more romantic mood the show wants to go for. The writer knows how to handle these moments and how to play with the character dynamic to keep it interesting.

The problem is the characters barely feel like they exist outside of this relationship dynamic, so despite how well it is handled I just can't bring myself to get that invested in them as characters. I don't find myself seeing enough of them outside of that to bring myself to care. It wasn't until episode five that I formed an opinion on a character and... we'll get into that next.

Oscar is Kind of a massive dick.

This is a bit odd to discuss considering the overall light nature of the show up to this point because I did not see this coming. There was a scene where Tinasha and a side character fake a kiss to try to bait someone out to take action, though the specifics aren't important. Oscar sees this and doesn't realize it is fake. He proceeds to recover an artifact of the Kingdom that suppresses magical power and slaps it on Tinasha's wrist without her realizing it. This is where things get a bit uncomfortable.

See, he picks her up and says that he has no intention of letting her become another man. He proceeds to take her back to the bedroom. When she completely freaks out, her power overcomes the bracelet and causes the window to explode. He apologizes and says he just wanted to scare her a bit and wasn't going to do anything to her, admitting it was in poor taste. I will 100% believe that was his intent but... seriously dude, what the fuck? It was so out of pocket for anything I would have expected from this show so far. We finally start to see the main character develop some level of personality, and this is what we get.

Too Slow of a Build

After six episodes, I know it's trying to build up some kind of overall plot involving Tinasha's history, but at this point, I have no reason to be invested in the characters or any kind of interesting plot. I'm all for a slow build, but you need something to keep you interested as things progress. And frankly this show just didn't do that for me.

Good Visual Design

I can't say any of the designs are fantastic, but it's one of those shows that just manages to be nice to look at the entire time. The show is very colorful and atmospheric, the music always manages to match the scene well, and the few action scenes we get are all pretty good. Even if nothing stands out, there really aren't any issues and it all comes together well.

Overall Thoughts

It's a show with a good, solid premise and some interesting ideas. It just ends up falling because of some pretty poor execution. Things just sometimes seem to jump to the big moments without giving the characters time to breathe, and the show just kind of feels like it's tumbling forward to the inevitable end of the two getting together. It just ends up feeling uninteresting to watch or even talk about, which is a shame because there is something here.