Spoilers below read at your own discretion The world and premise of this series I find to be seriously interesting. A world where everyone has essentially lost their mind in an instant so many questions arise why? How? Right from the get go Im hooked on learning about this world and witnessing Watarus epic journey Annnnnd nope The intrigue a couple minutes in already begins to fade as youre slapped with a small exposition dump by this random lady alright then and then you get hit by the 20 minute exposition flashback dump the ultimate two hit combo of how to completely kill the pace of the film. So we sit and watch Watarus history since the amnesiac wind and another important questions arises why is Wataru special compared to everyone else? A knowledge machine machine... Seriously? Listen I totally understand that the piece demonstrates the various ways technology can go serving as the primary antagonist in Watarus journey. But the whole superhero lab place felt too convenient for Wataru to gain knowledge and wisdom with the only struggle being simply to trust Charles Xavier jr. This immediately set my expectations fairly low for the story going forward and unfortunately I was right to do so. Ill skip the middle and its details because as I said its just not that interesting. I find the ending though to be a good example of how all over the place the story can be. It begins with a simple fight scene that is probably supposed to shut down that satellite antagonist? Even though its in space and its a computer? Sure righto... and then to just a random heavily implied sex scene? Ookay? I mean yeah wow the characters are had a lot of good chemistry through their strong characters so good for them Ill explain in a bit why Im being obnoxiously ironic here And then Wataru just walks away without the car he used for the whole film... it really didnt seem destroyed from the fight? Anyways he does some leaf whistling while looking at the floating Johnny head in the sky Jojos style and thats it. Sure I skipped the whole flying saucer mirror dome above NY but like the film basically did too. Looked cool I guess? Ah yeah Wataru this is where I parked my spaceship thanks for the ride. Yeah no worries. So unsurprisingly based on the tone of this review I find the main characters to be as empty as the rest of the narrative elements of Amnesia. Wataru is a kind person a bit of a hothead and his entire motive is to travel because his friend told him to do so. Pretty checklist character attributes that arent inherently bad due to their frequency of use but instead because Watarus character is never really pushed or challenged by the events of the film or the world around him. Sure he has to run and gun a few times in the film but his actual core values are never contested in a meaningful memorable way. You could replace Wataru with any generic shounentype protagonist and their likeness would be unparalleled. Somehow I find characters in the side cast who have no memories mind you to be more interesting than Wataru such as the presumed former cop. Why does he take care of his daughter? Is it because of the photo he has with her implying some sort of connection? Is it due to some innate paternal instinct? Is it because he was a cop? Or some other reason alltogether? Here whats left unspoken is compelling. What he will he do after the death of his daughter? how he will lead the now godless community? who knows? Sophias character is built around vagueness as well which does build interest initially. Unfortunately nothing ever comes of it. Theres no change growth or expansion of her character similar to Wataru. Despite being such a central figure she begins to feel empty behind that veil of vagueness when shes asked any question she responds: Eh idk. And then she just fucks right off back to space the ultimate enlightened neutralist. And I think these points really highlight the primary issue with the film my creative opinions beside being the god awful pacing. The scope of the premise combined with how they chose to do the story was way too massive for 80 minutes. At points scenes fell so disjointed and did not flow into each other at all like the story being based in the west coast for the majority of the first hour but within an actual minute being transported from Los Vegas to NY thats a huge distance. If they had lowered their production budget in favour of a better paced 20something episode TV show I think a better piece would have shown itself instead. And in regards to said production it mostly sounds and looks good not Akira or anything which came out 2 years before but hey a lot of things arent. But this provides me with further frustration as they could have chosen a more interesting story appropriate to the runtime with the budget they had. This film has left me with a question not about the intriguing setting but instead why did they choose to explore this world in probably the most bland and frustrating way possible? I can understand how a person could enjoy A Wind Named Amnesia but I find its way too much of a diamond in the rough for it to be worth a watch and my endorsement.