Mnemosyne - Episode 6 (Completed)

Ahh, Mnemosyne, however can we thank you for providing us with six long episodes of sadistic violence and gratuitous sex? By letting you drop into the not inconsiderable bin of easily and quickly forgotten anime, most likely.

While Mnemosyne hasn't been all bad by any stretch of the imagination, which some nice concepts and one or two half-decent storylines earlier in the series, it seemed that as the show wore on so the sex and violence become both more prominent and more pointless, as if to cover up for a main plot thread that was fast spiralling out of control into the realms of confusion.


However, no amount of sex or violence (although ironically this episode seemed to pull its punches sexually, albeit making up for it with tons of nudity, while keeping the violence coming) could really cover up the fact that this final, sixth instalment of Mnemosyne really didn't work in a lot of ways. For starters, its pacing felt all wrong, and indeed the whole endeavour often felt like a bit of a rush job to fit a satisfactory ending into this last fourty-five minute episode. This relatively break-neck rush to the finale probably also contributed to the general feeling of confusion surrounding it - Although all of the major points were explained, none of this was done in a way that truly felt satisfactory, and as a result neither Apos nor Rin finished the series as a character you could particularly care about it any way, be it negative or positive. The continued thread of immortality for all the major characters doesn't really help with this either, as no matter how they got slice and diced you knew they'd be coming back for more soon enough.

It's perhaps ironic that the series 'side stories' ended up being some of the best moments of the show - Perhaps if Mnemosyne had continued to focus on this rather than the whole Apos and Ygdrassil saga then it might have made for a more endearing series as a whole. I suppose, in closing, there's only one real lesson to be learned here - If you have yourselves an average anime series, it doesn't matter how many naked female forms or bloodied, dismembered corpses you throw at it, it'll still be average.