One day, a wind sweeps down from on high, wiping away human memory. Forgetting how to use the machines which make up every day life, mankind is thrust into a new dark age of ruined buildings and maddened machines, where all too often might makes right. In this land of chaos Wataru wanders, a human by chance granted a measure of his former human identity, seeking the source of this amnesia wind and the lost memories of humanity.

The unique premise of this anime allows it to explore human nature in a different kind of post-apocalyptic environment. The plot largely covers Wataru’s background, followed by his wanderings throughout America, with a short sequence of different environments and questions about human nature inherent in each such episode. Some of the premises for these individual episodes may be old, but the presentation is effective and slanted towards speculation about innate human nature. Like Tenshi no Tamago, the intent of the film is to raise questions through a series of portraits of a post-apocalyptic world. Some of the potential answers presented are more stereotyped and predictable than Tenshi no Tamago’s, but at the same time, the plot remains coherent and creative.

Wataru, doing exactly as his name implies, wanders a post-apocalyptic landscape.	The mysterious Sophia, as the Greek name would imply, possesses surprising insight into both the ravaged world and its inhabitants.

As in Tenshi no Tamago, there are two main characters: Wataru and Sophia. Wataru is a Japanese male who lost his memory when the winds came, but gained a second chance through a chance meeting with his mentor, Johnny. Johnny was a special experiment in memory enhancement and works to help Wataru learn the fundamentals of former human society, also giving him the name "Wataru," meaning "to wander." In contrast, Sophia is meant to be a mysterious second human who has her memories intact, as well as surprising insight into this ravaged world. There are other characters throughout, some of which play some rather interesting roles, designed to raise questions about the potential of human nature. A lot of the personalities may be stereotyped, but this is deliberate in order to more clearly illustrate different aspects of the central question.

The visual presentation of A Wind Named Amnesia relies heavily on camera motion around stills. The stills are incredibly detailed, however, and are a very effective means of painting the kinds of portraits necessary to explore the central question of this anime. There is substantially more animation in Wind than in Tenshi no Tamago, with minimal though effective frame rates for certain action scenes. For the most part, however, this anime relies more on stills than animation.

The music for this film is quite interesting and varied in style. From the frontier feel to more primitive, tribal music to the classical feel of traditional Victorian society, the orchestration encompasses a variety of musical styles in an effective manner, appropriately setting the tone for the various scenes. There may be no stellar vocal tracks to sing along to, but there are definitely some inspired themes in this accompaniment.

A Wind Named Amnesia is a more widely accessible anime set in the kind of existential or speculative genre epitomized by Tenshi no Tamago, with a more positive overall tone and a less jarring thematic progression. It is worth seeing at least once, if you are remotely intrigued by such themes of human identity or post-apocalyptic speculation.

Distributor: U.S. Manga Corps (CPM)
Creator: Hideyuki Kikuchi, Asahi Sonorama
Released: 1993

Plot: B+
Character Design: B
Animation Quality: C+
Music: B+
Overall: B+