Unnamed Memory

Episode 3

You are right if you're starting to feel that this is skipping merrily through the source material in a quest to adapt to a certain point. While I generally try to keep source information out of streaming reviews, it feels important to acknowledge that this is moving pretty quickly because it's affecting Tinasha and Oscar's relationship. Based on these three episodes, there's no real reason for them to feel as close as they do, which undercuts the final scene this week. Was it traumatic for Oscar to have to snap her neck in his dreams? Absolutely, no matter how emotionally close they are. Does anything explain what appears to be Tinasha's romantic feelings for him? Not really. Tinasha being upset because another witch is encroaching on her territory makes more sense at this juncture.

And she has every right to be upset with Lucretia, the Witch of the Forbidden Forest. Even if we discount the fact that Lucretia is messing with a human contracted to Tinasha, she's still behaving in a way that will make Tinasha's job infinitely more difficult. If you recall, Tinasha is meant to break Oscar's curse and keep him alive (hence the barrier she's put around him), and Lucretia appears to be gleefully trying to kill him. Why? Because she can! We don't know what the witches' relationship is. Still, Lucretia seems like the kind of person who would just really annoy Tinasha in general, and given the witches' relationship with mortality – if they're not immortal, they're the closest thing to it – she may not truly understand what slowly killing Oscar via a series of erotic dreams means. Or she fully understands it and is counting on it taking long enough that Tinasha will catch her out before he dies, which feels more likely. Given the alacrity with which she hands over the vials of Oscar's bodily fluids (and let's not think too hard about how she got his blood and semen), this could just be Lucretia's teasing way of helping out a sister witch.

Lucretia is the most interesting character to appear in the series so far, although that mysterious man who vaporized Valt bears keeping an eye on him. We could easily read her “gift” to Oscar and Tinasha as her acknowledgment that such fluids are going to help Tinasha with her curse-breaking and that Tinasha, who practices a form of magic that requires her to remain “pure,” might have trouble acquiring at least the semen. She doubts whether so-called purity is still something Tinasha needs to practice with her level of magical power, but she's also ensuring that she can remain celibate if that's what she wants. I suppose we could also view her dreams as a present to Oscar since she just told him he's not likely to get into Tinasha's bed anytime soon, but that feels like an assumption of lust and/or affection that the characters haven't earned. Saying that you want to marry someone for practical reasons like succession doesn't equate to desperately wanting to sleep with them, after all, no matter what historical romance novels tell you.

Part of the problem is that neither Tinasha nor Oscar have been as developed as they need for us to feel like they belong together. More time has been spent making it clear how inept and annoying Lazar is. Is he meant to be funny? I'm not sure, but at this point, I'm wondering why Oscar insists on taking him on all his missions. Lazar's more of a liability than an aide outside the palace. (He also suffers from a major perspective issue when he's seen sitting on a couch from the front; it looks like he's standing in a crouch rather than sitting on an object.) He's presumably meant to be a foil to the inhumanly composed Oscar, but it isn't quite working.

Despite my grumbles, this isn't a terrible episode. It's still clear that Tinasha is taking her job seriously and that Oscar is equally serious about eventually marrying her. Lucretia at least has a more overt personality than anyone else in the show so far. But it also doesn't feel like it's doing the source material justice, and that's something to keep an eye on as the story attempts to reach whatever point it's aiming for.

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Unnamed Memory is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.