![]() In the year 1999, the world has been reduced to an apocalyptic wasteland due to an inexplicable gust of wind that wiped even the most basic memories, such as speech and civility, from the minds of the world's populace. An English adaptation of the film was produced and released by Manga Entertainment on home video in Australia and the UK and by Central Park Media in North America. An anime film adaptation by Madhouse was released theatrically on December 22, 1990, directed by Kazuo Yamazaki. He is a member of several alternate history fora under the name 'SpanishSpy.A Wind Named Amnesia ( Japanese: 風の名はアムネジア, Hepburn: Kaze no Na wa Amunejia), also known as The Wind of Amnesia in Australia and the United Kingdom, is a Japanese novel authored by Hideyuki Kikuchi, originally published in 1983 by Asahi Sonorama. He writes regularly for the Sea Lion Press blog and for NeverWas magazine, and also appears regularly on the Alternate History Show with Ben Kearns. We should all be thankful that our memories are for the most part time, and that we should never take them for granted.Īlexander Wallace is an alternate historian, reader, and writer who moderates the Alternate History Online group on Facebook and the Alternate Timelines Forum on Proboards. Human achievements are those of memory and of practice and of discipline and of communication, and this film is about what happens when they are all ripped away from us. We talk of ‘industrial civilization’ and ‘technological civilization’ and ‘digital civilization,’ but all of those are dependent on the human beings who know how to operate them. At its core, A Wind Named Amnesia is about the utter fragility of modern civilization, and how dependent that civilization is on human beings. For those like me, it can come off as rather uncomfortable and poorly-handled.īut that is but one flaw. I believe I understand the purpose when it does show up, and I’m reasonably confident that it isn’t mere pornography rather, it reminds me of how Kim Stanley Robinson writes about sex, with some arcane trail of logic that must appear sophisticated to somebody but feels arcane to those not on its level. The only major flaw of A Wind Named Amnesia that occurs to me is the presence of nudity in some rather strange contexts. ![]() You really get a sense of just how big America is, and how much bigger it would seem if you have so very little modern infrastructure that is actually well-maintained. As you travel alongside Wataru and Sophia, you will see Las Vegas and a purposely-built government city with secrets (and something that will remind you of Appleseed), all heading towards the Big Apple. The plot itself is a road trip through a wasteland, akin to a more sedate Mad Max outside the cities and to Escape From New York in the cities (San Francisco certainly feels like all the criminals of the country have been dumped there and locked in). The two talk a lot about memory and its persistence or lack thereof (albeit with a distinctive lack of melting clocks), and if humanity in all its cruelty and all its benevolence deserves to remember anything. It is the relationship between Wataru and Sophia that the film wanders through the implications of this strange event. ![]() Wataru is introduced saving innocents from a rogue military robot, and Sophia is first seen standing on a ledge. This film follows two characters who meet in the ruins of San Francisco: Wataru (a name bestowed upon him) and Sophia. The end result is a complete and total apocalypse, where the United States is now a lawless wasteland where life is nasty, brutish, and short. They even lose their knowledge of the languages they had known since childhood. They lose their relationships, familial and romantic and friendly. They lose their capacity to operate vehicles and machines and tools. The premise is a rather simple one, albeit one with many depths: one day in the future (sometime in the 1990s, as shown by the opening), everyone loses their memory. Despite being a Japanese production, the film is set in the United States, on a trek from California to New York with a brief prelude set in Montana.
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