Krystallina: Demographic classifications for Japanese series have never been a science, but it’s even harder now with the webnovel boom. I was interested in Unnamed Memory for two reasons: one, the cover’s art looked like something from games like Octopath Traveler or Vanillaware’s releases, and two, the synopsis sounded shoujo-ish, a demographic that has been lagging from the mainly manga publishers like Yen Press.
After reading The Witch of the Azure Moon and the Cursed Prince, I can see shoujo tendencies, but I also see why various sites have classified it under the other three main demographics.
Prince Oscar, who is incredibly capable in both physical and mental endeavors and wields an anti-mage sword, climbs a tower where one of the world’s five witches lives. Reach the top, and she’ll grant a wish, and Oscar wants to undo a curse cast on him by another witch that makes him unable to have children. Although he reaches the top single-handedly, Tinasha is not what he expected — friendlier, and looking like a teenager. Tinasha tells him that it will take a lot of work for her to try to mitigate the spell, but a woman with strong magical resistance may be able to carry his child. Oscar immediately suggests Tinasha be that woman, an idea she firmly rejects. Still, as a reward for climbing her tower, she agrees to watch over him for a year and work to undo the spell. Thus their time together begins.
Again, it’s a shoujo-like atmosphere — but Tinasha waves away Oscar’s random declarations, keenly aware of their age difference and wanting Oscar to pick a bride out of love, not convenience. She often scolds him for being too affectionate, but she also enjoys his doting, almost cat-like treatment of her. The novel makes no secret about that their encounter will end up changing the world. Tinasha has also been searching for someone for a long time, and when things like murders are happening around the castle, yeah, there’s a bigger story out there than just the relationship between a royal and a spellcaster who could be his great-several-times-over-grandmother, even as they end up closer because of these sometimes episodic, sometimes connected incidents.
The larger mystery at hand is going to intrigue many people (although I suggest for maximum suspense to not read the end-of-volume preview for the second book), but the fantasy action is shows a lot of promise as well. I want the supporting cast (who are mostly warriors/soldiers) to prove their worth since Oscar and Tinasha are so OP compared to them. Tinasha in particular is not just a powerful mage, but she is also a strong physical fighter. You don’t see too many witches who can also use a sword, but she also enjoys learning more about magic as well as teaching Oscar. She’s powerful, but she has enough vulnerabilities and insight to not be a Mary Sue type of protagonist.
While the prince and the witch have to battle several strong opponents, most of their struggle to win is because they’re protecting others rather than facing an opponent of equal power. With the story’s antagonist still mostly off-screen, they’re going to have to train hard not to be dead weight for the leads.
Otherwise, despite some slow sections and sometimes not knowing if Tinasha is purposely being obtuse or is that obtuse about Oscar’s intentions, whether you come for the shoujo romance, josei reflections, shounen battles, or seinen intrigue, Unnamed Memory is a delight for a wide range of readers.
Krystallina’s rating: 4.5 out of 5
Helen: Oscar looks like the perfect prince to his people but he’s deeply troubled by a curse laid on his family when he was young by a witch, one that promises that “the blood of your family will tear a hole in a woman’s stomach” and thus end the royal family line. So Oscar has gone to seek the advice and help another witch: the Witch of the Azure Moon who will only listen to the requests of challengers who can make it up through the trials in her tower. The Witch of the Azure Moon, Tinasha, is one of the most powerful magical beings alive but even she can’t quickly undo the magic of another witch, although she remarks that this curse feels more like a blessing in some ways since it is also the source of Oscar’s near in-human strength in all areas, an added mystery to an event Oscar barely remembers.
Tinasha is confident that she can unravel the spell if given the time, or at least find another woman with enough latent magical power to survive a pregnancy with Oscar’s child, but Oscar has another solution: if it’s just a matter of having a wife with tons of magic, then he would like Tinasha to be his wife! And thus begins a one-year period where Oscar tries to convince Tinasha to be his wife, Tinasha tries to unravel what the Witch of Silence cast so mysteriously on the boy Oscar, and, as the book solemnly intones, the Age of Witches begins to come to an end.
As a lot of Tinasha’s analysis can be done on the side, the main focus of this story isn’t on her magical workings and findings but as establishing her and Oscar as a couple, or at least establishing their chemistry since Tinasha is still vocally uninterested in becoming his wife (the promo for volume 2 at the end of this volume seems to articulate a good reason for that which she didn’t give in this volume). As such, your enjoyment of this story will largely hinge on how much you like the dynamic between Tinasha and Oscar and less on the individual events during this one year period (like fighting a beast at a magical lake or unraveling a mysterious murder of a castle mage).
They’re not a bad couple together — they both have a lot of respect for each other and end up entertaining each other a lot as well — but they didn’t grab my interest very deeply. They, and all of the characters really, feel a bit too idealized and too removed from the messy contradictions that make up human nature and I just didn’t feel like I connected with them. This is a characterization issue that many stories struggle with but here Unnamed Memory leans more into Tinasha and Oscar’s already near-mythical statuses of “the Witch of the Azure Moon” and “the Crown Prince” rather than trying to ground them as “real” characters which was simply less to my taste.
The two of them and the story did grab my attention enough however that I am curious about what happens in the second volume (especially given the aforementioned, spoilerly promo for volume 2 at the end of this one). I’m also curious about the curse/blessing placed on Oscar; my pet theory is that his mother is actually the Witch of Silence which would explain why a witch would do the unheard of thing and meddle with royal affairs in the first place. I’m not absolutely dying to know the conclusions of any of these plots but, if I saw the second volume at the library, I would take it home and continue reading this story about the end of one age and the beginning of another.
Helen’s rating: 3 out of 5