50 First Dates, Anime-Style

America and Japan borrow television and cinema material from each other quite a bit. For the past 10 years, the trend has largely been "we steal Japanese horror films and Power Rangers, they steal everything else." That's been the general rule. I'd say less than half of American horror films this century have not been adapted from a Japanese original (One Missed Call comes to mind as the most recent example of this "borrowing" between friendly competitors), but I'd be a fool to deny that, by and large, it's mostly a one-way street (in both cinema and television) for Japan to import our stuff and, on occasion, to completely redo it from scratch. (Like their popular TV show "Galileo," which is identical to CBS's Numbers except the older brother cop got a sex change and the younger brother became more handsome, allowing for the possibility of romance.)

Anyway, I'm babbling a bit for the sake of my audience. Now that I've caught you up to speed, though, we can all move on to my main point and not get lost. And my main point is, I'm watching a show right now called ef ~A Tale of Memories~ and the major story arc in it is remarkably similar to Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore's 2004 film 50 First Dates. Just as charming. Probably a little more horrifying. (The Japanese do love their horror.) They introduced a few important differences to make the situation all the scarier for Barrymore's replacement, like causing her to lose her left eye in the same accident that robs her of her memory-making capabilities. (This means that, unlike Barrymore's character in 50 First Dates, Chihiro wakes up each day and the first thing she realizes is that something is very, very wrong.) Or the fact that they made the accident happen "four years ago when she was 12" instead of "one year ago when she was already an adult." This means that she has the mind of a 12 year old girl and all the hopes and dreams romantically that would come with that -- and the damning reality that no 12 year old girl, no matter how many video tapes you show her of the two of you having fun together, is going to entertain having sex with "a total stranger" she's "only just met."

So in this sense, I suppose I'd say ef ~A Tale of Memories~ presents a darker (and possibly more realistic) version of the events than what the American romantic comedy of 2004 did. If you've never seen the movie and are looking for a good anime to watch, this is probably worth trying out. It's only 6 hours long. If you have already seen 50 First Dates, I think you'll be disappointed with how little this show does that is new.