The Wind of Amnesia (1993)

aka A Wind Named Amnesia (1993)

Dir. Kazuo Yamazaki

A peculiar wind blows across the world, erasing mankind's memories. It's like nature hit a reset switch: people forget how to speak; parents forget their children, and vice versa; drivers forget how to drive; doctors forget how to heal, etc. The knowledge in books remains, but no one knows how to read. With even basic life skills lost, how will humanity survive? And more to the point, do they even deserve to?

But like every post-apocalyptic scenario in fiction, not everyone is affected. A memory-wiped youth named Wataru meets one such individual and learns from him. Thereafter, Wataru journeys across America looking for something that honours his mentor / friend.

I'm a big fan of stories that encourage us to question what makes cultures tick, and by extension examine humanity's true worth. E.g., with a clean slate, can we do things better? With religion dead, will our unconscious fears cause us to invent it again? Post-apoc settings are a tremendous framework for that kind of thing.

The movie ticks many of those boxes in a salient and ambitious way. It never over-explains a point. It gives just enough perspective to let a viewer add their own meanings to certain things. The approach isn't without its problems, but they weren't enough to ruin the whole for me.

There's a few action scenes sandwiched between the seeker philosophy, with machines that would fit in the mech genre well, delivering an admirable level of threat and violence.

It does reveal the wind's origin, eventually, but it doesn't give answers to all the questions that it raises. It's not that kind of story. But it's memorable. It has its share of bat-shit crazy that anime of the era was known for, but it was so different in all other respects to what the UK was getting at the time that its story stayed with me. I first saw it about 25 years ago on TV. I searched for it for years in VHS (and later DVD) stores but was never able to find it for sale. I saw it for the second time only today, after having stumbled upon it by chance, and enjoyed it just as much.