This is Part 14-1 of the introduction to the Unnamed Memory (UM) story universe, World-Memoriae. With the announcement of the final two volumes of After the End—Volumes 7 and 8—it looks like we’ll get to follow Oscar and Tinasha on one last off-world adventure: a journey to the Outsiders’ home world.

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The story takes place in the very distant future, in the year 11654 of the Unnamed Memory world. By comparison, the anime and main light novel take place around the year 1654–1655. After Oscar and Tinasha destroy the last of the Outsiders’ artifacts, they travel to the Outsiders’ world to face the final battle. They arrived at the destination, but Tinasha’s body was destroyed, and now her soul lived inside Oscar’s brain.

Aside from a few short stories, the only longer story about Oscar and Tinasha’s adventures in the Outsiders’ world is an older work called End of Memory (EoM). It takes place in the Outsiders’ world and, judging by the title, it might have been intended as the original ending to the whole Unnamed Memory story universe.

Like the already published Babel series, EoM has its own MC. Oscar and Tinasha appear in it, but so far they’re more like supporting characters. The author hasn’t finished EoM, so only Act I, consisting of 17 sections, is available.

At this point, After the End vol 7 and 8 seem to be the actual conclusion.

So what’s the difference between EoM and ATE 7–8? One way to think about it is that both stories cover the same broad sequence of events, but ATE 7–8 tell it from Oscar and Tinasha’s perspectives, while EoM follows its own main character.

Where can I read the story of End of Memory?

You can read all of EoM Act 1 on the author’s website, of course, in Japanese only. If you don’t understand Japanese, some sort of translation software or AI is needed. Or you can continue read this part to get a rough idea of what EoM is about. 

A quick recap before we start

Before we jump into EoM, let’s recap what the Outsiders’ world, Rudyrustyr, is like. It’s a floating city protected by a powerful barrier. The city drifts through a void—or a dimensional rift that looks like space, at least according to what its citizens believe.

Rudyrustyr is divided into 12 “Districts,” with a central Tower dominating the city. Parts of the city were almost destroyed in the war, giving the place the feel of a dying, dystopian civilization. It always reminds me of a blend of “the Capitol” from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games and “Zalem”, the upper city in Yukito Kishiro’s Battle Angel Alita.

If you rewatch James Cameron’s Alita – Battle Angel movie (Hollywood version, not the old anime OVA), the early development of EoM’s MC is kind of similar to how the character progresses in the movie. But this is just a personal opinion. The life of District 10th is no better than the Iron City in the movie.

What happens in End of Memory Act I?

Act I follows Liluya-Lulu, a young woman who wakes up with no personal memories inside a coffin in the ruined 10th District of the Outsiders’ world. A message on the wall tells her name, but she remembers nothing about who she is or where she came from.

As she learns to survive among the scavengers, Liluya gradually builds a new family with Hitz, a taciturn appraiser; Kanan, a young scavenger boy; and Saffy, a tailor.

The main mystery is Liluya’s connection to the Central Tower of their city. On the surface, it’s a story about an amnesiac girl searching for her origins. But to me, the deeper theme is how someone with no past can still build a new identity through the relationships she forms with others.

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Awakening in the Coffin (T0)

Liluya first dreams of waking beneath a ceiling with a blue map while someone whispers, “Good morning.” (This scene reminds me of The Blue Assembly in the After the End volume 3)

She then wakes for real inside a black coffin in a dirty stone chamber. She cannot remember her name, appearance, origin, or history.

The only clue is an inscription on the wall: “Good morning, Liluya Lulu.” The name feels strangely right, so she accepts it as her own.

Walking outside, she finds a ruined city beneath a purple sky. Broken transit structures and abandoned buildings all show that people once lived there, but the streets appear deserted.

A red bird approaches her and turns into a bracelet when she touches it. The bird becomes her first mysterious companion and an early sign that she is definitely no ordinary District 10th’s civilian resident.

Kanan and Hitz

Kanan, a very young scavenger boy in District 10th, finds Liluya wandering without wearing protective gear. This part of the city has been contaminated by harmful substances from the previous war.  Kanan chooses to help and brings her back to a plant-filled small dome inhabited by Hitz, an appraiser who identifies, repairs, and decontaminates objects recovered from the ruins.

Hitz appears detached and unsentimental young man. His right eye is a malfunctioning artificial eye, and he rarely explains himself. However, he gives Liluya shelter, clothing, food, and work. She moves into the dome, where clean water flows beneath a glass-bottomed pond. The green dome becomes an island of life within the gray ruins and gradually becomes her new home.

Learning to Live and Understand Love

Liluya retains language and fragments of general knowledge, but she lacks social judgment and personal experience. She asks seemingly stupid questions about work, bodies, affection, and ordinary life. Hitz teaches her chores. Kanan teaches her how to scavenge and read danger in the ruins – especially from human traffickers.

Saffy, a brilliant tailor who loves Hitz, initially treats Liluya as a rival after seeing her in his coat. Liluya responds with admiration rather than jealousy, and the two become close. Saffy is one of the rare people with a strange disease called genederless: she has no biological sex, stops visibly aging in adolescence, and may die before thirty without expensive medical treatment. She and her father moved to District 10th to avoid traffickers who treat genderless people as valuable human merchandise.

The Floating City

Hitz explains that Rudyrustyr is both the name of the floating city and the whole world known to its residents. 12 districts surround a central Tower. Their resources and living conditions differ sharply. District 7th concentrates wealth and power, while District 10th survives through salvage, repair, and informal trade after war and contamination destroyed much of its infrastructure.

The Magic, oh, no, Bioenergy

While salvaging valuable items from the past, Liluya learned from Hitz all humans in the Outsider’s world possess an energy commonly called bioenergy.

(The same bioenergy is called MAGIC in other less-developed worlds – like the world of Unnamed Memory, and only a few people like mages have it.)

People here can use a scientific device to boost their bio-energy level. “A-Cube” is a device to respond to and amplify this specific magic level. A small number of people can manifest magic through amplification of A-Cube, summoning the power outside the body as an Eight Seth, meaning “the outline of existence”. (Which is a fancy Outsider’s way of saying “Cast a magic spell”)

In other words, even all human in the Outsider’s world possesses magic, but not everyone can use it, and only a few of them can boost the magic like a mage in the world of Unnamed Memory. 

Hitz also noticed Liluya’s bioenergy level is “UNUSUALLY STRONG”. He seems to have some idea about Liluya's past, but he kept silent. (This probably means if she is born in the world of Unnamed Memory, she could be a witch?)

Traffickers and the First Act of Self-Defense

Liluya’s beauty, lack of identity, and social innocence make her an ideal target for abduction by human traffickers. Arlei, the son of the antiquities dealer Cerro, offers her unusual “highly paid work”.

Naïve Liluya nearly accepts because she wants to help Saffy pay for her genderless treatment, but Saffy and Kanan explain that Arlei intends to sell her to a certain wealthy patron.

Hitz then decided to teach Liluya to use an A-Cube-powered laser gun to protect herself. During her first attempt to boost her own magic with A-Cube, she loses consciousness and dreams of a scary scene:

“Hundreds or thousands of black coffins arranged in a vast chamber”

When Arlei approaches her again, Liluya clearly refuses him and fires her laser gun past him as a warning. This marks her first deliberate act of self-defence. (Good job girl!)

Meet Oscar: the “Outsider” from a Different World

After scaring away Arlei, Liluya’s magic was noticed by anther nearby adult male stranger.  The stranger introduces himself as Oscar, a swordsman who traveled from outside the city.

Oscar searches for beings called the 12 (maybe the guy who invented the blue and red time-rewinding orb) and wants to find a way to enter the central Tower. He notices Liluya’s unusual magic power and offers to investigate her amnesia, noting that his wife Tinasha understands memory manipulation better than he does.

Liluya declines with caution until she can consult Hitz first (smart girl!). Oscar appears courteous, but he secretly puts a tracking device on Liluya so that he can track her later and, if necessary, let Tinasha enter her memory by force.

This is only a very brief encounter. Liluya doesn’t think too much about it.

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The Central Database and Silver Sand

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Kanan hears from another scavenger that a surviving computer terminal may connect to the Tower’s central database and proposes using its citizen records to search Liluya’s true identity. They travel deeper into the ruined district and enter a sealed white structure. Beneath it, they find the corpse of another scavenger and encounter a silver-haired girl with a massive metallic tail dividing into bladed tendrils.

The girl identifies herself as Silver Sand, Rudyrustyr’s defense combat system. She follows the Tower’s regulations and attacks all intruders regardless of their reasons. Liluya and Kanan flee underground. When they reach a door bearing the Tower emblem, Liluya instinctively commands it to open. Somehow the door responds to Liluya’s command and lets them in, proving that some part of the Tower still recognizes Liluya’s past authority.

(It’s a hint she did possess security clearance to enter the Tower somehow from her past. But now being identified as an intruder rather than a valid user)

Deleted Identity and the Waiting Message

A surface terminal has no record of Liluya. Deeper inside, the pair reaches the true recording device, Dilsh, a conscious database (like your AI agent).

(It’s the same Dilsh broadcast to Oscar and Tinasha at the end of ATE volume 6)

Dilsh reveals that Liluya once had a record, but someone deleted it five years earlier, and only the administration of the Tower possesses data deletion authority.

Dilsh also explains that the people in the Tower have no ordinary births or vacancies. Only one person was ever removed from its ranks, and that removal occurred before the city existed. When Liluya sings the Shell Cracking Song, the one fragment retained from her past, her voice unlocks Dilsh to deliver a prepared personal message:

“Welcome back, Liluya Lulu. I wish you a safe journey and sincerely hope that we will meet again someday.”

Dilsh refuses to say who sent the message and disintegrates into sand immediately after delivering the message.

Kanan’s Injury and Liluya’s Departure

After the computer terminal’s self-destruction, soon Silver Sand breaks into Dilsh’s chamber. Liluya cannot defeat her. However, an unexpected ally shows up.

Hitz, warned by another scavenger, uses “spatial folding technique” (a.k.a. teleport magic) to reach the facility and destroys Silver Sand just before Liluya and Kanan die. Only then does Liluya discover that Kanan suffered severe abdominal injuries during the first attack.

The lucky thing is that, despite the dystopian setting, the world’s science is highly advanced. Damaged organs can be replaced by buying new ones. Hitz saves Kanan by getting him fresh blood and replacement organs.

Basically, repairing your body in the Outsider’s world is like repairing a car: just replace whichever parts are damaged.

The catch is that District 10 can only provide low-quality biological parts, and they won’t last long in a growing child like Kanan. Liluya feels responsible for her recklessly entering the facility with Kanan, so she decides to get him better replacement organs. But the good ones are extremely expensive, and she has no way to pay for them.

With no other options, Liluya finally accepts a “high-paying job” in District 7, arranged through Arlei, the human trafficker.

At first, she’ll have to work for three years to pay off the debt for Kanan’s new organs. Hitz offers all his savings to reduce that term to one year.

So, yes—she effectively sells a year of her freedom to save Kanan’s life.

Before she leaves, Hitz tells her more about who she might be: possibly an experimental subject who escaped from the Tower. The Tower may erase the memories of anyone who escapes, sometimes so completely that they don’t even remember escaping.

But that isn’t what Liluya cares about right now.

She sets aside the mystery of her past and takes responsibility for the life she’s building with the people she cares about. What she worries about is much more immediate:

Will she be able to return to her new home after a year of this “high-paying job”? Will Hitz and Kanan still accept her, no matter what she will become?

Hitz reassures her that the dome will always be her home.

Act 1 ends with Liluya leaving District 10 for District 7 to take on that shady job. She goes because she feels responsible for Kanan—not because she’s still chasing answers about her past. It’s the story of a brave young woman facing the unknown, guided by the people she cares about now rather than haunted by the past ghost.

So…

• What will be Liluya’s fate?
• Will she meet some wealthy/powerful figure from District 7th who recognizes her lost past?
• How would her path cross with Oscar and Tinasha later?
• Is she related to any Outsider who sent evil artifacts to the world of Unnamed Memory?
• Could she relate to Oscar’s ancestor, the first Queen of Farsas, Dierdre, the first outsider enters the world of Unnamed Memory?

Since there is no Act 2 written, we may find some answers in the about to published After the End volumes 7 and 8.

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More dots connected, more questions raised

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Does time flow at the same speed in both worlds?

Here’s an interesting question: does time pass at the same speed in the Unnamed Memory world and the Outsiders’ world?

Oscar and Tinasha spend more than 10,000 years hunting down all 12 Outsider artifacts. That’s an incredibly long time. We know the Outsiders sent their artifacts into the Unnamed Memory world to observe and experiment, but it seems strange that they would wait so long for results—even for some near-immortal beings.

For each science experiment, it has a clear purpose and needs timely results, not waiting for extremely long periods of time, unless the speed of time flow is different – like 100 years in the Unnamed Memory world being just like 1 day in the Outsiders’ world.

In End of Memory, the events in the Outsiders’ world seem to have taken place within the last decade. Even the civil war, which many characters talk about, appears to be relatively recent. Liluya’s records were erased five years ago, not 500 or 5,000 years ago. Here is the timeline event happened before the story of EoM started:

Some early Unnamed Memory readers had a wild fan theory: perhaps time flows at different speeds in the two worlds.

It wouldn’t be a new idea in anime or light novels. Dragon Ball has the “Room of Spirit and Time” (the Hyperbolic Time Chamber), and Fushigi Yûgi: The Mysterious Play also plays with the difference in time between different worlds (anime listing).

However, this is simply another unconfirmed wild-guess fan theory, but indeed mitigate the sense of time between worlds.

At least, the truth is not far from us.

Rudyrustyr as a “closed world”??

Based on the descriptions in the story, Rudyrustyr feels more like a “survivor’s ark”—a gigantic city-vessel—than a complete “world” of its own. Liluya’s first dream sequence, when she tries to increase her magical power, shows what looks like hundreds of thousands of coffins. That also gives me the impression that the floating city may be a remnant of a once highly advanced civilization.

Maybe Rudyrustyr was built to preserve survivors of an earlier disaster. Perhaps it drifts between worlds, carrying the last remnants of a lost civilization. We still don’t know for now.

The three-year civil war

The story doesn’t identify either side in the war, but the surviving slogans in District 10 condemn District 7’s violence and the Tower’s rule. That makes me think the conflict was probably a resistance movement against the political order, rather than a simple territorial dispute.

The war destroyed the ring railway, damaged the barriers between districts, depopulated District 10, and spread contamination. The salvage economy we see in the present feels like the social aftermath of that conflict.

At the same time, the Tower may still maintain systems the city needs to survive, so the conflict might not divide neatly into oppressors and liberators.

In the “Witch’s Round Table” chapter of After the End, Volume 5, the AI meeting table discusses a conflict in a city. Could that be a reference to the three-year civil war that devastated District 10?

Hitz is no ordinary civilian scavenger

Hitz is clearly no ordinary scavenger. He has combat magic skills, knew exactly where to teleport to rescue Liluya and Kanan, and knew how to defeat Silver Sands. He must know more about Liluya’s past and the Tower’s secrets than he lets on.

He seems to recognize Liluya as one of the Tower’s experimental subjects when they first meet, but he keeps that to himself. At the same time, he doesn’t appear to know much about the experiments themselves or their purpose.

So, who was Hitz before he became a scavenger? He may have had some role connected to the Tower, though probably not as one of its top decision-makers.

An early fan theory was that he had served as a security official or in a special military unit protecting the Tower.

Remember when I mentioned that the Outsiders’ AI, “Dilsh,” has an official X account? One of Dilsh’s log posts, dated April 11, 2012, on X(Twitter), may support the theory:

“Hitz was removed.”

This probably confirms Hitz was once part of Tower’s operation, but for some reason he was removed, and now lives very low-profile in District 10th.

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Is Liluya somehow related to Oscar?

One old fan theory suggests that Liluya might be a clone of the 13th Outsider, Dierdre—Oscar’s ancestor and the first Queen of Farsas. Why do some readers think that?

In this Happy Ending romance about Oscar and Tinasha ( 奇跡のような噓を貴方と: A Miracle-Like Lie with You), Tinasha uses magic to dry Oscar’s hair and notices his distinctive eye color, which she describes as resembling dusk over a blue ocean. Since both of them are hiding their identities, Tinasha recognizes it as the eye color of a very ancient bloodline.

The first Queen of Farsas—the Outsider who entered the Unnamed Memory world—had the same eye color. It’s also a trait associated with direct descendants of the Farsas royal line.

Liluya has blue eyes, too. The story mentions them when she first sees herself after waking up, and later the story goes “Liluya’s blue eyes” and “Oscar’s blue eyes” when they meet.

Of course, blue eyes could simply be a common trait among people from the same region too.

People who support this theory focus on the idea of a “full circle.” Long ago, Dierdre gave her power to the Unnamed Memory world to fight artifacts sent by her fellow Outsiders. She lost that power forever and lived as an ordinary human woman—the first Queen of Farsas. More than 10,000 years later, Oscar brings that power back to the Outsiders’ home world and restores it to Liluya, who may be Dierdre’s clone or reincarnation.

Again, this is only a fan theory … and some other reader’s version of perfect closure of the whole story.

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The origin of Liluya’s conflict identity with the Tower

Why does the Tower’s defense system, Silver Sands, attack Liluya, while the door still responds to her command to open?

Liluya was probably connected to the Tower and may have been more than an ordinary experimental subject. Her access to hidden doors, Dilsh’s welcome message, the deletion of her records, and her unusually high bioenergy level all seem to point to her past might have held a higher position inside the Tower.

But why would the Tower’s defenses treat her as an intruder? It seems possible that someone is preventing her from reconnecting with the Tower—someone with the authority to override Silver Sands and classify her as an enemy, or whatever conflict inside the Tower. Again, more questions arise.

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The Shell-Cracking Song and the coffins

The recurring coffin imagery may point to a large-scale preservation system, rather than simply symbolizing death. Liluya wakes in a coffin, dreams of thousands more, and remembers a song about an unnamed chick trapped inside a white shell. The shell could represent the coffin, the city’s barrier, and Liluya’s sealed memories all at once.

The red bird offers a contrasting image: it can fly, yet it keeps returning to Liluya. Maybe it represents the freedom taken from her. It could also be a key to the Tower, a device storing her memories, or something monitoring her journey. Hopefully, we’ll learn what it is later in the story.

Reservation link: https://store.kadokawa.co.jp/shop/g/g322509001069/

Source: https://x.com/dengeki_daioh/status/2092749682506088841?s=46&t=bQi9SiRFzZLFhICWbQJ3VA

News source: https://x.com/D_shinbungei/status/2092819821230703093

The 10,000-year saga of the Witch and the King’s fantasy romance finally reaches its conclusion after 18 years. (Yes, the story of Unnamed Memory has been around for about 18 years.)

The sequel novel series Unnamed Memory -after the end- will conclude with its final volumes, VII and VIII (ATE7 and ATE8), published consecutively over two months. ATE8 will be published about 1–2 months after ATE7, almost like getting two books in a row.

The official English translation might not be too far away.

There is also another book, Unnamed Memory Archives -chibi artworks-, planned for this December, fully featuring illustrations by Chibi. Including the sample posted in the X news release.

The wait is finally over. Two souls struggling to fulfill their destiny while making the most of every chance they could be together. Countless reincarnations, reunions, and separations.

The author recently hosted an X Space talk. Due to the time-zone difference, a friend of mine only managed to catch the very last bit of the author’s talk about the story. According to her, it was something like:

「妻よ、僕の恋人になってくれませんか？」

She said it sounded more like a playful question between a married couple, as if Oscar were saying to Tinasha: “My wife, would you be my lover again?”

Well, we’ll find out after ATE7 and ATE8 are published.

Hi everyone is there an English series dubbed of the anime.

I was expecting to know the ending but it seems it is not done yet. So after thousands of years, who are the characters that are still alive aside from Tinasha and Oscar? It would be better to have more allies.

Hey there,

I really loved the 1st season of Unnamed memory anime, which made me buy the 1st volume of the novel.

After enjoying both, I started anime s2, and I got so disappointed I didn't even finish it. I felt like Tinassha and Oscar were completely different characters after the world reset. Ok, they are technically not exactly the same characters, but still; here I felt like their actions and behaviors were at the complete opposite of what I understood from them in s1 (like Tinassha, the powerful and wise witch, getting clumsily captured by some random guys in the first episodes of s2...).

So, before going further in the novel, I'd like to know if novel readers felt the same or not about that part of the story? Cause I really want to give a second chance to the rest of the story, and believe that it's just the anime adaptation that maybe rushed things or something...

Hi! I'm looking for someone to explain the exact ending of Unnamed Memory: After the End.

I already know some general things about the plot: I know that Oscar and Tinasha become immortal, that they travel for millennia hunting the 12 cursed artifacts, and that Tinasha's soul ends up getting corrupted from the trauma of watching Oscar die so many times. I also know that Babel happens halfway through this whole journey.

What I want to know is what exactly happens in the last volume of After the End. How does Oscar manage to save Tinasha from that corruption? Do they manage to break the immortality curse to get a definitive closure to their romance? I'd really appreciate it if you could detail how that world reset or the final epilogue goes (which I read about according to ChatGPT, but I'm not sure if it's accurate). Hopefully there's someone who knows, since I'm not sure if there's already an English translation out there and someone who's read it. Thanks!

Im reading through the novels rn before watching the anime (I got to their first kiss scene and was horrified at how much was skipped from the manga so i decided to just consume the whole source material before watching).

Anyways, the whole dynamic between Elze and Javi feels really forced. When I had read through this arc in the manga I had assumed I was missing context from the internal monologues but reading through it now it comes off as really weird. From javi's perspective he wanted to be looked at in the same way she watched her husband die while the author insinuates that the wife never truly loved her husband, but also suffers from PTSD. On top of that Javi's gang has been murdering, and pillaging farsonian villages and civilians. Why wouldnt oscar just execute them all? And am I the only one incredibly turned off by the weirdly forced romance between Elze and Javi?

I do really love this series; just felt like venting my frustrations with this individual arc.

I haven't read ATE, but I know some people on this sub did. Was this answered yet? Or are there any theories around?

I know it's our Earth, but how is it connected to the UM world?

What it seems to me, with the outsiders and artifacts is that the UM world is a simulation. But this would be really lame and I hope that's not the case.

Hello! Found out about this manga yesterday and binged it all, it's amazing!

I was thinking of reading the novel since the anime trims the story a lot, but from what I've read so far it seems that oscar forgets about everything regarding him and nitasha? And that stays till the end of the series?? Wth ? Why! Absolutely crazy idea to write.

I kinda lost 85% of my motivation after knowing this. Is it worth it or not??

Not even a hundred pages into Book4 and Oscar has already thought of Tinasha as a lonely cat a dozen times

im a talentless hack asking for support making anime is really hard

This has been such an on the nose reference, that I am starting to wonder whether this is just a red-herring.

Boys,

I just finished Book 3, a lot happened.

They were so close to a Happy Ending, but the Author decided Re:Zero them. They were happily married and were determined to grow old together.

i peeked at Book 4 and, T is not the same as she used to be. Even Oscar while mostly normal is not the same. Three books worth of character development thrown out of the window just like that. It feels like I'm reading two new characters with their names rather than them.

i will continue to read. I plead to thy heavens that The King and His Witch may recollect their past selves. [Please don't spoil]

I got all the 6 volumes in Japanese, took me about 3 months to read them all. I just have to say that this is my favorite romance story now, and Tinasha is probably my favorite female character as well. Can't wait to get my hands on After the End

Happy ending please 🙏

If he does lose his Immortality then does he get it back.