Oh god. It’s been a while since I sat through such a mind-numbingly boring series as this one. Usually I obviously try to avoid these kinds of shows, but for the Melody of Oblivion I was lured in because I like a good mind-screw once in a while. What I got instead was a good sleep. You know, with series as Kurokami you can at least watch them for the good action, but Melody of Oblivion simply has nothing that makes it even worth watching, aside from a few weird ideas that never really get anywhere.
This series plays in a world in which humanity has lost a big war against the so-called “monsters”, which is something that the narrator is very keen on reminding us of in case we forget. The problems start right with the main character: even for your typical male lead, this guy has the personality of a potato. It’s more fun watching paint dry than to watch this guy on screen. On top of that, he probably has one of the flimsiest back-story I have ever seen. The first episode of this series simply starts off with him as a regular high-school boy, through the course of the first arc he gets his obligatory super powers (shounen series), and then he simply leaves on a journey. Why? We never know. In fact, he spends the entire freaking series fighting for no possible reason.
This might be excused if you know, he didn’t have anything better to do and just was fighting monsters to kill the time (which seems to be the case for nearly all of the side-characters in this series by the way), but no: he has a female love interest. Romance can be a beautiful thing: it can enrich characters and make you care for them. However, when the characters in question are a bunch of cardboard boxes, the romance simply becomes way too obnoxious. The lead female really isn’t much better than her male counterpart: she has no power of herself, so she continuously plays either the damsel in distress, or the love interest that watches from the side-lines while doing nothing but worrying. Their relationship becomes even more painful to watch when they’re together, simply because the male lead is such an incredible pussy that he refuses any advances that the lead female makes on him and instead he goes out fighting monsters (which obviously leads to lots of useless and pointless angst).
Well then, the series consists out of a number of arcs (eight in total), which feature the two lead characters arriving into a town under the influence of a so-called “monster agent”. These arcs however, all look like each other and do way too little to stand out, or even be interesting. They drag on for way too long. The monster-agents themselves are also incredibly dull and stereotypical bad guys who all fit in the same mold. The only one I even remotely liked was the Bobcat guy, but that may also be because he got the least amount of airtime out of all of them.
If I had to mention a highlight, then I’d have to say episode 25, but that’s more in the sense of “so bad it’s good” than that it actually redeemed some of the boredom. It’s a hilariously bad episode, with more recycled material than actual new footage (heck, I even suspect that there were just two minutes of new footage in total in that episode); it’s a completely nonsensical episode in which the creators pull all sorts of idiotic plot twists out of their asses, but it was the only episode of the entire series that was really what it was meant to be: entertaining.
As for the mind-screws that this series seems to be known for: it really isn’t that special. All this series has is one of the worst soundtracks out there, along with a bunch of weird images that make no sense and are just inserted for the heck of it. The series is completely nonsensical, hardly anything has a satisfactory background (the explanations that are there don’t make any sense more often than not) and the series closes off with an incredible amount of plot-holes still left open. You can see that the creators wanted to do something different with this series, and in a way I appreciate that, but at the same time they forgot one important thing: make this series interesting.
| Storytelling: | 5/10 |
| Characters: | 3/10 |
| Production-Values: | 7/10 |
| Setting: | 5/10 |
While I disagree with the review, I think your last sentence is pretty much spot on though. There were a few sublime moments to go with it too. It’s definitely something different as an experimental project and even I would say that the experiment probably didn’t work out overall.
However if you’re the kind of person who has to climb a plot ladder to go anywhere with a story, yeah, this is a tough show to overcome. But to say it’s not interesting is utmost misleading. This show is the spiritual successor of Utena in terms of directorial techniques and scripting, and I think thematically it’s exactly the same as that show, oddly enough. I don’t really think there were anything very important that was left unexplained either, although it has been a few years since I last watched it.
But not interesting? This show is all sorts of interesting.
I haven’t watched the show, but many people have stated this before and I’ll say it again. Isn’t your rating system quite flawed? I can’t believe a show you seem to hate so much you’d rate 50. How can a show that only has “2 minutes of new footage in one episode” and “one of the worst soundtracks” get 7/10 in Production Values?
Howling-kun: that was just an extreme case. The rest of the episode are serviceable in terms of graphics. Nothing stands out, but it’s not really bad either. I’ve just gotten tired of mentioning this in every single review.
“I can’t believe a show you seem to hate so much you’d rate 50”
What do you mean? Should the rating have been lower? It’s actually one of the worst ratings I’ve given out, I like it a bit less than with Romeo and Juliet while School Days, which was rated lower, left an even worse impression on me than this series.
If this is another “5 means average”-debate, then I have to emphasize again that I never claimed to use a universal rating scale; I just use one that I’m comfortable with.
Sometimes there are days when I totally agree with your taste and then there are days like this.
Of course I understand where people find flaws with series like Boukyaku no Senritsu, it is experimental, it is strange…a bit like going to an expressionist exhibition without any idea what topic the pictures have.
Having read your blog for some time now I would say that it’s just not your type of show, just like I could never sit through a World Masterpiece anime, because (in my oppinion) it leads nowhere. I suffered through two episodes of Porfy no Nagai Tabi just as much as you must have suffered through this.
But I really think it’s good that you at least finish shows even though they are not totally to your liking.
Bah, gotta agree with Omo, MO was anything but uninteresting and it had great style and absurdity. And you know, I’d take your criticism of MO a bit more seriously if you didn’t constantly heap praise on Shangri-La, which is full of idiotic plot twists and holes and designed-to-be-interesting-but-really-not characters.
To avoid being completely contrarian, I disliked the lead girl of MO intensely as well (I won’t say hated as the character doesn’t merit such emotions).. And the male lead was rather bland too. But overall the show left a strong impression on me, and I’m still sometimes haunted by the Kakenukete OP and the beautiful final line “sekai o tsuranuku ya no you ni”.
@psgels: Oh, that’s absolutely ok. I don’t go for “5-average” either, and I of course read how you rate them on your review index.
“The rest of the episode are serviceable in terms of graphics. Nothing stands out, but it’s not really bad either. I’ve just gotten tired of mentioning this in every single review.”
This is what I wanted to hear, I missed it 😀
I also disagree with psgels on this show. Sure it isn’t a great anime and also no must-see, but on one side I loved the soundtrack very much, while on the other side I liked the art, characters and the unusual plot. For me it looked like psgels hated the show for some thing and decided to keep this on until the end. This coold happen if someone’s watching shows, which were recommended to them, because you not really watch it from your very own interest. 🙂
As I said: Melody of Oblivion isn’t a must-see Anime, but I really think it isn’t that bad. 🙂
I, for one, agree with your criticism. The series was a complete waste of time; I got bored in most episodes, while the others were – as you mentioned – “so bad they were good”. If given a choice, I’d rate it even lower than you did.
I’m quite surprised at the amount of people who defend MoO here… I always thought it was universally hated. Especially regarding the characters, I couldn’t have said it better myself – the leads have the personality of a potato, while the other are either too bland and get way too much screen time or passable and are barely even seen (on second thought, that may be exactly the reason they’re passable). The production values were decent, but I really disliked the overall art style and the overuse of the color palette; the artists seem to have a certain like for a red and black contrast which gave me a terrible seizure. While the setting was pretty interesting, a setting is nothing without a story – and what moth-eaten story there exists in this series, was left as unpolished as the teeth of a dead sand rat. And I don’t understand what the creators were thinking! Perhaps they believed that, if they added to a shabby shounen series, irrelevant and even shabbier mind screws, it’d somehow become better?
This is an animé to be avoided, by all standards and with every mean possible.
I, for one, agree with your criticism. The series was a complete waste of time; I got bored in most episodes, while the others were – as you mentioned – “so bad they were good”. If given a choice, I’d rate it even lower than you did.
I’m quite surprised at the amount of people who defend MoO here… I always thought it was universally hated. Especially regarding the characters, I couldn’t have said it better myself – the leads have the personality of a potato, while the other are either too bland and get way too much screen time or passable and are barely even seen (on second thought, that may be exactly the reason they’re passable). The production values were decent, but I really disliked the overall art style and the overuse of the color palette; the artists seem to have a certain like for a red and black contrast which gave me a terrible seizure. While the setting was pretty interesting, a setting is nothing without a story – and what moth-eaten story there exists in this series, was left as unpolished as the teeth of a dead sand rat. And I don’t understand what the creators were thinking! Perhaps they believed that, if they added to a shabby shounen series, irrelevant and even shabbier mind screws, it’d somehow become better?
This is an animé to be avoided, by all standards and with every mean possible.
“If this is another “5 means average”-debate, then I have to emphasize again that I never claimed to use a universal rating scale; I just use one that I’m comfortable with. ”
The issue is more like, when are you gonna use the other half of the ten point rating? We never see any anime that got its Production Value rating below 6 (except for one).
@Kalandra: The reason is probably that to honestly review a series, psgel needs to finish it, and anything below the “50” rating – which in this case is not an average, but supposedly trash – just isn’t worth watching.
I also don’t understand why you’re so confused about the rating system anyway. Very few rating systems I’ve seen are actually based on the “50 is average” principle you’re accustomed to. It might help if you compare a few past reviews’s ratings with the review itself, to get a feel for what the ratings indicate. Otherwise you could compare the rating system to an exam grade – for every “bad mark”, some points are deducted. Expanding the exam grade analogy, it is also a good example of a rating system in which an average score isn’t necessarily the midpoint in the rating system. A score of “50” in a test is pretty bad by most standards.
Psgels, you think the OST is bad? It’s full of violins and references to Mexico! I’d take this OST over Durarara’s any day!