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 |
Okay, so this episode was mostly building up and it wasn’t as filled with as many plot twists as the previous ones, but nevertheless it had some great ideas and scenes thrown into it. One in particular was an awesome one. It’s a major spoiler, so if you haven’t seen the episode yet you might want to skip this entry.
Because holy crap: Kuniko is Mikuni’s sister! Momoko’s earring turns out to be something she stole from Nagiko, of all people. That gives that whole subplot a whole new dimension and a lot of things make sense now. But most importantly: Kunihito!?
If my theory indeed is true, then that means that the digmas are not just a bunch of random people chosen, but instead the three of them are siblings, and the grandchildren of the founder of Atlas! That’s what makes them so special! That explains why they all have “Kuni” in their names (which probably was a strange idea from their mother). It also explains why Kuniko and Kunihito got along so well: this series wasn’t trying to turn Kunihito into Kuniko’s love interest; they just got along as siblings would!
This makes me even more curious about that mystery mother, who seems to be at the center of all of this. In fact, I’m getting more and more the suspicion that Ryouko actually is the one who fits this description. As disturbing as it may sound, for the three of them to be the next heirs of Atlas, it must mean that their mother holds a very important place at Atlas for them to be considered so special. That can’t be anyone OTHER THAN Ryouko! Talk about a screwed up family. And speaking of which… who exactly is Kuniko’s father?
If that indeed turns out to be true, then we had a nice family reunion in this episode, in which Nagiko manages to arrange a meeting between Kuniko and Ryouko, about trying stop Daedalus. Apparently, even though it was meant to prevent fires Daedalus can seem to burn, otherwise Ryouko would have pointed that out.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> 
And here we have the big climax for the Naris Amnelis Marriage. Again, there’s no Guin, Remus, Linda or Istvan whatsoever and instead we’ve got an entire episode of political intrigue. I must say that after watching this arc in Guin Saga, Tytania is looking less and less impressive right now, because Guin Saga has done a much better job at it when it comes to the political intrigue part. If only a second season got announced. But yeah, Guin Saga has the same problem.
I’m really not sure whether Satelight is going to go for a second season of Guin Saga. Looking at their past series, they are the type of studio that milks their franchises as soon as they get popular (like with Macross and especially Shugo Chara shows that they do have the guts to carry a series for a hundred episodes, which is just what this series needs), but the thing is: Guin Saga isn’t popular at all. I have no idea whether or not the Satelight Executives feel something for doing this story justice and animating all of the volumes.
In any case, this episode provided a very interesting conclusion which went totally against my expectations. The Naris that attended the wedding turns out to have been a dummy. So when Astrias comes and kills the dummy off with a poisoned sword, everyone believes that Naris had died, which turns out to have exactly been what Naris intended. And to think that this is going to mean even more character-development for Amnelis, who not only lost her future husband, but also her little brother got killed off by Marius’ boss who didn’t see much money in Marius controlling and influencing him.
What also intrigues me is how there still seems to be a role for Astrias… he didn’t die, but he just got taken away by someone I suspect to be Ardnaris. What kind of use can still be there for him?
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]> 
Oh for god’s sake!
The start of this episode really spelled out promise: with an episode title of “Love’s Course”, and a start of the episode that showed a lot of Eggman, this seemed like a great episode in which we finally get some in-depth look at his back-story. But that turned out to be pretty much a false hope when HENDERSON butted in again. This episode wasn’t about Eggman’s past love, it was about Henderson FALLING IN LOVE with Eggman. What a let-down!
Henderson has really turned into the Saji Crossroad of this series, and I’m sure that this series would have been much better if it wasn’t for her constant whining and cheesy morals. Sure, the episode around Randolf would have been a tad annoying, but at least he managed to grow into an interesting character after that. Henderson just continues to be downright obnoxious, she continues to overshadow all of the other characters with her cheesy, dull and uninteresting problems and she sticks out in this series like sore thumb. And to think that usually it’s the kids that are annoying! Henderson: you’re a grown adult, for god’s sake! Grow the bloody hell up and move far away from this series!
I really don’t feel like summarizing this episode. The reason why I started doing these summaries was because I loved Porfy no Nagai Tabi, and I wanted other people who had problems understanding the raws to have a few pointers. Porfy really was an incredibly well crafted series, with imaginative and yet realistic situations that Porfy was thrown in. It’s a shame that Konnichiwa Anne couldn’t live up to its standards, but at least the Thomas family made this series worthwhile in its own way. The focus on Henderson starting from the Marysville arc has completely destroyed my fanboyism for this series and I really don’t feel like writing an incredibly long summary about that woman anymore.
There was one point I liked in this episode though: Anne’s hilariously horrible letter in which she pretended to be Henderson. It really looked like the handwriting of a kid who just learned to write letters and you have to give it to the creators: they really did their research in how little kids behave. I just wish that they also did this for teachers. *headdesk*
Rating: — (Lacking)]]> 
This episode made me think of the use of weaponry in the FMA universe. There were a lot of gunfights in this episode, in which the people working under Roy Mustang were assaulted by some of the homunculi and their chimera, in which they used various guns to defend themselves. That’s pretty nice and interesting, but that does bring up the age old question: why doesn’t Ed use one?
One of the major biggest flaws of Full Metal Alchemist, both the series I’ve seen so far, is of course how they try to get away with Ed’s strangely amazing fighting abilities, even though he’s only sixteen years old. And okay, it’s something that a lot of anime suffer from, so that’s easy to overlook. But I still wonder why he’s still stuck with his sword hands in a day and age in which guns seem to be common.
Anyway, about the actual episode, it was as fun as usual; especially Barry shined, and I’m starting to understand why he’s such an interesting character, and how much the first season raped his personality. It was very interesting to see him finding his old body back (talk about different from the Barry from the first season), and this indeed shows that the Homunculi are somehow related to the fifth laboratory, and their current mission indeed seems to stop people from finding out about them. That still doesn’t explain their main purpose though, but I suspect that Lior holds some hints to that.
I’m also glad to see Ross still alive. It had it coming of course, but it was quite unnerving to not see a single hint of her alive in the previous episode (yeah, I’m gullible; so what?). It’s also interesting that she’s going to get her own side-plot right now, as she travels to Xing in order to avoid any chances of revealing herself to the public. I’m interested to see what she can add to the story there.
Also, for some reason Ross hid near a camp of Ishbal people who happened to know Winry’s parents, and were helped a great deal by them. It then turns out that they were murdered, not by the order of the Fuhrer to wipe out the Ishbals, but rather by an Ishbal himself: Scar. Or someone who looks like Scar anyway. He sortof reminded me of a Humonculus in that flashback.
Rating: * (Good)]]> 
This episode was about a strange little side-story, featuring… Risa, the manager, of all people. In this episode, we see her trying to audition for a part in a local movie that seems to be getting shot. She ended up auditioning, and got through to the next round. There is just one problem: the character she auditioned for is supposed to be a female pitcher.
So a lot of this episode is spent on her, trying to actually throw a pitch. It’s far from a pointless filler though, because this episode really gave a totally new dimension to her character. We’ve come to know her as that stuck-up princes whose purpose as a manager never really was clear, but in this episode we finally see her working for something she really wants to do. And surprise surprise, but she actually turns out to have a huge amount of motivation and will power. While that last part was a bit exaggerated to say the least, it was definitely good to see her finally with a goal in mind. It’s good that she finally quit being a manager, to chase her own dreams.
Oh, and her random confessions were hilarious to watch. Especially since you had no idea what was going on at the time. It’s really typical of this series’ humour.
I just have one question: how long are the creators going to continue with that cat drawing at the beginning of each episode? Is it to keep the interest of the little kids that are watching this series? Is it to fill up time? Is it some sort of homage I don’t get? I could understand how it might be a good gimmick for one episode, but we’ve had this going on for what? Four weeks already?
Rating: * (Good)]]> 
Oh boy; here’s a series that’s aiming for great first impressions. The OP and ED are sung by the Backstreet Boys of all people. The lead character, a nine-year-old boy named Ichiro, is downright the most annoying and obnoxious anime character out there: he’s loud-mouthed, a cry-baby, continually picks fights with both his friends and family. If you thought your average shounen hero was annoying, you haven’t seen anything yet with this guy. On top of that, his mother is a loud-mouthed old hag, his sister an ugly overly whiny middle schooler, his grandfather a senile old man, his father an egotistical drunk carpenter and his best friend an incredibly shy and spineless crybaby. Oh, have I already said that this is an really charming series?
Seriously though, this is a very ugly series. The screenshots above may be a bit misleading because this is a Madhouse series, so there’s bound to be eye candy somewhere, but just be glad that I didn’t take any shots of Ichiro crying, yelling, taking a dump, walking around naked, picking his snotty nose or whatever. A lot of people are going to find Ichiro and the other recurring characters very hard to swallow, and but those who do stick with this series are rewarded with a very heart-warming story about a boy who can see ghosts.
Basically, this series consists out of a couple of arcs, most of which consist out of Ichiro meets the ghost of a dead person who still has regrets left in this world, and asks Ichiro for help because he’s the only one around who can see spirits. They’re usually the spirits of people who screwed up really badly when they made the most important decisions of their or their loved ones lives and can’t leave to the afterworld until they solve these issues. The stories all have a touch of mystery, in the way that you’re never going to know what exactly the ghost wants from Ichiro when you first see them, and through a very good build-up it slowly becomes clear what their intentions are, closing off with a teary and heart-warming ending that hardly ever misses the mark. These stories, while not on the Mushishi level of quality still are nearly all very good (even the first ones) and an excellent recommendation if you’re in the mood for something sappy.
The rest of the time in this series is meant for character-building for Ichiro and the rest of the recurring side-characters. These ones obviously are a bit harder to get through due to just about everyone being obnoxious, but it’s not like they’re bad characters in any way. The characters here are really meant to be flawed, and the creators sometimes tend to take this a bit too far, but they definitely grow on you as the series goes on. I especially liked Mandame Katarina, the ghost who simply refuses to cross over to the next world because she has too much fun being a ghost.
Overall, Hanada Shounen Shi is a sappy story, but I mean that in a good way. From the outside it might look like a kiddie show, and Ichiro can and WILL get on your nerves, but despite that it again and again proves that it can be a heart-warming series.
Yeah, I’m going to stop blogging this series after this episode. I’m going to be putting it under “sporadically updated” in case something peculiar does happen, but so far it’s really been much of the same: excellent graphics, great directing, nice character-chemistry, but the storyline still needs a lot of work. I still really like this series, but I’m running out of things to praise it for.
And it’s not like this episode didn’t develop the storyline either: Chinese Waitress Girl got some much-needed depth, and Alphard Side Kick Girl (yeah, I’m too lazy to look up their names) proved herself to be so kickass that she doesn’t need to dry herself after taking a shower because the water seems to just… evaporate apparently(sounds like a bad Chuck Norris joke, doesn’t it?), so kickass that she eats paper (seriously… wtf?) and so kickass that she doesn’t care about the life of her subordinates and just sends them to get killed off. Despite these flaws, I’m interested but you can really see that the storyline is second fodder to the matters that the creators find really important to this show.
My biggest criticism for this series is how it advertised itself, though: “The modern-day story centers on a group of people, from all walks of life, who are brought together in Shanghai by bizarre events with worldwide implications.” That makes it sound like the next Baccano or something, which it clearly isn’t.
Anyway, I can always blog another big budgeted action series. There’s one particular series this season that’s probably never going to appear again after it finishes, and I want to have a shot at it.
Rating: * (Good)]]> 
