i saw Melody of Oblivion some time ago and i enjoyed it most of the way through, the show is unusual as all hell and at times it is borderline nonsensical but it was never especially bad, it kept things interesting enough that i just had to see it to the end which, was fairly satisfying.
the main character starts off as an otherwise ordinary person with a fairly typical life, he goes to school, ...
i saw Melody of Oblivion some time ago and i enjoyed it most of the way through, the show is unusual as all hell and at times it is borderline nonsensical but it was never especially bad, it kept things interesting enough that i just had to see it to the end which, was fairly satisfying.
the main character starts off as an otherwise ordinary person with a fairly typical life, he goes to school, has classes and so on, like most people he seems blisfully unawares that monsters have taken control of the earth and are having widespread and disturbing impacts on human society, he very quickly realises that there is more to the reality of things and he decides to fight back against what they are doing.
from that point on he has a fairly typical, yet likable story arc, he starts off with overall little knowledge of what a mellos warrior actually is and how to go about fighting the Monster Union and he seems to have some difficulty in actually opposing them, over time he grows and develops both as a warrior and as a person while expanding upon his relationship with the female protagonist (Sayoko Tsukinomori) in ways that are well explained and showcased throughout the series, though i had wished they had given him more character development overall (the series would have been well served with one or two more seasons), this character development makes itself known both in mental ways (his training, learning new techniques, learning about the way of the mellos warrior, etc) and physical ways (at the start of the series he is wearing little more then normal clothing and takes the same bow he used for high school training into combat, by the end of the series he has acquired body armor and has a shiny new bow much better suited and intended for combat against the monster union)
perhaps my favorite element of the series however, was the female protagonist Sayoko, its very common for an anime to have a female character in the show who does little else or serves no purpose beyond being "The Girlfriend" and while such characters in anime often DO wish to support their loved ones, they have no actual skills, knowledge or means to DO so, the only times women in anime usually directly assist people in combat is when they are themselves frontline fighters, unlike those characters Sayoko has a fairly understandable backstory which makes her a much more endearing character as well as explaining many of her motivations, while i wish there had been more OF it she proves she has useful abilities, talents and knowledge in the show which she could use to aid the main character in his quest (much like how in D&D the rogue would assist the fighter, each bringing their own unique skillset to the table and achieving greater things by working in concert then they would by working individually)
furthermore i had hoped a romance of sorts would bloom between these two main characters and not only was i not dissapointed but it was also well executed, in alot of anime its very common for characters to have feelings for one another (secretly or otherwise) and for those feelings to go exactly NOWHERE, in the vast majority of anime in which romance is a theme, to my experience it is exceedingly rare for the characters to ever so much as go on a first date, kiss or even hold HANDS (a stark contrast to typical western television which is filled with sex and drugs) whereas here there is an actual arc in which the characters start by not liking each other very much to warming up to one another, to becoming friends till eventually they genuinely want to marry by the end of the series, an excellent touch for a show in which romance is not the central point in my opinion.
now however comes the downsides to the show.
the show had a great deal of nonsensical scenes or pointless content which marred my sense of immersion and made it more difficult to take the characters involved and the show as a whole very seriously at all, in episode 4 rather then showing tourists coming to the town (as had been referenced upon for much of episode 3 and 4) they replaced the tourists with walking robot babies who wore mini brown cylindrical tubs around their waist instead of clothing and had moist towelettes on their heads.
that was odd enough but i figured i could forgive the occaisional odd scene as long as the show as a whole proved to be good.
it doesnt end there though, a scene near the beginning has a gym teacher training his students by posing as if they were wielding a bow and firing imaginary arrows at REAL targets and claiming to "shoot past the wall" with the "force of their spirit", in the united states that is the sign of a man who is DRUNK, a teacher is giving this out as an actual assignment and then GRADING students based upon something which cannot actually be measured? i dont know how gym works in japan and i understand the idea that the monsters dont want training in the bow to go very far but they could just have all the gym teachers teach.....ANYTHING ELSE! there are literally HUNDREDS of different excercises their students could be doing, then near the end of the show it suddenly takes all the characters on both sides of the conflict and places them in a karaoke bar talking to one another about the events which just transpired when they're SUPPOSED to be in the midst of a very intense and difficult battle for their lives, almost half of the scenes in which they fire arrows at their enemies is played out via a long cinematic sequence instead of having them fire arrows while simultaneously dodging and weaving around a battlefield (this would be fine for the equivalent of a limit break but not for EVERY attack, if this was a video game i would be raging by now, and since all the mellos knights are ARCHERS they fire arrows in combat ALOT) the end result is that while the fights in the show can be intense, the fact that this is so has very little to do with the fight itself
and then there is the monster union itself...where to begin.
first off its never very well explained just why the monster union is so deadly, half of them are painfully obvious about their activities using attacks that are very easily telegraphed, i think i only saw a very small few of them that couldnt have been killed almost immediately if any of the mellos knights had ever just bought a gun and if humanity had not long ago fought and LOST an entire war against them then why doesnt anyone know who the monsters are or even that they exist? wars tend to be very large scale and involve alot of damage, even when not it involves alot of participants on both sides of a conflict not including the people who fight (for every soldier there is a great deal of support staff to get them INTO that fight), half of them just start shouting "VIVA! MONSTER UNION!" and they never, EVER stop shouting it to the point of it being annoying as all hell, its made somewhat clear the monster union controls all of human society and treats them as little more then pets and play things but if such is the case why dont they just tell all the human governments that the mellos knights are terrorists and let soldiers with guns go kill them?
in fact its never explained why this war happened at all or why monsters even need the humans, do they just enjoy the killing or do they need to drink blood or eat meat or what? if they just need meat why not just buy beef in bulk? does it have to be human blood and flesh specifically? if so why? aside from the part where they need to kill humans and treat them as essentially livestock they seem to largely have a POSITIVE impact on human society, the makers of this show SERIOUSLY need to sit down and play call of cthulhu if they really want their bad guys to seem dark and terrible.
and then of course it has more then its fair share of fanservice, almost all the female characters are heavily sexualized, the female protagonist is often in very skimpy or revealing clothes and the other female mellos knights have to perform semi erotic moves before firing every shot, the red haired girl in the art is always depicted as half naked and while im not opposed to the concept of fanservice i dont feel it really had any point or added to the story or setting in a meaningful way here, it was fanservice for fanservice's sake
the show left me with a HELL of alot of questions very few of which had any meaningful answers, i enjoyed the show greatly but it was way too confusing, i want to give it a 3 out of 5 but i enjoyed the show enough to bump it up to 4 stars, i would recommend it but do NOT think too heavily on the small details or you will end up as confused as i am.
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