Melody of Oblivion

[Sage Shinigami]

I've been downloading this while I'm at school on this connection where I can get 400k from an HTTP site. (Pay site, but its cheap so whatever.) I've downloaded 12 episodes, but I'm only up to 3. Its a fantasy tale about this world that had a war with monsters and, you guessed it--lost. Now all the humans have forgotten about the monsters, so they run the world however they see fit. The only thing that can stop them are the Melos Warriors, warriors who can fight the monsters with their special arrows, Aiba-Machines (think "space age motorcycle"), and can see the mysterious "Melody of Oblivion", a girl who is in some place where monsters fear to tread, but can be seen on the regular world.


Three episodes in, I have to say that despite the character designs...this series is really, really dark. (My girlfriend said it would be, but I ignored her. Since I'm keeping score, that makes it: her 4,569 times correct, me zero. :laugh: )

Anyway---has anyone else seen this series? Its being released by some anime company or other, but I'm downloading the R-B/Aone (whichever's smaller) version.

 

[Sage Shinigami]

Okay, so after sending this to my girlfriend (she lives in Florida right now--sucks) and rewatching it, I finally finished this anime last night. The first 20 episodes were very good. It reminded me of Evangelion since it was quite depressing and packed with symbolism, except better since it had more realistic characters (though realism wasn't really what HA was going for with his characters anyway) and much more fun-to-watch fight scenes. However, like Eva, it got stupid the closer it got to the ending and the last four episodes are totally "What the ****". I almost thought it was going to be one of those series that was a waste of time since:

[HIDE]The Monster King was in fact a Melos Senshi who'd killed the second Monster King, and all signs were pointing to Bocca killing the III one and becoming Monster King IV.[/HIDE] But they didn't do that and I give them points for not ending the series like that because that would have meant I watched the whole series for nothing. (Yeah, I think movies like 12 Monkies, comics like Superman: Red Son and anime like the aforementioned works are a total fucking waste of time.) Still, they worked WAY too hard to even get the series to a point where I thought it would end like that, so its sort of Deus Ex Machina-ish (you have to watch the last four episodes to see what I mean). Thus, to rate this series I'm splitting it up:

Episodes 1-20: 8/10

Episodes 21-24: 6/10 (Any ending I can expect is shitty--I didn't expect this, so it gets two points for the last five minutes not being stupid as hell.)

 

[Keith Justice]

Looks really Magical Girl oriented... fan servicy... interesting concept tho. :thumbs:

 

[Sage Shinigami]

Fanservicy? The only fanservice is when Toune charges up her arrows. All Melos no Senshi have a special tattoo and hers is on her....nah, just kidding. :laugh: It IS on the inside of her leg and it DOES look like that's where she puts it though. :anime:

Magical girl? I guess if you call a kid learning about the very world-changing fact that, and I loosely quote the Melody of Oblivion from the start of every arc:
"During the 20th century, a war occurred between the humans and the monsters. The horrors that occured during that war...were unspeakable. And in the end...the monsters were the victors. And eventually, people began to forget about that Melody..." Yeah. From here our hero discovers that his best friend was used as a sacrifice by the monsters, and his other friend was about to be their next victim before he became a Melos Senshi and started fighting back. Its mostly about a traveling hero, righting the wrongs the monsters bring to the world.

Of course, the funny thing about this series is....no one wants him to. Yeah, the Monsters are evil, they sacrifice children, they purposely cause sorrow, and they don't give a damned about who they hurt, but fighting back would mean risking ones own life, and most of the people in the show don't wish to do this. Unlike most anime though, the hero never really manages to convince them that its worth it to fight back, and thus continues his journey mostly on his own.

I'm actually surprised Adult Swim hasn't picked up this anime yet. Its a lot like most of the anime they show. Except probably a lot darker.

 

[KamenRiderZero]

I loved Melody of Oblivion dearly. I still have the entire fansub on CDs somewhere in my room. I thought it was a very well done series.

And boss, it definitely ain't a "Magical Girl" series. And like Sage said, not really any fanservice, unless you count the outfit worn by Bocca's companion (her name escapes me right now). And yeah, I thought the location of Toune's Melos Scar was interesting :anime:

Damn you Sage, you've made me wanna go back and rewatch it :laugh:

 

[Keith Justice]

Impressive... I just did a google image search and that's what I got from it. So it's already dubbed and localized?

 

[KamenRiderZero]

Yup, it was released by some company. I've seen the DVDs around, but I'm afraid of how bad the dubbing could be....

 

[Sage Shinigami]

I loved Melody of Oblivion dearly. I still have the entire fansub on CDs somewhere in my room. I thought it was a very well done series.

And boss, it definitely ain't a "Magical Girl" series. And like Sage said, not really any fanservice, unless you count the outfit worn by Bocca's companion (her name escapes me right now). And yeah, I thought the location of Toune's Melos Scar was interesting :anime:

Damn you Sage, you've made me wanna go back and rewatch it :laugh:

You LOVED it? Eh. Its worth paying for, but its not a show I'd put on my Top 10....

As for fanservice....Bio-Concert and the cowgirls. But that's the last four episodes, which are totally full of **** anyway.

And yeah, its been dubbed and the boxset is coming out soon. 120 bucks, I think it is. But I bet you'll find it on RightStuf for cheaper.

 

[KamenRiderZero]

You LOVED it? Eh. Its worth paying for, but its not a show I'd put on my Top 10....

As for fanservice....Bio-Concert and the cowgirls. But that's the last four episodes, which are totally full of **** anyway.

And yeah, its been dubbed and the boxset is coming out soon. 120 bucks, I think it is. But I bet you'll find it on RightStuf for cheaper.

Well, with the exception of the strangeness of the final episodes, I thought it was a great series. It may not command a top spot, but it's still in my top 10.

 

[Solari]

I watched Melody of Oblivion in mandarin dub. Interesting character designs and plotline; but the scenes of them firing their arrows got really repetitive after the 20th episode...