anime: Melody of Oblivion eps 1-2

[meganbmoore]

MoO is about...uhm...ok, I think this is what it's about:  In a near future Japan, monsters who look like humans rule the world, but most people don't realize it.  The monsters leave the humans alone as long as they're regularly offered sacrifices in the form of children.  There are warriors known as Meros who want to overthrow them, and they ride what appear to be sentient motorcycles and shoot magic arrows.  Apparently, the world will be saved if everyone can hear a melody they've forgotten, which seems to be a girl with red hair.  Our hero is Bocca, a boy with strange hair and eyes who wants to be a Meros(I think) and whose childhood friend disappeared one day, having been made a sacrifice.  When he learns a mechanic he's friends with knows the Meros, he meets a Meros named Kurofune, and watches Kurofune fight a monster, who is also the local mayor.  Leter, the mechanic makes Bocca a Meros, just in time for him and Kurofune to rescue Bocca's friend/girlfriend from becoming the monster's victim.  Later, Kurofune gives him the "you aren't cut out for this" speech and takes off, and bocca and Sayoko, a young runaway with some connection to Kurofune set off to find him, leaving best friend/girlfriend pining for him.

This, as near as I can tell, is the plot.  But between the crack and the "WTF?  Did you just do what I think you just did?" I kinda kept forgetting to pay attention to it.

Ok.  The mayor/monster is designed to be your basic badboy bishounen.  Actually, he kinda looks like Ban Midou(Getbacker's) evil twin.)    When he hits on a secretary, she literally swoons from lust.  Err...I think that's what happens.  Ah...it may have been more.  I'm not thinking about it.  Later, she's being dragged out by the other office assistant, but at first, it doesn't look like dragging is what's going on.  The, secretary and office assistant turn into moving dolls with pictures of human faces attached to the heads.  There's a bird(parakeet?)  who watches all this, then flies off.

Bocca's archery professor teaches them to shoot with the spirit of the heart, then mocks Bocca for being able to hit a bullseye.  He then tells Bocca to try to shoot an arrow through the wall.  Bocca makes a huge dent and breaks the arrow in half from the force, and the teacher thanks him for showing how futile it is to shoot with real arrows.

The active their magic arrows, the Meros draw the arrow along a tattoo on their upper arms, like they were playing a violin or fiddle.

Bocca is failing his tests, and to inspire him, best friend/girlfriend kisses him, then tells him they'll continue after he passes the tets, and he's annoyed he has to work for more.  There are also lots of jokes about how he's always looking at her breasts.  As this was at the beginning, it should have clued me in to weird kinky stuff.  (I feel I should note here that mayor/monster probably raped her when she was unconscious/zombified/brainwashed/whatever...it says a lot about the sheeer WTF-ery that I had to remind myself of that.)

Mayor/monster has a bulljeep.  As in, it has horns and legs, but the body of a jeep.  It runs very fast and does battle, and he rides around standing on top of it, looking sinister.  I have no words.

I have caps, but no time to upload them.

This has the potential to surpass Gundam Wing in certain regards.

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

THERE ARE (more) BULLJEEPS LATER.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

...

They come in multiples...

QUESTION!

Does Sayoko get to do anything, or does she just sit on the sidelines being cute and buxom and apparently worshipping Kurofune? And do we ever see best friend/girlfriend again?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe it's just the same one again. It was on the order of 2 years between seeing the first few episodes and the rest, so my memories are sort of vague.

Sayoko ... erm, not a whole lot, IIRC. She's central to the plot in that certain things revolve around her, but she's not especially active in their resolution, IIRC.

As far as best friend/girlfriend ... uh ... maybe? That's not me avoiding spoilers, that's being honestly confused at WTFery in the series. I'm not sure we ever get a definite answer to that question.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, I didn't start the first episode with anything vaguely resembling a thought of female characters gettign to do anything, I was just curious. For essentially being brainless fanservice so far, they're actually fairly decrnt characters. (Uhm...though I hesitate to call anyone of any gender an actual character yet...)

*looks*

NO< THIS APPEARS TO BE A DIFFERENT BULLJEEP! Actually, the first may have been a BULLBUS.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN BRAINLESS FANSERVICE. YOU HAVE NOT YET SEEN MISOGYNY. THE ENTIRE REST OF THIS SERIES WILL SEEM LIKE A BALANCED FEMINIST VIEWPOINT WHEN YOU HIT A CERTAIN POINT NEAR THE END.

YOU WILL KNOW IT THE INSTANT YOU SEE IT. YOU WILL SPEND PART OF THE SERIES THINKING "IS THIS WHAT SHE MEANT? WHAT ABOUT THIS?" NO. NONE OF THOSE ARE IT. YOU WILL KNOW IT INSTANTLY WHEN IT SHOWS UP.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Is it connected to the so-not-phallic-banana in the sea of so-not-symbolic-cherries that I remember from your posts?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

NOPE!

[sora-blue.livejournal.com]

...I think I need to find this.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Uhm...only for crack. I can't recommend it for quality, yet...

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Crack is the sole reason for watching this. And there's a hell of a lot of it.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I may have to stop to blog every couple episodes...

[telophase.livejournal.com]

YES. YOU SHOULD.

I have a few posts about the latter half of the series, but you really shouldn't read them if you want to preserve the pristine WTF?! for yourself.

[wingstodust.livejournal.com]

!! I remember this anime! I thought I'd try out the first ep, 'cause I heard the mp3 file of its opening theme song (Will by Lisa) and fell in love. I'm afraid I never got through the entire first episode, because 5 minutes into staring at the episode and its awful, lazy, WHITE and COLOURLESS background, I thought my eyes might just fall out. I know this may sound hypocritical since I am loving Nabari no Ou so far, and the backgrounds aren't that great for Nabari either, but somehow, for Nabari, it fit. The sketch, watercolour background gave it a kind of 'otherworldlyness' to Nabari, whereas in Melody of Oblivion, it just looked lazy. Or old animation before the 20th century. *shrugs* Not my style...)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I have watched so much anime and read so much manga that I fear I no longer completely notice when backgrounds are lazy, sometimes.

[wingstodust.livejournal.com]

lmao really? i'm really picky about the art... but even if it's dissatisfying, if it has some of my quirks, i may potentially sit through an entire ep, or read an entire vol... *coughsmarscoughs*

[valkyriesailor.livejournal.com]

Interesting how different viewpoints are shown just by talking about anime. ^^ For me, Melody of Oblivion was a good anime, by the time I watched it.
Since it was abstract in more ways than one, I didn't really watched the cover, but tryed to find what they want with this anime. The result:
A young boy, who wants to do something unique, but can't really 'spread his wings and fly', the rules of the world hold down every creativity. Then he sees someone, who is fighting these rules, and decides to try this as well.
(How I see it, the part about Kurofune telling him, he is "not cut out for this" is just a part of life. If just with this Bocca gives up, than Kurofune was right. But he doesn't give up, and begins to walk the same path.)
He struggles to live the life he wants to live, withouth the rules that tie him down. Sure, sometimes he chooses wrong, and walks the wrong path, but he learns from his errors and goes straight at his goal.
Don't ask why, but at the end, I had the feeling of Wolf's Rain~

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I can see glimpses of what you mean, but a lot of it seems lost amongst the sheer WTF-ery of certain things. There's also, just in the first 2 eps, some rampant misogyny that doesn't really make me inclined to like any characters yet, and they don't seem to have a grasp on characterizations in the two episodes(Bocca's characterization was all over the map, in one scene, he'd be a stoic hero, a perv, and a young idealist.)

If nothing else, I suspect I'll have some fun with it, though possibly not the kind I'm meant to have.

[valkyriesailor.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm not saying you should force yourself to like it, I just wrote my point of view. And I think it's important with what emotion you watch it. By the time I watched it, it was good for me. I had problems expressing myself due to the attitude of my surroundings, so I could sympathize with the character of Bocca (or it can be that I projected my feelings on him, don't know anymore ^^"). I guess if I would watch it again, it wouldn't be the same anymore. But I can see what you mean with the misogyny~ I think it's everywhere in this anime in pieces.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't worry, I don't believe in trying to force myself to like something, it never works. I'm really not big on character/property hate, and don't stick with things if I find more to dislike than to like. (I think the only exception to this is the Eragon books.) Despite how it tends to look, I'm actually fairly picky about what I read and watch, and rarely start something unless I'm pretty sure there's something about it that I'll like.

The core plot of MoO is actually the type of plot I'm pretty fond of in shounen anime, and when I look past how the characters are portrayed, I can appreciate that, so far, the female characters are a driving force of the plot, in the second arc, they were even the characters with power and control. When I start to talk about it, however, I get sidetracked by the way they're all essentially reduced to sexual objects in every way possible.

(The short version of all that was that, even if it may not seem it, I find more in it worth watching than not, so far.)

[valkyriesailor.livejournal.com]

to the short version: glad to read that. ^.^

[estara.livejournal.com]

You mean this ist crazier than Aquarion's orgiastic mecha merges? Goodness.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Say what?

[estara.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssftz10SXZQ
And that's a fairly harmless sequence. I only watched the first two episodes.
This not-very-good amv has a few more sexy sequences
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp91ijHhgnI
Reviews (with spoilers)
http://www.themanime.org/viewreview.php?id=865
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/anime/sfw18573.html
http://phoenix512anime.blogspot.com/2006/02/sousei-no-aquarion-26-and-review.html

[valkyriesailor.livejournal.com]

Nope, I think Aquarion is crazy in a different way~
But it's true, that 'I'm high from our power' part is quite... well... disturbing.