Melody of Oblivion

Viva, Monstah Union!.... On second thought, no. I hope the Monster Union doesn't live. I hope it dies and burns in hell. Like this show should. It should suffer for stealing 12 hours of my life from me. I seriously had to FORCE myself to continue watching after just 4 episodes in. And the only reason I continued and didn't just drop this show like a stinky baby was because I haven't had a shitty anime show to review in a long time. And my God, was this piece at the far end of the stink pile. Melody of Oblivion was so shitty that it made my hair talk, and oiled-up muskrats fuck in my bathtub. Did that last sentence make ANY sense to you? Probably not, and so you've just gotten a little taste of what Melody did to me. IT MADE NO GODDAMN SENSE. And this is coming from the guy who originally made order of Evangelion for the masses.

Melody is basically Studio Gainax calling it quits. They admit that they've run out of good stories to tell with this show (Aim For the Top 2: Die Buster drove this fucking nail home). Gainax, the once (and I wish future) kings of anime have fallen. Melody is an experiment in stupidity. It is nothing more than some sorry writer's attempt to pull an Anno or a Oshii-style script out of his ass. Unfortunately he didn't pull out a script, but instead a steaming turd... Even more unfortunately somebody decided to animate it. HOLY FUCK, you have no idea how bad this show reeks! It tries to be thoughtful and existential and theoretical and messagable and crap.... but it fails on every level. It attempts to be a serious and angsty FLCL, but it's not entertaining in the least -- and for all its insanity FLCL had a story that was fun, and understandable once you thought about it for a little bit. Melody of Oblivion is all the fuck over the place. It may have had an overlying, encompassing story to it, but I sure as hell didn't want to think about it once it was done. WHY DID I HAVE TO FINISH WATCHING IT?! Urgh! Hindsight tells me that it was not worth the payoff of being able to review it. Where is a time machine when I really need one? Christ, I'd go back two weeks (what a looooong and painful two weeks!) and delete this entire show from my harddrive, then fill my Mac up with pr0n... Well, it's already pretty much filled with pr0n, but Melody would be gone, and I wouldn't bother getting it again.

Ohhhh sweet Jesus, THE PAIN! It still burns inside my head!

Okay, for you losers out there who STILL want to give this crapfest a chance, let me go over the plot with you... Plot? Well, let me tell you what happens in the show. Melody takes place in a world where Monstahs won a war against mankind in the 20th Century. A big, bloody and violent war (we're told this over and over again, but we never get to even see this war because this show sucks). But everyday life for humans looks pretty normal now, though there are signs that everything is just a strange facade. People don't know of the war, though Monstahs still rule and roam the Earth as they please (in human form of course, because the writers and character designers have no talent whatsoever). But there are humans who can fight these Monstahs, and they are the Meros Warriors. The Meros have a tattoo somewhere on their bodies that they can use to turn arrows into weapons of light (or some such garbage). And they ride intelligent, mechanical horses. Mechanical horses that can turn into humans. Yeeeeeah. Anyway, so the Meros fight the monsters, and Bocca (the purple-headed androgynous pussy and *ahem* hero of the story) is the newest among their ranks.

Does this seem followable to you? It should, but this is just stuff that we learn in the first 2 episodes. It's right after this that things turn all goofy. Wait, did I say "goofy?" I meant to say "fucktarded." The show then breaks down into 3 episode-long story arcs, and each one is even more confusing and pointless than the previous. Each arc has to do with a Monstah or a Monstah Union member (i.e. a human who wants powah from the Monstahs, and is given some worldly authority, and a gay giant robot [seriously gay, like a giant mouse, egg or horse robot], in return for their stupid loyalty) taking over a faggoty town, and Bocca and his whiney traveling companion (who has enooooormous titties for a 16 year old) riding in, solving the problem, and then moving on. One of the arcs had to do with a Monstah Union member who took over a town, built a dam, created an army of tiny robot mice to go around the world and collect the tears of children from which she then filled the dam up with, made her childhood boyfriend paint a giant "crying eye" on the front of the damn, and then had a power struggle with a talking parrot that mocked her every move. Oh, and there was that blue-haired kid who's hand was stuck in the dam ala the Dutch boy story. And that room full of accountants who all looked alike and counted on abacuses... Abaci? And lest I forget the blue-green haired girl who came back to the town after a long trip, who loved the blue-haired boy and not her fiance, the painter, even though the Monstah Union member lady loved the blue-green haired girl's fiance and hated the blue-haired boy.

Did I mention the army of robot mice?

THIS was the least stupid story arc too. The rest are more ridiculous, and they'll make you want to bang your head against the faucet in the kitchen sink until you black out or start shouting "Viva, Monstah Union" yourself.

SHITTY COCK TITTY FUCK SUCK!! This show was baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. Why?! Why did they make it? It's cobble together worse than the story my four year-old nephew told when he tried to explain why he pushed his younger brother into the pile of dogshit in his front yard. And THAT story had leprechauns, Kim Possible and talking lions in it. Talking lions with pee-pee sticks that peed Kool-Aid. At least I understood what the fuck my nephew was talking about. Melody is just a mishmash of narcotics-induced dream sequences. Each story arc tries harder to outdo the one before it with grander images of gayness. It's like the writer just kept opening a broken dictionary up to random places and pointed, and then had to use that word as a main plot point. "Hmmmmm, let's see, I have mechanical egg, hot spring resort, lighthouse, flying motorcycle, monster, sacrificial lamb, shadows, red light, nazi salute, Medusa, the Exxon Valdez, and cupie dolls. I think I can make something out of that." And by gum did he try. Only he failed miserably.

Melody tries hard to be all mysterious and stuff, like the main plot behind Eva. It also tries to be so insanely bizarre that you'll wonder if the previous scene really did have a bunch of huge-tittied girls in cow-spotted bikinis playing volleyball in a field while saying nothing but "Moo." It's just bad though. It tries way too hard to try and tell twenty stories, and in the end it fails to explain even one clearly. And did I mention that the Melody of Oblivion itself is a pink, glowing girl? Because it would just be stupid if it wasn't.

Sonovabitch! Jeesus! And I feel I must warn you even more about the final four episodes... They are such a convoluted mishmash of unconnected images and ideas that you block out what happened on screen just two seconds previous. And it's okay to forget those stupid images because they hold no bearing AT ALL to any kind of plot that we've seen up to that point and even beyond. The last block of "storytelling" takes place in space, but it's not really space, and then there's more monsters, but they're not really monsters, and then they have to stop something from happening, but it happens... or does it? Shit! I have no goddamn clue what the fuck the point was of the space arc!!! Didn't the Meros fail? No wait, they succeeded... No.... Well, Bocca made it back to Earth... But wasn't Earth just nuked or something?... And then those cowgirls again... And that monster who liked to bowl had something major to do with the plot: No, wait, SHE DIDN'T. SHE HAD NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH ANYTHING. And then that Meros Warrior who became Monster-sama III died... But if he died then Sayoko had to have died too, and she was still alive in the end... OR WAS SHE?!

No, Melody was not a "good" kind of confusing anime (like Haibane Renmei; where you care about the characters and their plight, and their attempt to make sense of a surreal situation). No, Melody was like Dead Leaves... Only even LESS connected to anything relevant. It's just images. And not even cool images like Leaves. Random, lame images. One after another pretending that the parts and the whole are profound and have meaning. Let me repeat this for you in case you are still confused about it: IT HAS NO MEANING. This show is the biggest waste of time that I have EVER spent on ANYTHING. To paraphrase the Knibb High Principal in Billy Madison: Studio Gainax, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Man, I don't think my review of Melody of Oblivion even made any sense... Whatever, I still only give it 0 out of 5 Stars of Gainaxy Gloriousness. Gainax, if this is what you've become, please do the world a favor and either commit seppuku, or get Hideaki Anno back on your full-time payroll.

Wait, what? That wasn't a shitty, Tequila-induced dream? Whoa, G... That's fucked up.

Then, was this show supposed to mean somethin'? 'Cause I figured it was just my head playin' with me, tellin' me that by racing against a giant, flying, mechanical horse I shouldn't be bettin' on the ponies anymore. Or by watchin' those endless armies of dollies marching into that hotel out of that schoolbus, that I shouldn't be chasin' no high school tail anymore... Or at least I should splurge a bit with the Benjamins and get a room at a fancier pad.

Shiiiiit, ain't no nevermind. This thing was more fucked up than that nightmare I once had where that bear with the shark head ate all my Jell-O shots, and then proceeded to shit out a litter of mini Pauly Shores who then ran around my apartment screaming, "I'm the Wee-zel, buuuuuuuuuuuuuddy. I'm the Wee-zelllllllllll. Gonna eat your toes now." That was ka-raaaaaazy. I wasn't able to get back to sleep for days after that fucked up dreamscape... And I only got some Zs then 'cause that damn Mexican Robot hit me in the face with a microwave oven.

Thumbs down, my homies. This Melody show was just too stupid for its own good. Like Jimmy Jammer.

I think this is the last Japanimation program that I let my brother show me.

I'm giving this Japanimation a thumb up, only because it got me to finally say "No!" to future wastes of time.