Melody of Oblivion

Melody of Oblivion:  N/A

Hoo, boy.  This series is really something.  One of these days I'll go back and review Revolutionary Girl Utena so I can finally have my opinions about Melody of Oblivion (Bokyaku no Senritsu, in Japanese), Star Driver and Utena all down in the same place, which is relevant, because they're all very similar series.

I want to give Melody of Oblivion a B and a C, and I kind of want to give it an A as well.  I really can't manage to pick between these three, so it gets an NA.  It gets a C because it's freaking bizarre and if you're not paying much attention to it and trying to reconstruct some kind of pattern out of the symbolism it will just drive you crazy.  It gets a B because it's fun to watch and conceptually very interesting.  It gets an A because the symbolism of it is fascinating and the story is ultimately good.

I'll spare you a short version of the plot, because you can just read my Star Driver 5-13 review (here).  Melody of Oblivion, even more so than Utena and Star Driver, has strong sexual overtones (which become rather hilariously no-longer-tones in the later parts of the series), and viewing it as an exercise in symbolic innuendo results in an intelligent story very much about some difficult-to-approach subjects.

This is also the series where I mention that there are dudes who are also motorcycles and also unicorns.  So it goes both ways.

Definitely a series for those of you who like weird stuff, I do consider Melody of Oblivion the weakest of the three series, but that is due more to Star Driver and Utena's excellence than Melody's lack.