100 dollars of Geneon merchandise.

Oh hey, my 25 Geneon items from that recent RightStuf.com sale arrived. As you can see: Seven A Little Snow Fairy Sugar DVDs, three Popotan DVDs, six The Melody of Oblivion DVDs, and nine CDs.

If anything, it'll give me an excuse to start talking about The Melody of Oblivion again.

Boukyaku no Senritsu title screen.

Okay, the basics: The Melody of Oblivion is a joint J.C. Staff and Gainax production about a post-apocalyptic future. Mankind has lost the war against the Monsters, but seems content now to live quietly under their subjugation. Most people just want to go about their lives, ignorant of the Monsters and their dealings.

Kurofune.

However, there are a few Melos Warrior around who fight the good fight, mostly alone, and wandering as drifters.

Bocca.

Enter Bocca, a disaffected boy unhappy with the banal trivialities of school life, and frustrating efforts of those around him to shape him to their will.

These aren't robots.

As for the rest of the show, it is about monsters, and music, and mythology, and motorcycles, and archery, and poker, and love, and freedom, and child sacrifices, and FREAKY FREAKY SHIT. Oh, and karaoke. This is what happens when you let Gainax weird up a J.C. Staff show.

It's a bull, it's a bus. I don't know.

You can immediately tell that The Melody of Oblivion is going to be a different type of show right from the start. You'll notice that the backgrounds are watercolors. And this is all before it starts getting weird. And get weird it does.

I haven't watched The Melody of Oblivion since the now-defunct Rice-Box fansubbed it, but I'm pleased with Geneon's DVDs and happy for an excuse to re-watch the show. The first DVD itself is packaged in a transparent case with reversible covers and the insert contains a cheesecake centerfold of Sayoko. I don't have any issues with the DVD itself, but I do think "RESOUND, MY MELOS!" was a better choice than "RING OUT, MY MELOS!" At the very least, "ring out" doesn't seem as appropriate for the Melos Warriors' stringed instruments/weapons. It's an odd enough choice that it makes me wonder if somewhere along the line a decision was made not to use either resound or echo in order to avoid the appearance that they had "copied" the fansubs.

The mostly invisible Melody of Oblivion.

Rest assured that "VIVA! MONSTER UNION!" is unchanged, being in English originally and all. However, "JUST FIT RIBS" is now "JUST FIT RIM" in the DVDs (not that that makes any more or less sense), until the third disc anyway where it is "JUST FIT RIB." Additionally, I notice the first DVD made the same mistake as the early fansubs in using FLASH instead of FLUSH. (It becomes apparent later on that the Melos Warriors are shouting poker terms when initiating their attacks.) It's fixed by the second DVD, though. Incidentally, Toune is spelled Tone in Geneon's subtitles. That makes a lot more sense, really.

Tone.

As is appropriate for a show about music, the soundtrack is quite good. I especially like the the ED.

It's also kinda nice that they got Yuji Ueda, Kana Ueda, and Mai Nakahara (among others) to voice minor throwaway characters instead hiring random scrubs. The vocal cast as a whole is quite talented, in fact.

The Melody of Oblivion is a hard sell, I understand, but I like it a great deal. J.C. Staff could have benefitted from some of this Gainax weirdness in Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo, and they definitely needed it in their rather insipid Zero no Tsukaima recently.

Sayoko and Bocca.

Also, any show that features obi-spinning by the third episode is all right by me. Oh yeah, and there's fanservice.

Bocca and Sayoko.

The last DVD of The Melody of Oblivion is SO WEIRD. I can't even really begin to explain it. The Melody of Oblivion was already a weird series to begin with, but the last last four episodes take the peculiarity to another level.

Are the episodes good? Yes. I can assure you of that much. But I also can't present a bunch of random screenshots and expect those of y'all who haven't watched the series to understand just what makes the series SO WEIRD. Thus, I've posted the two least weird screenshots I had—ones that don't feature karaoke or girls being milked.

Bocca.

I also have my own theories as to what happened at the end of the The Melody of Oblivion, but I understand others may embrace different interpretations.

P.S. BIO CONCERTO.

Evangelion Platimum Edition DVDs boxed set.

Holy crap, the Platinum Edition of the Neon Genesis Evangelion DVDs (ADV's version of the digitally remastered Renewal discs) is down to $33.87. I can vouch for the quality of these discs. As someone who owns both the Platinum Edition and the older so-called "Perfect Edition," the Platinum version is vastly superior in every respect.

I would be okay with the upcoming Evangelion movies using this character design.

I am posting this Gainax splash page image because it is awesome.

I hope the artist (Kozaki Yusuke) has an Asuka for next week.

She may be weary.

Young girls they do get weary

Wearing that same old shabby dress.

And when she gets weary

Try a little tenderness.

It's not just sentimental.

She has her grief and care.

And a word that's soft and gentle

Makes it easier to bear.

This is really a picture of Asuka.

I sort of hope Miyamura Yuko has been working on her German in preparation for the new Evangelion movies.

There's a third Love Eva manga, Neon Genesis Evangelion Gakuen Datenroku (Neon Genesis Evangelion Academy: Records of Heaven’s Descent). At least I think it's the third one; I may have lost track. Like the first Love Eva manga, known as Iron Maiden 2nd, Girlfriend of Steel 2, and Angelic Days (among other monikers), Evangelion Academy runs in Monthly Asuka.

Turtle Paradise Scanlations is up to chapter five as of this entry. They're using scans from Monthly Asuka itself, and meeting the same challenges I faced with its pulpy paper when I was scanning Iron Maiden 2nd for Studio ADTRW. Scanning-type issues aside, Turtle Paradise is doing a fine job so far, although I see they've found yet another spelling variant for "Soryu."

As far as the manga itself...it seems all right. I like how Rei totes around the Lance of Longinus. One thing I don't care for is how it—like just about every other Eva revision—tries to make Shinji less despicable and whiny. While that may make him less annoying, it kind of makes it Not Eva anymore—might as well just take the basic idea of the revision and turn it into an original title. Making Shinji less of cretin seem as unnatural to me as transforming Asuka into The Virgin Mary. Oh, wait...

Sacrilicious.