STORY: The premise of the story was what compelled me to at least try Melody of Oblivion. I thought that a storyline about a warrior fighting a war that has long been decided and against the wishes of the people of the world would be interesting, and maybe with better writing it would have!
What I got was a story that was nearly incomprehensible with overuse of extraneous and often inappropriate symbolism. The most egregious example of this was a large-scale battle near the end of the series that was intercut with scenes from a farm where (it was implied) girls in cow bikinis were being milked, along with scenes (intercut in the same battle!) where the villains and heroes are in a karaoke room (?!). These had no bearing on the story! They undercut any emotional impact from the scenes that followed it! Why were they there?! I hate this show.
The last four episodes are particularly guilty of overuse, almost to the point of total incoherency. I did not enjoy them very much at all.
ART: The backgrounds and backdrops for some of the locales in this show are mellow. Some have the appearance of watercolors, which looked very nice.
However, the character designs and animation are sort of ugly. A lot of attack scenes are overly long, reused liberally, have more gratuitous fanservice, and a lot (particularly of the main character) contain more pointless symbolism.
CHARACTERS: Barely developed. Frankly, only a few them (the leads) even seem to go through a character arc at all throughout the course of the series. Some of the villains are particularly one-dimensional, mainly the ones near the end of the show. Why did they join with the Monsters? What were they getting out of it? Who knows! Guess that character development was thrown out to make way for more train track symbolism!
OVERALL: There are really too many flaws and too much wasted potential in this show to recommend it. What should have been a dynamite combination between J.C. Staff and Gainax became a muddled mess. Avoid.
