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Aug 3, 2013
My friend and I started watching this show because we're both huge Legend of Galactic Heroes fans, and the novelist that created that show also created this one. Legend of Galactic Heroes is probably one of the best anime shows of all time; it's a show of amazing ambition and scope that manages to blend in personal struggles, memorable characters, and a galaxy-spanning war without ever becoming unengaging to the audience.
Unfortunately, Heroic Legend of Arslan doesn't live up to that pedigree. Well, whatever, Yoshiyuki Tomino had Garzey's Wing, I guess Yoshiki Tanaka has Arslan.
The biggest problems I had with the series were the story, characters,
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and animation. I'm probably going to reference LoGH a lot to prove my points.
STORY: The story hooked me right away with the first episode. It seemed like it had the makings of a classic story - a kingdom falls, a prince vows to get the kingdom back, he gets some allies, some plot twists happen, he raises an army, and gets back the kingdom in the end.
The problem is that the characters themselves seemed to lack emotion and seemed dispassionate about actually getting Pars back. In addition, I never really got a good handle on how the war between the prince's group and the usurpers was actually going. In Legend of Galactic Heroes, they usually took a few seconds during each battle to illustrate in some way which side was winning and their spatial locations. In Arslan, I had problems following who was where and why.
Also, Arslan continues something that I hate, hate, hate about anime series: no ending. Basically, he starts almost at square one again, invalidating all the effort he took in the previous five episodes!
CHARACTERS: The second biggest problem with Arslan are the characters. I mentioned it above, but Arslan seems mostly indifferent to the prospect of actually getting back Pars. Sure, he mentions it, but it doesn't feel like he has any sort of spark or drive. With Lohengramm in LoGH, you got the sense that he was full of (and would eventually be consumed by) his ambition.
The other characters in his group were kind of a flatline for me too: none of them except for that black armor knight seemed interested in Pars either. They seemed to be mostly along for the ride and didn't seem like they were actually friends or life-and-death companions.
The only character that seemed to have any passion was the Silver Mask villain. It was funny actually, I thought his beef with Pars was pretty legit, and I was kind of rooting for *him* to succeed. Who cares if he used black magic, at least he had some sort of drive!
ANIMATION: Arslan's animation is inconsistent from episode-to-episode. Character designs seem to change, the quality of the animation seems to change, and it's very noticeable. Not having a consistent animation style is off-putting, and it takes you out of the story.
OVERALL: I'm giving this a 4. I really wanted to like this show, but all the elements that worked in Legend of Galactic Heroes simply don't work here. Whether it was being confused by character motivation or not being terribly interested in the characters, Arslan had problems that made it a below average viewing experience.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Feb 22, 2013
This is going to be a Johnny-Come-Lately review, but after watching FMA: Sacred Star of Milos, I realized something about anime movies like this--non-canon movies about an established franchise stuck somewhere nebulously within the main plot--that's been bothering me for a lot of years now, and I felt like I wanted to share it.
When I got done watching the movie, I didn't dislike it necessarily and I wasn't gushing about it. I barely had any reaction at all. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I thought the same thing about a lot of these non-canon movies (e.g. the Cowboy Bebop
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movie, the Trigun movie, a lot of the One Piece movies). I don't hate them, but I don't love them either.
That's when I realized that there are systemic story problems with non-canon intra-story that prevent the story from having any sort of meaningful impact. Here's my logic as it relates to the FMA movie:
One of the aspects of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood that I liked the most were the characters. Most of the principal cast felt like they grew and changed throughout the story. They learned new things, they changed a little, they thought of things differently, they had character arcs that built up throughout the series.
The problem is that since the character arcs of the main FMA characters are already established by the show, there's really no way for them to grow in the movie. If the Elric brothers had some grand earth-shattering revelation during the course of the movie that fundamentally altered their worldview, wouldn't it be silly if they just discarded it by the time they left the movie's setting?
This means that for convenience for the greater FMA story, everyone who's involved in the main story who is in the movie has to simply have no change whatsoever. You can't make a movie like this though, because then the plot of the movie will just be what the Simpsons would call, "a bunch of stuff that happened," so what happens is that they toss in a group of side characters who have arcs throughout the course of the movie in order to have some sort of emotional climax.
However, non-canon side characters in anime movies generally have much less screen time than the main story characters because an anime creator wouldn't have a side character upstage a main character. The result is that the emotional core of anime movies like FMA:SSoM is built on top of shaky ground and the characterization looks and feels extremely weak compared to the show.
What you end up with with FMA:SSoM is a group of main characters that don't grow at all, a story that's visually appealing but doesn't have any impact to the FMA world as a whole, a setting that's far removed from the main story so as to have zero impact, and a bunch of side characters that grow in a rushed and superficial way.
Which is a shame, because the art and animation is decent in the movie, and the dub is top notch (Funmation's voice actors did an amazing job with FMA as a whole), and we sympathize with the characters' struggles in the show.
I don't want to say, "Don't watch this!" because it's not a bad movie on the whole, but it lacks impact and is generally forgettable. Rent it from Netflix if you want a lazy Sunday movie.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 22, 2012
I've never really been compelled to write a review about a show before, but Melody of Oblivion is truly one that deserves some sort of warning before going into it. I naively thought that a show made by J.C. Staff (with some help from Gainax) would be something thought provoking, or at least, entertaining. However, incompetent storytelling, bad characterization, terrible dialogue, and extremely poor use of allegory and symbolism torpedo any potential this show could have had.
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
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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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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