As for the story, like any anime I watch I can't tell how much I'd like the story fully until the ending. Far too many times do animes with great stories ruin it with the end. The end here was a bit anticlimactic for my tastes, it wasn't completely screwed up to the point of ruining the series for me but it seemed a bit meh for all the tension it was building.
If you watched the first EF you will notice that the main charaters in this one are the side characters from the first season. I loved this part. Usually I hate when an anime dives off its main story line into side characters excessively, but this being a new season with a whole new story line and the original being completed I loved it. Really original, while the main characters from the first season appear here as side ones. Great concept.
This one threw in 2 different plot twists than memories, the first being the time aspect, one of the stories occurs during the past and if you've watched memories your pretty much know where it's going to go. But the way they alluded to this story line durring memories was so interesting to me. They teased you with it and never told you, until melodies.
The other is the distant thing. I was completely unaware during memories that the two stories were occurring on different continents. This part really didn't come across well at all. The characters switch around what country they are in at the drop of the hat, they made many mistakes as to who was in what country when (Listing them would all be spoilers) While I liked how they tied the characters together some of it just seemed forced and trying to draw the line between how this character knew this character from where- when the lines were crossing constantly and across continents just made my head hurt.
As for the characters themselves, much, much better than memories. I'm really impressed with how much of an improvment they made with this one. You grew to genuinlly care for these people for the most part, I hate when a writer wants to have two characters fall in love and instead of taking the time to build a logical relationship, showing the cause of the love between to characters they basically just shove them together for a day and when they come out declare their love for one another for no apparent reason. (Or not a believable one at least) While memories was riddled with this problem, melodies mearlly featured it. A little more build up in the love story would have been good, but this wasnt horrible.
Miki was the one character that just got under my skin. And as her earlier story line progressed, got really confusing. The earlier parts gave her depth, but I really wish they had expanded on that because as she is now she just seems like the typical ditzy anime girl.
As for the visuals in this one I didnt find them as dynamic as I did in the first. This one was all about good characters and good deep story lines. Memories to me relied way more on its looks. The english in both series's OP and end were a funny listen, though with the amount of drama contained within the episodes probably not the time you want to here something funny. I dont think anyone would find it romantic if I walked up to them and told them I wanted to see their insides. They should have just done them in Japanese, it would have come across much better and taken the cheese factor down a notch for me.
Overall this was a pretty good anime. Some minor flaws keeping it from perfection but after memories I am pleasantly surprised with this one. Defnitley worth the watch.
