TBH, I like it a lot better myself, art, story, all of it, DMD was never one of my favorites. Only a few if the characters are even attractive, but in Melody, almost everyone is.
Well, quality work takes time, there are a few, like Man of the House, who puts up an update every other week, but they are short, whereas here, he is trying to do a full story arc with each update. Not to mention, hand drawn art takes a lot longer than cgi renders. With CGI, once you have the models, you just need posing and rendering, with 2D, you have to draw almost every frame. This project did get slowed down this time due to losing one programmer and the main one having a death in the family, but they never stopped working.