Utawarerumono: The False Faces

This is a review written after I saw it entirely. So, it'll diverge a lot in relation to those which had been written around the beginning. Is my first review, mainly cause of the controversial feeling about this anime. Story: People may say that it hasn't a story, I say the otherwise. The first half can be a low-development kind. For those who compared directly with the first Utawarerumono, it really is slow and without a outter story development. Though, the second half goes on a exponential curve of "Give me the next episode!". So, we have character and environment presentation and later the rampage ofthe story. For those who searched about the anime, now that it is based on a 2-part visual novel, so, be warned that we have a "half" series, even so, I consider this season as a preparation to "I hope there will be a" next one. Art: Well, the art is nice. The ambience is well made, and although there's a difference from the first one, in a few episodes you accustom to it. Well, the furry part is well made, as are the battles and "special effects". Some parts, considering the year of release, are lot better than the first one, which is expected. Sound: I really liked the previous Utawarerumono opening (I love that one). They keep Suara's songs for the two openings (prefer the first one - really nice - but the second is really nice too). The endings are those slow-motion zen-kind songs, nice if you want to hear it (worst from all aspects). The general soundtrack is really good, mainly the last episode's ones; They match very well to the situations and ambience. Character: Well, we have a half season for that, if it was bad the overall would be to. We have a whole set of cliches to not cliches characters. I, particularly, really liked the MC - because he is really different from the normal-MC-way, and has a great development -. Aside from that, the whole set (older Utawarerumono characters, "allies" characters and enemies alike) are well made, be the visual, the actions, reasons, thinking, whatever. Even the lesser things cab be see as a potential character development fuel. Enjoyment: The fantasy slice-of-life that is the first part is, if nothing else, fun. I found it to be relaxing too. They have a equilibrium between fun and serious, a bit of overall development, new characters, being to know more of the world, etc. The second part is fun, cool, tense and all around some feels and emotions in some aspects (I'll refrain from spoilers, but mainly one part about the MC, and the finale). Basically, I watched one episode every week and waited for the next one from the first to the last episode. So, the overall note is kind a mean between all of it. I'm bad with rating, never know exactly what I think, Thus, pay more attention to what I wrote than tho the rating.

Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen is one tough anime to review. I started watching it without having seen the first season (I probably should have done that, but in the end I felt like I was able to understand the story without it) and had some mixed feelings while watching it. Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen is an anime that starts out as a slice of life and fantasy type of anime and ends as an action and drama type. I'm having a hard time deciding if that was a good thing since it made it good in some areas, but bad in others. As stated beforeI have mixed feelings about this anime, and I will now try to share those with you. Utawarerumono starts out with an extremely slow pace, extremely slow. Almost nothing happens for more than 10 episodes. The slow pacing is good in the sense that it introduces us to the characters and the world of Utawarerumono. The first few episodes are extremely relaxing to watch and easy to understand. As time goes on we gets introduced to character after character, that all gather around the main character. I can see why they all gather around him, I think he's a likeable guy with his casual lazy-type of personality. The characters around him get a fair bit of development considering how many there are. Too many for me to be able to count, and maybe not even remember. They each have some unique traits which make them avoid getting absolutely forgotten. But the side characters are too many to be able to genuinely contribute to the story, which is a shame since they also were likeable. All in all, the anime does a good job at introducing us to all these different characters, and sets us up for a promising ride. After the characters have all been introduced you would think that the story would start progressing, but that is not the case. After the characters have been introduced and developed, either nothing happens, or even more characters get introduced to even more characters. The middle of the anime, after the characters have been introduced and before the all the action, the anime turns stale and a bit boring. Maybe it was to fill more episodes, but it doesn't work out very well. These episodes are just a composition of random events that does not progress the story at all. The episodes contain some sort of action, but it's badly executed with the characters fighting armies by taking on usually 1, rarely 2 or 3, opponents at a time. The different action segments are boring and meaningless since it does not progress the story nor offer very much to the viewer. It's a shame that the good build up was ruined by this sudden stop of progress. Since the story of the anime stopped progressing, I had little hope that it would turn out good, or even decent. But at the end of the anime something finally happens, and it's actually something good and exciting. Since we get to spend so much time with the characters doing nothing, we are very likely to sympathise with them. When the story starts to unfold, we get to follow developed characters trough their adventures. This is great because we actually have feelings for these characters. Maybe not only good feelings, but we actually know these characters. The political twist (maybe not a twist if you've seen the first season) was nicely presented and executed. The power struggle was both fun and exciting to watch. The ending to this anime is great. It's bittersweet and definitely leaves an impact. The animation of this anime is pretty good. It has a nice natural style which fits in nicely with the medieval type of universe. The background is detailed but at the same time it doesn't stand out too much. A fault with the animation is that it sometimes comes of as being lazily done. Mainly action scenes have too little going on. For example when armies are fighting, only a few people are fighting at a time. This makes the fights come of as unrealistic and genuinely bad. The sound is not something that really stood out to me, all the openings and ending where decent, but not great. The soundtrack was also nothing that really stood out to me. Most voice actors where pretty good and the majority of the characters did a good job at impersonating their character. I enjoyed some parts of Utawarerumono, especially the start and end to it. But the middle of the anime just felt stale and boring. All in all Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen is an okay anime. Would I recommend it? I would if you like slow build up, a medieval type of universe and animation and/ or political disputes.

Everything about this anime is fantastic.In my most honest opinion,it is a good succesor to the 2006 season.The art is outstanding,story is very comprehensive and deep and expands its roots from the first season.The characters all have their own background behind them and very interesting and well-tought ones at that.While watching the first season will triple your excitement about this anime,you don't need to do that in order to see the fantastic story.It is honestly very rare for me to feel this way about an anime and encourage others to watch it as well,and not to give it a bad rating after watching only 25%of it :)

Warning: Review may contain spoilers. Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen is a good example of why a second season is sometimes a terrible idea. I can't help but wonder if most of these "reviews" even watched this anime. The "successor" to the charming first season of the series, which was a series with likeable characters that saw well-paced development, followed with a strong narrative and art/sound direction for the time and was an overall joy to watch. Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen, however, falls flat on all expectations short of art direction and soundtrack. Characters lack any real depth, they don't grow, bond or build a real relationship, we cansee characters lounging around for the better part of the series, 12+ episodes until anything happens isn't "slow pacing", it's poor writing and lack of actual content, and having a hack of a director in charge. The action feels forced and unnecessarily over-the-top compared to the first season when it does happen. We're presented with Haku, an extremely unremarkable and outright idiotic main character with no redeeming qualities, who finds himself in the wilderness and is rescued by Kuon, an inferior and bland version of a character we had in the first season. This second season regurgitates and reuses some narrative elements such as amnesia, a character rising to become a leader, and inheriting a weapon that belonged to someone else, in very cheap ways. From the moment Haku shows up, he pretty much just receives everything, and everyone falls in love with him for no reason at all. He's lazy, ill-mannered, untalented and amnesiac. He is quick to form a harem of literal princesses from different countries through no effort of his own, there is no real development or storytelling to speak of. The first half of the series takes place in an inn where all the characters converge as if it were a cheap run-off-the-mill slice of life, the series tries to entertain with the "yaoi fangirls" trope every single episode which quickly gets old, even though it's not funny the first time, it definitely wasn't funny the 20th time. By the time anything happens in the series, it's hard to take it seriously at all. Haku fails to care about anything other than drifting by and doesn't have any meaningful bonding with any of the other bland characters nor any noteworthy character development, he literally just lazily strolls through a war-zone while accompanied by the rest of the group who seem to think that going to war is a game, and after witnessing a single particularly gruesome event he pretends to be highly hurt by this for two episodes even though he has no reason to be. After 80% or so of the series has passed by, we're introduced to the cheap twist of "this guy is actually amazing" for Haku, he's supposed to be related to the late emperor! At this point the plot is trying to rapidly move forward in a rushed way, the empire is about to fall and the princess is rescued by Haku and his comrades, one of them dying along the way and entrusting the lazy good-for-nothing with the future of the empire, with absolutely no emotion or build-up at all. With basically no reason to do care or do anything, Haku accepts and pretends to be his fallen comrade and tries to rally his supporters to march towards the empire, and the series ends there. Astounding isn't it? As far as the "action" goes, there's a clear exaggeration when it comes how strong and capable the characters are, as fights that were akin to medieval fantasy with some mild magic gets twisted into literally splitting mountains with a single slash, yet these people are unable to win fights against the old season 1 characters. This felt like an unnecessarily big narrative gap created by mindless shounen power-leveling and "flashy" fights. In the first season, characters had real reasons to fight, such as revenge and protecting their homeland and loved ones. In this series it's basically "these guys are challenging **US**, we'll kill them!" All-in-all, Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen was extremely painful to watch, it's sad that the series which was solid and had laid the groundwork for something great was ruined by this. When it's not a mediocre slice-of-life harem with stale humor, it attempts at serious storytelling and fails. I recommend watching the first season and skipping this one.