Uta∽Kata

It's the last day of the school term in Kamakura Girl's School, and summer is about to begin. Serious but polite 14-year-old Ichika Tachibana is excited to make her summer vacation with her friends a special break to remember! But little does Ichika know that this summer will be more special than she could have ever imagined.

While cleaning in an unused school building, Ichika notices an image of an unfamiliar girl in place of her own reflection in a large mirror. Convinced by her friends that she was just seeing things, she is surprised to see the girl in the mirror later that day, holding her lost cell phone. Introducing herself as Manatsu Kuroki, she comes out of the mirror and hands Ichika's phone back—and to Ichika's surprise, the stones on her cell phone charm have changed colors and now allow her to borrow the power of the 12 Djinn that watch over the world.

Uta Kata is a tale of a young girl who will realize new things through her interactions with these spirits. As the Djinn show her overwhelming sights, they will soon also bring to her overwhelming thoughts...

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Tachibana, Ichika Main

Honda, Youko Japanese

Kuroki, Manatsu Main

Asano, Masumi Japanese

Toudou, Sei Supporting

Tobita, Nobuo Japanese

Toudou, Kai Supporting

Canna, Nobutoshi Japanese

Munakata, Michiru Supporting

Tamura, Yukari Japanese

Takasugi, Maki Supporting

Kakazu, Yumi Japanese

Hinata, Michiko Supporting

Nagata, Ryoko Japanese

Nakano, Tooru Supporting

Sasanuma, Akira Japanese

Shirasaka, Shiho Supporting

Hiramatsu, Akiko Japanese

Munakata, Rumiko Supporting

Honda, Takako Japanese

Uchida, Tetsuo Producer

Yukawa, Jun Producer

Haruta, Katsunori Producer

Gotou, Keiji Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation, Principle Drawing

Reviews

Aug 26, 2022

Vanillashaketime

Recommended

This show truly brought me to tears and comforted me. It starts off slow and boring, but as time goes by it shows more emotions and ties the beautiful picture together.
I recommend this anime 100%. This is different than normal horror magical girl anime, but it's the same in a way.
This anime is something I would watch over and over again.
Heads up, there are some solid plot twists. And EVERYTHING shown is tied with each other.

In this anime every little information shows up again in one way or another. I've found myself re-watching the first couple episodes to see the things I may ... have missed, not knowing what the future would hold for this show.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Apr 9, 2020

cja1994

Mixed Feelings

I am not usually one to write reviews for things, but based on the other reviews for this show, I feel like I NEED to right this review. If you don't want to read the full review, the thing to take away is that if you are looking for a Dark Mahou Shoujo show similar to Madoka Magica, Magical Girl Site, Magical Girl Raising Project, Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Day Break Illusion, and anime like that, THIS IS NOT THE ANIME FOR YOU!

I'd previously watched those anime, and based on the reviews, I thought that was what I was getting into, but this ... show is like those shows, in the same that an apple and an organ are both fruits. Does this show have magical girls? Sort of. Does it have a dark twist? I guess. Does it deal with dark and mature themes? a bit. But that's just kind of it, besides that this show is more of a slice of life/coming of age story, with a girl who happens to have magical powers.

I'll admit that the plot did keep me coming back, because the show does do a good job of alluding to the darker twist, but that's just it. If I had to describe an average episode, I'd say it's about 80-90% slice of life, and at the end of the episode it alludes to the darker and greater plot, but it does this for almost the entire series. For example, you'll find yourself on episode 9 or so, and the writers are still just dangling the whole "There's something bad about using the Djinn's power", but the do that for the entire series! From episode 1-9, I'd like to know more than just "using the power of the Djinn is bad". I guess my complaint comes down to pacing, the pace of this show is slower than a snail crowing.

I think what also adds to the slow pacing of the story is that unlike other Mahou Shoujo shows, the main character isn't fighting evil others, or even similar to Magical Girl Raising Project, where in the beginning the goal is to collect candies. This premise of this show is literally that the main character gets super powers, and there's no real evil threat anything, she just uses her Magical Girl powers to, fly through the sky, look for a watch, help her friends find lost items, and other things of that nature. I am not kidding, I literally just spoiled the "conflict" for half of the episodes, sorry. But as you can see, the show just gives the character powers for no real reason. The powers do add to the whole coming of age portion of the story, which is why I would again describe this show as a slice of life/coming of age story, where the character happens to have powers. Also another spoilers, I keep saying "powers" but let me clarify, for more than half the show, she only uses two powers 1) Flight and 2) The eye sight of the Djinn, which allows the main character to see further distances and complete view of the world (which the show never really goes into, but they're Gods so just role with it), which usually helps her on her fetch quest for the day.

If you're looking for a slice of life show, a show where the main character has a love interest and is unsure how they fell, or a show about teenage girls trying to enjoy their summer, then this is the show for you. But if you're looking for a Dark Mahou Shoujo show with violence, death, action, depth, fantasy, etc, then this show is not for you, and you'll like be bored out of your mind, but you'll get to episode 9 and realized you've invested this much time in this show, might as well finish it. By the end of this show, I was skipping through about 60% of the episodes because I was so over the slice of life BS. I think this show wouldn't have been bad if it was advertised as a slice of life show, but instead it was advertised as this dark and twisted anime, which it is far from.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Apr 2, 2024

Phobossus

Not Recommended

Came here to watch one of the "very dark takes on the Mahou Shoujo genre"? In for a psychological drama? Spare yourself the trouble, ignore recommendations, I can't think of one reason why this would be worth your time. This is an unexciting slice-of-life series that has a mystery lurking in the background - we're talking maybe 10% of each episode's duration - and plenty of uncomfortable, pedo-fanservicy shots at the body parts/underwear of underaged female characters - just so you could, on top of being bored and unamused, also feel utterly disgusted.

Uta-Kata, as we may expect from its premise, is mostly episodic in nature. ... It's always a different story that has our main character use the power of Djinn to resolve a certain arising trouble. The problem is that the Djinn Trials in question... are executed without any substance and contribute very little to the plot. They are neither preceded with interesting drama buildups (or, in some cases, *any* buildups at all), nor actually feature any interesting aspects themselves. The circumstances surrounding them that lead Ichika into using a Djinn are low stake (in both physical and emotional sense) and forgettable. The theme of "using powers has consequences" is in fact almost absent. There is no real payoff for sticking to the show if you don't like it early "because it gets darker", it doesn't really. As for the mystery and its reveal, it is - ironically - paced much faster than most of this show and severely underwhelming.

Uta-Kata, in my opinion, will not generally meet the expectations of someone who would decide to watch it based on the recommendations section (Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica, Shoujo Kakumei Utena, Princess Tutu, Mai-HiME). As mentioned before, it leans more towards slice-of-life, there's far more laid-back character interactions about nothing and beach episodes than there is psychological content, dark twists, emotional drama and so on. Throwing in a scene of mysterious black haired lady watching Ichika and playing ominous music once per episode isn't really it, sorry.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Uta Kata Episode 12 Discussion GlennMagusHarvey - Jul 21, 2011	10 replies	by bizor »» Jun 20, 2023 9:40 PM
	Poll: Uta Kata Episode 9 Discussion GlennMagusHarvey - Jul 20, 2011	16 replies	by Destroyer31 »» Apr 1, 2023 12:14 AM
	Poll: Uta Kata Episode 7 Discussion Shocked - Aug 27, 2011	10 replies	by Destroyer31 »» Mar 31, 2023 8:38 PM
	Poll: Uta Kata Episode 5 Discussion VampireLord - Sep 3, 2012	12 replies	by Destroyer31 »» Mar 31, 2023 7:45 PM
	Poll: Uta Kata Episode 8 Discussion VampireLord - Sep 3, 2012	10 replies	by bushman66 »» Mar 12, 2023 10:07 AM