Jul 14, 2008
This review comes from a guy who really hasn't watched any Mahou Shoujo anime other than Puni Puni Poemi, which by most would be placed in "Comedy/Parody" anyway. So you could say I have no idea what makes a Mahou Shoujo anime good.
At least I didn't find anything that I really liked with Uta Kata.
Story - The story is neither bad nor good. It's merely a tale of summer break miracles , friendship and love (enjoyment is sold separately). While it's not the worst crap someone has ever produced, it mainly feels like a smoothed-out, over-produced generic mass of magic teenage despair. Just reading the
...
synopsis made me feel a bit uncomfortable with it.
The main's, Ichika's, issues with love and friendship feel exaggeratedly serious and makes it all seem like the world is nearing its end, but soon resolves a few episodes later just to make you think "Why all the fuss?".
When I think about it, many series that I like are like this, but I don't know why I notice it so clearly in this one.
The ending is about the only thing that is touching.
Too bad that it really needed much smoother character development to support it.
Art - Quite smooth actually. The girls are cute, the guys are stiff and hansome and colored in a palette mainly composed of grey, green, purple and blue with a splat of brown. In some episodes it varies though. I once mistook one of the guys for a giraffe due to his long neck, but now afterwards I think this was meant to make him even more stiff and handsome. Oh well..
Animation-wise Uta Kata is quite good. Nothing impressive but it fills its purpose.
The backgrounds are well-made pieces of art, and sometimes I actually considered having a screenshot put up in my room with a neat frame or something. It doesn't beat Mushishi on this point, but hey, what does?
Sound - The soundtracks are all standard Mahou Shoujo I guess, since this is basically what I remember from Puni Puni Poemi. The dramatic music starts really suddenly and sometimes even too soon for the right emotional impact. It's strange rather than bad.
No music besides the ED is really memorable in this one, sadly.
The voice acting is quite good, but I frequently got tricked by the sometimes strange and unnatural dialogue.
Character - Weak girls with a weakwilled facade has never really appealed to me. And yeah, it seemed to me like all the girls in the series were copies of each other besides this one girl who was particularly slutty (can't remember her generic name though).
Watching this bunch of stiff guys and girls really reminded me of animal channel. And I really don't like animal channel. Animal channel get's 4/10, and so does the characters in Uta Kata. They don't develop much. Mainly they just change their mind about certain stuff, not that deep if you ask me.
I'm quite bugged with the fact that the main sometimes (not that often) felt like a mere plot-device.
Enjoyment - I'm a sucker of drama and romance anime. But thanks to the stiff characters strange mood changes and due to the sudden music changes without ramps nothing really got to me emotionally. And even though this is supposed to be a summer break miracle story they actually had whole episodes dedicated to slice of life events like going to the beach going apeshit over some lost watch.
Some wasted episodes in such a short anime if you ask me.
Well, it shaped up at the end but still failed to deliver enough for me to chew on.
Oh, and then there were very obvious panty flashes every now and then..
Though the art was good, it all felt unecessary, and once again, too obvious.
Not really something I enjoyed.
Overall - I wouldn't really recommend this series to anyone who wants to see "some good anime". But if you're into Mahou Shoujo, smooth art and odd fan service then maybe this could satisfy some of your needs. Similar to me, who will watch anything with romance, some people might want to watch anything with Mahou Shoujo, erotic transformations and cute girls galore.
I give this piece of overcooked pancakes 6 out of 10 tosters.
Not goodl, but not horrible.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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