Apr 9, 2016
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 can
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see 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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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