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I'll start off by saying that I'm a big fanboy of the Utawarerumono series. I've watched the original anime series and it was so good that it made me play the Visual Novel version. (Which brought me into the Visual Novel world - this was a few years ago) So it's natural that I was overjoyed when I heard Itsuwari no kamen was getting animated. I also came in with some expectations.


With that said, here's my slightly biased review of Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen.

Story:6

The first few episodes were beautiful, it allowed first time viewers to get used to the world and the people in it. ... Then the plots slowly starts to go south. The biggest thing that bugged me was combat. We see characters that laze around doing nothing, suddenly become proficient at using their weapon. We are told, but not shown how they've gotten stronger. It is most likely due to the fact that this anime was based off a SRPG, where the player trains the characters. At the end, a lot of things were left unexplained and plot points left hanging, but I will talk about this more at the end of this review.

Art: 8

I'm no expert at spotting errors in animation so I can only give you my impressions as viewer who focuses mostly on the plot. The scenery in the first few episodes blew me away, it really gave you a sense of being in the world. The large scale battles featured cookie cutter soldiers, but I'm fine with this as it is pretty expensive and a waste of money to try and anime each solder individually in a large battle. All in all, character movement felt smooth and the colors used in the anime felt natural.

Sound: 9

Nothing to say but great. If you enjoyed the type of music in the first series, you'll love the ones here.

Character: 6

Except for a few, most of the characters in this anime felt flat and their actions felt mechanical. I will explain more about this at the end of my review.

Enjoyment: 8

Utsuwari no Kamen will feel nostalgic to those who've watched this first series and just seeing the world and characters is enjoyable. Somethings will bug you like inconsistent plot and characters, but that is due to it's SRPG nature and a fact that I will discuss right below.

Rant

For those of you that don't know. Next we'll mostly likely get the next season during the Fall 2016 lineup. Why you ask? It's because the last visual novel of this series will be released that day. Why am I talking about next season on a review for this season? This is because you'll find that everything in this season is a buildup for next season.

What essentially happened was that they made the visual novel too large, so they split the story into two games. (Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen and Utawarerumono: Futari no Hakuoro) Which forced the anime to follow the same pattern and the viewer is left with lots of unexplained and hanging plot at the end. For those of you that have watched the first season, all of Itsuwari no Kamen is basically like the world building in the first few episodes of the first season. Now this wouldn't be a bad thing if the director could create some anime original scenes to smooth the transition from a SRPG visual novel to an anime, but due to the fact that there's already a sequel in plan, the director is not given much leeway. The anime is sticking so close to the source material that some plot points feel extremely awkward/doesn't make sense due to the SRPG elements.

Overall: 7

Tl;Dr Don't expect too much from this season as it is just world building for the next season.