Utawarerumono: The False Faces
Based off a visual novel for the Playstation platforms, Utawarerumono is the biggest disappointment for me this season. Sure, I dropped a few others (Comet Lucifer, Attack on Titan: Junior High, and Mr Osomatsu) due to a lack of interest, but for some reason I had higher hopes for Utawarerumono.
I think I had placed my expectations higher for mostly 2 reasons. One, I thought (based off the first couple of episodes) that the world it was set in looked interesting. It has a kind of mixing of Chinese and Japanese aesthetic in a fantasy setting which I found appealing. Two, the animation was really pretty good. Some beautiful scenes are featured, especially in the OP.
And the show keeps good animation throughout. The story however is another matter.
The pacing of the story is slow. It starts with potential and kind of fizzles out. You get an idea that something interesting may be happening in the background, but this doesn’t get fleshed out. Instead we get:
Fan service. Animal-eared and tailed girls acting pointlessly “cutesy” and multiple bathing scenes. You also have the main character ending each sentence she utters with: “I think”. It is annoying. I can forgive some fan service here and there if the story is good and going somewhere, but this just feels like it is exploiting it for it’s own sake.
Now maybe if I had watched the other associated anime or played the visual novel I would appreciate this show more, but I didn’t and I don’t.
Attention Parents: Overall the show doesn’t have a lot wrong with it, but there is nudity and some ecchi situations that may not be appropriate for younger viewers.
Go ahead and give it a try. Just because it wasn’t my thing doesn’t mean it won’t be yours.
Until next time. Happy viewing!
dadwatchesanime 
I think my only problem with this, since I really enjoy it, but that is only due to characters from the first series coming in from time to time. If you watched the first series this one is a lot better since the world is known. The first series took about 7 episodes to get to a major point. It was not till the second half of the 25 episodes where the main plot appeared. Since this one is also 25, I am assuming the same thing. This one has more humor, so there is that. But the first Uterwaremono hardly got any attention and both are taking their time. Not a lot of people know about it either since it aired back in 2006. I did not either until like 2 weeks before the anime aired and I decided to watch it from a recommendation.
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Yes. I think if I had the experience of the other show I may have had a better impression. I think it’s pace and reliance on fan service stuff is just what put me off. Because otherwise, like I wrote, it seems like it has some interesting places it could go and the animation is really nice.
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Yeah, the first series was like that too. But once the action kicked it the fan service appeared less and less.
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I like cute cat girls… I think.
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You can’t go wrong with cat girls, no.
… but don’t cats hate being in the water?
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Plot holes everywhere!
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Hahahaha!
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