Utawarerumono

Information of Anime

A man wakes up in a mysterious room & is treated by the village elder, Toskuru.  He suffered life threatening injuries & was told that he was found on the road.  Coming to, he notices a mask on his face & can't remove it.  What's more worse is that he doesn't remember what he did & who he is.  Under the care of her granddaughter, Eruruu, the man decides to pay back their kindness by working in the village.  However, these villagers have strange ears & tails.  Living with them for a long time now, Toskuru decides to name the man Hakuoro, the name of her late son.  When political powers try to disrupt this peaceful village, Hakuoro steps up & defends for them.

Utawarerumono is based on the ero strategy game by AQUAPLUS.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I'veseen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The story is mainly about war & politics & the character development of Hakuoro.  Because of his kindness, many people admire him & has won their respect; even people outside the village.  But yet, he seems to be well-educated in the field of war strategy.  After overthrowing the emperor that disturb the village, Hakuoro became the new emperor & many surrounding countries were concern about his actions.  Some decide to unite with his country & some decide to take action.  Although he does his best in maintaining peace with his country & others, Hakouro's past starts to be revealed in episode 11 when a country decided to invade his country for unknown reasons.  During this encounter, he discovers his forgotten past & becomes a shock to him as he is labelled as Rak Shine, a villian & traitor in Kuccha Keccha.  Hakouro starts to investigate about this Rak Shine person & see if he's really him.  As he tries to get the answer, Emperor Yue kills him as he finally sees what Hakouro's powers are & tries to push his country to the limit with a number of aggressive attacks to weaken Hakouro's forces.  However, after the Emperor Yue arc where he is defeated, Harkuoro's past is still covered in mystery. 

It's only at the last arc that we discover Hakouro's true self when he transforms into a form that evolved between monkeys & humans.  Also, he came from a different world as the Earth was losing its population & humans need to be made in a different planet in order for the race to survive.  It turns out that he is split into two beings; one good & one evil.  The evil one being Dii, the one behind all the wars who wanted to eliminate the human race & start anew.  To end it, Hakouro who's really name is Iceman decides to end it by combining his split self into one again.

The show ends with Hakouro being sealed.  Time passes as Hakouro's family & friends move on with their lives.

My Personal Review

Utawarerumono is really a great show.  It's got nice war tactics & political issues.  Also, the mysteries surrounding Hakouro's past keeps me thinking who he really is.  However, the show is a bit bloody at times in terms of where the cuts are aimed at.  Later on, body parts really starts to fly & it may not be so enjoyable for some.  Personally, I would recommend watching this even if you aren't a fan of the series at the start.

Animation

The character designs are almost the same for the girls.  The big eyes & chubby faces.  The only distinctions are the hair & creature traits.  It seems to be pretty common in anime these days to use the same female facial designs.  For me, it seems Hakoruo's face is pretty long due to the large forehead he has.  It's most likely because of the mask & the way his hair is parted in the middle.

For movements, it's quite fluid.  It's pretty interesting that the show uses 3D CGs for the army marches.  Although it looks like regular CGs, you can tell it's different by the way they march.  The movements looks very funny.

As for the background, it's pretty dull with light details due to the dull colour toning in the show.  They weren't breathtaking or very interesting to look for hours.

Sound

The sound effects aren't bad.  Pretty clean & clear.  Although the slicing though flesh isn't the best sound out there.  There is also a mixture of realistic & silly sounds in the show.

The seiyuus done a great job portraying their characters.  Hakoruo has a gentle voice that matches his personality at the moment.  But I don't know if the story will make him evil later.  If it happens, I feel the seiyuu chosen here is the best man since I have heard his other works before.  The female voices take some time in getting use to.  Although their characters does require to do a lot of crying & yelling at times, it can be a bit annoying.  However, it would get into your system soon or later without problems.

The music creates the mood of the show very well as it has that Asian feel to it with Asian instruments.  However, it's quite boring as most of it has the pace of ballads & a style similar to contemporary music.  Some of the songs create some tense & some can be plain.

Story

Not only does it talk about Hakoruo's past, but also the ugliness of war.  Even behind Hakoruo's kind character he used some dirty tactics.  As much as I like to watch the war strategies put into play, the action isn't highly exciting.  Although this was based on an ero-game, this is no love story show.  At least, not yet.  For the characters, they are a pretty good & balanced cast.

The show really leaves the viewers questioning on who Hakoruo is.  Although he's a gentle person, it looks like he has a demon inside him when he has visions appearing in his head.  When we learn some about his past in episode 11, I was really on the edge of my seat in figuring out why some people want him dead that badly.  However, he seems to have powers that are pretty power that he doesn't know that he possesses.  However, it seems Emperor Yue know what it is.  But, things go downhill a bit when Hakoruo kills Yue in a disturb blood battle.  We see Hakoruo's evil side, but it doesn't reveal much.  After Yue's death, the progress of revealing Hakoruo's past comes to a halt as the peaceful times come again.  This sort of wrecks the character development as the pace is slow.  However, for some reason, it feels right as nothing is rushed.  It's only at the last arc where things get interesting as the show reveals Hakuoro's past & who he truly is.  However, it seems it's explained a bit too fast with things popping out of nowhere almost.  Luckily, the facts are understandable enough to fix them together to get an understanding about Hakuoro.

The ending is pretty good as it completes the story well.  It ties up the story, even though the past of Hakoruo didn't reveal a lot.

Overall Conclusion

Utawarerumono is probably an anime show that would be overshadowed by bigger & ecchi anime shows during it's season.  It's a great show with a great storyline.  It doesn't focus much on character development as it's heavily on past backgrounds more.  I highly recommend watching this show if you are into war tactics.

Utawarerumono gets an 8.5/10.  The show has an interesting storyline which made the ero-game popular.  Also, it has great characters & an interesting view on war tactics.  I don't have much problems with the show aside of the battle scenes being a bit on the dry side at the start.  It got more interesting & graphic as the show passed the halfway point.  Another problem would be about Hakuoro's past as most of the information is revealed near the last five episodes.  Although it gives enough for the viewers to understand his background, it would have been more nice if they added more to it.  It seemed a bit jumpy at times where things come out of nowhere almost.

Last updated on January 22, 2008