Awww, Licenseless Rider is awesome and heartwarming! Him and OPM being friends is great, they clearly have very similar attitudes despite the difference in power.
In other news, Utawarerumono has finally frustrated me enough to compel me to write about it...
So if you aren't familiar with it there was a series called Utawarerumono back in 2006 or so that was based off of one of those half-VN-half-battle-RPG games. That series was alright - it was a slow build and underdeveloped many of its characters but it had some pretty cool parts throughout its run, too. Now airing is Utawarerumono: The False Faces, a new show based on the second game but which is not a direct sequel: it seems to be set many years later, in a whole new country, with whole new protagonists, though there are references and cameos to places/characters from the first series.
The first few episodes of The False Faces were really, really, REALLY good - so good I made a huge post expounding about it right before watching the fourth episode... then I deleted that post because the 4th episode made a huge tone shift, and it has more or less stayed shifted since (I'm now finished up to episode 9).
The show starts with introducing the main protagonist - Haku - an amnesiac who wakes up in the mountains (I guess the VN wanted him to be a blank slate for the player) but he's soon rescued by catgirl Kuon. Over the course of the first few episodes the pair of them travel through the mountains, stay at a village and meet some other characters (all of whom are cat-people, by the way, Haku is the only human, but it's not a big deal (yet?)) and there's a ton of interesting world-building - cool monsters revealed, an aristocratic thaumaturge sort of guy, banditry, giant bird mounts - and character development - Haku is this sort of lazy engineer who doesn't want to do any work but when forced to he works smart, Kuon is the more hard-working and honest type but with a mischievous streak - going on. I wasn't even annoyed when they had a bit of ecchi - it was actually set up in quite mature and believable circumstances and didn't fall under any of the usual stupid tropes. There was lots of great comedic bits, too.
Then the characters reach the country's capital and everything grinds to a horrible halt. Many of the interesting side characters disappear, there's practically no world-building even when interesting ideas are hinted at, and each episode has just become a pretty boring slice-of-life mundane-problem-of-the-week format. The one mature nude scene from the first few episodes becomes a token bath scene every single week, now including all your favourite over-used stupid ecchi tropes. The characters have suddenly become a lot less mature and basically seem like high school SoL/harem characters instead of adults like they were before.
And... the... plot... is... going... nowhere...
I haven't looked up who the director (or perhaps the series composition writer - thanks Shirobako!) is yet but their idea of progressing the plot seems to be do nothing all episode and then put in a totally unrelated "hype up" scene after the ED that is completely out of context.
All that disappointment is exacerbated by the fact that Utawarerumono: The False Faces is animated beautifully, too. What a waste
I'm going to keep watching as long as I can stand it, but with the way things have been going and look like they'll keep going, I would not recommend this one, folks.
Help
QuickTidal, on 23 November 2015 - 06:55 PM, said:
even the seven deadly sins thing I watched on Luci and Shiaras' netflix when I was on holiday. XD
