Utawarerumono

Utawarerumono:  D+

I first heard of this series when I was shown the DVD special... it must have been 4 years ago.  It was amusing and kind of silly, but given that the title (which translates to "The One Being Sung") is a rather complex mishmash of japanese syllables, it didn't stick in my head and I lost it until a friend reminded me of the name a few weeks ago.  So I decided I'd watch it.

And I really really wanted to like it.  The characters held my attention and the fantasy world felt fantastic and mysterious.  The protagonist clearly had some powerful magical dark secret (and amnesia, which worked out well, actually) and I was looking forward to learning more about it.

One of my first complaints were the pointlessly evil villains.  These guys were moustache-twirling, dog-kicking, incredibly-skilled-but-good-hearted-subordinate-who-refused-to-massacre-a-village-full-of-innocent-people-firing idiot villains.  And they don't stop showing up, either.  Maybe I've just been spoiled by other anime that have provided justifications for why people are bastards, but that was my first disappointment.  But whatever, right?  We beat up some bad guys and save the world.  It's cool.

More characters keep getting rolled as the series progresses on, especially female characters.  This isn't really surprising, originally, Utawarerumono was a turn-based strategy hentai game, but very few elements of the original fan service or naughty bits are left over (in TVTropes terms, the underwear has been very well bleached).  I think we don't even see cleavage until episode 3?  Anyway, that combined with the fact that the girls' reasons for being attracted to the protagonist are either well-justified or just left out led me to enjoy the first half of the series.

Now, I'm going to spoil the ending, because it's the part of the series that ruins it.

Then, around episode 18 or so, things just start going downhill, and they start going downhill fast.  A character who was made sympathetic begins making outstandingly bad decisions.  We suddenly have invincible mecha in our fantasy setting (which isn't that bad, it's anime, right?).  And then the invincible mecha aren't invincible any more, and our protagonist can turn into a kaiju.  That's his dark secret.  He turns into godzilla.  And then evil godzilla shows up and they fight.  And the protagonist has to be sealed beneath the earth for the safety of the world.  The end.

Even that could have been made a credible story except for the fact that so many of the characters wind up not mattering at all to the ongoing story, they were only put in there because they were in the original game and taking them out would have displeased their fans.

It reminded me more than anything of the Fate Stay Night anime: they clearly have way more story and characterization and plot than they can ever fit into 26 episodes, so they tried to make a cohesive and expansive story out of everything, but they wind up not giving enough focus to the things that would have made that story make sense because they're trying to give screen time to everything else in it.  Which is really too bad, because there are some nice ideas and some genuinely lovable characters in this series, and it's really disappointing that they series they're in sucks so bad.

I should mention in regard to Fate Stay Night's anime: I also played/read the Visual Novel, and it was mind-blowingly good, a truly brilliant example of what can be done with a voiced and partially animated choose-your-own-adventure story that takes full advantage of its multiple endings and branching plot trees to deepen characterization and plot.  So I think it's very likely that the Utawarerumono GAME is actually really good, worth making into an anime, certainly.

But unless you have a disturbing fetish for animal ears, tails and disappointment, I recommend against watching the series.