Cinnamon Ass

OP - Musoka (Suara) - a bit overly chirpy, perhaps? Decent enough animation, though; looks like there’ll be a lot of battles in this show.

ED - Madoromi no Rinne (Eri Kawai) - AWESOME song (but the single’s not out until June!), really “tribal” in tone, and the picture it plays over looks very intriguing if you’re going to watch the rest of the show.

A man (who is currently nameless, and is just “Man” in the credits) wakes up in the home of Eruru, a sort-of cat girl (she just has ears and a tail), in some unspecified fantasy past. He has some kind of mask over his face that won’t come off and can’t remember anything about himself - apparently Eruru found him in the forest.

Once Man is steadier on his feet they go around the town, meeting Eruru’s shy younger sister Aruru (their parents are both dead, their mother died giving birth to Aruru) and the cocky young trader Nuwangi, whom Man humiliates in front of Eruru (whom Nuwangi likes). However, a storm is brewing, and there is unrest amongst the townsfolk at Man’s mysterious presence as their crops are being spoilt; whilst Eruru helps convince them Man has nothing to do with it, the storm’s passing brings a new danger; some kind of evil wolf creature. Except the OP gives away that Eruru goes riding around on it later, so…

Utawarerumono is an H game adaptation, but it doesn’t quite set out like one - while there’ll obviously be a bunch of girls turning up later in the series as the opening shows, we’ve only got Eruru and Aruru here and there’s no fanservice or romantic tension set up, despite the obvious player character that is Man.

However, I can’t really say that it’s pushed any buttons for me. Air is the only bishoujo/H show I’ve ever really enjoyed, and that was mostly thanks to the incredible artwork pulling me in; while Utawarerumono doesn’t look terrible, it’s mostly competently animated and illustrated. Furthermore, I didn’t find any of the characters compelling enough to make up for this; while the story might be interesting (the picture in the ED is pretty intriguing) I don’t want to watch Man, Eruru and Aruru be part of it, frankly.

Utawarerumono isn’t bad, then, but I just didn’t find it overly inspiring; as always, your mileage may vary.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 11:55 pm and is filed under One Shot Wonders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.