{"id":11255,"date":"2015-10-25T16:38:59","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T20:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/?p=11255"},"modified":"2015-10-25T16:38:59","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T20:38:59","slug":"utawarerumono-the-false-faces-anime-early-impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/2015\/10\/25\/utawarerumono-the-false-faces-anime-early-impressions\/","title":{"rendered":"Utawarerumono The False Faces–Anime Early Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much to my surpise the new anime<\/a> series that I’m enjoying most is Utawarerumono The False Faces<\/em> (Utawarerumono–Itsuwari no Kamen<\/em>) (Crunchyroll<\/a>), a fantasy-adventure in which a man finds himself in a strange world where the people have animal ears and act sort of like medieval Japanese.
\n\"Utawarerumono\"<\/a>
\nThis is a sequel to a 2006 anime series which I never watched. Fortunately it seems quite possible to enjoy the sequel without having seen the original, though I’m probably missing a lot of subtle implications due to my ignorance of the backstory.<\/p>\n

(“Utawarerumono<\/em>” means “Someone celebrated in song and story.” Or perhaps “Something<\/em>.” The difference would be clear if the title was written in kanji<\/a> but it’s in hiragana<\/a>.)
\n\"Barefoot<\/a>
\nOur nameless hero wakes up and finds himself without any memories, stranded on a snow-covered mountain in his pajamas. (Incidentally the scenery in this show is beautiful.)
\n
\n\"Centipede\"<\/a>
\nHe is immediately attacked by something scary.
\n\"Slime\"<\/a>
\nThen he is threatened by something even scarier that ate the first scary thing.
\n\"Saved<\/a>
\nFortunately he is saved by Kuon<\/strong>, a traveling herbalist who happens by at the right moment.
\n\"Kuon\"<\/a>
\nKuon seems an ideal heroine character: cheerful, resourceful, adventurous and honorable, though with a certain mischievous streak.
\n\"Tail<\/a>
\nThough her name means “dog” in Greek, Kuon’s tail is as expressive as a cat’s and prehensile as a monkey’s, not to mention strong enough to use as a weapon.
\n \"Kuon<\/a>
\nSince this guy obviously can’t survive on his own, Kuon decides to take responsibility for him, as one might an abandoned child.
\n\"Room<\/a>
\nSince he can’t remember his own name she gives him the name “Haku<\/strong>“, saying that it is the name of someone famous. (I’m told it’s a shortened form of the name of the hero of the original series.)
\n\"Fluffy<\/a>
\nHaku is a bit of a jerk. This should be obvious to Western viewers but will be much clearer to Japanese viewers. For example at the inn in Episode 1 he should offer to let Kuon use the bath first since she is obviously his senior. Instead he arrogantly goes first without even asking. Kuon takes revenge by peeking…
\n\"Kuon<\/a>
\n…and gets more of an eyeful than she bargained for.
\n\"Fixing<\/a>
\nKuon says that Haku must find a way to earn a living, but he seems incapable of any sort of manual labor. Fortunately he turns out to have some useful skills as he shows by fixing a broken gristmill that the villagers had been unable to repair.
\n\"Ukon\"<\/a>
\nThis attracts the attention of Ukon<\/strong>, a smart cheerful military commander. He seems like a good guy to have around when there’s trouble.
\n\"Maroro\"<\/a>
\nUkon is accompanied by Maroro<\/strong>, a whiny effeminate court scholar. This guy is really annoying but he can be useful to have around since he’s a semi-competent wizard.
\n\"Rurutie\"<\/a>
\nRurutie<\/strong> is an imperial princess whom Ukon must escort to the capital. Very young, shy and naive, she is perhaps overly impressed with Haku’s good looks.
\n\"Kokopo\"<\/a>
\nKokopo<\/strong> is Rurutie’s mighty steed: a giant bird with the intelligence of a typical movie horse. Kokopo develops an immediate crush on Haku which she proceeds to show with constant excessive displays of affection.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it, between Kuon, Rurutie and Kokopo it seems that Haku is gaining a standard anime harem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much to my surpise the new anime<\/a> series that I’m enjoying most is Utawarerumono The False Faces (Utawarerumono–Itsuwari no Kamen) (Crunchyroll), a fantasy-adventure in which a man finds himself in… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[648],"class_list":["post-11255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anime","tag-utawarerumono"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11255"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11287,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11255\/revisions\/11287"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugfox.net\/fun\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}