Reviews in Brief: Utawarerumono (anime)

Utawarerumono was recommended by my manga sempai, and turned out to be much more engaging than I had expected. And just so you know, that impossible Japanese title winds up translating roughly as "Song of the Hero" or "He Who is Sung" or something like that.

An unconscious, severely wounded man is discovered in the forest by Eruruu, the granddaughter of the village healer, Tuskuru. He wears a mask that they cannot remove, and when he finally awakens, he cannot remember anything of his past life. Tuskuru names him Hakuorou, and he remains in the village -- he has nowhere else to go. He eventually becomes the chief of the village, and, due to circumstances beyond his control, embarks on the path to empire.

This one starts off looking like a fairly standard historical romance/fantasy, except the historical period is up for grabs: it's really more fantasy than history, even without the fact that the characters are all kemonomimi (animal ears) -- except for Hakuoro, a phenomenon which is explained later on, when the story starts to take on a definite science-fiction cast. (Hint: this is far in the future, and there's a mad scientist involved.) Then it goes back to fantasy, of a strange, almost mystical sort.

A big part of the appeal is the graphic work. It's nothing out of the ordinary in terms of character design, although very well executed. Hakuoro is exceptionally appealing, even with the mask -- I think it's a combination of his low-key personality and his large, expressive eyes: somehow the animators have managed to instill a great range of feeling into a character who is largely expressionless.

As far as the acting goes, it is, as seems to be the case more often than not, excellent. I'm not familiar with any of the seiyuu for the major characters, but they are pretty much right on target. Special mention to Rikiya Koyama as Hakuoro -- he does as much as anything else to make Hakuoro a real person. This is not to downplay any other contributions -- this one displays a full range of colorful, vivid characters, and the actors are up to it.

It's a two-season TV series -- 26 episodes -- and worth every second. I've been watching it online, but the DVD is on its way to me -- it's definitely a keeper.

Funimation has licensed it in North America. And rather than take up space here listing cast and staff, here's the link the to encyclopedia entry at Anime News Network, which is where I get all that information anyway.