First Impressions / Utawarerumono

Summary:
The war rages on, but Hakuoro’s peasant armies are winning their battles. On one particular night, Eruru finds Hakuoro staring at the sky. Eruru has a request for Hakuoro, which seems to be for him to go see Yuzuha. The bedridden girl says that she’s listening to the sounds of the night. They’re interrupted when Oboro comes running because a nearby village is getting attacked. Nuwangi is the one responsible, and he orders his soldiers to execute the remaining villagers. But before they can do so, rebel troops attack. Fighting is fierce, but Nuwangi’s troops start fleeing after Hakuoro leads another charge from behind. In the chaos, Nuwangi gets thrown off his mount and is captured. He’s taken back to the rebel stronghold and put in front of all the villagers. Hakuoro ends up looking to Eruru for the decision on Nuwangi’s fate. Everyone is shocked when she wants to let him go. Eruru says a simple goodbye and watches as Nuwangi walks off into the morning mist.
Hakuoro’s forces push their way through the imperial troops until they finally reach Inkara’s castle. By using men both to scale the walls and to bust through the main gate, the rebel forces manage to overwhelm the defenders. Hakuoro and Oboro move on ahead into the main building in search of Inkara. Meanwhile, Kurou frees Benaui from the jail and gives him back his gear. However, Benaui feels a responsibility to continue to fight for his country. While Kurou disables peasants with his fists, Benaui faces off against Oboro and then Hakuoro. Both fights end in stalemate and Benaui runs further into the castle when he sees more enemies coming. He finds Inkara in the throne room, and reports that they have been defeated. Inkara finally realizes the grave situation, and Benaui suggests suicide. Or rather, he forces it on Inkara by killing him, accomplishing what he calls his last duty. Hakuoro enters the room and watches as Inkara’s body goes limp. Benaui says that this is the end of the war and leaves the country in Hakuoro’s hands. He then prepares to kill himself, but Hakuoro slaps the sword out of his hands and says that Benaui has the responsibility to see the end himself. The two emerge from the castle together, a sight that stops all of the fighting. Hakuoro announces that Inkara is dead and that the war is over. By evening, the two sides are wrapping each other’s wounds and even eating together.
In the land of a different country, reports of Hakuoro’s new country come in – it’s named Tousukuru. The leader of these winged people decides to dispatch a delegation there and the princess of this country volunteers. In the shadows, another girl is watching and giggling to herself.

An episode pretty much devoted to fighting (which isn’t a bad thing), but also shows the end of this war. Given that both Sasante and Inkara died, and that he’s already been given a second chance, I was surprised that Nuwangi got to live thanks to Eruru. Maybe he’ll come back to fight them again? Anyway, Inkara’s dead at the hands of Benaui, whose sense of responsibility to his country is very strong, but Hakuoro does manage to stop him from killing himself. Which of course means that Benaui (and Kurou) can now fight for the “good” guy’s side. I also found it rather fitting and a good tribute for the new country to be named Tousukuru.
There was some good use of CG in this episode (the map shots) but also some odd mixes of CG and traditional animation. I winced when I saw them recycling the same animations of Teoru, Oboro, and Hakuoro beating up enemy grunt soldiers from the fight against Nuwangi to the attack on Inkara’s castle. Overall, it was pretty well done considering that most of the episode was devoted to action and fighting.
The end of this episode makes you realize that there’s more to this world than just the country that they’ve been fighting in. Next arc looks to involve Kamyu and Urutorii, the two winged princesses.

28 Comments

  12. //I hope they finally kill Nuwangi off, I hate pathetic rat like that. I can see hes the kind of lowlife that backstab or play traitor if we let him live.//

    Well that what they were planning to do, but Eruru spared his life, for some reason he was pretty shocked at this….

    mikemil828
    Reply

  16. for those of you who hate nuwangi

    Show Spoiler ▼

    codezeromind
    Reply

  19. If you thought Sasante and Inkara arc was amusing, you have a wild party awaiting you in the next arcs 😉

    And I’m not pleased with them doing what they did to Kamyu at the end…Chuckling is a sign of evil and should not have been used for her T_T

    Rasmiel
    Reply

  20. Interesting thing is the person who benefitted most from existence of Nuwangi is Hakuoro. If Nuwangi got killed very early on, Benaui would remain the top general of imperial army, which mean very little recruitment for the Hakuoro side, and I doubt peasant force could win against army directed by Benaui. Or Benaui would be the Emperor by the time Hakuoro arrived at the capital.

    wontaek
    Reply

  27. But if Nuwangi wasn’t around there wouldn’t be any need for a rebellion either. Hakouro could just happily live together in the villiage with Eruru and he would have no need to damn himself to the deepest pits of hell and all that.

    Symmetry
    Reply

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