First and foremost, I would advise you watch the first season before attempting to watch this one. Otherwise, you will not understand half of what happens in the second half of the anime. You might think this is obvious since this is a second season but you'd be surprised how many people dived straight in that anime without watching the original first...
To start off with a side note, I am baffled by the amount of people who claim this anime is basically a Slice of Life anime and has no direction whatsoever and decided to drop it halfway.
It's not that nothing is happening, the anime is simply taking its time to properly do a good job at adapting a story that deserves that much time put into its world creation. I personally wanted to wait at least 20 episodes and surprise ! Things are actually happened !
But back to the review.
Story-wise, it is true that the anime starts off slow. That's a good thing. It takes its time to properly remind us of the world we were left in with season 1 while making A LOT of obvious references to it (and this is important, due to how many years it has been since it was released). In fact there are so many references that some people mistakenly thought at first that this wasn't a season 2 but rather a rework of the first season. But what we have is indeed the continuation of an epic tale of fantasy, sci-fi and war but with a whole new cast of characters... at the beginning at least. Not much to add, the story at first is mainly character-focused and later on links back to what we have left from season 1 to create tension and drama.
In my opinion, while the original Utawarerumono was focused more on its plot than characters, this season takes a different approach by giving each character its own arc in a way that makes us attached to them as the events go on. This however does not mean the story is neglected.
In fact, one could even divide Utawarerumono: Itsuwari no Kamen into two parts: the first half that is meant to introduce each new character to us and the second part which introduces climax, tension, drama, plot twists and allows the previously showcased characters to each shine in their own way through meaningful character development.
The artwork is one that is close to one commonly found in "moe" Slice of Life anime. While it works in the first half of the anime, it feels a bit out of place as the second half reunites us with characters from the first season who look younger due to the upgraded art-style even though story-wise they should be older. While the visual update is generally appreciated, I still can't help but feel like it contradicts with the image I kept from back when I watched the first season which has an art-style befitting of the 2006 anime era.
Animation-wise, it feels smooth and fluid, so I have to give props to the animators for that.
In terms of music, well just like the original, the soundtrack merges perfectly with the tone of the scenes, using traditional instruments to give that kind of historical/fantasy feeling. I also really liked the first OP, not so much the second one but both of these are personal tastes.
All in all, I consider this series to be just as great as its predecessor and a must watch if you were a fan of the first season.
