Category: Uta Koi

It still surprises me how light-hearted this series is, but really: I’m learning something new with every episode here. This episode in particular contained a lot of comic relief. And almost no romance whatsoever.

Instead, this is about two poets and their relationship, as they discuss poems and love poems. I did not expect that, but at the same time I find it a nice touch that the creators are trying to link all of these poems together. In Chihayafuru they all just seemed like random poems that were compiled, written by random poets, but not only do all of them have backgrounds, the poets also knew each other and influenced each other. There are poems that fit one author much more than others. That’s fascinating right there.

I’m just not sure what the point is to put Fujiwara no Teika in all kinds of modern situations. This time he was on the beach under a parasol and hitting watermelons. And don’t get me wrong, their explanations are quite useful (especially when they started talking about criticism)… but it still feels weird.
Rating: (Great)

Now that all Summer series have debuted, I can say this for certain: Uta Koi has the best soundtrack of the season. Even though this is a season that has three of my favorite composers in it (Yuki Kajiura, Kou Otani and Hikaru Nanase), it is Yasunori Mitsuda who until now was completely unknown to me who really stole the show. And on top of that, the soundtrack is also really well used, and knows exactly what tracks to use at each moment.

And yeah, this series is just fascinating. The Heian era is one that doesn’t appear often in anime, in favor of the samurai and Sengoku eras and all, but I still find that onE very interesting. This series takes people shrouded in mystery (in this episode’s case Ono no Komachi and gives its own interpretation to them. The most important creative liberties here are Ono no Komachi’s position and the reason why her lover couldn’t visit her for the full 100 days.

it just takes a while to get used to these weird stylistic choices that the creators went with. This time, Fujiwara no Teika dressed up as the new Tokyo Sky Tower… okay. And yet, for the childish voice he uses, the actual episode took itself pretty seriously and didn’t feel childish at all, and it also put a lot of emphasis on the misogyny that reigned during those days.
Rating: Excellent

Before I start with this entry, there is one question that I just have to ask first: WHY, for the love of god, would you want to censor snakes!??

In any case, Uta Koi surprised me with its atmosphere that was completely different from what I expected. This is Josei, right? Then why was the narrator talking to us as if we were children? Why does the ED feel so ridiculously out of place? Why the need for such out of place comedy?

Despite all that though: TYO, THANK YOU for making this series. This is by far the most interesting series of the season, and that’s saying something in a season that has series about germs, the boundaries between virtual reality and real life and pitch-black food jokes. I only rezlize this right now, but I’m learning a ton of new things watching this series: out of the series that aired during the past years, I think only Hyouge Mono had a deeper historical context.

Last episode had two stories, but this one just focused on one, and this allowed the characters much more time to play out, including intertwining this with one of the stories from last week. This was a great portrayal to two victims of court politics, being forced to live together as husband and wife and both dealing with this in their own ways, and yet at the end of this episode the creators stressed that this is just an interpretation of what things must have been like for the two of them, based on the very little information we have. Heck,if this series is aimed at children, it really takes them seriously; this series really wants to teach something, rather than treating children like dumb sheep who will whine to their parents for toys.

But why the snakes?!
Rating: ** (Excellent)