The Sword of Uruk is the continuation to the surprisingly good Aegis of Uruk, which aired last year. It left us with quite a cliff-hanger, and it’s in any case worth the watch to see how everything plays out in the end. There are quite a few surprises along the way, but somehow the Sword just doesn’t have the charms of of the Aegis.
But before that, you really have to admire the time that went into developing the background for this series. Six months have passed since first season, and this shows in the character-development. The setting, which sounded so innocent and playful in the first season develops into one of epic proportions, and this really is a series of plot twists. For a fantasy series, the plot’s been quite complex and imaginative, which is something I can really enjoy.
However, at the same time I just don’t feel the things that made the original series great. The Aegis of Uruk was a very varied series: there was an excellent combination between silly adventures, character-development and plot. The Sword of Uruk is much more formulaic, though: the first five episodes or so are silly adventures, and after that the comedy stops completely to make room for the ever increasing drama. It just doesn’t feel balanced at all.
the first season had lots of interesting sites to explore, but only one episode of the second season really made an impression on me like the first season did: the house of the dead. This show succeeds more than ever as a fantasy series, but as an adventure one, it fails to impress, which is a bit of a shame, considering the first season. The ending especially shows this, as it’s a bit too much of a formulaic cheese-fest.
Still, there’s lots to like left in this show. The characters still are as charming as they ever were, especially since they already had a season’s worth of development on their resumes and the animation looks as solid as ever. The second season definitely stands out for different reasons than the first one, but it’s still pretty impressive, although not the charming series it once was.
| Storytelling: | 7/10 |
| Characters: | 8/10 |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 |
| Setting: | 9/10 |
the sword of uruk is a pretty good follow up to the 1st season. but the last two episodes were quite disappointing to me. in the 11th episode, during the fight, there was a huge drop in quality of the animation, while the last episode was disappointing bcoz of the unsatisfying ending, and quite a lot of questions were left unanswered.
I think I liked the second series better than the first, but only barely. I THOUGHT I was going to LOVE it, until the last three episodes, when I swear they switched writers or something. The two penultimate episodes were really, really bad, and the final episode made up for it a LITTLE, and I found the ending pretty decent, but it was still a huge drop in quality from the rest of the series to that point – especially the house of the dead episode, which you mentioned in your review, and which I agree was the absolute best episode of either series. So much potential existed in that one episode, and very little of it was realized during the rest of the show.
Still, Tower of Druaga was a great all-around fantasy show, and I’m glad to see that the fantasy genre lives on. (:
-Tom
if you ask me I enjoyed the whole series and hope that it does not stop at season 2 overall it was great but too damn short