Forum - View topicUtawarerumono vs. Guin Saga.
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Raftina
 Posts: 3282 |
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Encyclopedia Entries
Guin Saga Utawarerumono These are stories about an amnesiac man who appears to wear a mask he cannot remove. He appears in a forest. He does not at first appear to know the way of the world. He makes some friends, and he comes to be on their side through everything. And because of his allegiance, he ends up commanding a resistance against an evil empire, where he shows surprisingly thorough knowledge for an amnesiac man. Well, so much for the similarities. Now to compare the differences. The most obvious is the setting: Guin Saga is set in a medieval sword and sorcery fantasy world. Utawarerumono is in a fantasy counterpart of feudal Japan. What's more interesting is the development of their resistance and their characters. For Guin, his army is a grand alliance of sorts, though of ragtag tribes. He ventures into the unknown land and gathers its then separate people to fight against the invading empire. For Hakuro, his army consists of peasants. He leads a peasant rebellion against their lords. Their characters follow a similar contrast. Guin is a stoic warrior. He has great strength. He has great charisma. He is a speech giver. He almost immediately gains the trust of those to whom he speaks. And his scene are accompanied by grand music. He is a larger than life figure. Hakuro fights quite well, but he has a scholarly air. We see him gradually acclimate to the lifestyle of the villagers and want to help them and lead them. In neither case do we see deeply into the characters' minds. They are mysterious figures with amnesia. They are defined more by their current actions than their thoughts. Their personalities appear to be already mature. Contrast this with the treatment in Basara: The protagonist also leads a peasant rebellion against their lords. However, she has a well-defined past and well-defined role. In it, we see much more of her thoughts, so she is less defined by her actions in comparison. In Guin Saga, we seem to have a larger than life figure leading a larger than life struggle--the sort of thing you might see in an epic fantasy story like Lord of the Rings. In Utawarerumono, the movement is more grass root. It's almost something one might find in a chapter of a history book. So what do you think? Which of these series would you say is the better to watch? Me? I have only see a few episodes of each, but the similarities struck me. However, based on a careful analysis of the merits of each series I have seen so far, I would have to say that Utawarerumono is better. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Guin Saga is better in virtually every way and by far the superior series overall, but Utawarerumono is still a decent watch. Well, providing you don't mind spoiler[poorly-integrated Mecha] in your Fantasy (which I kind of did at first).
And heck, I can even pronounce Utawarerumono's name quite easily. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18404 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Interesting comparison/contrast. The one comment I'd add to it is that female characters generally come off better in Utawarerumono; although Guin Saga looks like it has a couple of strong female characters early on, both regress to fairly pathetic states by the end of the series. In Utawarerumono, OTOH, Hakuro is regularly surrounded by a bevy of consistently strong female characters. This, of course, is a reflection of their vastly differing origins, as one (GS) is based off of a long-running novel series done in the classic "high fantasy" vein and the other is a cleaned-up version of an ero game.
As for how they compare, I agree with dtm42's assessment. In a review of Utawarerumono I once described it as "never a stand-out series but never bad, either" and I gave it an average B grade overall. GS got an average B+ grade from me with even better scores for its technical merits. (Uta has a substantially higher weighted average rating in our fan-contributing rankings, though, which flabbergasts me.) Story-wise, Uta only really operates on GS's level in the last quarter or so and never operates on close to the same level on music, animation, or artistry. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4151 |
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I could never get into Guin Saga but The One Being Sung got me hooked right from the start. If Guin Saga eventually surpassed Utawarerumono {which I refuse to believe as 100 volumes can't be condensed into a 26 episode series; Utawarerumono ends well and it ends precisely}, well, they should have started with a better premise.
Look at it my way: Masked Man with Amnesia who decides to protect some villagers, peasants even, who cared for him in a world where Noblity Rules is a lot more interesting than Leopard Headed Man with Amnesia decides to protect some Ousted Royalty, twins even, whom he happens to find while he was lost. In Utawarerumono, there was always the question if Hakuoro was fighting out of obligation, duty, actual affection or if he just liked to fight. In Guin's case, my impression was that if he didn't do anything for Load 1 and Load 2, there wouldn't be any story. Because starting the story on the Leopard Headed Man alone looking for his own past isn't enough. Can you sense the sarcasm? And I keep mentioning Leopard Headed Man as should have been enough of a hook except for the fact that it wasn't. "So?", I thought after the end of the first episode. "Some people are just born ugly while some people become ugly through a hard life. So it must be the same for the Leopard Headed." Incidently, I never cared where Hakuoro's mask came from as I thought he was more interesting than the mere plot device and the fact that he was spoiler[a normal human in the human zoo world] was better anyway. Maybe if Guin had a normal head while everyone else had animal motifs? But this reminds me, I haven't picked up Utawarerumono yet. I'm off to search for a deal. And yes, I know it's part of the SAVE series but it seems to be getting harder to find. Apparently, there are people who like it. Not because it's great or anything, no, that's just silly... [i][EDIT: Spoiler tag added. Really, that's a pretty major late-series spoiler. - Key] |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18404 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Don't be silly; they only adapted the first dozen or so novels. The series ends with the resolution of the major arc introduced in episode 1 and a couple of concurrent lesser arcs but leaves immensely more to tell. It was one of these "we left the window open to animate more if it proves popular" deals.
Don't see what justification is so hard to see here. The first thing he saw when he awoke is two kids being threatened by armed soldiers. Why wouldn't he help them if he had the capability to do so? He found himself directionless without his memories, so he decided to stick with them and help them because it seemed like a worthwhile thing to do while he sorted out the mysteries about himself and what his purpose should be. I had much the same impression about Hakuoro.
Planet of the Apes, anyone? |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7992 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Personally, I preferred Utawarerumono if we're comparing it to Guin Saga. I thought the storyline was more interesting and came to a conclusion, unlike Guin Saga. I also thought Utawarerumono had a better cast, since I didn't really like many of Guin Saga's characters. Overall, Guin Saga was a rather unspectacular series that had great art but also was just plain boring most of time and ended up ending with no conclusion whatsoever. I found it to be a chore to finish. On the other hand Utawarerumono had me hooked from very early on and I liked it a lot aside from the spoiler[rather depressing conclusion.].
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Mits
Posts: 54 |
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Guin Saga anime featured book 1 to 16 of the original series, which consists of 130 books of the main story and 22 books of side stories. The story ended up unfinished because of the death of the author, Kaoru Kurimoto, on 2009. So, we will never see the conclusion of this series. The author died on May 2009, and anime was aired from April to September 2009. So I think Guin Saga anime project was the last gift for the author, and I guess that it was planned after her disease (pancreatic cancer) revealed to be very serious. |
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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Pancreatic cancer is serious by it's very nature- the symptoms appear when it's already so advanced that the only possible decission is introducing palliative treatment.
IIRC it was quite opposite- the plans for anime were much earlier, but author refused to give agreement, hoped that Guin Saga will be noticed by Hollywood. |
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lem
 Posts: 734 Location: Land of trying to figure sht out |
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I went into Guin Saga knowing full well that it was a partial or an incomplete, the author had passed away, etc.,. So low to No expectations made it an easy viewing. It didn't disappoint or have me going wtf? and to me, that's more than good enough.
I certainly enjoyed the extras interview with the author, the music, scenery, and fight scenes throughout. But I have to admit, the female lead, already forgot her name (Rinda?or?), got to be annoying near the end. For what has been animated to date, Guin Saga worked and looked better as a fantasy world to get immersed in than Utawarerumono. Which is one that I bought the singles for way back, and from what I can still recall, it has some butt ugly cgi video game like cut scenes in it during a few of the battle sequences. That, and the utterly unoriginal take on spoiler[Escaflowne's "Dilandau" character wasn't all that good.] At least to me. It does do a better job with the female characters though. They're simply far and away cuter than any female character in Guin could ever hope to be. And the extras, which show some of the characters acting out of character, are a lot of fun once you've seen the entire series. Overall, both shows were good for what they are, fantasy tv series on a budget. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4151 |
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You saw it as a worthwhile use of his time, I saw it as if he didn't do anything, he wouldn't have anything to do as they were all lost; But I only made it through about five episodes on Anime Network {that's my count; If a series fails to capture my interest by then, I cut it}; As I started my final show, I thought "Ok, who's going to capture them this time?" I quit when it actually happened. Hakuoro could have always left up to a certain point; It was an option that was never available in Utawarerumono's sister series, Tears to Tiara.
Ah yes, Planet of the Apes, where the apes became man and man became ape. So you're saying Guin eventually found his own kind in a zoo of some sort? And I never considered that to be a spoiler in Utawarerumono because wasn't that the point of the mask? Not in retrospect but wasn't it obvious in the first place? |
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V1046-R
Posts: 172 |
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I had no knowledge of Guin Saga being incomplete before watching it. Thus it was one of my biggest anime dissapointments ever. Because it really did make you want to see how it would all end. It really felt like it was building into something big by the time you got through 26 episodes. But then you see little has changed, and they announce "this is the beginning" after final credits. It just felt like a huge waste of my time, and left a bad taste in my mouth.
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Juno016
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I read the first 5 volumes of the novel released in English, but then went on to read the next 7 or 8 in Japanese, and I haven't gotten any further. In order to prevent myself from spoilers, I didn't actually finish the anime, since it had caught up to where I read... but if there's anything I love about Guin Saga, it's the powerful force it gave me while reading in both English and Japanese. Unfortunately, the anime didn't capture that well (even though it was BEAUTIFUL, regardless of animation quality).
In that respect, Utawarerumono's original Visual Novel was less exciting to me as Guin Saga's novels, but Utawarerumono's anime was definitely put together better than Guin Saga's anime. Regardless, I still love Guin Saga's anime more, as a personal preference. I just love the artistic and musical direction it took to give life to such a spectacular world. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Disagree with that. Guin Saga may not have had an end but the material that the show covered and the structure that the show exuded (bar the non-ending) were both definitely better than what we got with Utawarerumono. |
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Juno016
Posts: 2414 |
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I forgot to put a disclaimer that I was strictly speaking from my own opinion, but... for me, I was specifically referring to the anime adaptions versus the originals and how well they were adapted to capture what they were meant to capture from the beginning. In Guin Saga, the issue I had was that much of the inner dialogue was not turned outward in any way. For instance, in "Twelve Kingdoms," (another great anime adaption of a fantasy novel series) they added two characters to the story in the anime to allow a less personal and more open way for the main character to express herself--which meant that they had to conclude a little more with these new characters and deviate slightly from the original, but it still captured exactly what they wanted from the novels. In Utawarerumono, you didn't have extra characters, but the main character vocalized things more openly (though he stayed mysterious throughout) and there were some small events added to trigger a reason for him to open up. However, in Guin Saga, the books gave us a quiet, but constantly-in-inner-turmoil being with clear depth shown within his inner dialog. In the anime, the instances where Guin vocalized himself were minimal and I witnessed several people getting the wrong idea about who he was as a character because of it. This threw off their understanding of him and other characters in which the same issue persisted, and left it far more ambiguous and unclear, if not the complete opposite of the book (since the book speaks wonders about how Guin's physical strength carries less weight than his mindful, inner weakness, but the anime clearly shows the opposite except in a few cases where they actually visualized his inner confusion for the sake of the plot at that point). For me, ambiguity allows for freedom, and I value it in many cases. But when adapting other material, if the original story doesn't have such an extreme ambiguity, I'd rather not see it in an anime adaption of that story. But it's been a while since I've seen both series, and I didn't finish Guin Saga (though I got just as far in the anime as I did in the novels), so I can't really say I have a clear vision to compare the two. Regardless, this is what I feel about them. =P |
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Mr Sinister
 Posts: 157 Location: NY |
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I'm going with Utawarerumono on this one. I really just liked everyone and everything about that show. Hakuro is among my favorite characters ever. Saw it dubbed and it makes me wish John Gremillion got more lead roles. Also loved everything about the ending, and what happened to some of the cast at the end will stick with me forever.
Guin Saga on the other hand.... WOOF. Not really, I still liked it, but it just had soooo many characters that I couldn't help but hate on for every frame they were on screen. I saw this about a year ago and I honestly cannot remember how it ended or anything really other than they were always running/getting captured, the canyon battle and my hate for a number of the main characters. I did like the setting and the world building they did though. World building is a really big + for me. It is a shame that this won't be continued because I feel it is a bit unfair for me to judge this show since I'm sure a lot of the characters that I dislike eventually turn into better characters later on like they did with the prince. Last edited by Mr Sinister on Tue Mar 20, 2012 9:45 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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