Chihayafuru headcanon: This is Kanade's new favorite show.
My initial thoughts when I first heard about this series was that it might somehow fill the gaping hole Chihayafuru left in my heart. However, after the announcement of the second season I decided to treat it as a chance to gain some context. As a result, it's impossible for me to not view this show in the context of Chihayafuru, and I'm not sure if I'd be watching it otherwise.
The show also seems to be aware that it owes its television slot to Chihayafuru's success, starting with an interpretation of the title poem. The show could learn a thing or two from the Kanade School of Poetry since the reactions leave a lot to be desired ("He described the leaves as red!") but at least the romance is up to snuff. I don't know how historically accurate this is, since I know nothing about the period--the "super-liberal interpretation" part of the synopsis seems to be shorthand for "we're making this stuff up"--but since it's so entertaining, I don't really care.
This mostly has to do with how Utakoi presents itself as well as the fact that I'm a complete hopeless romantic. That attendant who was swooning over the poems in this episode? That's me, if for some reason I existed in Japan during that time period. In its opening episode, Utakoi is all about the romance. There's no reason to expect that it will move from that course either, since the foreword was basically "Love poems are awesome." There's also sex. Nothing graphic--this is not a hentai--but it's there and it's treated as part of the love story.
The only mark against this episode is the animation, or rather the lack of it. It mostly consists of panning over still images, with only the mouths animated. The patterns of the clothes stay in place when the characters do move, like in Gankutsuou but not to such an extreme to be considered part of the art style like with that show. It's a good thing that the stills are so nice to look at and its primary goal of telling a good romance story completely distracts from this. If it continues at this level, then this is a solid entry for the summer season.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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