Oh geez, I hope this isn't a sign of things to come, because this episode was really bad.
If there was one thing I was critical of Utawarerumono all the way through so far, it's the segue between scenes, ie there is none. Events seem to happen in a rather random sort of fashion, and I'm really having trouble seeing how many of them contribute to the story overall, and how they tie in with each other. It's not an issue with the pacing, since that's been fine, but it's something that's a little more fundamental. It could be to do with the nature of fantasy/war type stories, but too many things (battles in particular) happen very suddenly, without warning. The transition from relative peace to war is just too jarring, I find.
But that's a minor thing I can deal with, because the story has been ok up til now. But something's gone wrong in this episode. I thought the plot-twist towards the end and Hakuoro's demonic side were really trite plot points. But what made it worse were the way they were presented. The dialogue was pretty tacky, and whathisface's laugh was seriously annoying and very distracting. And Orikakan
as little more than a plot device.
Very disappointing episode, I thought. Too much attention on plot, not enough on getting flow and atmosphere right.