English Dub Review: Utawarerumano – Mask of Truth “The Night Before the Final Battle”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Oshtor/Haku awakens the next morning feeling more tuckered out than normal and seeing his disguise is starting to fade. Aside from that, things are going well, as the combined forces of his allies means he can now face the enemy forces on equal footing, and so prepares for the deciding battle. While the rest of the group relentlessly trains, Haku decides to visit Torikori, Oshtor’s mother, but she soon reveals that she knows he is not truly Oshtor. He tries to deny it, but soon breaks down and admits her son is dead. She forgives him and says he honors Oshtor’s memory, claiming Haku as her new son. Rulutieh also overhears this, but decides not to bring it up. Later, Kuon offers Oshtor to come back with her to her land when the war is over. The next day, the two armies prepare to face each other.

OUR TAKE

This is the expected calm before the storm sort of episode that usually accompanies a big climactic battle, which I guess will be the entire latter half of this season. And appropriately, it’s about the protagonist questioning his current situation and reflecting on where he might end up when the war is over, which will be pretty difficult to determine when he is currently impersonating a dead man. I brought up my questions regarding that whole complicated situation and it seems the story is not above poking holes in that either as it is very much addressed here. Haku visited Oshtor’s mother earlier in the season, seemingly out of obligation to his late friend, but now we know that she was not so easily deceived and could see through his disguise. How it’s resolved is pretty wholesome, almost unexpectedly so, considering Torikori is pretty quick to forgive and understand things. I wasn’t expecting something like her trying to fight him or kick him out but…well, I actually didn’t really know what to expect. I guess it’s better this gets resolved quickly so we can move onto the big fight. There is also the potential drama of Rulutieh knowing the truth without Haku himself knowing, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be a huge problem.

I won’t repeat too many of my concerns from last time, but I feel I need to reiterate that this whole hiding of Haku’s identity FEELS like it’s going to be a big deal at some point, as evidenced by this episode putting a lot of focus on it. However, it also seems like everyone is already pretty much dedicated to Oshtor, even if that Oshtor is technically Haku. And we still have over a dozen more episodes to just focus on this big ol final battle, focusing on a bunch of existing and possibly new characters that I am not totally familiar with but will probably need to study up a bit on the wiki or something. I imagine if there’s fourteen episodes set aside for this final deciding climactic cumulative battle war fight, there are going to be numerous phases, probably giving a bunch of characters singular focus before we bring things back to Oshtor to cap things off. Who knows if I’ll see the end of that story or this series, but it’s something to consider as we enter this final phase.