Katanagatari.... reviewed.

Katanagatari

Writer:                     Nisio Isin

Director:                   Keitaro Motonaga

Production:               White Fox

Original run:             January 25, 2010 - December, 2010

Episodes:                 12.

Yasuri Shichika is the 7th generation heir to the Kyoutouryu sword less, sword fighting style, who spent 20 years isolated on an island in exile with his family. 20 years after the war, a girl named Togame beseeching his help approaches him. Togame is a stratagem for the Shogunate (Japanese Empire) who was tasked with finding and collecting all 12 of the perfected deviant blades created by the ancient legendary sword smith Kiki Shikizaki. She needs Shichika's help because his sword less sword fighting style would allow him to collect the various swords without succumbing to the poison that the blades inflict on whoever wields them.

The first thing to notice about this show, which makes it so alike to it's artful sister series "Bakemonogatari", is that it is Dialogue-centric. The majority of every episode is spent in conversation. Unlike other shows which claim vastly more dialogue than anything else, Katanagatari doesn't limit it's banter to "I'm strongest more than you! No you're not! Yes I am! Are not! Am to! Are not! AM TO!!". Every conversation in this show is masterfully done, and deserving of the best in the oxford debate club. Characters intelligently pose their opinions, support it with short but detailed elaborations, listen to each other, ask questions for clarification, and post insights and arguments and counter opinions. Also, like the conversation over tea about the taste of the cookies that could sway the difference between life and death in the next upcoming war, the conversations are loaded down with many subtle layers of deeper vocal conflict and double, triple, and quadruple entendre. We foreigners tend to miss most of those layers, because we don't speak the language and most of it is lost in translation, but mostly because we be too stupid to see anything but the most clear-to-face and obvious meanings to everything, and therefore require long, lengthy paragraphs of constantly repeating words that describe what we are already looking at before we can get it. What I'm saying is, this show isn't a Tits and Explosions kind of action. It is a show for intelligent people to listen to the words and try to understand the various meanings behind them. If you're not that kind of viewer, then the anime is pointlessly long and frustratingly boring. If you are one of those intelligent types, then the show is a never-ending crux of engaging conversations and inspiring concepts.

As a compliment to the dialogue, is the length. Unlike a 23 minute per episode show released every week for exactly 1/4 of a year (13 weeks), This show is OVA style, each episode being 45 minutes long and released only once a month for an entire year. 12 months, 12 swords, you can see the pattern. This isn't an OVA (that is a really one long movie broken into 3 or so smaller parts). Each episode is an independent episode, and the end product is such that it is unimaginable to try and picture a compressed version for the usual half an hour lengths. None of it gives off the impressions of being too jammed packed, or even delay tactic filler material. The pacing is perfectly gentle, allowing for proper dramatic buildup.

And what a dramatic buildup it has. Not only does each episode work its way slowly from a calm beginning to a catastrophic crescendo, but each episode builds upon each other in a symphony of intertwined plots to make for a reverberating tension you just can't rush into. The individual sword plots are somewhat predictable in the results, but as the sword capturing comes closer towards the end, we all sit there waiting for the other shoe to drop, with a big difficulty in imagining just what that other shoe is going to be. I personally couldn't predict what could possibly be more exciting than episode 4, what could be more different than episode 5, what could be more absurd than episode 6, what could be more dangerous than episode 7... and yet it did get more exciting, more different, more absurd, more dangerous, and continues to do so, right up to the end.

The action is severely lacking at the best of times. For a 45-minute episode of a show about a legendary swordsman fighting off the worlds best swordsmen in order to collect the most exotic swords, quite frankly the action sucks. The real fight scenes are limited to maybe some quick buildup followed by the climactic moment. Heck, the only fight worth its weight in time was the only one that didn't actually involve any swords. That's not to say that the show is in any way slow(er than previously mentioned), but the whole project could have served just as well as an elaborate graphic novel for all the motion that was involved.

The graphics, too, are another point that might be taken against the overall quality of the show. Like any good 4-letter comedy or a quack experimental anime, the art style itself tends to change rapidly. From photo realistic to stereophonic to shoujou pretty-boy to video game sprites, there just doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason behind anything visual. If anything, I might have to say that the purpose of the visual shift is as a shortcut. The few action scenes are all broken up or hidden by odd angles, styles, or after effects. Even setup scenes that require the visual aid to support the plan or reason is left to the simplest or most repetitive style available. That's not to say the art is bad, it's just wildly different and expertly used to hide the purpose (animation shortcut). It could even be surprised that what action we do get is a bonus, because the art is nothing more than a means of keeping our eyes from getting bored while we concentrate on the dialogue.

The characters are colorful, and all of them original. From the animal themed Maniwa Ninja, to the Kaleidoscopic princesses to the sharp sword owners, to even Shichika's changing Oak patterned life, there is not a single named character whom you could look at and say "he/she looks like a rip-off of _____". Instead, all of them would each make for an instantly recognizable cosplay at any convention, one flooded with awes on the difficulty it must have been to tailor the costume.

Due to the existence of the Howard Stern Syndrome (you either love it or you hate it, but there's no in-between), I find it difficult to properly rate this show. It all really comes down to the dialogue. If you are the kind of person who can follow and appreciate it, then Katanagatari rates a whopping 9 out of 10, held back only by the annoying shifts in art and the existence of a better precedent (Bakemonogatari had, mysteriously enough, much better dialogue and much more appropriate radical art shift). If you need more explosions and cleavage in your sword-fighting, then the show drops to a miserable 2 out of 5 for hiding all the good stuff and boring us all with big words, saved only by the originality of the characters and the concepts of persona la badass. Penalty points taken for replacing the episode shaping up to be one of the most epic swordfights in the history of ever with a side story, bonus points given right back for that same side story being totally worth it!

-Ben