Category: Katanagatari

Excellent, this episode did exactly what I hoped it would do. While the tongue-in-cheek storytelling of the first two episodes was fun, it was bound to get old after a while. this episode drops the comedy (aside from one scene, perhaps), and instead takes itself seriously. The result is my favourite episode of this series so far.

Unlike the first two episodes that made a bit of fun of the villains, we finally could explore this episode’s sword wielder to her full potential, and this episode did well in fleshing her out, and telling about her backstory. She wasn’t exactly rounded, but as a flat character she was pretty good. This of course amounted to a lot of exposition, but I felt like it was more balanced than in the first episode. It’s also good to see that this show intends to be varied.

I’m also surprised by the music in this episode. Taku Iwasaki isn’t someone I’d name amongst my favourite composers, but his scores definitely know how to hit the spot. I like the use of choirs in soundtracks (as long as they’re not overdone, obviously), O I quite liked the musical score at the end of this episode.

In any case, this episode showed that Katanagatari is another one of those shounen series that suffers from the “I’m about to attack you, but first let me tell you my life story”-syndrome. The reason why I like it here, compared to shows as Bleach, is that the dialogue adds something to the characters, and the fact that the action scenes themselves are short and sweet, and pretty much what action scenes involving deadly weapons should be: deadly. Battles here are very much built up with the dialogues, resulting in a short but sweet climax.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Okay, for those confused by the strange schedule of this series: episode 3 will air on March 8th, and I assume that the rest of the episodes will also follow on the eighth of every month, but that’s not certain yet.

Anyway, about this episode: I enjoyed it a lot. There obviously was a lot of dialogue again, but it was interesting to follow, rather than just continuously stating the obvious like what shounen series tend to do when two characters are talking to each other in the middle of a fight. This episode also had a ton of subtle jokes, like that crazy ninja who just kept talking backwards. Nice references to those shows that have minor side-character with a strange “gimmick”. As this show explains it: they only do that to stand out.

Between this and the previous episode, I liked the previous one a bit better, mostly because its direction had a bit more of an “edge”, but this episode also had some nice touches and unexpected parts. Using your partner’s face as a leverage. The action in this episode was very short, and it really was one of those fights that’s decided before it even started, although I’m not exactly sure how one could figure out that that super-fast sword could only slice horizontally, not vertically.

I’m also enjoying this series because of the cross references. Sure, there’s a ton of dialogue, but it’s not exactly random. The topic of clothing for example just keeps returning, and at the end of the episode we also see the two lead characters talking about last words, just after characters have died that they probably did not intend (especially the reverse guy :P).

For the coming number of episodes, what this series needs to do is to continue fleshing the two lead characters out through this dialogue, so that they can get some proper development in the second half. In the meantime, it also needs to keep its dialogue fresh and characters interesting. This episode threw in nice details about the background of the place and ronin of this episode, but at the same time I do hope that the topics of the future episodes are slightly more interesting. Making a series that consists out of nothing but talking for 50 minutes interesting doesn’t just happen on its own.
Rating: * (Good)

Whoa! I didn’t expect Katanagatari to have episodes of 50 minutes. That seals the deal for me: I’m going to blog it. I very much approve of this longer pause between episodes. Series like Votoms’ Pailsen Files, Figure 17, Blade of the Immortal and Marie & Gali also had this, and they became very entertaining to watch in their own ways, simply because the creators had more time to refine their episodes.

My biggest fear before starting this series was obviously the director of School Days who got appointed behind this, not to mention that the animation company behind it has only done Tears to Tiara, which apparently was mediocre at best (though I dropped it after 1 episode). Still, for now I’ll just see this as another case of Casshern Sins, in which the director of various Dragonball Z movies ended up making such a beautiful series. And yeah, I guess that we should at least be glad that Shinbo didn’t also get this series. This episode wasn’t just “okay”; I very much enjoyed it.

This series is a bit of an homage to the shounen genre, it has many elements of a shounen series, and yet it isn’t exactly a shounen series. It includes fights, it makes fun of the “Hah! I’m about to kill you but let me just stand here and let you finish whatever conversation you’re having!”-trope, it also pokes fun at how fights like these tend to go on for ages just because the characters won’t shut up talking, it features teenagers who fall in love with each other quite quickly, but at the same time there are also tons of quiet scenes, in which people just sit in a room talking for more than ten minutes, straight on; which is something you won’t find in any other shounen-series, and is actually more seinen.

Overall, what I liked most about this first episode was the build-up: I’m really surprised at how well this episode built up its tension through the incredibly long dialogues in the beginning, and the more action-packed yet still dialogue-filled second half. The animation was also simple where it needed to be, and detailed where it needed to be, though aside from its crispness and unique look nothing special. What I did like was the subtle sense of humour oft his episode, in which the creators liked to insert a joke right in the middle of a character’s speech. It keeps you on your toes and it adds an interesting flavor to the whole script.

It was quite a bit of a challenge to follow this episode raw (to all the fansubbers and typesetters planning to go for this series: good luck), but i like challenges like these once in a while. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but I seem to have some weird fascination with watching dialogue-filled series in raw, trying to keep up with the Japanese even though my own Japanese is far from perfect.
Rating: ** (Excellent)