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)
Great review!
I felt the first half was pointless and tedious, but once they got to where they were going the episode picked up. The core plot of the episode was actually quite good, but the execution left a lot to be desired. The flashy and childish stuff really ups the lame factor, and I wish they didn’t rely on it so much.. it would be much cooler if the people were realistically skillful and used realistically powerful weapons, not superhumans using superweapons.
Spending half the episode wandering through a desert talking about catchphrases was a waste of time, and the episode basically made me feel like Togame is a complete idiot. It was nice to Shichika play her for a fool, but not so nice to see that she really was a fool in everything she did otherwise. Not much of a “strategian”.
Basically if they stuffed this into the 22 minute format, and dropped all the superfluous dialog, it would be much better. I don’t mind lots of dialogue, but not when it’s mostly so inconsequential.
I enjoyed this more than the first, Im loving all the dialogue, its rare to find interesting dialogue which isnt pretentious
This is actually what Bakemonogatari failed to do (because of you-know-who), so Im really happy they are heading in the right direction with Katanagatari
The main couple is also really fun to watch, and when the action does kick in, its AWESOME… I love how he used his newly made catchphrase right before he killed the other guy 😛
Actually I liked this episode more than the first one especially when Shichika dropped the catch line and my heart went dokidoki.
I agree with you Topspin that some of the dialogue is a littl tedious but its makes me laugh every now and then.
psgels: I think he couldn’t use his “iai slash” thing because the opponent was just above him, not only on the ceiling.
Oh and Togame isn’t wearing any pantsu!!!
“I enjoyed this more than the first, Im loving all the dialogue, its rare to find interesting dialogue which isnt pretentious”
I know that Bakemonogatari is a series that (if your not into the female cast members) is a bit hard to actually find interesting, because you have to have a rather strange interest in language and human relations.
I wouldn’t say I found Bakemono great, but I find Katana to be a bit too simple at times.
And where exactly is Katana LESS pretentious then Bakemono or any other anime of that kind?!
It shows characters talking about stuff that is mainly only put in their to be funny in a selfreferential way.
I would say it’s even more constructed then Bakemono was, because there people were at least talking about things they could know, while in Katana they are pulled out of context on purpose.
Regarding this episode, it was okay and about 1/2 was entertaining. The walk through the desert was painfully unentertaining and again they didn’t use the visual medium through that part at all. I would have prefered reading that part…seeing the same background and them barely moving got me to doze off so much, I needed to rewatch it (maybe that’s a plus if you watch it with subtitles).
Generaly I would agree with psgels on his review, the only thing I have a different opinion on is that I found this episode more entertaining than the 1st.
Its not pretentious in the sense that they dont start going on about pointless philosophical babble just to look smart… In fact its the opposite, since Togame looks stupid more often than not
Either way, its a conversation that I can imagine normal people having, unlike anything in Bakemono, thats the main point for me
“although I’m not exactly sure how one could figure out that that super-fast sword could only slice horizontally, not vertically.”
The sword doesn’t simply grant super-speed to anyone that wields it… Uneri’s technique (draw sword, cut, and resheath) is one that can’t counter an attack from directly above.
I thought that Koumori explained it sufficiently:
“Everything is within Zerosen’s range”?
Wrong!
You can’t draw straight above your head!
It’s quite a well-known style of Japanese martial arts. Look up Iaido and Iaijutsu.
I personally enjoyed this episode slightly more than the last one – probably because I find the comedic banter more entertaining than explanations of the (somewhat generic) plot.
After watching the second episode, I think I’ll keep up with Katanagatari, I’m in awe at the massive amount of dialog in this anime.
I couldn’t care less about the fights, but I find the banter quite entertaining, specially the continuous self-referential and shounen genre satire.
Although it superficially looks like a shounen series, it’s in fact a bunch of guys drinking beer and eating pretzels while reminiscing and poking fun at the shounen they enjoyed as little kids: the plot is plain and inconsequential (who cares about those swords, the creators are not even trying to make them interesting), the meat of the series is obviously the dialog.
Like for Figure 17, if Katanagatari can keep a 9/1 ratio of babble/fight, I’ll be happy ^_^
I’m not that big on dialogue…there was too much with things not going anywhere. I think I’ll just follow this series by reading your reviews.
Now I understand why it’s once a month. There’s enough dialogue in there for an entire month. 🙂
If the show wants to be a parody, fine (it’s no Gurren Lagann if that’s the case). I’d rather they drop the pretentious parody and focus on the core story of the episode – it was actually quite good and could have been great without the “parody” stuff. It felt more like they had a good story but gave up on it and made it lame on purpose.. much like the first episode. I wasn’t laughing during either episode.
“I enjoyed this more than the first, Im loving all the dialogue, its rare to find interesting dialogue which isnt pretentious”
“Its not pretentious in the sense that they dont start going on about pointless philosophical babble just to look smart”
I don’t think people discuss philosophy “just to look smart”. Just because you don’t like it, don’t hate. Also, if you find the dialogue interesting, who cares if it’s “pretentious?” I feel like “pretentious” is one of those words people throw out there to immediately dismiss anything that tries to have a point. As far as Bakemonogatari goes, I don’t think there was any philosophy there anyway…
“Either way, its a conversation that I can imagine normal people having, unlike anything in Bakemono, thats the main point for me”
Like that part where he was licking her hair? Yeah. That sort of defeats the purpose of television, right? The truth is, conversations in real life are generally slow and boring unless you’re taking part in them. For example, everyone hates cheesy and overused lines in movies. But in real life, people are often cheesy, and a lot of what they say is overused. Of course, there’s a point where dialogue can step into the totally unbelievable, but I think Bakemonogatari and Katanagatari are both well within that range. If you’ve ever seen Clerks, I think the dialogue there is pushing it a little, but my biggest issue with Clerks is they don’t give enough space, not necessarily with the words themselves.
“I enjoyed this more than the first, Im loving all the dialogue, its rare to find interesting dialogue which isnt pretentious
This is actually what Bakemonogatari failed to do (because of you-know-who), so Im really happy they are heading in the right direction with Katanagatari ”
Good god do some of you people actually read the crap you type? The dialogue in Bakemonogatari is far from pretentious, stop throwing around words you clearly don’t fucking know how to use.
And the “you know who” responsible for the dialogue isn’t Shinbo, the dialogue in Bake is lifted from the novel and when they had to adjust it Nisio himself during recording did so.
“although I’m not exactly sure how one could figure out that that super-fast sword could only slice horizontally, not vertically.”
i think it has something to do with what they call “maai”. noticed how he was counting the steps before he drew his sword the first time? one can draw as fast as one can but it’s useless if the opponent is out of range. he could have drawn his sword to defend himself from above but that was it for him either way. it was the weakness of his technique.
great series. i loved the whole thinking-up-a-catchphrase talk. then there was also shichika’s “… is how i figure i should react…”. lol.
the people above me thinks too much about this series. haha. if you don’t like then stop watching. simple as that.
kyuzo: everything I said took less than 1/10 the amount of time it takes to watch an actual episode. if that’s too much thinking for you, you clearly do too little. stop trying to quash discussion.
Jake: bahaha! so what, you can say whatever you want and i can’t? well fu-didly-uck. go do whatever you want to do man, why be bothered by what i said if you really want to continue whatever discussion you guys are having. as if what i said had enough weight to bruise your egos. shees.
I liked the previous episode more as well. This one had a bit too much continuous talking. It felt like their conversations were dragging on too long, or maybe I was just getting bored of the subject matter.
too much frivolous talk but some of the interactions between Shichika and Togame is pretty tee hee funny. But the fact that Shichika is a complete tard makes it acceptable to me lmao. I think we will be seeing many of these awkward/ quirky moments and meeting an abundance of weird adversaries. I would like to agree on that fact that Shichika was pretty creative in approaching Urei and i hope to see more moments like that lol. I don’t think this anime is intended to be serious at all so i don’t see the reason to QQ about that.
Hopefully they will cut back on the jibber jabber. Other than that this anime seems promising.
Actually, the irony at work in this episode is that Shichika is supposed to be stupid, but in fact he is actually quite intelligent and insightful, despite having very limited experience and his supposed stupidity is simply this lack of exposure to the world off of his island. Similarly, Togame, is supposed to be the smart one, but she really only has a sort of worldly cleverness and is in fact not very intelligent at all.
And, I agree with the poster who said Bakemono’s dialogue was pretentious while Katana’s isn’t. The pretentiousness is that Bakemono took its dialogue too seriously, when in fact there really never was anything that deep going on, the characters were shallow, the themes pedantic, and the humor choked and forced. Katana on the other hand does exactly the opposite, it never pretends to be deep, makes fun of itself frequently, and in the process, often manages to turn up some interesting insight and unique looks at the world. Some people clearly liked Bakemono’s dialogue, fine by me, I don’t even expect you to defend it, but I love how people like to tell other people they don’t know how to and/or don’t have the right to use the language they used. Last week I’m told I apparently don’t know what “witty” means, and this week someone else “isn’t allowed” to use “pretentious” to describe bakemonogatari. But yet, when I gave a pretty thorough and detailed list of reasons why I found (and still find btw) this show witty, then suddenly I’m overanalyzing things. Apparently the vocabulary-police out there who don’t like this show and did like bakemono don’t want to give their reasons for feeling that way, instead they just want to use ad-hominem attacks and try to invalidate those they disagree with’s word choices. Pretentiousness was exactly what was wrong with bakemonogatari, whether that was Shinbo’s fault, Nissio’s, or both as is likely. Similarly, Katanagatari succeeds where Bakemonogatari failed precisly for its lack of pretense and the witty way the show engages with itself.
I love all the dialogue…it is the whole point of the show…but you have to pay close attention because next to nothing is said overtly, instead subtext is everything, even though the deadpan manner in which it is usually conveyed may make it difficult for some of you to catch everything, that deadpan delivery is precisely what allows it to work. If the show made it obvious that it was TRYING to be funny, it wouldn’t be, and would instead be pretentious, just like its cousin, bakemono. In fact, the few jokes in this serious delivered comedically are purposefully corny, and fall flat on their faces, which contrasts in a quite lovely manner with the real source of humor in the show, which comes from various ironies and the less-than-obvious manner in which they are given to us.
Kids, kids: at least try to keep it a bit civil here and try to not insult each other, okay?
@PL: Well I think it’s also a matter of personal taste and not only actual quality, because I found Bakemono’s humour quite catchy and liked what Nishio was adressing.
He never tried to be deep, the only actual difference is that Katana was written to entertain, Bakemono was written as ‘his hobby’ and he adressed many thing which he came in contact with through his work and his hobby.
Before calling something pretentious it would have had to make a claim on being special or overly deep in the first place.
Just because the presentation and dialogue wasn’t plain and simple does not immediatly imply there was a deep message in there.
I’m not saying one can’t call the show that, but it’s more a question wether it actually fits the show itself and not only the perception some people had.
I just think that Katana’s humour is easier to get for foreigners because it doesn’t rely on any special knowledge of Japanese culture or language…it’s just there.
chounokoe, that makes a certain sense and I also agree that to a certain degree it is a matter of personal taste. For the record though, I’ve been studying Japanese language for years and have a deep fascination with the culture, and I still didn’t “get” bakemono, but it is still quite possible that as an outsider, the humor in bakemono appealed less to me than others with more familiarity. Thanks for a reasonable and uninsulting reply. You were definitely not who I was reffering to, becuase you actually address the word, instead of just telling people they dont know what they are talking about.
@PL: Yeah, I didn’t feel attacked here at all, just thought I’d try to strengthen my side of the argument with a bit of reason.
I think it really depends on what your preferences are, I’m studying Japanese (language and culture) for almost 3 years now and I’m concentrating more on modern times.
That includes studies of youth language, neologisms (etc.) in literature and literature itself…and recently after starting to get into Nishio a bit more (also due to a friend) I started to notice how many references and cross-references this guy is adding to his works, he’s referencing language phenomenons, philosophy, pseudo-philosophy, literature, arts…but everything from a rather personal, subjective point.
It’s not that Katana is less well written I would say…he’s just a lot less referential, maybe because there’s not as much to reference to that he knows. He’s a detective fiction/mystery/linguistics/meta-fiction author…I think he just didn’t have the knowledge to make Katana full of Jidai-Geki and Taiga-Drama references, therefore he just made it funny in a broader sense.
fair ’nuff