First Look: Katanagatari

Title: Katanagatari Genre: Action, Romance

Summary: This story teakes place in the Edo era where Yasuri Shichika is the seventh head of the Kyotou school of Japanese sword martial arts living in Fushou Island with his sister Nanami. With the order from a female samurai general Togame, he sets out for a trip to collect the twelve treasured swords created by a legendary swordsmith Shikizaki Kiki.

First Look: Katanagatari’s art was the first thing that popped out at me. At first I was against it, every character having different eyes, and very flat looking hair, but it did grow on me. However, after watching three hours worth of this anime I really enjoyed the old-style Japanese painting feel. The scenery looked flat but beautiful, with a wave of colors and curves. So like many other animes this one may take some time getting used to. Moving onto the story that I expected to be rather long. When doing a little research a couple things came up, for one there is no manga adaptation (sorry all you fans that like skipping the fillers), and secondly there are only twelves episodes. Wait, what? Twelves episodes? Twelves swords? Either they will keep doing what they are now and skipping the travel scenes and getting one sword an episodes (leaving no room for resolve), or mashing them together and making the final episode or two resolves. Many of you are thinking, “They are hour long episodes! They can use the final 30 minutes for resolve!“. Which would be true if the style of this anime changes. Currently the anime is nothing but talk. For an action anime it really lacks in the action department. This anime is probably the biggest tease I have seen a while. The opponents face each other, tensions are high, sweat drips down their faces, blades about to be drawn… but first let’s go into a twenty minute long dialogue about the past of each character. OK now that we got that out of the way let’s get back to fighting. Swish woosh fighting is over. We have a victor after one attack. The action scenes last all of 30 seconds, finishing every battle with a single strike. Although very cool strikes, only one is actually done. Even the romance is instant, no build-up what-so-ever on the guys end. He was told to fall in love, so be it! And when I say he was told to fall for a girl, I literally mean told.The final thing I would like to say is that the anime seems to be released every two weeks. Not horrible since you do get an hour long episode, but just a warning to anyone who has their weekly anime schedule.

Final statements: I can’t say much about the soundtrack just yet, I haven’t really listened to it, so I apologize for skipping it. Katanagatari is a very long winded anime, so if you don’t like dialogue you probably will get bored very quickly. It is was great to hear the backgrounds of characters and the story, but there is only so much I can take. They really could have done a better job with the action as well. The art style is unique but don’t get discouraged by it to quickly. In hope that this anime picks up I’ll keep it on watch.