Review of Katanagatari

tl;dr: It's a good show, but it shows its age. Before reviewing it myself, let's do some "meta-reviewing" or "review statistics". If you look at the first page of reviews (newest 20), they are currently distributed like so: * Positive: 12 (60%) * Mixed: 2 (10%) * Negative: 6 (30%) Compare that to all-time reviews:* Positive: 155 (81%)
* Mixed: 20 (10%)
* Negative: 16 (8%)

I think it's because people can probably compare with more recent shows (which often have high budgets, more catchy stories, animators with more experience, etc), and see this with a more critical eye than what people did a decade ago. I would know because I'm one of those people too. Also note that this show has very few user votes, even fewer than first/second/third seasons of certain hit shows that aired <6 months ago. I first watched this a decade ago (give or take a few) and it left a really good impression (8+), but I decided to rewatch it now after finishing the second seasons of Solo Leveling and Spy X Family, and it doesn't compare. That does not apply to other pre-2015 series I've rewatched recently. But enough talking about no-lifer MAL reviewers and their quirks, let's get reviewing.

The first and biggest strike is the animation. People complained about the recent TBATE series being a slideshow (I haven't watched it), but from the clips I've seen it still has some minimal animation, be it minor particle effects or whatever. Katanagatari on the hand, often has a single image being panned with zero, 0, nada, niente, no animation. It's bad... but it's clear to see that the animators made an honest effort with the constraints they were given and gave us some more-than-decent scenes.

Art and sound are above average. Art is really nice, the sort of that would also look good in games, and has this "painting" look. Sound is a mixed bag, sometimes you get some pieces that don't really fit the overall theme, but even though they stand out, they surprisingly don't seem bothersome. Maybe they intentionally tried to break the monotony.

I liked the story. A few nice references to historical names and events, some puns and wordplays, a mostly interesting cast that doesn't come with the carbon-copy protagonists of most shows today. No qualms with the ending either. Not sure how interesting the characters may seem to the average person, but I enjoyed the various backgrounds and the change of pace. What I didn't like was the amount of fast-paced dialogue (at least for a non-Japanese-native, non-English-native English subs reader). It's very dialogue heavy, which isn't necessarily a terrible thing on its own, but it also happens during fight scenes which is a bit annoying, and it could be a bit better in terms of uniqueness and meaning to the story. Speaking of dialogue and fights, the "most hyped fight" against "the strongest swordsman" wasn't even shown to us, just commented on at the end of an episode by the protagonists while they were eating. In the words of the show itself: "don't waste my time [by talking instead of fighting]. Our two spectators have gotten so bored they started chatting".

So, yeah, lots of minor annoyances and quite a few pleasant surprises, paired together with an otherwise "pretty good" series gives you a rating of "7 - Good". I'd probably recommend this only to someone who has already watched older top-tier stuff (S;G, FMAB, ...), and newer hits (SL, KnH)... and hits from the previous 1-2 decades... and maybe a few other stuff too... but after that I'd definitely recommend Katanagatari too! D: