Review of Katanagatari

Based on Katanagatari's high scores here on myal, I decided to give Katanagatari a second go after putting it on hold for a very long time. I'm certainly glad I did as by the end of the series it went far beyond my expectations and will certainly be revisited at some time in the future. Seeing Katanagatari's character art style quickly began to stir comparisons to some older anime that I had watched in the past with the fastest one coming to memory being Casshern Sins. The simplicity of its elongated style of characters makes for better animation in my opinion and ultimately it workswell when you get into its greatly appreciated fight scenes.

The story follows the journey of Yasuri Shichika, a practitioner of a family fighting style that uses his entire body as a sword, and an ambitious strategist Togame who elicits the help of Yasuri to hunt down 12 legendary swords by order of the shogunate.

My biggest fore warning about this series is its format. With an hour long viewing for each episode understand that your in for some serious watching...and serious banter...I mean dragon ball z does not hold a candle to this anime in every literal sense of the meaning. There were only a selection of episodes that truly kept me engaged from start to finish and I feel like a shorter format could have made this anime much more welcoming.

I found Katanagatari's biggest stand out to be in its character development and it was what mainly kept me moving forward with the series. The overall plot is very shakespearean which is not so apparent from the start and it is why I believe the anime has become such a stand out among the rest.

It's soundtrack is certainly helpful in setting both the light hearted antics and intrigue in the best times possible and was certainly enjoyable throughout.

Katanagatari comes very close to a masterpiece work for me but it misses the mark with its hour long format and stretched out conversations. If not for this, I would have given it a much higher rating. None the less, the overall viewing of this series was certainly worth it and I urge anyone who may not have made it past the first few episodes to hang in there and give this one a look.