Review of Katanagatari
Katanagatari is one of the more intelligent anime out there. Along with Tatami Galaxy it spread light over the otherwise dark year for anime 2010 was overall. It constantly builds up your expectations and makes you think you know what's gonna happen next, then proceeds to surprise you by doing something different from what you were expecting, and then laughs at you for thinking you figured it out. When it wants to it can also build up a peaceful atmosphere similar to the one found in Mushishi. It also contains a handfull of kickass action scenes, a refreshing art style, well developed characters, a uniquestory and some of the best, most well crafted witty dialouge seen in anime.
The characters are one of the many highlights found in this fun, weird package of a story. The male lead, Yasuri Shichika is definitely the most developed of the bunch. He starts off as the typical loveable but naive guy arcetype, who has lived on an isolated island his entire life, only knowing two other humans, being his father and his sister. You get a feel for him and you start to think you've figured him out. But after a couple of episodes you'll notice how he slowly but surely gets accustomed to living amongst more normal people. His development is really well handled. It's not so subtle that you barely know if he's changing, but neither, apart from a couple of times, is it completely spelled out for the audience. Other fun characters include Emonzaemon, Higaki Rinne, Togame and Tsuruga Meisai. Instead of explaining them I'll just say that they're all very witty and a ton of fun to watch and you have to experience them yourself.
The animation for Katanagatari is probably its weakest point. The character designs are indeed unique, the backgrounds pretty, and the art directing beautiful, but the actual animation, the motion of the characters is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand the fight scenes, while short are very well executed with good choreography, smooth movement and high detail. But then on the other hand for basically any scene that isn't fighting or otherwise vital to the plot the movement is stiff and miniscule, though with good storyboarding, directing and constant dialouge Katanagatari does a great job of masking it's lower budget and it doesn't feel cheap and is ever hard or unpleasant to watch.
Katanagatari is a very talking heavy anime, and I'll just say that if you don't like that style of show, then well... Get over it! You'll like this one.
As for other things and stuff: There's no dub, but that's okay since the setting doesn't really fit a dub either, and the Japanese voices are very good either way.
The music is quite good, reaching a wide variety of musical genres. It even features the choir from the original Ghost in the Shell!
Sound effects range from eargasm quality right down to a point where it almost feels like a parody of 90's shounen, probably because that's exactly what it feels like. They also do something fun with the animation and change it a bit each episode, most noteably in episode 7 which was the episode that really got me to liking this show.
Overall Katanagatari is a fun show, that constantly ridicules other anime, you and even itself. There are so many fun little details in this very rewatchable, enjoyable nice bundle of an anime. It has romance, action, shounen-like hype moments, witty dialouge, enjoyable characters and heck, even a bit of parody. Definitely not something to miss.