Another month, another installment of Katanagatari. The series glazed over Nanami in the first episode, but this week she gets her turn in the limelight. We get to see three thrilling fights against the Maniwani Corps! Oh whom am I kidding, this series is about the dialogue, not the action. Moreover, the cute sister is nowhere near as harmless as she appears. The total fight time is about 2 minutes out of 50. Well, let’s get this underway!
We are... the Three Amigos!
Last month on Katanagatari, Shichika and Togame retrieved Zantou Namakura from the tragic villain Ginkaku. The next sword on the list is Sentou Tsurugi, or the thousand swords. The weapon has fallen into the hands of Meisai Tsuruga, the matriarch of a shrine and yet another foe with a tragic history. What are you going to do now Shichika?
Apparently, he's going to get punched in the face.
Last week on Katanagatari, the show acquainted us with our main characters, Shichika and Togame. They didn’t have long to talk though, as Koumori from the Maniwa Corps attacked. Shichika defeated him and retrieved the first sword, Zettou Kanna. This week, they pursue Zantou Namakuma and the ronin that wields it.
It's good you have a strong grip, Togame.
We’ve almost reached the end of the Winter season launches with the airing of Katanagatari. However, this is a nonstandard series. The plan is to be a sweeping epic series that is aired as one 45-minute episode every month for the rest of the year. I don’t have a lot of time before shipping out for Ohayocon, so let’s jump right into this.
Going out in the middle of a blaze is pretty cool though.
Word reached me early this morning that White Fox, whose OVA project Katanagatari premieres on January 25, had one of their FTP servers hacked (a la Funimation, albeit with actual hacking.) Fortunately the only things leaked were production art, storyboards, scripts, a few music files, and the OP sequence.
In other words, nothing of any real value, and nothing that would cause any major monetary loss by White Fox, right? There’s already speculation that White Fox could have done this on purpose to drive off negative press surrounding their adaptation of the Katanagatari light novels.
But let’s not jump to conclusions.
Winter Preview?! It’s like Christmas all over again!
… Well, sorta. This season looks pretty crappy.
Female Characters and Subverted Expectations in Katanagatari
Tags: Anime, chanbara, editorial, edo period, female characters, nisioisin
Given that Katanagatari is a story in the style of chanbara, samurai films which focus largely on “manly” men, it’s great to see it play with gender roles (and subvert our expectations with regard to them) as much as it does. Despite the fact that the central character, who is set to become the strongest in Japan, is male, many of the show’s most powerful characters are women and the plot is very much driven by female characters. Warning: this post and one of the images within it contain major spoilers for Katanagatari episodes one through seven. Events in episode eight are mentioned, but there are no spoilers for the episode.
[Aco] (NSFW)
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