KATANAGATARI review

Katanagatari, or literally 'Sword Stories'. You might think you know what to expect; an enigmatic, moody hero, nods to every chanbara classic under the sun, an adversary of the week, limbs flying hither and yon. Yes and no; this is a Nisio Oisin creation, the successful light novelist behind the hugely under-rated Bakemonogatari, and anyone familiar with that show or any of the author's work will already know he does things a little differently.

Our hero, Shichika Yasuri, is the son of Mutsue Yasuri, an exile banished to a tiny island in the middle of nowhere after he made use of his fearsome prowess in the No-Sword fighting style to crush a rebellion against the Shogunate. No-one's been to visit the loose cannon for two decades until Togame, strategist for the Shogun's army, comes calling to find the father's long dead and only his son and daughter remain.

She tells the siblings the story of maverick swordsmith Kiki Shikizaki, whose work swayed the balance of power during the warring Sengoku era. Togame wants the head of the No-Sword School to accompany her on a quest to track down the final twelve of the master's blades, each one held by a legendary hero who's not disposed to hand it over.

So far, so predictable; but Shichika is a simpleton, knowing nothing of the outside world, and Togame's something of a blowhard, clearly out of her depth. Some of their enemies are more than they seem, some decidedly less, and morality is a fluid thing from episode to episode, with major characters revealed to have some decidedly unexpected ulterior motives.

As with Bakemonogatari, Nisio is clearly paying deft, loving homage to convention at the same time as he's sending it skyward. Right from the first episode we have tangents thrown in solely to explore convoluted wordplay, Three Stooges banter, dry mockery of the staples of the genre - costume design, catchphrases, the languid poise expected of a hero - and two leads who clearly need to lean on each other the better to avoid falling over.

At the same time, again, like Bakemonogatari this isn't satire for the sake of it. Slowly, we begin to form an impression of the protagonists, even the supporting characters as people. They're hapless, but far from incompetent, and their reactions to and opinions on events matter. We may be invited to laugh at the slapstick and the buddy-movie repartee, but Nisio clearly hopes we'll empathise with a lot of what the underlying subtext suggests, and one major twist several episodes in is absolutely horrific in its implications, putting everything that comes before it in a quite different light.

Which is not to say the show doesn't work as a pure genre exercise. It frequently pulls the rug from under the viewer in many respects yet Shichika and Togame's adversaries and the fights to claim their swords are creative and a pleasure to watch. Katanagatari is the work of new studio White Fox, only their second major project after key animation work on a handful of other people's series. The higher budget is immediately apparent on-screen; while not quite cinema-quality, the show is polished, flashy and gloriously artistic, with an odd look halfway between watercolour paintings and a '40s or '50s aesthetic reminiscent of something like Masaaki Yuasa's Kaiba.

The main problem with Katanagatari, however, is that the marriage between genre convention and auteur playfulness can feel more than a little awkward. Bakemonogatari stood out as something attention-grabbing and different right from the introduction to the first episode, and peppered the running time with a selection of beautiful, throwaway gags in between the deeper material. In comparison Katanagatari comes across on more than one occasion as a pretty yet fairly uninspired tale of wandering cartoon swordsmen paced so glacially slowly many viewers will probably have tuned out a few minutes in.

The peculiar broadcasting schedule doesn't help, and may yet turn out to be a mistake - the higher budget is partly afforded given the show screens one forty-five minute episode per month (!). Any show would suffer spaced out to twelve instalments over the course of a year, and Katanagatari's leisurely air feels like a significant weakness here.

It's a difficult thing to give any definitive pronouncement on; anyone fond of Bakemonogatari's dry wit, visual flair and talent for blending comedy with cutting pathos should probably give Katanagatari a look. Any fan of graceful samurai war stories that set themselves apart from the norm might also find much to enjoy here. But the dragging pace (unsurprisingly, no-one has licensed it at the time of writing) and the nagging suspicion too much of the running time is merely very artistic padding will have a number of people wondering if this is worth keeping track of.