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So it took three months, but finally Katanagatari gets some dialogue that isn’t pointless and boring. I have to believe Nisio Isin is in some way aware of how ludicrously wordy his books are, as one of the characters makes a reference to “pointless chatter” and then they actually stop talking and fight! Wow! Imagine that!

This month we have Shichika and Togame visiting a shrine led by Meisai Tsuruga, a reformed bandit who has devoted her life to helping women driven insane by sexual abuse. She keeps them as maidens in the shrine, believing that exposing them to the deviant blade Sentou Tsurugi will help heal them. The twist is that Sentou Tsurugi is not one sword, but one thousand copies of a sword, built with the philosophy that swords are expendable. This happens to fit Tsuruga’s fighting style, which takes advantage of swords scattered around a battlefield. So you know Shichika and Tsuruga’s inevitable showdown will be interesting. You also get the obligatory Maniwa Corps appearance. They seem to exist only to make an annoying speech and then get cut down.

What I like about this episode is that the dialogue feels substantive. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very wordy, but it sets up an intriguing story with a lot of moral ambiguity. Meisai Tsuruga has dedicated her life to protecting the women in the shrine (who are helpless on their own). She belives she needs the Sentou Tsurugi to do this, as the swords’ unique properties allow the shrine maidens to hold on to their sanity. Togame (doing her best Haruhi impression) simply wants to claim the swords for the bakufu, but would rather do so without a fight. Where it gets interesting is the deal Tsuruga strikes with Togame. Tsuruga wants the two deviant blades that Togame has, thinking they will allow her to help more people. So either one side can surrender their swords, or Shichika and Tsuruga can fight to the death.

Shichika, in this case, claims that he has no purpose other than to do whatever Togame says. I have a few problems with him as a character, but the overall conflict is that you don’t want Tsuruga to lose her swords, but you kind of want Togame to win too. The episode approaches this dilemma without some artificial third option; the resolution isn’t very happy and I like that it chooses to go the challenging route.

I’d like to go back to Shichika, who says he acts as Togame’s sword. This is an interesting concept, as in this episode it parallels the role of Sentou Tsurugi. What I don’t like is Shichika himself. It’s not that he has no concept or right and wrong—the problem is that he chooses to ignore it for a woman who basically ordered him to fall in love with her. What’s worse is Tsuruga’s observation that Shichika ignores his own believes because it’s convenient and he’s lazy... and she’s pretty much right. I mean, are we really supposed to sympathize with a remorseless killer? This guy basically murders three people (two of whom committed absolutely no wrongdoings against him) on the orders of a stranger without ever questioning her motives, or even trying to understand them. He’s about as interesting as a robot with all the personality of a brick, doing whatever he’s commanded to without thinking for himself. The fact that Tsuruga lampshades this makes me sympathize with her, whereas Shichika is just a mindless barbarian with a cool catch phrase. There is a feeble attempt to cast doubt on Tsuruga’s methods, but all through the episode, I really wanted Shichika to lose.

The only reason you’d cheer for Shichika at all is because he’s the main character. Personally I’m not fond of the idea of rooting for a lazy, unethical automaton who doesn’t provide humor or anything interesting to look at (we don’t even see why his fighting style is so good because they cut away at the moment of the killing blow). If Togame is the only driving factor, then her selfish quest to find the swords is a weak counterbalance to Tsuruga’s motivation for keeping hers. So while I enjoy the conflict that the two come in, I think the outcome is bitter and undeserved. Which in its own way is kind of cool, but is also a douchey move on the part of the author. Anime criticism: it only sometimes makes sense.

Tags: Katanagatari, Super Serial