Katanagari

[Dracos]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katanagatari

I've watched 6ish hours of this so far.  It started slow and bad, and has steadily and quickly improved.  The characters still talk way too much and the female protagonist is a embarassment blob, but the show gets pretty good by ep 2 and keeps getting better from there.

Being about halfway through I very much wonder how they're going to top the last opposition though.

[Dracos]

Finished the series.

With one sorta weak episode it continued a rising action with lots of enjoyable scenes up until 5 minutes from the end of episode eleven.  At this point it promptly went into a horrible death spiral that continued for the entire next hour and so of the show, which was completely unenjoyable and unsatisifying as a wrap up.

Very Bad End:

Spoiler: ShowHide

So Togame's backstory is revealed to the bad guys and then she is shot with guns and dies.  This death scene takes like 15-20 minutes where she repudiates any character growth she's had the entire series, indicates her actual plan was horribly stupid, and then bleeds out in Shichika's arms.

The annoying blonde rival then takes credit with the shogun, but while she's doing it, Shichika bursts in, kills lots of guards.  Then destroys the eleven blades they'd collected thusfar in a 5 second each set of basically killing incompetent guards with super-swords.

Then he fights the Identityless Paper Bag Who Shoots People.  The guy who basically exists only as a void of character who went around killing folks, complete with stupid mask who's had none of his backstory really covered (Just some present things).  Said Paper Bag has infinite ammo, but it isn't any good against Invulnerable The Hero, so he loses.  His power is, as its been everywhere else, whatever it conveniently needs to be in order to be a better match against who he was fighting.  So yes, lots of punching with his guns that were suddenly on fire.  Having a dramatic finale against a guy who doesn't rank in the top 3 powerhouses shown in the series is weak.

But it gets worse.  The blonde bitch is spared in the end.  The shogun killed.  And the hero just wanders off, replacing his previous tag along girl with the bitchy blonde.  Despite wiping out the ruling power, he is allowed to just wander the country unbothered.

[Brian]

It had a really distinctive animation style, some interesting concepts, and a good sound track.

That last episode (and five minutes of the eleventh) was really annoying, though.

[Kt3]

Honestly, it's a shame it apparently turned out that way Dracos, but I'm glad you reviewed it.  I was thinking of watching it, but based on what you said, I doubt I'd enjoy it very much.

[Brian]

Well, to comment on one thing about the ending:

Spoiler: ShowHide

I'm fairly sure that Togame was lying about killing Shichika when they were finished; I think when her eye goes cross-shaped she's telling the truth, and if I recall, it didn't during her entire closing monologue.  Unfortunately, that doesn't actually mitigate the lousy ending.

There's no 'good' take on it.  Either she really did like him, and died, and then Shichika is implied to hook up with the villainess (effectively), or she didn't, died, and thus everything was pointless.  And Shichika is still implied to hook up with Princess Whatserface, who is an entirely unsympathetic character -- herself having had her previous loyal follower die fighting Shichika (and she didn't order him to win; she fully expected him to be killed, there).  So ... yeah.

That being said, I honestly think that the anime does work decently if you ignore the last episode (and about the last five minutes of episode eleven).  It's got really neat art and music.