Legacy is a funny thing. It can inspire the greatest acts of artistry or heroism, but has no tangible form. It can form the cornerstone of societies or empires, or just as easily lead to their ruin. It can inform all our actions, but when our actions are reduced to mere history as well, what does legacy leave us?
Katanagatari has somewhat mixed feelings on the concept. Its two central characters, Togame and Shichika, are each agents of legacy in their own way – Togame’s desire to avenge her father fuels her mission, and Shichika himself stands as a living representative of his family legacy, the sword style Kyoutoryuu. Beyond his nature as a “sword,” his priorities mirror Togame’s – at the beginning of the series, he can only be roused to anger by insults to his father’s home and school, and he initially falls for Togame specifically because of her apparent dedication to her father. The fact that his father was directly responsible for the death of her own does not enter the equation – after all, his father was a mere sword performing its duty, and the grudges of that sword’s owner have nothing to do with the sword itself.
On that note, swords are also kind of a big deal in Katanagatari. The central narrative of the story concerns the collecting of the Twelve Deviant Blades, mystical weapons forged by the charlatan Shikizaki playing his own legacy-focused games. But clearly the show’s definition of a sword is somewhat unique – one “sword” is actually a suit of armor, another a pair of pistols, and, most critically, Shichika considers himself a sword. So what’s their definition here?
It’s actually pretty simple – a sword is a weapon. It is a tool for inflicting your will upon the world. When Shichika says he is Togame’s sword, he means it – at the beginning of the series, he is merely an extension of her will, with no individual agency, morality, or doubts. In being her sword, he is performing the secondary duty of being his father’s sword – for it was his father who dictated he take up the Kyoutoryuu style, and who decreed that the legacy of their family would be to exist as swords and nothing else. Shichika’s slow path from sword to human is the central character arc of the series, and the markers of this journey crop up constantly throughout. In the second episode, after being called off by Togame from mercilessly killing some bandits, he frankly asks her if that’s some specific mainland custom. In the third, his will as a sword proves unbreakable even if the face of Meisai’s compassionate plea on behalf of her mission and shelter. But slowly, the influence of Togame and the others he passes begins to change him, and he discovers compassion, mercy, humor, and love – marks not of a sword, but of a human being.
Few characters in this series fare so well. Despite her passion and her own wielding of Shichika, Togame is ultimately no more than a sword herself. It is legacy itself that wields her – she is simply an instrument of her father’s wishes, and her actions are calculated to seek revenge and exercise his will without mercy or restraint until the very end. In spite of this, she learns to love Shichika as well – but her love is used as one more tool in service of her father’s legacy, and it is only at the end, when her hopes of fulfilling that role are dashed, that she allows herself to embrace her love for him. Even that small admission might classify her as one of the lucky ones – legacy’s stern hand leads most characters in the show to ruin, as Togame’s quest leads them from one dying family name to another, seeking the swords that act as both lightning rods for legacy’s ambitions and markers of their dying era. In a show obsessed with swordsmanship and the ephemeral nature of legacy, it is fitting that the very last sword is a pair of pistols – fitting as well that their first mission finds our heroes assaulting a once-great castle, now buried by sand. The way the weight of history’s passage itself is contrasted against the individual weight of family name and expectation that nearly every character labors under is just one of Katanagatari’s many tragic parallels.
Ultimately, despite her growing love for Shichika, Togame is undone by her inability to forget the past and become a human herself. Her last act as Shichika’s master is to order him to forget her and move on – fortunately, by that point, he is no longer a sword at all, and as a human he is not bound to obey. Instead, he makes the human choice to break the cycle, dying if he must, and ending both the personal grudges that doomed Togame and the corrupting influence of Shikizaki’s meddling legacy. In the last act, he destroys Shikizaki’s swords entirely, along with the fake empire they installed and the last of the great swords, Emonzaemon the retainer. Emonzaemon and the Princess Hitei act as constant foils to our protagonists throughout, and in the end it is the two who have abandoned the pull of legacy who survive – Shichika, who has finally become a full human, and the Princess, who herself admits she does not care how her ancestor’s legacy is resolved. After the dust has settled, Shichika emerges as his own man – though the scars of his love for Togame match her own distinctive eye, that love is his own choice, and what he does with it he will do as a human being.
As far as the boring review-ish concerns go, Katanagatari has an incredibly distinctive and frankly beautiful visual style, and is peppered with stylish and well-directed moments of brief action. It seems odd to mention costume design in an anime review, but here it’s just incredible – each character has their own specific theme and aesthetic, and many of them are also thematically relevant (Shichika’s autumn leaf dancing briefly as it falls and Togame’s constant encirclement by the self-devouring serpent being two of the highlights). The soundtrack is eclectic and excellent, and the dialogue is distinctly Isin while also being much more focused in its character illumination and thematic elaboration than he tends to be. His style is clearly an acquired taste, and there’s definitely an argument against his method of slow, circuitous storytelling, but all the elements of this show work towards the same goals, and I believe that the show’s meditative pacing ultimately works to its benefit. Characters reflect each other in their journeys and beliefs (honestly, I’ve only begun to scratch the various parallels here), the personal themes reflect the universal ones, and the construction of the whole builds gracefully out of each individual story, making Katanagatari work as a eulogy for an entire era of swordsmanship and legacy while also telling an achingly personal story of love and self-discovery. It is beautiful and creative and absolutely uncompromising. I don’t really have any complaints.
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Dropped the show after episode one the first time I saw it, mostly because of the ridiculous amount of talking there was during the first fight. Then I decided to pick it back up, after having seen more shows and maybe accustomed myself to more varied styles of stories and man what a great serie. It goes to show that when you actually seek out themes you view things differently. You did a really great jobs describing its main ideas. That soundtrack is amongst my favorites. Funny enough I wasn’t sad at all when Togame died, because it was heavily expected at this point but I did feel more when the show truly reached its end.
i honestly thought about dropping the series after the first episode just like you did but then the art just catch my eye so much that I force myself to watch a couple more episodes. Oh boy, was i glad that I did. The character development and the story build up were just so fantastically well-written.( SPOILER )To me, Togame’s death makes perfect sense. I was a little upset how she was just so forgiving toward her “enemy” shichika although to the audience nothing is his fault. Her grudge should have ignited when she remembered how her father died whispering his last words of love to her and the site of her hair turns instantly white because of the unimaginable grief. Yet, she could just hold his hands at the end. That is just impossible. Only death can end her 20 years of vengeance once and for all and wrap up her story. Lastly, the outfits similar to Togame that Shichika wears at the end just makes me feel like he is living for the both of them. It makes me feel more at ease though I don’t really understand why the princess hitei has to tag along. I just pretend she is not in the picture.
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To be honest, I found the last two episodes to be supremely disappointing. Shichika’s assent to the top was the only satisfying part of nearly all two hours. The problem with Togame’s whole dying speech is the fact that when you have a character do a 180 like that (especially at their death) it just sort of erases all of the characterization up to that point. Nearly all the show is rendered moot in a retroactive move like that. And for such a character driven show it’s doubly bad.The fact that it’s so sudden makes it all the more egregious. We see Shichika slowly change as a person in gradual, satisfying ways. With Togame, it’s suddenly: “I was totally going to betray you by the way, all my emotions were a lie or something”. Plus killing her off reeked of every trope related to manpain and disposing of women as motivation. It doesn’t help that Shichika goes on a gloomy killing spree almost immediately after that.
Shikizaki’s whole evil history changing plot felt tacked on as well. The only redeemable part for me was him forging the swords using knowledge of the future. The idea that these ancient swords were really more advanced than the present-day was admittedly cool. But otherwise, the whole real and alternate history bit was shallow and intentionally confusing. It was introduced far too late into the story and the viewer has no reason to be invested in it at all. All we’ve been given to care about is Togame and Shichika and suddenly they’re usurped by Shikizaki’s several hundred year old plan. All it does is, for lack of a better phrase, shit all over the characterization built over almost 10 hours.
I agree with nearly everything you’ve said about Monogatari but I can’t do that here. Though I suppose utterly failing at Katanagatari’s ending like this is how Nisio honed himself for later Monogatari volumes wasn’t it?
I’m with you on this. Overall, Katanagatari left me feeling dissatisfied. For one thing, I just have a bias against overpowered characters in general. None of the 1000+ fight scenes in this series had any tension for me because it was obvious who was going to win. Shichika would always smash his opponents, as with Emonzaemon. The show does a good job of making all the side-characters human, which was why I was always rooting for the sword holders/Maniwa Corps characters, but none of them could hold a candle to the protagonist or the Big Bad, and they all die in the most pitiful and humiliating ways. I was waiting for the Maniwa Corps to have their big moment, but the show completely disregarded them in the end and they got absolutely no closure. There was that bit in the last few moments of the show, where the narrator acknowledged all the dead side-characters and said that the story gave them hope, but I don’t see how it did. They’re dead, and the show never really contemplated the existence of an afterlife.
Togame’s final speech didn’t really work for me either, for reasons already stated and because I literally thought she was being ironic the whole time, and that at any moment she would jump up and say this was all part of her scheme or something. The whole scene just lacked gravity for me, maybe because Togame starts with a joke about cherrio, and it was kind of tactlessly drawn out.
It was still a good show, it was very visually creative and yes, the character designs/costumes were absolutely fantastic and helped make the whole cast very distinct and memorable. Togame and Shichika were a pretty endearing coupe. I liked how comical it was, and how it generally preferred “out of place” lightheartedness over melodrama, though I had too many significant issues with it to consider it a “great” show.
I just picked up the series the other day and finished it today. And the show is just so visually-stunning, and at the same time thought-provoking. I wanted to learn more and understand more what’s going on under the surface of it. And I agree; the core of it all is legacy. The legacy of a person, a family, a clan, a village, a kingdom/shogunate, a country. I want to say more but my thoughts are still a-jumble after witnessing the death of Togame…which I believe that is something that has to happen given her motives and “schemes”. It is ironic, though, that she has been shouting goodbye (“cheerio”) to Shichika every time she tried to hit him, and I realize now that it may have been foreshadowing of her ultimate demise.
Overall, love this show. Love all the characters, both major and minor. And I love this analysis, and I cannot thank you enough for sharing this. It’s like a salve to the wound this show left on my heart.