Shichika Yasuri is the main character in this tale. He lives with his sister Nanami on an empty island, and they've done pretty well for themselves, considering their father, a legendary warrior, passed away only a year before this story begins. Shichika is the seventh generational head of the Kyotō-ryū form of martial art, called the "swordless style." However, their peace is disturbed when a military strategist named Togame arrives. She asks Shichika to aid her in finding the last 12 swords forged by a legendary swordsmith. Thus starts our year-long adventure.

An interesting note I'd like to bring up about WHITE FOX: this is only their second true project, their first being Tears to Tiara. They've done key and in-between animation on several other shows, but here they're getting the chance to show what they're made of. And for the most part, they do alright. The fantastic art style itself can be attributed to Japanese illustrator Take, but WHITE FOX puts it into motion. During fights the action is clear and deliberate, nothing is hard to follow and the animation is actually pretty good. Sadly, it still falls into the general anime pitfalls of wide pans over character's faces with their mouth hidden or aimlessly flapping -- a lot. Given that Nisio Isin loves his extended dialogue scenes, it's important to make these interesting. The chat inside the main character's hut could have been spiced up a bit. Seeing a great deal of these mouth-flap pans is especially disappointing.

Another thing I must mention is the relationship of the source material to the anime. As mentioned, I've not read the books, but from everything I've heard they have lacked the ability to grab the reader's attention the way Bakemonogatari did (Nisio wrote very little else while doing Katanagatari, and the Monogatari series bookended Katanagatari as far as dates are concered). Writes Andrew Cunningham on Eastern Standard (don't visit unless you want the whole story spoiled, seriously, it'll ruin the ending of story for you in every way):

I think Katanagatari failed for three primary reasons - the schedule, which was a stunt thing involving churning out a book a month for an entire year (and seems to have encouraged him to pad the fuck out of the books with 30 page recaps and write books even when he clearly didn't have a good idea); the structure, where each book has them up against a new sword, and basically locked him into a structure of long on the road conversation followed by introduction of the new sword wielder and sword and then a brief action scene to recover it; and the two lead characters, who have to be the two most boring people he's ever created, and who have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever.

A sad thing to hear, especially with the desire to see more of Nisio Isin's work animated. Reading such, I approached Katanagatari with trepidation. Whenever the story is moving, the show is entertaining. However, whenever we fall into Nisio's ridiculously long-ass conversations, the show falters. Instead of the clever wordplays we found in Bakemonogatari, we only get a teaspoon dosage and are instead treated to mostly expositional dialogue.

This might seem like a very negative impressions so far, but I don't mean to be. Instead, I'm seeing signs of things to come that may prove problematic later in the series. The first episode was pretty 50/50. Did it have some stilted scripting? Yes. Did it run into the shonen pitfall of characters standing around in the middle of a fight having a deep conversation? Yeah. Were the characters developed very well? Not yet. We still have a long ways to go (we have a whole year of this show, people) and there's plenty of time for improvement. Plus, I'm willing to cut WHITE FOX some slack, given that they're both working from difficult source material and are dealing with this being their second true project. Let's say this: I still liked it and I'm optimistic.

I'd like to make a small detour and make note of the music. Composed by Iwasaki Taku, (who as you may know, also did Gurren Lagann and Soul Eater's music) it really pops and adds to the show. Never dominating the other audio or disengaging the audience, it fleshed out the show quite a bit. A few of the songs are clearly his style, but there's a few tunes that sound like he's experimenting (the very first song you hear in the prologue gave me visions of the Akira soundtrack). I'm starting to really pay attention to his work and can't wait to see what he does next.

I'm hoping for some recovery here, as this show has the potential to be really fun. I think the idea of one story a month will work better in the animated medium, and converting a novel into fifty minutes of television will certainly cut down on some of the flak that might attempt to rear its head. I'm not sure if I recommend watching it, but it's also something very different art-wise from most of the shows we're getting this season. WHITE FOX has some chances to really make the art a selling point, and I think that it's already pulling people in that way. If they can overcome the shortcomings in the original story, we'll have something very nice to look forward to each month. That's a huge challenge, but I'm wanting it to be taken on. I think this can be wrestled into something entertaining, but to do that the studio will need to do some serious work to their source material. Good luck, WHITE FOX.

What I Liked:

• The bright and vivid art style
• Music is fantastic
• Character design is unique and recognizable
• Fights were fun

What I Didn't:

• Long expositional dialogue hurts the flow
• Characters aren't fleshed out, sort of boring
• Animation has quite a few stills, mouth-flaps, and slow pans