So, let me take a moment to praise an excellent episode of an excellent show.  Many anime fans out there inappropriately diss this gorgeous, witty, intelligent show because its humor is easy to miss…especially if deadpan isn’t your favorite type of humor to begin with.  My initial reaction to the first episode  can be found on psgels’ Star-Crossed Blog, under the SN PL.  To give a brief description of the show, allow me to quote myself:

I wouldn’t exactly call this parody, though sometimes there are a few self-referential fourth-wall moments where clearly the show is parodying itself and thus, parodying all action/adventure anime. While the long talks during the fight aren’t exactly parody either, what they are is purposefully, and blatantly unrealistic, and we are brought into the know with the author, that this is literary and not to be taken as realistic, in order to engage in a sort of verbal swordplay serving as counterpoint while the battle itself is point.

There’s something essentially Japanese in the sort of wit that goes on here, in the way character’s assumptions about each other are consistently undercut by their replies, dialogue is as dangerous as sword-technique, and deep insights are couched within simple, obvious and even naive statements.  As I also mentioned on psgels’ blog, one of the most humorous ironies of the show is that while Togame is the self-proclaimed genius strategian, all she really has is a sort of wordly cleverness, with little real understanding.  Meanwhile, Shichika, the main character, is supposedly quite dumb and yet its clear that he’s actual quite intelligent, and simply naive about a world he’s never known and because of this very naivety, very interesting insights about the nature of the world he encounters are drawn attention to.  For instance, his conceptual but un-intuitive feel for when to use certain social and lingual niceties is constantly drawing attention to the disconnect between our language and reality.  While Shichika is no Zen Master, his interactions with Togame and the other characters in the series share a certain something with the dharma battles of Old Zen, a certain kind of wit that I find refreshing and entertaining. Fifty minutes may be long for a single episode of anime, but since it is only released once a month, both episodes have felt like they went by far too fast.  If you want something lighthearted yet engaging, I highly reccoment Katanagatari.  Enjoy!