EARLY ACCESS Katanagatari Episode 7 Reaction

Interesting reaction! I really like Nanami as a character. This is just my read on her. As a character, she is someone without identity. She has no idea who she is or what she wants. Nanami is basically episode 1 Shichika if he was a little smarter. She's never interacted with anyone except her family even after leaving the island. At least, that's how I read the whole video game aesthetic. It was just that impersonal to her (that might have fell flat when the show tried to use it as a joke and then reuse it later in the episode). She has been told her whole life that she would be better off dead, so she takes that as given, but in reality she has no clue what she actually wants (the emotional version of Shichika not realizing he was getting frostbite). The big twist at the end wasn't that she was so strong that other's techniques weakened her, but that she had been unconsciously trying to prolong her life the whole time even while on her death seeking quest. I think that's why the episode tried so hard to beat it into us that she wanted to die without ever really making the audience resonate with that. She didn't really care that strongly about dying, she just assumed she should want to die because everyone told her she would be better off dead. Everything about Nanami is confusing and contradictory because she has no idea who she is, only the story she grew up with. Everything she says comes off as shallow because that's all she knows. There's a lot more too. For example, Shichika has always had his identity as Kyotouryuu and as Togame's sword. The past few episodes, he has begun acting more human and both he and Togame have to figure out how to balance his identity as a sword and his identity as a human. Nanami is different. She has never had an identity except as the genius who would be better off dead. You see that when she introduces herself as without a school or style, and more with how delighted she is when she realizes that by wielding Akuto Bita she also experienced a (figurative) backlash. And how strongly she reacted to the human parts of Shichika. I don't know, there was actually a lot going on in this episode from my perspective. As for the other parts of the story, I didn't really mind it giving us a break to see what the other characters were doing. But maybe that's personal preference? I'm not really good at picking up on good/bad pacing in shows.

AG

it’s on their Patreon page. For some reason it doesn’t show up in the main Feed

GaryS

Where's kaguya?