(Not trying to be "the edgy guy who pans the anime that everyone rates as 10"... but I guess thats exactly what I'm going to do. Sorry.)
ART: Let's be honest- if you look the art in NG with no context, it's undoubtably the worst I've seen in anime. By a longshot. Way worse than crappy CGI, or cheap 80s pulp. I honestly feel generous giving the art a 2.
SOUND: No sound, no rating
CHARACTER: It's a 4min short- there was never going to be character development, but someone edited NG down to 2 minutes, lost nothing of value in terms of entertainment, and improved the film. Honestly, that 2min video could be cut to 20 or 40 seconds. Another 2.
ENJOYMENT: Hard to rate. Let's be honest- 90% of NG's entire value is it's "first" status. To a modern viewer, it has no entertainment value beyond that; it's a one-joke (barely even a "joke" tbh), completely silent film that manages to make 4 minutes seem like an unbearably long time.
But I don't want to give it straight 1s and 2s, so for the historical significance, I'll throw it a charity 8
(But for real, don't watch it if you expect to be *at all* entertained)
OVERALL: I guess that in 1917, maybe this *was* entertaining? And no doubt it was innovative. But a film-maker in 1917 had no-one to guide them on how to make a watchable film, and that *really* shows through in Namakura Gatana.
If you want to know what "The First Anime" was like, and are willing to invest 4 minutes in that, then here's your chance. It's definitely a 10/10 in the catagory of "being The First Anime".
But aside from that, even compared to b&w, silent western cartoons from the period, NG is bad story-telling, and un-entertaining. The film-maker used minutes at a time of two characters doing nothing but sitting and talking IN A SILENT FILM. No subtitles. No overdub. No dialog in any form. Just silent lip-flapping for like > 30% of the film. I guess they hadn't learnt that mouths moving, in itself, isn't really interesting? idk.
I guess it's interesting to see the very first, faltering steps of an artform, (or maybe not...) but what's most striking about NG is how insanely crude it is. It really seems like something a child made; I'm not just saying that as a cheap shot- It looks like something a bright 8yo with a super8 camera might make in the 40s or 50s; More an experiment or a quirky novelty than any real attempt at story-telling or entertainment.
Anyway, overall, I'm giving it an very generous 3.
(But with that scoring, I can't imagine what would earn a 2 or 1; The honest truth is, Namakura Gatana's ONLY value is the "first" factor. You 100% WILL NOT find a less entertaining, shittier-looking anime on MAL.)
