This speculation recurred to me with the hilarious episode 04: they'd been building up to the fight with the master swordsman Hakuhei since episode 1, and the episode 3 preview showed them fighting Hakuhei with shattering mountains in mid-air jumping from rock to rock, etc., and then episode 4 is about... the little sister killing a ninja squad with her instant-learning/cloning ability. The episode concludes with the protagonists gorging on food, with the smoking island in the distance, spending several minutes talking about how incredible awesome the duel was and how amazing Hakuhei was and how each new secret technique astounded them. I couldn't decide whether it's an epic troll or a clever way to save money, but in retrospect with the whole series to look back on, it's clearly part and parcel of how _Katanagatari_ is constantly messing with the viewer and their expectations. This was an interesting thing to do, but I do expect more from my anime than tired post-modern gags and so, as of episode 05, I was still not terribly impressed. (eg. I was expecting a longer callback for the 'cheerio' joke, and the fight was boring. But at least an episode passed without some Maniwani dying - it was starting to feel like they were the officially designed butt-monkeys.) Immediately, a new example presented itself: Did the closing narration for episode 6 really just spoiler the entire point of episode 7? It did! It happened exactly like the narration said! What kind of anime gives away the climax of the next episode like that‽ (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ And with 08, we got back to killing off Maniwani casually... The rapier was done better in _Shigurui_, IMO. Similarly, episode 09 is not very good; the romantic humor is seriously weak, and while I always approve of guns subverting the usual martial arts tropes, I'm annoyed to see *another* gimped Maniwani death. (That said, I did enjoy the quasi-Evangelion episode 10.)
Pushed through and finished _Katanagatari_. The art is consistently excellent where it's not amusing ('The flippant way the series treats its carnage often makes it more, not less disturbing—the creepily cute video game version of Nanami's bloodiest rampage being a prime example. ') and the action part of the ending was as good as I had hoped, but what a mixed package! I *understand* the whole prophecy & stealing technology & altering history stuff, I just think it sucks and comes off as tacked-on, and the killing of Togame...! I read the ANN review of the second half sans spoilers, and it mentioned that there was a big event in the second half that would disgust and nonplus viewers instead of being an emotionally devastating twist like intended, and I thought to myself, 'well, the only thing I can think of would be finally killing off Togame as they've been threatening the entire time' and... yes. I have other issues - a weird mock climax for Houou, Penguin's powers being nothing like we were led to believe, the waste of an episode on the bokken, the bizarre epilogue with Princess Denial tagging along with mapmaker Shichika.
In the end, _Katanagatari_ is pure style, style which almost becomes real substance.
