Not long ago I was sent a show for review that knocked my expectations into a cocked hat. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect from Katanagatari, based on the riot of color and shape that greeted me on the front of the product box. What I got was one of the most creative and original shows I'd seen in a long time -- well, the first half of it, anyway. There was always the chance the second half of the show wouldn't follow through, and leave us with nothing but a glossy wrapper.
Now the second half of Katanagatari has arrived, and I'm pleased to say it's everything the first half was, with the added bonus of bringing its story to a worthy conclusion. You'll have to read my review to get the full details, of course.
A while back I mused about the value of deluxe editions for anime titles (like this one!) -- namely, that deluxe editions stimulated sales for a given title, but also drove the price up to a point where casual viewing was out of the question. In my opinion that caused the viewership for some titles that deserved wider recogintion to become highly self-selecting. I've refined that outlook a bit more, thanks to a couple of points made by other people.
1. It's easy to say a deluxe edition is only going to be suitable for a title that's "worthy" of such treatment. The problem is, who gets to say what's worthy and what's not? For me, it's stiff like Katanagatari and Arakawa Under the Bridge, but for someone else it may be a totally different class of show that's simply that much more in line with their tastes. So any talk of what's "worthy" of a deluxe edition or not starts to feel a bit arbitrary in that light. That said, I still think some shows clearly merit the treatment far more than others -- it's just that I've become increasingly aware of how subjective the whole thing really is.
2. A pricy deluxe edition only puts a show out of the reach of casual viewers if it isn't also available via other means, and the options have broadened, not narrowed, in the past couple of years. On-demand streaming, video rental kiosks, NetFlix and Hulu, et and cetera. The bad news is that yes, some titles (Katanagatari among them) do end up in deluxe-only editions due to the relatively small target market for them: anime is a niche of a niche, with further niches within it. One has to be realistic about the commercial prospects for a title, and sometimes a deluxe set is one of the few ways to make a profit on a distributor's investment in a given title.
In short, I still think deluxe editions have the potential to make the anime market that much more stagnant instead of vibrant, but I'm prepared to be proved wrong. And when a title like Katanagatari comes out, which shows that some titles positively thrive in the format, I'm happy to think I'm wrong.
Image: Katanagatari © NISIOISIN, Kodansha / Katanagatari Committee. Image courtesy NIS America, Inc.
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