Watch the opening with the sound muted. That should give you a good idea of the plot development. SSLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWW....
Only it isn't Air, or Yokohama Kaidaishi Kikou, or Kino no Tabi, Which were slow paced but always moving forward.
It's more like Jackson Pollack has a canvas the size of a house, then only carries enough paint to cover a tenth of the canvas. Its pretty jazzy in some places, but VERY sparse and quite empty.
I literally can't remember episode 5-7. I saw 7 yesterday...
Don't get me wrong, it's good, but it lags in places, and if you've ever been part of a online game where other players lag and is slows Everyone down, you'll know why this is not a good thing. It makes me impatient to the point where I get bored watching just one episode, and I started watching it when it first came out... and I'm here watching episode 8, so.... yeah....Characters are deep and very real; so real in fact that this could easily translate to a live drama excellently, and perhaps that's what they should have done. however, I know that your mind adjusts to the subjective nature of the image you behold, so if you were to watch the same show in crayon, but the dramatic intensity remains, you would actually feel deeper mood swings. so things that look very real, might work against you versus dumbing down the realness of a work...Music was excellent, haven't researched who wrote what yet, but The music in this episode reminds me of the awesome Robot Carnival, the one with the old man with huge eye brows who falls in love with his doll like Pygmalion who fell in love with his sculpture in Ovid's, Metamorphoses. Great Anime in it's own right, but daaamn that music is hauntingly beautiful, like salad fingers (boards of canada's - geogaddi)The character animation seems incredibly familiar, I checked anidb and didn't see any connections. But I do enjoy stylized art over seeing the same daaamn thing twenty anime in a row, granted it's the story I latch onto emotionally, that and the music, it doesn't matter how they look, but as with shin-chan, looks tends to be a good indicator of content (Anime Law #304,679: if you is ugly outside you sure as hell have a heart of coal, which extend to whole shows apparently)I think if I were asked what one thing I would do to fix the show, and I really think there's only 1 real problem, the same daaamn problem with dragon ball z back in the day and they took our advice!!! they edited it down to size, and made it canon with the manga, but that's another issue.

This anime will quadruple in awesomeness as soon as we can really see Masa's fighting skills.I'm debating on not watching for a few weeks so that I can watch a couple hours worth of episodes at one time. I find that going a week to watch 20 minutes of story is killing me softly. But, that's my problem and definitely not the Anime's fault :)

Japanese anime keeps evolving and evolving. It's like the Japanese finally get to export the sophisticated, culturally-sensitive stories that they've kept to themselves - and not the Robotechs or Sailor Moons.Not that those are bad or anything - but this anime brings a sophistication to the story, plot, character development, and so on that you don't see in too many anime that are exported to the US.I LOVE "Darker than Black" but this one draws me in too. Great character development.I also appreciate that killing and gore isn't the focal point. After watching "Shigurui: Death Frenzy" and the copious gore, I was kind of turned off by samurai stories. But this title is very very story rich.Love it.

Even though it is very slowly paced, with little or no immediate plot development, something about the style of this anime really draws me in. I have always liked historical/samurai stories, so that might be part of it.This episode was really interesting because we get to see more of Matsu, who is a pretty reclusive character.