You are the best kind of correct, technically correct.

Yeah, what I was going for was that compared to revolvers as guns, katanas as swords were much more difficult and time consuming to produce, primarily due to all the techniques used to compensate for the very poor ore quality and lack of high temperature forges.

The result in a weapon that was far more expensive and rare, taking waaaay more hours of specialized labor than a revolver coming out of a factory.

Making a katana in the modern age, with modern forges and access to high quality ore/alloys is yes, not much more difficult than with any other style of sword.

It depends on what you mean by 'popular'.

Do you mean popular in the media, in people's general conception of 'badass weapons?'

Or do you mean... actually popular, in real life, everyday ownership and usage?

The 4 chan post says 'only popular because of how they're depicted in media'.

If you are using the first definition, this is a meaningless tautology, thing is popular in media because thing is popular in media.

If you are using the second definition, this is just a false statement, hardly anyone actually owns or uses katanas compared to revolvers.

Both absolutely have been emphasized as 'cool guy weapon' in media.

But probably 1,000x to 10,000x more people actually have revolvers than katanas.

Both revolvers and katanas are largely popular in media and general public conception, becauase the characters depicted using them are often well written compelling characters, or at least are the heroes of compelling plots, and their usage of them is often depicted as extremely skillful...

..., but revolvers are far more popular in real life, because they are far easier to use, and more practical.

If you can be more specific with your question, I can probably be more specific with my answer.

A well made katana is probably (?) more flexible and less brittle than many european bastard or two handed longswords.

That is to say, they're more likely to deform from bending, from striking or blocking at an improper angle, whereas a stockier european style sword is more likely to crack or shatter generally from hitting something solid too many times or with too much force.

That is a huge generalization though, an in depth look would require a lot more specificity.

One on one katana duels varied in character depending on the nature of the combatants, relative skill levels, level of armor of combatants, overall scenario.

Some duels would be more as you first describe, a drawn out struggle, others were finished in seconds.

I am far from an expert as to the relative commonality of different natures/kinds of one on one duels but they did actually happen with decent regularity, as compared to one on one revolver quick draw duels, which there seems to be no solid evidence of more than a handful of occurences of, and even those are contested.

The quick draw duel trope as we know it today largely comes from A Fistful of Dollars outright doing its best to emulate a fast, one on one or one on many katana engagement scene from Yojimbo, but with revolvers instead.

Such scenes with katanas as depicted in Yojimbo may not be literally historically accurate, but are generally more grounded in reality.

It would kind of be like if that movie version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo Di Caprio, where they just use modern guns that are named 'Longsword' and such for artistic liscense... somehow kicked off a greater cultural trope or meme about how street gangs in the 90s often conducted armed disputes with guns.