INTRODUCTION
For my first anime review I thought I would do a series that may not be known to occasional anime fans but is really well-known in the anime community. Bakemonogatari was a complete fluke that I ran into when I was searching for something else. In fact, I first watched an episode of the sequel to the series Nisemonogatari not knowing it was a sequel and was pleasantly entertained. I did some research and eventually it lead me to the whole Monogatari world.
CHARACTERS
Bakemonogatari has one exceptionally strong point, character development. I don’t think I’ve seen an anime that went this far into developing characters to the point where you start to get attached to them throughout the series. This is also the first time where I’ve enjoyed and loved every single character in the show but I do have a favourite…Shinbou! Awwww she’s soo cute! I felt a connection to each character and this is the first time I was hoping no one would get killed off. A few characters make a brief appearance like Araragi’s sisters, Hikagi’s father and Shinbou. I was really hoping we would see more of Shinbou and a bit more on her back story but nonetheless we got a great cast overall. Every character had a vastly different personality than the other so it made for an interesting viewing experience. This was also a very unique looking cast with the outfits/accessories they have making them easily recognizable and highly sought out for cosplay fans and figure collector’s I’d imagine. Some of my favourites are Shinbou (helmet, donuts and dress), Senjōgahara (school uniform with deadly school supply accessories) and Hachikuji (gigantic backpack and cute pigtails).
THEME/GENRE
Since becoming a fan of anime more hardcore lately, I’ve grown to enjoy these types of genres. Harem/Comedy/Supernatural/Drama/Romance. What I loved the most about Bakemonogatari was the subtle, or not so subtle ways, depending on how you think, in which the comedy was delivered. It wasn’t laugh out loud funny or enough to make you cry from laughing so hard. It was mean, harsh and blunt but it was my kind of humour 100%! I think I’m having trouble describing it but this isn’t your normal comedy. Come to think of it I think this might register more with late teens early 20’s demographic and was probably aimed at them. I don’t see many 16yr kids or lower enjoying this kind of humour, then again what do I know I’m a pretty old fart nowadays LoL
The supernatural theme was another strong point for me. I haven’t really dived into that genre to heavy yet but I did enjoy Shiki (slow but great season 2) and Full Metal Alchemist quite a lot. Maybe I’ve just been watching a lot of sci-fi or comedy lately to really research this genre. Anyways, this genre came through extremely well done in the series. The gore factor wasn’t overthetop (not very graphic) and the stories behind each character’s oddity was well thought out and executed perfectly. What really made me praise this anime a lot is the fact that it’s a mixture of all kinds of “oddities” not just one kind! It’s very hard to balance many different types of supernatural beings in film or TV and with ghosts, vampires, curses, etc, I thought this would have failed miserably but no character was left to the wasitside. That’s quite an achievement in my book.
Now onto the harem aspect! I don’t quite fully understand what constitutes a harem other than the series has to have 1 main guy character surrounded by a cast of females. If that’s the case then this series is 100% a harem. All the characters interact with each other but the main focus is always on Araragi. The genre might not stand out to you right away because the storyline is top-notch and you’re trying to keep up with all the dialog but afterwards when you think and reflect on what you just watched its definitely a harem, a great one at that!
Lastly comes the drama/romance. I won’t go into this too much but I will say that the main romantic relationship going on here was done great. It didn’t interfere or take over the series but it was more of a backdrop to everything that was going on. I’ll admit though there were a few episodes where I thought to myself “this is gonna get lame now that the relationship is established” but boy was I wrong here. Absolutely wonderfully done. One of the major highlights of this series is the dialog. There is so much going on it’s hard to keep up. All the drama between characters and the drama within themselves is a lot to take in. What makes it worse is that there is split second shots that show you a sentence or phrase with the subtitles still going on at the same time so it’s impossible to read everything at once. You’ll have to watch this series multiple times to get everything.
ANIMATION
Animation is tough for me to judge on because I’m a noob so too me it looks wonderfully done but compare it to something recent like ‘The Garden of Words’ and it doesn’t come close. The only other anime that were released in 2009 that I’ve seen so far are Gundam 00 and Clannad so if I compare it to those I think Clannad would still beat it. I’m sure most people who watch this won’t care much about the animation anyways after the first few episodes when the story starts to heat up and get really interesting.
CONCLUSION
Bakemonogatari is something I truly truly enjoy. The characters and storyline are some of the best that I’ve had the pleasure of coming across so far. The repeat value on this is astronomical because there is so much dialog that your bound to miss something so this will definitely be a future purchase of mine. There really isn’t much left to say about this series other than you should give it a shot. I think that’s because it has such a wide range of genres that the chance you’ll enjoy this is pretty high up there. For myself it cracked my top 10 anime that I’ve had the pleasure of watching so far. I highly recommend this 🙂
Kuesuto's Happy Cafe Blog 