Hanamonogatari

Hanamonogatari just didn't do it for me as a fan of the Monogatari series. It's more of a side story focusing on Kanbaru and an old basketball rival of hers, Numachi. And really, that was a problem for this anime. Kanbaru is a likable character, but she is not nearly charismatic enough to carry an entire anime as the lead, especially when her foil, Numachi is particularly bland.

The entirety of the anime focused entirely on these two characters and only briefly featured cameos from the Araragi family and Kaiki Deshuu. This was a mistake, as most of the engaging ... dialogue and mystery was missing from this installment, precisely because most of the cast was either gone, or only involved for a cup of coffee.

But what really hurt the anime was the insanely long backstory of Numachi, she spent all of episode 3 and then half of episode 4 explaining her history. That really sucked me right out of the anime, because I wasn't really invested in her as a character to begin with so having so much time explaining her past wasn't incredibly entertaining.

The climax of everything was also kind of lackluster. Things are settled in this anime with basketball games instead of fights, which was kind of a weird choice. But, at no point in time was the outcome in any doubt. The conclusion was just kind of "meh". And that sums up this whole anime for me. "Meh.". I'm looking forward to better installments going forward.

Story: 5
Art: 10
Sound: 7
Character: 6
Enjoyment: 5
Overall: 5

Hanamonogatari is yet another entry in Studio Shaft's ultra offensive anime franchise. It lacks humor, the characters are dull, and the show is just getting worse.

After the surprisingly good Hitagi End arc of the Second Season, we're left with this trite piece of...something. I'm loathe to call it art.

Hanamonogatari continues the show's long running gag of placing power point slides in the narrative that move too fast for most people to read. There are words there, but you'll never read them. Other times it'll be a black frame or red frame with the words "black frame" or "red frame" on them. This is just in ... case the viewer is too stupid to figure out what it really is. Hanamonogatari really stretches it by showing the viewers the elusive pink frame, however. Is that a plus? I'm not sure.

This show follows the character of Suruga, or something of the sort. I don't know. I forgot her name after she failed to kill Araragi all the way back in Bakemonogatari. Had she succeeded the quality of the show would have increased dramatically. But she didn't so I'm going to hold that against her. She's remiss when her arch-nemesis from jr. high shows up.

It reminds me of a story that one of my friends told me when I first met him in high school. He previously went to a private Catholic school. However, you cannot go to a private high school in my state. His dad taught at my school so naturally he went there. Anyway, he too had an arch nemesis in the form of a Greek kid named Kosta Fantidas. He used to tell me about how much he hated this kid and what a drag on his life he was.

Turns out that Surugu talks her nemesis to death and then defeats her in a game of basketball. Da fuq? My friend's nemesis probably grew up to be a villain in a Bond movie just to contrast.

Near the end this series pulls out all the stops on being offensive and reintroduces Araragi. I was sincerely hoping I wouldn't have to see this guy in this show because seeing him negatively affects the quality of my life. I am worse off for knowing that Koyomi Araragi is a character in a show.

Araragi spends the last 10 minutes of the show talking about how much he wants to molest his sister. Also he was being a creep and watching Surugu sleep in the nude. That was after he entered her house uninvited. Seriously though, Hitagi volunteered to be this idiot's girlfriend. He should be getting enough sex from her to get over his deviant sexual behavior. Guess I'm too optimistic, though.

It will probably take no less than 3 hours of spamming Guile's theme for me to feel better about myself as a person after having viewed this show.

The first thing to say about this season is that it’s best not to watch it unless one is at their 100% ‘cause I was kind of sleepy when I watched it and boy was it tough.

In terms of visuals and sound I didn’t find much differences from the previous season so I don’t bother much with it. The opening has Kanbaru and some other girl acting as friends even when they are enemies, though there’s a part where the vocals change completely and it is nice. The ending has a very creepy and completely different art style so it was cool to watch ... even though the song itself was more of the same. Some recurring characters has different designs which are good but the most important one isn’t permanent so fuck it.

This season takes two risks. One, coming out at this point even though chronologically is the last, at least when it comes to the anime up until this point, since the novels kept going, as far as I know. This will make any possible tension from future entries to lack any real impact since this one already confirms the outcome.

The second is having Suruga Kanbaru as the protagonist, as was built up in Second Season, since for plot reasons many characters are not around. Up until this point she was a comical type of secondary character, and as previous examples have proven, it’s very rare for a type of spin off or sequel like that to be good or successful or even not ruin the character.

So, is Kanbaru a good enough main character to take the place from the previous ones? Not in the least, or maybe she is, she could be, perhaps, if this anime was about her, but it really isn’t, since for a big portion it focuses on another girl whose name I didn’t bother to learn and who has a very simple and boring backstory compared to the previous main cast.

Said backstory takes one and a half episode to be presented and said presentation is kind of a mixed bag. First, like with Shinobu’s in the previous season, it is told instead of shown, and this time around there aren’t even some cool visuals along with it for its first half, all that’s shown is the character talking and Kanbaru looking at her with a straight face from time to time. Ok, there are some visual metaphors with floating objects but that’s it. The second half goes for something completely different and far more interesting looking for some reason, so it balances out.

As for Kanbaru herself, something important happens to her character wise, but not because of her, it’s something that someone else does for her, without her even noticing it at first. It’s not that she’s explored much either, some backstory of her is told, and she has some conversations with old time characters where she tells them about some of her doubts, they encourage her, and she gets over it rather easily and quickly, that’s it. Plus, it is weird to see her all serious like this, she doesn’t really feel like the character that was shown so far.

Ok, I’m not dumb nor uninterested enough to not notice that the series explicitly draws some parallelisms between the two girls but, Suruga, I don’t care about being TOLD about who you could have been, I want to SEE more of who you are, or how you came to be, or who you can be in the future, and you brought none of that in this show.

The more enjoyable scenes for me where the first and third out the four scenes where old time characters appeared, and even then, one of them undid a death from Second Season, and the other was kind of comical and didn’t have the same melancholic tone of the rest of the season. The second left me indifferent and the fourth was the same old pedophilic and incestuous humor that I made clear that I hate.

As a whole the season continues to have great visuals, serviceable sound, a welcomed different melancholic tone to the most part, and it isn’t really bad to be honest, but also feels like it has very little content and very little or very uninteresting characterization in it. A very passable one and I would say the second worst after Nisemonogatari so far, which doesn’t leaves me wanting to watch any possible sequel.

Hanamonogatari is the second instalment of the second Monogatari season as well as the closing arc of said season. The arc follows Kanbaru as she comes to terms with a rivalry held between her and fellow basketball player Rouka Numachi who survives on the misfortunes of others. The arc is a mere five episodes in length and does very little to add to the overall story of Monogatari.
The arc begins following Kanbaru as she rediscovers her rival, Rouka, for the first time in three years. Rouka has been living as the embodiment of the devil and looking for the devil’s body parts so she could ... fully absorb his power. Kanbaru leaves town for a few nights and encounters Kaiki who tells Kanbaru she must give up her monkey paw to Rouka, despite Rouka already having taken it at this point. As the days pass by Kanbaru receives the Devil’s head from Kaiki shortly after learning from Karen that Rouka had already died three years earlier. Kanbaru and Rouka meet up at the gym to play a round of basketball, if Kanbaru wins she keeps the head and the rest of the body parts, but if Rouka wins she can have the head. Kanbaru can’t make it past Rouka’s defense so to combat her she passes the ball to her and steals it back before dunking and scoring the first point. The action of passing the ball is enough to cause Rouka to feel happy about the sport again and pass on into the afterlife. Kanbaru collects the pieces of the Devil and asks Araragi to feed them to Shinobu for her.
There aren't too many things done well in this arc. The best detail was the animation in the final episode and the squeaking sounds while the two played basketball, both details really helped to show how much effort the team put into making this instalment of Monogatari. As for the story, characters, music, and the like, it all just seemed meh and rather boring. The referencing back to Bakemonogatari with the monkey paw is starting to become overdone as it was done twice during Second Season but was still probably the best part of this arc.
Just as there weren’t too many things done well, there aren’t that many done bad. The opening theme song is the worst by far with it sounding like Kanbaru’s voice actress is just screaming into the microphone rather than singing. As for the story, it seems relatively similar to when the same exact story was done in Bakemonogatari except this time it is way worse and is essentially entirely based on basketball. This instalment seems to drag out way longer than others despite only being five episodes.
Overall this arc has been the most skippable by far. Literally nothing happened except building on Kanbaru’s story which was already built on in Bakemonogatari. There is nothing that makes this arc stand out as amazing but there is nothing that makes it super terrible. The animation in the last episode combined with the added details of foot steps and squeaks while they were playing basketball helps the score increase while things iek the boring story and terrible intro song hold it back from getting all too high of a score. It would be most recommended one watches this in a group to make the experience go by faster and not drag out as long.

While it may not be the weakest of the Monogatari series story-wise and brings some much-appreciated focus to a side character, Hanamonogatari ultimately comes up short in the face of its predecessors. There are enjoyable parts of the show: the return of a previous character, the aforementioned returned focus, and the interesting start. However, one of the new characters brought into the world of Monogatari creates a headache that lasts for the last half of the series. This antagonist nudges the viewer to turn off the series rather than hope to see the protagonist succeed against them.

The new antagonist is a package of flaws ... and cliches that are seen in Monogatari and other anime: there is nothing truly good/evil, doing good hurts something else, etc. Never mind the fact that a lot of these faux-philosophical stances can be proven untrue by even the simplest mind, but they're tired and cookie-cutter in execution and dialogue. While the character's motivations for their actions provide a small amount of reprieve, it is not enough to keep the show from dragging. Hanamonogatari may be 5 episodes long, but the last three or so feel three or so times as long as your standard 24 minutes.

There was a great deal of potential here in Hanamonogatari, and I was excited going into it. In the end, it comes up almost as a weak epilogue to a truly tremendous series, a hollow mould of anime that came before (and after) it, and a blip in the radar of some truly great shows. The saving graces are the protagonist, the second episode, and the usual titillating art style and music of the Monogatari series. As it is only 5 episodes long, I recommend watching it to complete the Monogatari series (placing it between Second Season and Tsukimonogatari) but go in with tempered expectations. You may like it more than I did, but I have to say that it's the weakest sliver of the Monogatari series.