Owarimonogatari

No spoilers. (at least not big big one)

English is not my native language, sorry.

Owarimonogatari is by far my favorite monogatari season. It has my three favorite arcs of all the monogatari series:

1: Sodachi Lost
2: Ougi formula
3: Sodachi riddle

... Adaptation of Owarimonogatari 01 by Nisio Isin
The artstyle and animation is just stunning. It's studio shaft in his golden age. The soundtracks are also really good, and feats the anime well. The anime also has this stressful atmosphere since araragi is faced with the hatred of sodachi which he hasn't understood for 3 years. He slowly begins to raise question about his life that he tried to hide from himself because it was too painful to remain. The new character Oikura Sodachi is pretty good. It felt like all characters until now, liked araragi in some way. Even the antagonist wern't in really bad terms with araragi (except for kaiki, but it's araragi who hates kaki). Sodachi hates Araragi. Until the very end sodachi hates araragi.
She has good reason for not liking araragi and her obsession for hating araragi is also understandable since of what she's been through. Ougi also is a really good character. But ougi oshino is ougi oshino. Jk. Seriously, she's an indescribable character. Ougi formula is just so good and the conclusion of the arc is just so damn special to me. It really feats the theme of the arc being democracy and unfairness.

Adaptation of Owarimonogatari 02 by Nisio Isin
Shinobu mail is one of my least favorite arc. It's good but nothing special. It's just the conclusion of the relation of Seishirou Shishirui (Shinobu's first subject) and Shinobu. Animation and soundtrack are pretty good, as usual of monogatari. There's this scene where kanbaru confronts shinobu that I really really liked.

Sorry for my bad english. I hope you'll like this masterpiece as much as I did.

Tiring.

I believe that the problem with writing a light novel series heavily based on witty dialogues is that, after twenty something books, you kinda run out of things to say.

As the anime series is almost a word by word adaptation of the novels, it reflects them by taking forever to just get to the point between endlessly idle chatter and the necessity of reminding the viewer what the story's about every 2 minutes or so like we have some kind of mental disability to grasp what the characters are saying the first ten times they said it, so they have to recap everything again! Even ... if it isn't as bad as the necessity of the author to remind us what a goddamn vampire is each two paragraphs like in Kizumo, it's still pretty annoying.

At least we were told an excelent story on the Sodachi arcs, which had more relevants moments than the opposite, being, in my view, one of the best narratives of the anime until the moment (it was even weird to watch so many episodes without so much fiddle-faddle), but the second half of the anime could be around 70% shorter and we probably wouldn't miss much by it. Frankly, only the scenes of SurugaxShinobu clash and Senjougahara's call (also other by the very end, which is a bit spoiler-ish) were actually good, because the rest, meh. Not that the story in this arc was useless; it was actually necessary, but it had way too much futile moments when compared to actual narrative development. Even if this particular tale was actually handled in a kinda poor way for such an important event of the story, at least Monogatari still manages to be generally good when it focus on its plot.

Shaft's anime series, which debuted in 2009, is part of the wider Monogatari franchise based on the light novel series by Nisio Isin. The franchise includes several shows that have aired out of sequence, with the latest installment "Owarimonogatari."

The show kicks off impressively, unlike any other anime you have seen. The entire look and feel of the show are that of a stage play with fixed locations, a few characters, and lengthy dialogues or monologues full of obscure references and wordplay. The action's pace is slow as each show heavily focuses on unraveling a mystery with supernatural overtones. The show can be unconventional, creepy, disturbing, ... and sometimes downright weird.

In season one, there are two story arcs. In the first arc, the central character, high schooler Koyomi Araragi, is introduced to Ougi Oshino, an enigmatic underclassman. They investigate several closely related mysteries about events in Araragi's life, all involving a female classmate, Sodachi Oikura, who exhibited an unexplained hatred of Araragi. Oshino gently unlocks parts of Araragi's memories of events to reveal the revelations.

The second story arc is less standalone than the first and concerns Araragi meeting his school friend Suruga Kanbaru at an abandoned cram school where a supernatural entity attacks them. The story spins violently out of control in a tale of revenge, curses, love, and vampires. It's challenging to deliver any synopsis of the second arc as it is all over the place, with the show seemingly enjoying its self-referential obscurity. It appears to have been written by the fans for the fans, and to an outsider, it resembles a Shakespearean play written about a book from the Bible.

Shaft's shows are challenging to comprehend, with highly sophisticated and long-winded dialogues that seldom conclude. As entertainment, it can only appeal to the fans, and the casual observer may be unable to follow what is happening. It is almost like one big joke, and it's on the audience. Although it is a genuinely clever show, it is sometimes borderline pretentious, and it's hard to determine whether Shaft designed their shows to be impenetrable to outsiders to enforce their cult-like status among fans or whether they did so deliberately.

In conclusion, the Monogatari franchise is an original and highly stylish show, but it can be almost unwatchable due to its deeply unconventional style. While it is undoubtedly clever, it may be too clever for some. It is recommended that anyone picking up the franchise so late in the day should plow through the Wikipedia pages to get up to speed before committing to watching this particular show.