Koyomimonogatari

Koyomimonogatari is the weirdest entry thus far for Monogatari.

Each episode goes forward in time by about 1 arc, so you start the season with Bake, and end off in the current timeline, with each episode only running 10 mins

The first half is snooze-fest short stories that are incredibly forgettable; pretty much filler bits of knowledge that can add depth to the already told stories. Most of these filler bits are incredibly inconsequential, unremarkable and boring, so much so that it takes effort to remember what happened in this half despite watching it 1 day ago.

However once you catch up to the main story and season ... 2 at episode 7, Ougi shows up, and it instantly gets interesting. The season ends off strong too with a really good climax+cliffhanger which was unexpected given the lax, filler nature of the season up to that point.

Overall since the beginning is a boring 6-7 out of 10 and the last half is a pretty good 9ish, this is a solid 8

It's that time when the non-chronological narrative of the Monogatari series, and the ambiguities and plot holes that come with it, reach a critical level.

Even though I watch the series in order, it's incredibly hard to keep track of what's going on or what the status of the characters is. And normally I wouldn't have a problem with that (I'm a huge NGE fan!), but here there's so much of it that I had to watch the last episodes of Koyomimonogatari and Owarimonogatari twice. I've watched it because I want to finish the whole series and see, where it will go, but I really don't ... know what to think of it.

Something I never talked about regarding this franchise is the wordplay in the titles, as the first two combine the last syllable of a word with the first one of monogatari. It’s lost in the translation, but the original names of Monsterstory and Imposterstory are cool because of that. Then later entries lost that because the connection of syllables just wasn’t there anymore. Koyomimonogatari doesn’t reach that level either, but at least it has a double meaning of Calendar Story, because it happens across many months, while it also means the story of Koyomi, as he is the main character of every episode.

Besides that, ... I suspected even before I watched it that it would be the one to get the lowest rating out of me, since even the fanbase agrees it’s the worst entry in the franchise and don’t defend it much.

The show is usually referred as filler or a type of series of specials, more than an actual season, and that’s exactly what it feels like. It’s just about Koyomi and one girl per episode pondering about a silly mystery that might or not be related to an aberration, and as most episodes prove at the end, they aren’t. Heck, even the duration is just about half of a normal one, and even less when you consider that most have an opening and ending. So, if an episode it’s between twelve and fourteen minutes long, it’s actually about nine to eleven minutes long.

So basically, it’s just a cashgrab of an entry that shouldn’t even exist, but even just saying that doesn’t cover how bad it is. Although every season before had a lot of meandering and dead time, it was never done to this degree. Here’s a rock, let’s talk about it for twelve minutes about if it is or not supernatural, only for the resolution to be completely stupid. There are some flowers there, let’s ask ourselves if they are for a ghost or not, only for the reason to be something completely different.

Some other stories are even sillier. Kanbaru’s father looks wrong at water. Shinobu, the once most powerful supernatural entity ever, wants to eat donuts. Let’s spend a whole episode just with that.

Some episodes even go against the concept because they are not even about whether something is supernatural or not, like the Shinobu one, or the Tsukihi one, since she is convinced beforehand that her problem is not related to a ghost.

Some other even contradict the canon since, despite the show attempting to connect every story with a specific point in-series, Araragi talks with Kaiki before they actually met, and Nadeko goes to his room when she already was becoming one with the snake. Those things don’t add up.

You can’t even call this series a proper mystery, since the answers are given out of the blue through lateral thinking without any proper hint or anticipation. It’s not slice of life either, because the things that happen to the characters are initially thought of as out of the ordinary.

Maybe it’s supposed to be comedy? Well, I may not be the proper audience since I rarely laugh when watching anime, but this series didn’t even get a smile out of me, I bet I get more laughs out of Monogatari fans that dislike my reviews than this series ever got from me.

Even in terms of visuals and audio the entry just feels uninspired, because the artwork goes back to Bakemonogatari levels of polish and the motions, directing and special effects are far more common than they were in ALL the previous seasons. At the same time, since the actions of the characters are far more mundane, there aren’t nearly as much nor as good sound effects, and every piece of soundtrack and every opening is straight up reused from the shows before it. At least the intro on Shinobu’s episode is great. There’s a new ending I think but it’s nothing special, even among the not special outros of this franchise. Don’t get me wrong, both aspects are still above average but nothing compared to what was shown so far.

The only few positives I found in it is how it keeps building up the actions of Ougi, and it shows Ononoki keeping an eye on Araragi at some point around Second Season, I guess based on both her own will and Kagenui or Gaen’s orders, to ensure that events from a certain arc happen the way they did.

The last two episodes are the only ones that can be said that progress the plot, and even then the second to last barely does it and is not very serious, while the last one is the best but goes for a shocker of an ending, which doesn’t work because Hanamonogatari already showed that everyone is fine, thus it ruins the outcome that Koyomimonogatari goes for.

The best thing that I can say about this series is that is not as bad nor cheaply made as other Specials type of extra entries of other series, but if I have to go to THAT level to say something nice about an anime, then it’s seriously fucked.