Monogatari Series: First Season

Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Bakemonogatari, Monster Tale, Kizumonogatari: Wound Tale, Nisemonogatari, Fake Tale, Nekomonogatari: Kuro, Black

Japanese: 〈物語〉シリーズファーストシーズン

Information

Type: Light Novel

Volumes: 6

Chapters: 107

Status: Finished

Published: Nov 1, 2006 to Jul 28, 2010

Genres: Action, Comedy, Mystery, Romance, Vampire, Supernatural

Authors: NISIO, ISIN (Story), VOFAN (Art)

Serialization: Mephisto

Statistics

Score: 8.95¹ (scored by 10,312 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #12²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #239

Members: 40,057

Favorites: 2,277

8.95

Ranked #12Popularity #239Members 40,057

Light NovelMephistoNISIO, ISIN (Story), VOFAN (Art)

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Volumes: /6

Chapters: /107

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BAKEMONOGATARI
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Synopsis

This is a story, a "ghostory" of sorts, about scars that bond, monsters that haunt, and fakes that deceive.

The story of Koyomi Araragi begins through a fateful encounter with the all-powerful, blonde-haired, "hot-blooded, iron-blooded and cold-blooded" vampire, later introduced as Shinobu Oshino. Their tragic rendezvous results in the end of Araragi's life as a human and his subsequent rebirth as a vampire—a monster. However, this encounter is only the start of his meddlings with the supernatural. Koyomi's noble personality ultimately sees him getting further involved in the lives of others with supernatural afflictions. This is his desperate attempt at returning to a normal human life, in a paranormal world filled with nothing but tragedy, suffering, and inhumanity.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

This entry includes the first season of the Monogatari Series.

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Background

Monogatari Series: First Season was published in English by Vertical Inc: first with Kizumonogatari as Kizumonogatari: Wound Tale on December 15, 2015, Bakemonogatari as Bakemonogatari: Monster Tale in 3 volumes from December 20, 2016 to April 25, 2017, Nisemonogatari as Nisemonogatari: Fake Tale in 2 volumes from June 27 to August 29, and Nekomonogatari: Kuro as Nekomonogatari (Black): Cat Tale on November 28, 2017.

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Related Manga

Sequel:	Monogatari Series: Second Season
Side story:	Bakemonogatari Short Stories, Monogatari Series Heroine Hon, Nisemonogatari Short Stories, Monogatari Series: Off Season
Adaptation:	Kizumonogatari III: Reiketsu-hen, Nisemonogatari, Nekomonogatari: Kuro, Bakemonogatari, Kizumonogatari I: Tekketsu-hen, Kizumonogatari II: Nekketsu-hen
Alternative version:	Bakemonogatari

More characters
Characters

Senjougahara, Hitagi

Main

Oshino, Shinobu

Main

Araragi, Koyomi

Main

Hanekawa, Tsubasa

Main

Hachikuji, Mayoi

Main

Kanbaru, Suruga

Main

Sengoku, Nadeko

Main

Araragi, Karen

Main

Araragi, Tsukihi

Main

Kaiki, Deishuu

Supporting

More reviewsReviews

May 27, 2013

107 of 107 chapters read

Overall Rating: 10

Jamesml9411 (All reviews)

72 people found this review helpful

If you are here, it means either you are a big fan of Nishio Ishin, or saw the anime Bakemonogatari and fall in love with it. Monogatari series, as expected from Nishio Ishin, is full of Japanese word plays and definition intonation; what I mean is it is hard to understand from just reading it once. From here and now will be a review of the book, not the anime.

Before getting into review and "a bit" of spoilers, here is the timeline of the story

Kizumonogatari -> Nekomonogatari Kuro -> Bakemonogatari -> Nisemonogatari

Now let's start this.

Bakemonogatari:
Consist of different girls possessed by different Kai'i(Oddity or strangeness). Senjogahara Hitagi possessed by a Crab, Kanbaru Suruga possessed by a Monkey, Hachikuji Mayoi possessed by a Snail, Sengoku Nadeko possessed by a Snake, and Hanekawa Tsubasa (re)possessed by a Cat. Each had a reason to why and how they where possessed to these oddities and you can find that out by reading the novel or already know from the anime. Araragi Koyomi basically helps these young ladies to remove these oddities from them, and the point is he only "helps", not actually "saves" them. Bakemonogatari, as it's name is a collection of stories(monogatari) of monsters, or oddities(Bakemono).

Kizumonogatari:
Koyomi Vamp. Yes, why wouldn't have our dear main male character not be possessed by a oddity? Araragi Koyomi, one day, meets a Vampire, Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade, on the way back to his home. Kiss-Shot was heavily injured, and Koyomi gives up all his blood to her to save her, and from this, Kiss-Shot turns Koyomi into a Vampire. Kizumonogatari is the "Beginning" of the all the monogatari series. The point to pay attention to this story is not only thrilling battle scenes or the beauty of Kiss-Shot, but more of our dear almighty class-representative, Hanekawa Tsubasa. Kizumonogatari is a story where one and others hurt each other creating scars (Kizu) to each other.

Nisemonogatari:
There is a real and there is a fake imposter of that real. Now, which one has the more value?

Nisemonogatari features the story of Araragi Koyomi's cute little sisters, Araragi Karen and Tsukihi, the Fire Sisters. "Fire" is one feature to keep in mind for Nisemonogatari and Nekomongatari Shiro, but for Nisemonogatari, fire comes from the name of Karen and Tsukihi (Ren = fire, hi = fire). Karen is self-proclaimed "Moreu Onna" (Burning women), which she meant to explain her extraordinary passion towards everything. Tsukihi, is not passionate, but has a personality of that of a fire, hysteric. Main point of the story to pay a close attention is the Kaiki Deishu's logic towards fake and false. We can even say that Kaiki is the main character of the story, rather than Karen and Tsukihi. Nisemonogatari is a story where what can be called fake/imposter (Nise) and the true value of the world.

Nekomonogatari Kuro:
The talk of there being no such thing as right, is right.

Nekomonogatari Kuro is, yes a story of a cat(neko), but it's not that cute at all, or rather, a bit gruesome; Nekomonogatari Kuro and even go par with the Suruga Monkey from Bakemonogatari. The story takes place in between the Kizu and Bake, and is about Hanekawa Tsubasa and her meeting with a Cat, and more about the family of Hanekawa. Beginning starts with Koyomi's confession to Tsukihi that he can't stop thinking about Hanekawa's breasts, comedy, and then rapidly turns into serious story. Nekomonogatari Kuro, in another way to say it, Tsubasa Family, is about Hanekawa Tsubasa and her life in her family. The reason why Kuro (black) is added to it, you can find it out by yourself. Main point to pay attention to this story is the family issue, and the Oshino Meme's logic and Araragi Koyomi's logic towards people, or more about Hanekawa Tsubasa.

Nishio Ishin thank you for publishing books in out of time line for sakes. But still, I loved it, especially Nisemono and Nekomono Kuro. For people who are not a great fan of reading too much words, or not interested in beauty of Kanji and their true meanings, I really do not recommend any of Nishio Ishin's novel, but for the rest, Monogatari series is the best to know Nishio Ishin's writing style.

ps. All of them are available as anime so if you are confused or auditory learner, then go watch it after/before. It will make more sense.

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Jul 11, 2020

107 of 107 chapters read

Overall Rating: 10

abystoma2 (All reviews)

20 people found this review helpful

Would NisiOisiN have been born in 18th-19th century in Europe, I’m sure we’d all be learning about his literary masterpieces in school and how his genius helped molding the face of literature. Regrettably, he’s from a mere small island nation in the current year, so he won’t get all of the attention he deserves. Then again, this enables him to include in his work all those tidbits and tropes we came to love (and dismantling them on the way), so that is also a win situation.

What started as something the author wrote pretty much just for the fun became one of the most beloved franchises, and not for no reason. Monogatari Series is in fact an experiment, or a string of those. Even after becoming success, the series is still written for a fun, and it shows. In a good way. The narration is experimented with, sometimes with a specific challenge the author gives himself for a specific volume, which keeps the series fresh end entertaining to read. The novels employ a significant amount of meta humor and meta commentary while not hurting the story and its seriousness at all. NisiOisiN is one of the few authors that can mix comedy and drama without one of those hurting and decreasing the power of the other one. The plot twists are delightful the experience, with the author often pulling a high quality bamboozle on the reader that subverts previous expectations but only adds to the overall enjoyability of the story, not taking away any of it.

The characters are written in a way that really shows NisiOisiN mastered the craft of novel-making. Each is enjoyable, unique and with characterisation that is the exact opposite of shallow. Starting right with the protagonist with his unreliable narration that adds a whole another layer to what is portrayed in those books, the rest of the cast too keeps unveiling their characters and is given more detailed portrayal of how their inner workings work – which is something that keeps getting better and better as the story progresses and more puzzle pieces and bamboozlement comes into light and as the characters go through several character developments. This is of course helped by the non-chronological sequence of event that helps with revelations to in a retrospective to the ongoing timeline. Of course, mentioning specifically what is it that makes those individual characters great would be spoiling the content not only of this novel series but of the sequels too, so I’ll leave that to the analysis content creators as those character studies already exist on other platforms and by other people.

The illustrations of those novels are stylish and too a work of quality, which my only complaint being that there only a bit of them. Contrary to the usual light novel format with bunch of illustrations at start of the book with more of them through it, we only get one or two illustrations per volume here, which is regrettably low number.

Overal, Monogatari Series is an unique piece of fiction of which I have thoroughly enjoyed every moment of reading and that I would wholly recommend. Yes, even if you’ve already seen the anime - both because the writing is so good it deserves to be experienced in its original form and also because some of the meta gags work only in a novel form and were not included in the anime because of that.

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Jun 8, 2019

107 of 107 chapters read

Overall Rating: 10

Riskzz (All reviews)

18 people found this review helpful

Oh boy here we go !

The monogatari series. The number 1 highest ranking light novel here in myanimelist...

If your'e new here and your'e not familiar with the monogatari series nor read the light novels, but you are indeed curios, then let me help you

First thing you have to understand, the monogatari series, more specifically its author nisio isin doesn't really care about the order of the story
( the prequel to monogatari, which is kizumonogatari got released after bakemonogatari ) its sounds weird and it causes a lot of controversy in the fandom too... in my opinion you can either start with kizu or read more

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Jun 3, 2019

107 of 107 chapters read

Overall Rating: 8

Natsuki_Hyundai (All reviews)

14 people found this review helpful

The Monogatari series is one that has alluded me for some time. Like with Durarara!, the hype train came and gone. Their anime both- astonishingly- adapted all the volumes of their source materials, and have long since fully aired. However, they looked so charming that I HAD to try the originals for the sake of the fact that I really don't care for anime that much. And finally, in 2019, I slowly sunk my teeth into the first third of the Monogatari franchise.
~~~~~~~~
Story AND Characters- What Even is This?/10

This is a strange series. Basically, we have a supernatural slice-of-life, similar to Durarara! Except unlike Durarara!'s nonchalantly over-the-top cast and sense of humor, Monogatari- so far- is the exact opposite. Monogatari is all about meta-humor and nuanced wordplay.

Monogatari is a character study in disguise as a supernatural harem. The main character, Araragi, is a hypocritical masochist who has been through some HELL. Ever since his run in with a vampire in Kizumonogatari (which is set BEFORE Bake but was published AFTER because the author is so "META"), he's had to help various girls like Best Girl Senjogahara and Other Best Girl Kanbaru with Best Man Oshino the Memelord.

These girls are all tormented by inner demons, literally and figureatively. Literally, as in they are being cursed by literal yokai and spirits. Figuratively, as in these are all real life human issues. And the latter thing is my least favorite aspect of Monogatari.

I think Monogatari is a very charming series so far, but I personally don't care about what it's trying to do. I know what it's doing; it's trying to deconstruct the harem genre by making the self-insert male and his girls deceptively complex and human. But... I dunno, maybe it's because my selectiveness has spared me from the hundreds of thousands of hours of factory-produced harems and rom-coms that Monogatari puts to shame, or the fact that I don't find human psychology that interesting, but I'm not floored by it.

As for Monogatari's writing, though... oh boy! You've ever heard of SAO's notorious information dumps? Well, Kawahara is holding Nisioisin's beer! A chapter will often start with Araragi meeting up with someone on his way from point A to point B and say something to the effect of "Good morning, X-san!" Fifteen plus pages later, and those same two characters will finish their intricate philosophical conversation about the meaning of life, their game of "Let's retroactively analyze Araragi-kun's psyche", or... panties. It's... different, and I'm at odds with it. The real problem is that it gets redundant and feels like padding. A lot of the times Araragi meets up with someone by happenstance it's ON HIS WAY to the actual plot of the arc and then the entire chapter ends up being spent just roasting him for the umpteenth time, especially if he's with Senjogahara or Hachikuji. Not that I don't like a good "nothing happens" story (like Grand Blue), but Monogatari HAS arcs and ORVERARCHING NARRATIVES, and the actual proper storylines are legitimately really good, so the nothing happening bits are AGONIZING in this case. But don't worry; it's perfectly justified by having Araragi apologize to the reader after intentionally wasting 100+ pages of time. *sarcasm*

This feels like an unintentionally pretentious writing style, plus it reminds me a lot of the abhorrent writing of some Western YA novels that I hate. For example, there's this vampire character, see, and if their name is ever mentioned in dialogue OR narration, we must be reminded that she's the "iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire". I can suspend disbelief over her having hot and cold blood at the same time, but calling her IRON-blooded?! FUN FACT: Blood HAS iron; That's the whole basis behind the Metallica fight in Jojo! Why call it "iron-blooded"? Because it SOUNDS COOL on a surface level, and people'll eat it up (not literally though, or else they'll become vampires too...). It makes me feel like the series is pretending to be smart.

But the thing is, Monogatari pretends to be smart really well. Like I said for the twelfth time, it's charming. I didn't expect to see a perverse guy screaming his perverse ideals and feel like it's an uplifting battle shounen moment. I didn't think that a book would describe panties for 5+ pages. It's not terrible! But I can also see how people wouldn't enjoy it. It depends on what kind of person you are. If the characters didn't have legitimately interesting personalities (unlike some other "human" protagonists who have less personality than rocks), then I would without question hate this series.
~~~~~~~~~
Art- Not that Much/10

This one only really has volume cover and chapter cover illustrations. However, the presentation of the cover art is very visually surreal, and is probably what would get people into the series if it weren't for the anime.
~~~~~~~~~
Overall- 8/10

I'm really at odds with this franchise so far... I enjoy the personalities of the characters (except Hanekawa) and how the harem tropes are seamlessly integrated into the drama. But... at the same time, I don't enjoy the whole infrastructure of talking about random crap until the good stuff happens (at least it always gets to the good stuff within the volume, unlike Overlord) or how it sometimes thinks it's smarter than it is. If it weren't for my PTSD with Western YA "masterpieces" like The Fault in Our Stars, I'd likely enjoy Monogatari marginally better.

I'm definitely willing to finish the series, but it's not the masterpiece of a genius, it's merely the pretty darn good work of a decently talented writer.

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