Monogatari Series: First Season

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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.

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.

Is Bakemonogatari an intelligent series?

Bakemonogatari tries to be a smart anime. Yet I think Bakemonogatari is moreso an example of the death of parody.

Parody has a function. Parody is a form of critique: a way of deriding the status quo. A critique is successful when it introduces a new way of thinking. Bakemonogatari tries to be a parody. It tries to critique, and yet rehashes and strengthens the templates it borrows from.

What exactly is the point of the one-note cookie cutter characters like Kanbaru or Hachikuji or Senjougahara or Araragi? They seem to be critiques, over the top parodies of tropes that exist elsewhere ... in anime. Yet, Nisioisin paradoxically celebrates their tropic and generic qualities. It is supposed to be unproblematically funny when Hachikuji is a brat or when Kanbaru is a pervert, the reader is never challenged for liking the tropes that these characters represent. Perhaps the viewer has a light hearted chuckle to herself when Araragi sexually assaults Hachikuji, self-abasing herself at how dark her humor is. Yet this is hardly subversive in any way. We do see dark aspects of the character's lives: perhaos showing a more subversive side to the novels. For example, Senjougahara has her parents roped into an evil cult. Yet the darker themes and deeper aspects of the show are not something that are not used in other stories in Japan, in other words, even at the stories darkest moments, we rarely see anything particularly ground breaking or subversive. Even movies like Akira dealt with the topic of cults for instance, so do many Japanese horror flicks like Higurashi. Even in those moments where Bakemonogatari tries to break the status quo, it borrows from pop culture in ways not particularly subversive. Yet seemingly parody seeks to critique the status quo. Bakemonogatari is not parody, it is simply referencing a pop-cultural phenomena, similar to other forms of modern pop-culture like the Simpsons or Big Bang theory. It is not an intelligent show in this regard then. So, Bakemonogatari does not use its characters for parody: a means of subversion and like many other light novels it reuses basic templates... That's fine, not everything needs to be parody or particularly subversive. Yet are its characters at least deep or good, even if ultimately reused templates?

When we do see a character's back story, it is often glossed over, not affecting the character at all. It is often basically window dressing. For example Hachikuji does not act particularly different from when we first see her even after being reunited with her home which was found to have been destroyed. All this to say that Bakemonogatari is not particularly subversive when it delves into dark themes and nor is its character writing very good. Its treatment of Hanekawa's abuse is just incredibly overt and forced at times which took me aback. There is really no room for ambiguity which I think makes the characters come off less deep than they should have. When it is not talking about dark themes, it is not very subversive.

There is word play, yet the word play is often using merely utilising references or the punch lines can be seen a mile away. It is sometimes funny yet not enough for one to consider the series particularly clever.

Quite fairly, people might suggest that I am reading the story wrong: Nisioisin has no agenda, he is simply presenting over the top characters based off of templates for entertainment value. If that is the case, the story is not an intelligent story, it is doing something similar to the Big Bang Theory or the modern Simpsons. These are shows often critiqued for a lack of intelligence. It merely references with no mind to that which it is referencing which is intelligent writing. This is of course fine: not every show need be ground-breaking, yet for a series that tries to be smart, it is quite a jarring viewing experience. Maybe we should ask:

Is bakemonogatari entertaining?

I do not think the books are very entertaining. The books have the same structure. There is a mysterious girl who has feelings for Araragi. Araragi saves the girl, the girl is thankful and the story ends. Hachikuji is an exception, not confessing love for Araragi. Yet the other girls are all uniform, loving Araragi for no reason. I do not critique this on the grounds that this is not intelligent writing. I critique it on the grounds that it is boring and charmless. When one can predict the story perfectly each time, the story just gets very very boring.

What makes the story more boring and charmless is the lack of characters other than Araragi and the girls + Oshino (maybe Gahara's dad if you'd consider him relevant at all). While this is certainly an authorial decision -- and a brave and commendable one at that -- it makes the story very claustrophobic and tiresome. So I'd say it isn't entertaining.