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Having watched the Monogatari series in release order during the last few months, I was looking forward to this very much. Finally getting to see, how araragi and shinobu met in the frist place. The Monogatari series is now (still, despite of this monstrosity) one of my favourite Anime series, with all the arcs up until here ranging somewhere between 6/10 (nadeko snake) to 10/10 (tsubasa tiger, hitagi end, suruga monkey,...).

That said, it is hard to believe, how terrible this movie is. The visuals are mostly okay, but everything else went wrong:

Characters:
This is my biggest issue. Araragi in this movie is not araragi. The same ... completely over the top panic-expressions combined with baby-like voiceacting turn him into a pathetic little wimp, so much so that it is painful to watch. Shinobu goes from threatening to crying like a baby within a few seconds, in a way that does not make any sence at all. Her personality after changing into child-form is also abnoxious and nothing like she turns out to be in the actual series. The only character they actually got right is hanekawa.

Soundtrack:
It is god-awful. Most of it is the bare minimum of what is cosidered dramatic orchestra music, composed without any inspiration and mixed in too suddenly and too loud. It is completely different from the minimalist but sufficient approach that the rest of the series takes. It is distracting and annoying.

Storytelling/Directing:
For some reason, this prequel is not treated as a prequels at all. It spends so much time setting up "suprising" moments, that we ALREADY KNOW are going to happen. We know, that araragi is going to find shinobu at the end of that blood trail. No need for 3 minutes of him dramatically following it. We also already know, that he is going to save her. No need for him to go through mindless over the top panic to a brief moment of actually being araragi to depressed selfhatred within a few minutes before actually saving her. And we also already know, that he is not going to die. All of these things were never going to have any tension about them, but that is the only thing the movie is trying to achieve, instead of focusing on character develpoment.

All in all, this is nothing but a painful experience of wasted potential for what copuld have been a great story.