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“Being kind to everyone, simply means there’s no one special.”
Story: (8 / 10)
The general (spoiler-free) plot is at first glance very simple. Araragi finds out about an aberration in some way, and then proceeds to deal with it in some way. Simple enough.
However, even if all of these “arcs” may seem pretty standalone, they all sort of tie together in a not-so-direct story related event, but how they all affect Araragi’s relationships with people.
I thought each of the “problems” that appear throughout the series were quite well done, and rather interesting, and most of the episodes had small twists to further entice the viewers.
As you probably know, this is a very dialog-heavy show, and so at first I thought it felt kind of slow. However, once you actually get into it, that problem quickly disappears. But because this is so focused around the dialogues, and they don’t always talk about things related to any aberration or anything else seemingly related to the story of the episode, it can be hard to follow (or even remember) what the original point of the conversation even was.
Even with this minor complaint, the show manages to keep you interested with whatever’s going on, whether it’s an exorcism or talking about things you’ve heard on the radio.
Art: (9 / 10)
The art in this anime is simply amazing. While the quality of the art and the detailed backgrounds are a big plus, that’s not all that makes up for the amazing art; It’s also about the very special way things are visually presented.
As someone else pointed out before me, a lot of the art in Bakemonogatari more or less serve as visual aid, as opposed to eye-candy. This is clearly exemplified by the “text-only screens” (I’m unsure what to actually call them, to be honest), where it’s simply a single-colored background with a single line of text. This can sometimes be a repetition of what was just said, to sort of “enhance” the message trying to be delivered, and sometimes they transition between these screens really fast, to write out entire pieces of the story, (so to speak).
Another thing is how there’s not really a lot of movement going on in the scenes. While there are some scenes featuring the characters walking somewhere, and even the occasional fighting scene, which all have very fluid and good-looking animations when it actually comes down to it, a lot of the scenes play out with the characters sitting down, or moving from place to place in between jump cuts.
Because of this, a lot of the scenes may sometimes have weird camera angles, a lot of jump cuts (as I just said) with characters switching positions in the area, and of course the occasional head tilt and “hair twitch”.
All of this serve to keep the viewer interested throughout all of the dialog the show presents, as I think it might’ve been a pretty boring experience had they done it any other way, whether they just had a static image of the characters currently talking, or more “normal” animation techniques....
Sound: (8 / 10)
In a series so focused on talking, it obviously won’t work out if you have “bad” voice actor’s, or VA’s who don’t really seem to know what they’re doing. Fortunately, this is not the case for Bakemonogatari at all. All of the voice actors do a very good job in portraying their respective characters, and they’re all a joy to listen to.
The cast also features one of my favorite voice actors, Hanazawa Kana, as a somewhat important character, so bonus points for that!
As for the music, I think it’s an overall great OST. A total of 5 different openings are used (one for each arc?), including one by Hanazawa Kana; However, only a single ending song is used, “Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari” sung by Supercell’s Nagi.
The actual background music is also very well done, and adds a lot to each scene, whether it’s a loving moment between two characters, or an intense battle between Araragi and an aberration.
Characters: (9 / 10)
This would also be a section very important to an anime like this, but yet again they’ve succeeded in creating interesting & enjoyable characters. All of the characters are rather different from each other, which makes for a nice contrast when they’re interacting with each other. There is character development present throughout the story, though all characters don’t share as much of this as the others do, however it’s not really needed for these characters to develop any further at the moment either.
It’s really a well done and interesting cast of characters which, again, is important to a series so focused on dialog, because having emotionless drawings talk about stuff would really take away from the feeling they’ve managed to draw out with their work.
Enjoyment: (9 / 10)
At first I was a bit reluctant, and didn’t think I’d enjoy this very much (or well, not as much as I did), since as far as I knew it was basically 90% dialog. But somehow, because it’s so well done and whatnot, I really enjoyed just watching the characters talk to each other even if it did feel slow at first, and I’ll happily watch the rest of the franchise hoping for the same level of enjoyment.
