Reviews

Here we are with my fanboy review of another installment of the monogatari series. This series definitely stands out from heaps of other anime with very few series being like it. At first people might go into this series thinking its supposed to be something super artsy with hidden messages and metaphors everywhere but honestly all it does is take a fairly generic story and take a new approach with it. People criticize this series for its lack of character development and plot. A lot of these people watched 3 episodes and quit. Character development in this series is actually very interesting. The main character Araragi actually doesn't really go through any character development this is true. However he is not a one note character that is stagnant throughout the series. He changes based of the main character of the arc to be able to play off of them better. This is what the real selling point of this series is. Everything including even the environment changes in order to fit the heroine of every arch.
Finally the actual review part about this installment specifically. The main heroin's of these arch's were unfortunately not really as interesting as in some of the other installments. They still have enough support from araragi and the environment and other supporting characters to make this an extremely enjoyable series but its not as interesting as the arch's about senjougahara and hanekawa.
As for the plot I also found this to be weaker than in the other installments. Each arch has their own separate plot that doesn't necessarily fall into any chronological order however they all do connect in some way as you see in the last arch. The first arch was an Araragi backstory which is instantly made more boring because it's about Araragi. There is a heroine that is eventually introduced and she is a tsundere meaning she is instantly overshadowed by senjougahara and she actually ends up being one of my least favorite heroines.
There is oshino's niece who follows Araragi around the whole season but once again her interactions simply weren't as interesting as the other characters.
In the final arch kanbaru comes in to save us by being one of the best characters in the series meaning Araragi can play off of her extremely well. Also we see some characters that we didn't see all that much of before but they don't really have that much dialogue that isn't exposition so its hard to judge them as interesting or not interesting characters.
This installment for me is definitely the worst one. However having the smallest golden bathtub amongst your neighbors isn't something to be disappointed in and if you liked the other installments you will definitely like this one.
Lastly art and sound is exactly as you would expect for this series however the first arch was definitely grayer than anything else in the series mostly due to it being about the past and also somewhat grim.