Also: this is my opinion. Im not here to regulate thoughts or influence the way you look at this movie. If you loved it: great! More power to you. However, I would like you to remember that I also am entitled to having an opinion.
Also: yes, I've read the book and watched every part of the series till Owarimonogatari.
I'm planning on working this critique out a bit further sometime in the future, but for now, here is my critique of Kizumonogatari part 3.
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This movie tried too hard.
As a mild fan of the Monogatari series (mainly bake, Kizu 1 and the Nadeko arcs) This movie really disappoints. It tries too hard to be a work of art while also trying too hard to pander to the otaku crowd, coupled with being inconsistent with/to it's thematic messages/the rest of the series. This doesn't try to be a quirky/semi-serious movie like previous instillments in the series, and coupled with some weird directing choices I think that it hurts this movie overall, on a thematic and artistic level.
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While critiquing individual categories of this movie, I will try to bring to light my main problem with it.
Starting with the:
Art: The base animation and more experimental animation cuts were lovely. Stylistically, I liked this movie a lot. The varying styles/art design could've been used a bit more tactfully, but in the end, they both were okay. The birth imagery and the visual callbacks to the other instalments in the series were interesting, but more on the imagery later. A more questionable addition was the idea of the non-chronological shots during this movie. I get what their trying to do with the idea of the unreliable narrator and the nuances between story and plot, but it was really hit or miss. It was a bit too overused.
the imagery: in my opinion, it was mediocre.
The shots constantly try to evoke underlying thematic deepness, which is unachievable with the:
1. inconsistent tone throughout the movie (first being about the choice between humanity and vampirism, then about the worth of a human life, then about sex, etc. Stick to one theme. Meanwhile it also tried to be otaku-ish with the close to rape scene of Hanekawa which was played off like comedy and was drawn to look very sexual, obviously for bait , while also dangling the message in front of us that hunger is comparable to indulging into someone sexually. This isn't the original series where sexual imagery was just a thing, and the constant popping up of it conveyed the themes of puberty, hormones and sexuality.)
2. wonky shot compositions (no film-school theory applied, except to the colour design)
3. hyperactive (enological) cutting, and scenes that drag on for too long, which prevents a consistent theme from developing in a scene.
This isn't The end of evangelion where the characters can actually support the imagery because of their realism; the characters in the Monogatari series are archetypes of harem anime; just a bit more developed ones.
However, it wasn't all too bad, because it sometimes did the imagery well. A great example is the first scene, where the positions of Araragi and Oshino, the cutting, the shot of the hallway behind them, the lenght of the shots and the color design really complimented each other well to make an engaging, atmospheric, and thematic scene.
Sound: good voice acting. Soundtrack was meh compared to the first and second movie, sound design was okay. Nothing special but not bad.
A thing which irritated me a lot was the amount of dialogue; unlike the first and second movie, this one was very strong on dialogue. Why would you add in a lot of dialogue in a film? It doesn't add to the tone here, (In the original Bake it added to the quirkiness, which wasn't as apparent here as there.) and weakens the effect of the more strongly staged scenes/shots. There is no reason you should have any advantages watching this over reading this because of the amount of info-dumping and dialogue, unlike the first 2 movies.
Character and story: this is a hard one. As I stated earlier, this movie tries too hard to be standalone and tries too hard to be part of the series. What do I mean by that? These movies try to develop their own, interesting narrative (which, is a decent one for the most part. Just poorly executed on every level.), while forgetting that it is:
1. inconsistent with the series (all the character development here is completely thrown out of the window when entering bake, where only a few elements of this story matter. Why try to make a dramatic narrative out of it when it doesn't even add to the story? This is a big problem the Monogatari series has in general.)
2. doesn't awnser many questions in a satisfying or deep/new way. (what is the worth of a human life?, What is the food chain and how does it influence our way of thinking about each other? What is the effect of the male gaze on the perception of female power? The answers provided here, if at all, aren't new, particularly deep or special.)
The character development was decent, for working out some archetypes in the harem genre. However, it suffers from the same fault as the story, with being inconsistent with the rest of the series. Again people, this isn't The end of evangelion, and in the end, these characters are meant as archetypes. Just some well-developed ones.
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Final verdict:
In the end, this movie is okay. This isn't a masterpiece, or a work of art in my opinion, but I just hate the attitude of this movie. It really, really wasn't my thing. I love the Monogatari series as a small, quirky series, but this really wasn't like that experience. And I know that my critique/score for the most part is very personal, but I'm trying to bring some legit problems with this movie to light.
This movie isn't as deep as it looks to be, because of meh craftsmanship or because everything that happens here, doesn't matter in the long run. Nisioisin isn't the next Shakespeare and I feel like people forget that in-between all the admittedly clever wordplay, In the end, he is an otaku, writing stories for otaku while being just being a bit above the norm. Same goes for the staff at studio Shaft. And I do not hate these peope! What I hate however, is the attitude of the fans towards non-fans, declaring them dumb for critiquing this/these movies for legit flaws, while not even looking into the thing that completely panders to their interest. Always look at something critically, don't buy into something blind.
