On certain days, ‘The Monogatari Series’ might just be my favorite anime, and holding something in that high of regard often comes with you wanting to find out more about the work. The natural progression for me was to read the novels, which not only made me once again realize why I love this story so much but also surprised me with how different the experience was from watching the show. It really is one of those works that completely lives and dies by the medium it’s presented in, be that in the form of a book or an animated show, and that is without changing a single setting, character, or story beat.
And the story really is adapted to an absolute tea in the show, you’re not missing anything by sticking to the anime, and that’s in part due to the fact that everything that’s exclusive to the novels just wouldn’t work in a visual medium. Many of the jokes and “written visuals” in these books are simply unadaptable, a fact that the show compensates for by having jokes and visual cues that wouldn’t work in a written medium. It’s an amazing relationship that can only be understood by experiencing both incarnations of the series, which is why I highly recommend, for any fan of either version of the work, to consume the two of them. In both cases, they are stories that fully utilize the medium they are presented in in order to create wholly unique experiences that no other piece of media has ever replicated.
If nothing else, these novels give a lot of insight into what an amazing time NISIOISIN has writing these books. It's evident that his mind works in a completely different way than most humans, which lends itself great to creating stories like this one. It kind of just warms your heart a bit.
