This is my place.

Decided to republish this. I think it needs more love!

---

I am busy rewatching the entire Monogatari anime series for the third time. I have a not-quite photographic memory for movies and anime so for me to watch something even twice is a rare honor.

This show was not produced in chronological order.

The first season consists of Bakemonogatari (ghost story), Nisemonogatari (story about fakes) and Nekomonogatari (cat story). You won’t find Bakemonogatari episodes 13-15 or Nekomonogatari: Kuro on Crunchyroll. They were ONA, only available on the internet. You might have to search on disreputable sites to find them.

That is 30 episodes, 3 chapters, and 8 story arcs for season one. Most anime are lucky to get 13 eps in a season. It is an indication of how good it is.

The second season has 2 stories, Monogatari and Hanamonogatari. The first is a collection of 26 stories in 5 arcs about existing characters. Hanamonogatari is a 5 episode story about the ongoing experiences of Kanbaru (an important character from Bake) after Araragi has graduated and is heading off to college. It is usually seen as one long movie instead of 5 episodes and takes place after the end of season 3, so I save it for last. It is slow-paced and philosophical. I like that sort of thing but you may not. Hana, by the way, means “blooming of flowers”

The third season has Tsukimonogatari (Tsuki – meaning to haunt, or possess.) Kizumonogatari (story of pain) and Owarimonogatari, which is In three volumes. Owari literally means “the end,” and it is wrapping up all the loose ends and various interpersonal relationships. And then Koyomimonogatari. Koyomi is about our hero. Koyomi also means calendar or month. Koyomimonogatari is 12 episodes long and has 12 mini-arcs.

Recently released in the US is Zoku Owarimonogatari the last arc of Owari.

If you are really desperate to identify the exact chronological order of each episode, the Reddit Araragi Wikki has the sequence for you. You can also see which books have not been made into anime.

Bouncing back and forth between episodes in different arcs and even different seasons was a bit beyond me. Many of them don’t really matter what order you see them in. The 3 Kizumonogatari movies are how Araragi got to be an oddity, like dropping a prequel into season 3. I prefer to watch it first, then almost everything else in broadcast order, and save Hanamonogatari for last, as he is heading off to college.

If you have a problem finding an episode, just Google: “Watch ____monogatari episode ___ online”. You’ll find it.

Have you noticed that a lot of anime that involve yuri use the word “Hana” in the title? There’s a historical reason for that.

Begin definite spoiler alert!

What I love about this anime

There isn’t a lot of short-term suspense. Our hero gets into a fight and faces overwhelming odds but manages to come out on top. Over and over again. You know he does because there are still a zillion eps and arcs to go. In the hands of lesser people, this would become boring after the umpteenth time.

It’s the characters, their relationships, and the character development over time that I love. I love the rapid-fire banter, the subtle humor, and the not-so-subtle humor. I would so love to be fluent in Japanese because I’m sure much of the humor gets lost in translation. Watch it subbed, not dubbed. The voice actors are simply exquisite. Let that rapid-fire Japanese flow over you, subtitles zooming by as fast as you can read them. Often they are just playing word games. Sometimes, they analyze the Kanji characters in a word to find more possibilities in a situation. If it is really important to the plot, they’ll speak slowly.

Occasionally, they will flash screens of text at a faster rate than could possibly be read.

I’m weird, but I try to catch as many words as possible as a personal game. Manage to catch six words out of a four-line, 30-word text and try to figure out what it means. Then I’ll back up and attempt to freeze the frame to read what it says. This fast frame technique gets a lot of criticism, but it pleases me. (Remember, this is my place, not other critics’.)

It isn’t about the fights. The action scenes are pretty good, but half the time, Araragi just gets beaten to a (literal) pulp and is saved by someone else. Why does Araragi put himself out to save others so relentlessly? He considers the people he saves to be more important than he is. He takes the role of “Hero of Justice” seriously, although he knows in his heart that he’s a fake hero, lacking the strength to make it stick without far more powerful helpers. He doesn’t mind dying if that’s what it takes to solve someone else’s problem. It doesn’t have to be a life-threatening problem either; anyone in need will do.

It is in what happens after the fights that we see growth. Almost glacially, he becomes a better person with the support of those whom he saved. By the end of Owari, you can see a dramatic difference, the narcissistic, self-involved adolescent has become an adult. The sister-con and loli-con traits are gone. In turn, those he saves slowly become better people as well.  And, well, this is a harem of sorts. The people he saves are all young women and girls.

And herein is the best part of all: the character development arcs. Nobody is the same at the end as they were in the beginning. They all learn a little bit about life as they go along. Not a contrived change that doesn’t match the action. Not merely going up levels in strength. In the end, no humans get true superpowers – Koyomi does get a kind of level-one vampire power – but they only become stronger by overcoming psychological weaknesses.

A few of the main characters

These are the main characters.  The anime has a large number of characters that have significant roles but IMHO, are not quite as important.

Koyomi Araragi, our male protagonist, rescues people. I think it is how he justifies his

continued existence. Our hero is a “third year” in a Japanese high school. He starts out as a total dweeb with nothing to live for.  He is as dense as depleted Uranium regarding romance and actively discourages anyone from getting close. Doesn’t believe he’ll graduate high school, let alone go to college. He has a sour relationship with his sisters and parents. A lolicon and siscon creep.  Ah, but he does develop – if slowly! His trademark cowlick goes from question mark to exclamation point to quivering to limp noodle according to his mood. Seems to be a family trait.

Meme Oshino is an idiosyncratic specialist in supernatural affairs who takes up residence in an abandoned cram school. He helps Araragi through tough situations and mentors him until he can stand alone. Not a person to mess around with. His favorite saying is that he can’t save you; you can only save yourself.

Shinobu, aka “Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade,” is a damaged vampire queen. She starts out as Araragi’s first “save.” He encounters her in a very bad state and offers her his blood even though he expects to die. Every drop of his blood is just enough to restore her to an 8-year-old with limited power. (Hence he “Really 700 Years Old” trope. (The new Japanese name she takes on is Shinobu.) She, in turn, saves him by making him a low-grade vampire.

He goes on a quest to restore his own humanity, but in the end, she was really planning on him killing her to get it. As long as she exists, he can’t be normal. He doesn’t kill her (Pity? Or love?) and instead decides on a strange co-dependent state for both of them in an intermediate state. She is his companion in his shadow for most of the anime. Over time, her changes, as she adapts to a new environment, are pronounced.

Early on he meets Tsubasa Hanekawa.  She is moe to the nth degree. The top-scoring student in the school, she has an almost preternatural mind. She saves him, and he saves her during his quest to recover his humanity. Soon, Hanekawa is in love with him; he’s just too dense to see it, and she can’t come right out and say it.

But there is scarring here, issues Araragi-kun can’t fix. Her parents are long gone through multiple divorces, and her adult guardians dislike her. Her substitute father hits her, and she sleeps in a hallway. And she finds reasons to excuse it. She changes and evolves. A hurt kitten who turns mean catty – but eventually heals.

The lasting love in his life is Hitagi Senjougahara, another young woman he saves with

help from his mentor. Hitagi is also a self-imposed isolate, avoiding social interaction at almost any cost. Something in Araragi’s selfless assistance, despite her hostility, reaches her. (Hitagi was cursed by a crab to be almost weightless.) She is another bird with a broken wing. As a child, she was attacked and almost raped, with the connivance of her mother, by a cult leader. PTSD to the extreme. Her father is mostly absent from her life and doesn’t know how to help her.

Hitagi’s appearance is tall, slender, and stunningly beautiful in an aristocratic way. She is not a supergenius like Hanekawa, though she is still extremely bright. She approaches Araragi without any subtlety and wins him over.

She is also quite the tsundere – and for good reason. Watching her wounds slowly heal over time is one of the great joys of the series.

Losing Araragi to Senjougahara is another great pain in Hanekawa’s life. She was slow to move on him – while Hitagi was quick – and watched his affair with Senjougahara with deep regret.

You know that curses come from our failure to deal with our regrets, don’t you?

Suruga Kanbaru is a third fascinating character. Yet another girl with a troubled family life. Her parents are dead and she lives with her grandmother who isn’t particularly interested in her. She’s a lesbian. She reads erotica. She hangs out naked at home. She is a top athlete. As a middle schooler, she fell in love with Senjougahara and would have her as a friend and lover but settled for just a friend. Years later, her idol abandons her and drives her off without explanation. (It was because of the weightless curse.) Kanbaru does not lose interest, though, and watches from afar. She is my favorite character, second to Senjougahara.

Kanbaru comes into direct conflict with Araragi over Senjougahara. Kanbaru is not above offering her body to Araragi if it would keep him from bedding her lady love.  And there is this demon inside her who would kill him as her rival.

Araragi suggests to Senjougahara that Kanbaru has a dirty mind. He also thinks she is an exhibitionist. Her response blows him away. The Kanbaru we see at the end of the series is a far more mature version of the same individual, willing to finally re-embrace her strength. (Probably because Araragi gave her a haircut.)

Araragi has two sisters. The elder one (Karen) is a martial artist/wanna-be hero who lacks the strength and experience to make it stick, while the younger one (Tsukihi) is a fake in her own way. Together, they are the Fire Sisters vanquishing middle school evil… until they meet the real thing. He loves them. He hates them. He has a fetish for them. He rescues them. He’d die for them. Things change.

Mayoi Hachikuji is a lost little girl who cannot find her mother. Of course, Araragi has to rescue her. They work up a creepy running gag of him sneaking up and pretending to molest her whenever he encounters her. She always reacts in mock terror and almost bites his fingers off. This is followed up by another gag where she mispronounces his name, and he pretends to be offended.

And here I am, adding a character months later. His name is Kaiki Deishu. He plays a very important role in several related arcs. An associate of Meme Oshino, he is a con man and lives by conning people out of their money. He believes that a fake that is indistinguishable from the real thing is actually worth more than the real thing. There was a distressing incident in the past where he conned Senjougahra’s family out of all their money which caused the family to disintegrate. Another where he sold bogus magic to middle school kids. He plays it like a villain. You decide for yourself if he is one or not. Perhaps he is an anti-hero instead?

What bugs me about this anime

Yet there are things about it that I don’t care for, even in this masterpiece. The cleverness of the puns drops off as the series progresses. Third-season plots get a bit boring. And then there is the loli fanservice and some dubious situations.

I get what the director and writer are trying to do. The whole series has Araragi wrestling with his sexuality. Even though there’s nothing particularly hurtful in anything that happens, well, he obviously has all kinds of lolicon and siscon fantasies going on.

Some of his rescues are middle school girls. Shinobu takes on the form of a little girl. His sisters are 4 and 5 years younger than him, and he engages in siscon behavior while rescuing them. There is plenty of nudity, some of it integral to the story and some of it merely gratuitous. Oh… and there is a toothbrushing scene with Araragi and Karen that will stick in your mind forever.

I find myself concerned about how some unknown “other” will react to lolicon scenes. Silly, isn’t it?

So, in the end, it isn’t my reaction but rather the reactions of an unknown group of bogeymen that cause me unease. Part of me says to forget this silliness, as you can’t hurt an anime character. Images don’t make people pedophiles; they just seek out the images. Images like those in anime may be a release valve for pedos, who then won’t go for a live victim. I shouldn’t hold art responsible for the actions of people who misunderstand it. Blah, blah, blah. Intellectually, I know I am right, but the irritation (a minor one, I admit) remains. It is a problem endemic to much of anime, not just this show.

I am also irritated by Araragi’s constant fixation with girls’ panties. Panties can be shown in a useful way. Hanekawa’s episode one, “panty view,” presents an example of a good idea. To the public view, she is a very correct and innocent young woman. The panties tell a different story. These are not your grandmother’s panties. And when the wind blows her skirt up, she doesn’t make any real effort to push it back down. Inside there is a naughty wench struggling to get out.

But… along the way, we get to see every girl’s panties from every angle. This bugs me.

There are also scenes where Araragi acts with what sure looks like incestuous intent and coerciveness towards his sisters. This bugs me.

But perhaps it is meant to do so. Perhaps we are meant to see Araragi’s flaws and be bugged by them.

Then there’s the scene where he is bathing with Shinobu, the little girl version of Kiss-Shot, the 500-year-old vampire trapped in his shadow. Some people will call this loli-hag lolicon and pedophilia. It isn’t. This is different. She does try to play with his mind, but Araragi has no sexual interest in this flirtatious “little girl”.

The bath scene is really a kind of bonding between two friends. An unsteady armistice became a peaceful alliance. (Also an opportunity to lean heavily on the “Really 700 Years Old” trope.) It is a promise to live and die together. There is no chance of sex between them. Araragi is not excited. Theoretically, it is quite pure. Few will see it that way, and I’m pretty confident it isn’t intended to be seen that way. It bugs me.

Hint: Every time Araragi handles a female’s hair, it means a step towards maturity for the female and for Araragi, too.

All the soap suds? Well, I can’t help it if your mind is in the gutter.

Another thing that bugs me is the worship of large breasts. That is not the exclusive problem of this anime by any means but I just thought I’d throw that in there. Almost every female in anime has large breasts in comparison with what real human breasts are like.  “Flat-chested” women worried about their bust size despite looking like Barbie dolls. Even the 13-year-old girl who supposedly has completely undeveloped boobs looks like a 32 B cup. This bugs me.

Fanservice

There is plenty of fanservice if that is what you want. I consider most fan service harmless. I’m certainly no prude, I’m what you might call a “free-range naturist” myself.

You get to see quite a bit of Hanekawa in the nude. For the opening credits of one of her arcs, they even have a live nude model that is implicitly Hanekawa in the flesh. It is ironic in the extreme that the OP is allowed to have nudity, but the anime still can’t show nipples in the animation.

Senjougahara has a spectacular scene where she challenges Araragi with her nudity, and he ends up hiding in a corner and trying not to look. She says it was a reward, but it was really a test. She has been scarred before by those she trusted the most, and she wants to make sure he is “Senjougahara safe”. Monogatari is here deconstructing fan service with a role reversal.

Araragi-kun has his share of nudity early in Kizu III after defeating Kiss-Shot. (Or rather, after she lets him defeat her.) He certainly has nothing to hide from Hanekawa anymore. There is more of him in Nisemonogatari.

This stuff doesn’t leave me with the slightest bit of unease. They are all close to his age and powerful characters in their own rights. One of the very clever things the anime does is to view attractive female characters from his eyes. There is sometimes even the sound of a shutter clicking to signify he wants to save a particular view forever. You’ll see his view focus on her face, then slip down to her bust and then down to her legs, and then back. It is almost exactly how my eyes would travel as a teen. A girl’s eyes would grab me. I’d visually explore her other assets and then back to the face and think, “OMG! How perfect!”

This is a super special anime

Back to the things I loved. There is a lot of reference to other anime here.  To an otaku like me, I enjoy trying to catch them. YMMV. Another thing is that occasionally, there are hints of breaking the 4th wall, the imaginary wall between the viewer and the performance. It is well done, so it isn’t jarring, but it is there.

There is a bit of sister yuri here. As I mentioned, Araragi has a sister complex and even a bit of lolicon. That is a common plot element in seinen. (Anime directed at older boys and adult males.) Monogatari has a predilection for underage sexuality. You may find it disturbing.

Each arc’s opening theme is sung by the major female character’s voice actor. How cool is that?

The overriding plot of the anime, aside from the maturation and development of the characters, is Araragi’s faithfulness to Hitagi Senjougahara. Through it all he is tempted by every female he encounters to stray, to fool around.  This is a kind of deconstructed harem where some of the females are after the hero’s body, and some are not. He resists his urges and usually succeeds, even if only partially. The woman he falls for, Senjougahara, is the very one who will make him wait.

When Hanamonogatari rolls around, seeing Kanbaru’s body doesn’t arouse him anymore.  He can even joke with her about his sister complex. His faithfulness to Hitagi is assured. Maybe we can blame it on all the haircuts he’s given.

I cannot say enough good things about Episode 12 of Bakemonogatari. It is the best expression of true love I have ever seen in anime. If I were a bit more sentimental, I might cry.

I think I’ll bring it to an end here. My eyes are starting to water – must be allergies. It couldn’t possibly be because I just rewatched ep. 12 of Bake. Nope. Definitely couldn’t be that. This doesn’t happen to guys.

Well, maybe it can. Zoku is looking like it is going to be rather steamy.