Review of Bakemonogatari

I thought it might be interesting to write part of my review of Bakemonogatari in the style of its most wearying dialogue, but then I asked myself: in imitating that self-referential style, do I need to reference my own little gimmick in order to preserve the spirit of that dialogue? And if I do, am I still really mimicking that dialogue or am I doing something wholly different by virtue of distancing myself from that idea right at the get? Also, isn't the word "self-referential" among the most totally autological words in the English language? The word "small," for example, seems autological, but one wouldneed to know the length of every word in English in order to definitively say that the word "small" describes itself. On the other hand, it's unquestionable that "self-referential" is a word that makes reference to itself. There's something very strong and pure about that, don't you think?

Regardless, it's peculiar that a show so committed to developing believable psychological interiors for its characters has so much self-involved, unreal dialogue. Granted, said psychological interiors are regularly externalized as monstrous wordplay-based apparitions, but the show still seems to genuinely believe in its characters as real people. The whole postmodern self-referential spiel comes off as shallow and almost immediately becomes tiresome—though in all fairness, it's mostly thanks to Senjougahara. Hanekawa, the smart, hardworking class president, was instantly my favorite character just because she talked like a real person. When she turned up in the Mayoi Snail arc, I was at the verge of dropping this altogether, but she was such a breath of fresh air that I kept going, if only to see her story—which, by the by, was easily the best arc of the five featured in Bakemonogatari. The dialogue shines best when the show stops being so pleased with itself. The other most praiseworthy aspect of this show is its minimalistic, SHAFT-y style—it's visually striking, and the surreal scenery is complemented by the equally spare BGM. You won't find another anime that looks and sounds quite like this one. But then again, you probably knew that already; it's pretty much the one thing everyone knows about Bakemonogatari.

This show is described by detractors as a wish fulfilment harem. I would agree, with the caveat that I have no idea whose wish this is granting. Besides Hanekawa, Kanbaru was the only other character I genuinely liked, and both of them had dialogue that was at least marginally more subtle and thoughtful than Araragi's painfully predictable interactions with Hachikuji or Senjougahara's incessant babbling. Hachikuji herself isn't too bad of a character in theory, but she's executed with the subtlety of a train crash. Sengoku allegedly has more development in later seasons; here, she's fairly bland, though I admit to a few juvenile snickers whenever she started pulling the submissive seductress routine and making Araragi uncomfortable. She might have benefitted from being given some more focus during her arc, but I certainly didn't object to seeing more of Kanbaru, whose good-natured demeanor belies quite a dark, conflicted character.

Returning to the main point: I can only surmise that Bakemonogatari fans are all a bunch of unashamed masochists, because this show relies heavily on the assumption that Senjougahara is a character good enough to break up Hanekawa's arc with a date episode that completely excludes all the other girls. To clarify, it's pretty inarguable that she's a bad character, but I can't help finding her thoroughly unlikeable. "Stapling my mouth" pretty much tops my list of things that leave me with a seriously bad first impression, and even once Araragi starts dating her, there's this weird threat of physical violence pervading their interactions. After he tells her that he met Kanbaru, she gets up on the table, sticks a pen right up to his eye, and threatens to push it in and gouge out his eyeball. The usual range of explanations offered by fans in defence of her actions don't really satisfy me, either. She's had a troubled life, sure, but childhood trauma is a poor excuse; that is to say, her past might explain her behavior, but it doesn't justify it. Clearly, it isn't at the level of abuse here—she's supposedly just teasing him—but I still have to pacify myself occasionally with the explanation that Araragi is a masochist who enjoys that kind of thing. Luckily, the date episode was mostly free of violent undertones. Instead, it was just insufferably indulgent, and it's here that we strike at the meat of my problem with Senjougahara beyond any personal misgivings: frankly, no real person has ever talked like her and it makes her into this formless, jabbering nothing obscuring a halfway decent character. The idea that written dialogue can imitate real life speech is obviously flawed, but here there's no attempt to mirror it even superficially. This show wants to have its cake and eat it—you just can't mix psychological realism with such transparently self-aware, self-referential archetypes. This doesn't make a bad show, but it really hurts Bakemonogatari's cohesion, far more so than even the most puerile harem moments. It's too damn on-the-nose, and it makes what could have been a great show into just a good one.

This might all seem rich coming from a user with Louise in their favorite characters list, but she's really just an affectionate holdover from my days of being a horny teenager who didn't really care if Louise beat Saito to death as long as she kept on being cute and tsundere. I wouldn't enjoy Zero no Tsukaima if I watched it now. Given that, I suppose I've inadvertently imitated Senjougahara here in coyly refusing to address the obvious conclusion until now: Bakemonogatari is a show best enjoyed by horny teenagers.