Review of Bakemonogatari

Monogatari is a series that is constantly praised by the anime community as a whole for being an amazing piece of fiction. So, I decided to try it and the result is very odd. First let me start with the story, it's in a world where the supernatural exist and is constantly plaguing our characters and our main character, Araragi, is trying to help them all. You would assume it's pretty simple and turns out to be interesting but the reality is that it's anything but that. Let me say that each character arc is actually pretty solid, they go through their own reasonings and developmentto try and overcome their issues and it plays out very nicely, the main issue I have is how.

First Araragi is shown as an altruistic person who wants to help except he just falls flat, his character is insanely 2d both personality and character wise and his actions are all over the place. One time he almost dies yet meets his possible killer with no apprehension and it feels like the author threw logic out the window.
Seconed I have is that there is no struggle, before you think I'm being ridiculous let me explain. Each arc plays out the same way, Araragi finds a person struggling, he watches them and learns of their problem and just goes to Oshino to get a solution, that's it. It's like Oshino has every single problem memorized and how to fix it, the supernatural are things that are unexplainable and reality bending not something you can solve with a talk to an old dude in 5 minutes.
There are many examples of the character's doing things and actions that deny or go against their entire development and arc such as Senjougahara many odd and strange actions/dialogues or after Kanbaru's character arc she just gets a whole 180 and makes it feel like all the pain and suffering and development she went threw literally a day ago never happen.

Finally the entertainment, for me this was the worst part. I'm not someone who only wants fights or fast pace animes, I actually loved LOTGH but Bakemonogatari is literally 15 episodes of conversations, every problem and solution is a conversation. Then the in between arcs are just conversations and then guess what to find out the supernatural is a conversation. You think I'm exaggerating but I'm not, you can watch an entire episode and the character's will be talking from minute 1 to the ending.

I would honestly not mind it that much if the directing wasn't so bad, there are so many degenerates who try to defend this by "it would too boring in a regular style" which is completely false as proven by many anime's. The directing feels so bad to me because it's just a still frame then a random flash or change shot to another frame and that's ignoring the many epilepsy seizures you get from the title cards or words flashing. Also the many scenes of fan service is disgusting, some scenes are actually necessary and vital to the plot but others are gross, who thought it was good to put a 12 year old in a swimsuit and flash her body or get Araragi acting sexual around kids or even just the many scenes of character's changing. Finally the OST's as well are quite strange, I actually liked a lot of them but at the same time I didn't, why do we need to get our ears assaulted by loud beeping and computer noises during a calm discussion between two people.

Overall Bakemonogatari isn't actually bad, if you look at it purely from an objective POV you would think it's actually good but there are a lot more factors in an anime than just writing. If this was a Light Novel or Manga I would rate it much higher but as an anime it was extremely disappointing.

6.7/10