Review of Bakemonogatari

This is the anime that balances fan service, harem, and supernatural perfectly. They took a typical harem anime and made it absolutely exhilarating, frightening, and paced it absolutely perfectly. SHAFT's artworks shines through here because it fits the manic, freaky, scary, hyper pacing that fits with all the conceptual "aberrations" The symbolic figures are spread all throughout the series beautifully and it feels like a detective hint for many of the arcs because clues are left all over the place for the viewer. For me, episode 5 is when everything starts to click because the dialogue in that episode really pushed the series forward. The character development is wonderfully donebecause outside of one or two characters that change their personality to fit into the storyline after their perspective arc, each character is needed. Each character has their reasoning that actually makes sense. Even if it's a "harem" anime most of each girl's logic and feelings feel natural for the most part.

Episode 12 is one of the best works of art I have ever witnessed because imagine having a beautiful date with a yandere. They executed that perfectly.

So then why isn't it a 10?

The final arc started to have an imbalance of fan service to character development and plot ratio. The final arc could've been fit into 3-4 episodes without that much fan service.

It's an extremely beautiful season with well developed characters and unique SHAFT artwork that works to enhance the product. Some of the transitions are so good that some of the dialogue flowed from scene to scene.