Review of Bakemonogatari

Minor Spoliers reviewing plot structure ahead Alright, just watched S01 of Bakemonogatari and I have been ruminating on it for an hour or so. To start off with, I can definitely see why there's so much hype surrounding it. Had I not known it was made 10 years ago, I would've thought it was from a couple of years ago, the art and animation style are incredibly unique and it definitely reminds me of Madoka Magica in the collage/live action shots within it. I guess ill go with a pros and cons list to best visualize my thoughts. Pros : Like I said, art is veryunique, the whole labeling of scenes (the transition slides) are the first ive seen of its kind. Characters are well developed and rounded, obviously by giving each girl their own arch within this introductory season gives the watcher a sense of what the girls are like.

It also has fairly witty humour which I can actually enjoy, so thats always a plus when they have a good script.

Its also nice how they dont completely put MC and Purple girls relationship to the side and that the show basically consists 1/2 of purple girl hurling insults and MC and the other half being solving people's issues.

Cons: Whilst building these characters up as real life people with real emotions and feelings, by completely ridding the world they live in of general people (what they replace with card board cut outs), vehicles and buildings (all of which are c+p of the same drawing e.g. bikes and cars are all identical), the lack of reality breaks any immersion.

Also, in the way the game death stranding is made out to be a walking simulator, this god damn anime is a talking simulator. I like dialogue considering what I watch is mostly rom coms anyway, but the amount of dry talking that goes on within this show is unbearable. Within 15 epsiodes, I can count on one hand how many times there is action/conflict of any kind. Even for me, this show at times was more of a chore to watch than a pleasure.

I really dont like how first girl wins (at least so far) and Hanekawa (glasses) is so obviously best girl.

I think referring back to the whole balance between their relationship (MCs and P.G) and solving ppls issues, bunny girl does it better but thats a bit nit picky i guess

When I mentioned that the show was witty, one of the biggest factors of that was Oshino. Honestly Oshino was the Joker of monogatari, every1 else was so fucking serious the entire time (albeit the couple of times Araragai and Purple hair were alone). Now knowing that hes gone, I imagine there will be a significantly large void of humour in future seasons.

So far 7/10