If you don't enjoy the characters for what they are and represent, your enjoyment will suffer greatly.Īnd let me get one more thing out of the way: This isn't a book for children. To me, this is an interesting thing to read about, but it is also plain to see that it will not be enough for a lot of readers. And as convoluted as the chatter can be here, the prose itself, the style of the narrative, is very straightforward and often simplistic. A lot of the dialogue and Araragi's inner monologues aim to elaborate on those points specifically, putting them into various different contexts and deliberating back and forth. Instead the author aims to get you into the characters' heads, and develop an understanding of their circumstances. You'll be unlikely to get lost in the setting, like you could with many western fantasy authors. Environments and outside descriptions are mostly absent, unless they directly concern the characters in some way. The focus is squarely on the dialogue, the banter, the wordplay and tension between the characters. ![]() In fact, large sections of "Mayoi Snail" take place sitting on a park bench, or walking around looking for a certain address, before returning to the park bench. Unlike with Kizumonogatari, where the protagonist Araragi had to fend off three vampire hunters and the vampire Kiss-shot Accerola-Orion Heart-under-Blade, this is a more passive pair of stories that relies much more on dialogue and simple character interaction. The child, Hachikuji Mayoi, is funny to read about and offers a neat counterbalance to Hitagi's sharpness.īoth stories are rooted in family-related drama for all involved, straddling the line between comedy and touchy subjects.Įither way, if you expect action, you'll be disappointed. In "Mayoi Snail", Araragi comes across a lost grade schooler on Mother's Day, while he is reluctant to return home himself, and together with Senjougahara they attempt to take the kid to its destination. Senjougahara is a difficult, sharp-tongued person with more thorns than petals, and her relationship with Araragi borders almost on abusive. Araragi happens to find out and offers his help in solving the oddity. Looking at the stories, "Hitagi Crab" explores the traumatic life of Senjougahara Hitagi, who had her "weight" stolen by a Crab a few years earlier and lives an isolated life trying to hide the fact. So kudos to the translating and editing staff at Vertical for the solid job here, as with Kizumonogatari, which frankly wasn't nearly as tough in this way. It also helps that the translator tried to localize some wordplay and references to the point where they'd be understandable to an english-speaking audience - there are still a few japanese language-related subjects in here, like the way you could interpret and read certain character combinations and how the meaning of a name can change drastically depending on perspective and circumstance, but I felt it was well-handled here. The book is easier to digest in that regard. Watching the anime in japanese with english subtitles is certainly entertaining, but can get quite overwhelming with how much information it conveys. It was a good way to refresh my memory of the series which I watched many years ago, and some things are a little less mindboggling than in the anime, due to giving the reader more introspective sections and time to piece things together without the dramatic visualizations, flashing screens and rapid-fire of dialogue lines. However, taken on its own, I enjoyed this first volume. ![]() I'll also have to say that, if you've already watched that particular anime adaptation, you can mostly skip reading this book, because unlike with Kizumonogatari (which got a dreadful 3-part movie adaptation), most scenes are copied pretty accurately, despite some liberties the animation studio took with scenery and keeping it visually busy. ![]() To cross-reference the highly popular anime adaptation from 2009-10, this release covers episodes 1 through 5 only. As a result, this one here only includes the stories "Hitagi Crab" and "Mayoi Snail", but not "Suruga Monkey" like in Japan. Unlike the japanese original, which was split into two volumes, the english release is a three-parter. To dial back a little, this is only part one of Bakemonogatari. Some may appreciate the witty wordplay with little moving parts beyond metaphors and rolled eyes, while others will be floored by how little actually happens in the included stories. Some love it to bits, others will hate it to their very core. The series is as divisive as I can see any piece of media with a cult following getting. He is a strange writer at the best of times, and the Monogatari series could be considered his magnum opus in terms of peak strangeness. Well, I guess that is actually a given for any one of NisiOisiN's works. Bakemonogatari is an odd one for certain.
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