Pick Up Bakemonogatari, Part 1: Monster Tale (Bakemonogatari, #1, Part 1) Chronicled By NisiOisiN Offered In Interactive EBook
book felt like the author just churned out some inane conversation tied loosely to a sketched out plot, He's got the start of an interesting character in Araragi, but we don't get very much, The other female characters and yokai he has to deal with are even less fleshedout, Granted, this is part one in a threepart series so far, but it's not off to a promising start, It feels very throwntogether to meet a publishing deadline, So here's the thing with Bakemonogatari and Monogatari in general, it is extremely dialogue heavy, Very little actually happens in the anime, and the same can be said of the books thus far, It is all regularly witty, humorous, and sometimes thought provoking the dialogue,
The anime is infamous for entire episodes of dialogue where the camera angles shift to give us views of scenery just so it feels like something is happening.
Despite the lack of a very compelling plot, this book and the anime that's based on it are wonderful.
The wordplay, witticisms, observations of Japanese culture, humanity, morality, and the world at large are all enjoyable,
There's a lack of any background characters, because the author wants us to focus all our effort on the main characters.
In this book, there are five, That's right, we only hear from five people, Five people whose collected dialogue and internal monologues make up the entirety of the story,
It's a bit difficult to explain how this can be so compelling, but the truth of the matter is, they're just very well rounded and engaging characters.
Each one seems simple at first glance but has layers upon layers of depth and development,
Hitagi Senjougahara is the main focus of this novel and what a wild ride she leads us on.
Very heavy themes are discussedChild abuse, divorce, sexual assault, to name a few, and the tone can be very dark at times.
It can also be surprisingly light hearted and discuss things as trivial as teenage sexuality and high school crushes,
Primarily a paranormal style mystery fantasy novel, there's lots of mention and twisting of Japanese myths and legends.
Over the course of the anime, myths from all over the world is discussed, As the first book was a near mirror image of the five episodes it covers, I'm excited to read more.
For fans of the anime, it adds a different flavor, We don't get the jaw dropping anime visuals, beautiful character design, and wonky architecture we all love, but we do get a better look at the inside of Araragi's head, more of the witty banter, and a
bit more of the hard hitting discussions.
Um, WHAT! This story was so fragmented and weird, It was broken up in the worst way and so hard to put together, I see it has pretty good reviews and I honestly don't understand, I don't even know what was trying to happen here, I did not like this one at all,.stars.
The supernatural stuff was interesting but the dialogue got a little too rambling for my taste, Absolute masterpiece. sitelink also published here
Bakemonogatari is an odd one for certain.
Well, I guess that is actually a given for any one of NisiOisiN's works, 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.
The series is as divisive as I can see any piece of media with a cult following getting, Some love it to bits, others will hate it to their very core, 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.
To dial back a little, this is part one of Bakemonogatari only, Unlike the japanese original, which was split into two volumes, the english release is a threeparter, As a result, this one here only includes the stories "Hitagi Crab" and "Mayoi Snail", but not "Suruga Monkey" as well like in Japan.
To crossreference the highly popular anime adaptation from, this release covers episodesthroughonly, 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 dreadfulpart movie adaptation, most scenes are copied pretty accurately, despite some liberties the animation studio took with scenery and keeping it visually busy.
However, taken on its own, I enjoyed this first volume, 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 rapidfire of dialogue lines.
Watching the anime in japanese with english subtitles is certainly entertaining, but can get quite overwhelming with how much information it conveys.
The book is easier to digest in that regard,
It also helps that the translator tried to localize some wordplay and references to the point where they'd be understandable to an englishspeaking audience there are still a few japanese languagerelated 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 wellhandled here.
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.
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.
Araragi happens to find out and offers his help in solving the oddity, Senjougahara is a difficult, sharptongued person with more thorns than petals, and her relationship with Araragi borders almost on abusive.
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.
The child, Hachikuji Mayoi, is funny to read about and offers a neat counterbalance to Hitagi's sharpness,
Both stories are rooted in familyrelated drama for all involved, straddling the line between comedy and touchy subjects,
Either way, if you expect action, you'll be disappointed, Sorely so. Unlike with Kizumonogatari, where the protagonist Araragi had to fend off three vampire hunters and the vampire Kissshot AccerolaOrion HeartunderBlade, this is a more passive pair of stories that relies much more on dialogue and simple character interaction.
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.
The focus is squarely on the dialogue, the banter, the wordplay and tension between the characters, Environments and outside descriptions are mostly absent, unless they directly concern the characters in some way, You'll be unlikely to get lost in the setting, like you could with many western fantasy authors, Instead the author aims to get you into the characters' heads, and develop an understanding of their circumstances, 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.
And as convoluted as the chatter can be here, the prose itself, the style of the narrative, is very straightforward and often simplistic.
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.
If you don't enjoy the characters for what they are and represent, your enjoyment will suffer greatly,
And let me get one more thing out of the way: This isn't a book for children, The cover may be inviting and anime/manga still have a reputation of being "for kids" in the West, but this is anything but a kids' story.
Bakemonogatari deals with the characters' traumatic experiences and their reactions to them, and while there's always a sense of comedy and tongueincheek writing here, some subjects can be pretty sobering when they surface.
Beyond that, there is also a degree of sexual topics in here while Senjougahara's story deals with those in a rather frank manner, it may seem too much to some readers, and downright offensive to others.
It makes certain cultural differences between the West and Japan stand out quite strongly, Even accounting for that, I feel that NisiOisiN elaborates a little too much on these touchy subjects here, though they still serve to underline the characters here and there.
Despite a bunch of points in my review seeming negative, I do want to stress that I enjoyed the book.
I'm hoping the second part will be with me next week, The closeup on weird, eastern folkloreinspired abberations and very personal dramatic experiences is very appealing to me, even with all its quirks.
There's neat trivia in here that I didn't know before, and the squabbling between Araragi and the rest is entertaining and can even shift your perspective on your own past actions at times.
The witty dialogues are often refreshing, easy to visualize and made me laugh more often than they made me cringe.
I still enjoyed the more directed nature of Kizumonogatari more, having a real sense of danger that didn't really exist here, but for as different as they may be, both Kizu and Bakemonogatari share three important aspects: They are engaging, entertaining and introspective.
If that's your thing, like it is mine, then you'll be in for a treat!,