I spent a large part of my childhood in the north eastern part of Scotland which, to those who aren't familiar with the area would describe as “the middle of nowhere”. Those who are would likely nod and then call it something much worse. Summers were short and hot, the hills abundant and green and the winters biting and long. Water pipes froze, roads closed, and snow drifts towered over children sledging carelessly into them.
It has a romantic appeal, being snowed in snug and warm beneath a blanket next to a crackling fire, until you actually want to do something productive like eat or travel anywhere. That child-like nostalgia persists however, so whenever a video game or anime does winter, I’m always searching for that ephemeral feeling that only a quiet, snowy vista can elicit.
Just having a good scene set during winter though doesn’t automatically make it a good winter scene - Guts versus Griffith (part two) takes place on a crisp, white morning and it’s understandably evocative, but doesn’t tickle memories of the past. Similarly neither does just setting a scene, or even your entire series, during winter - so Non Non Biyori, WWW.Working!! (the northern one), Noragami and Primsa Illya 3rei all feel frosty but don’t make the grade. And just faking winter snow is cheating, yes I’m looking at you Nagi no Asukara, salt flakes doesn’t count.
So to lead be example, here are six perfect winter scenes in anime.
You really are spoiled for choice with Mushishi when it comes to winter scenery. Whether it’s episode fifteen of season one, “Pretense of Spring”, or take your pick from season two with episode three’s “Beneath the Snow” or episode nine’s “Valley of the Welling Tides”. My choice though is episode three from season one, “Tender Horns”. The Mushishi anime already embraces a lot of what makes a great winter scene, so when Ginko approaches a village deep in the mountains, where even the wind cannot reach, snow drifting noiselessly down from a dark sky and Toshio Masuda’s “Yawarakai Kaku” (柔らかい角) plays as feet crunch through the snow, its effect is magical. “Beneath the Snow” from season two follows a similar pattern with the new opening, Lucy Rose’s “Shiver” setting the perfect tone, but that episode has a much darker tone to it, teetering on the edge of horror at times. For audio use alone though, Mushishi’s winter scenes are consistently, spine-tinglingly spectacular.
For a series so brutally futuristic taking place almost exclusively in the shadows of sleek high-rises and the warrens of mega cities, it would seem an odd for such a peaceful winter scene to exist. Indeed, it takes Section 9 visiting Europe, Berlin specifically, before the quiet brilliance of episode eighteen, “TRANS PARENT”, shines through. Kusanagi and Batou are on a long term surveillance operation, stuck in the winter twilight between gabled buildings with honeyed light flowing out of frosted windows as errant flakes of the season’s first snow drift down. An inky green night comes and Batou looks across the city from his vantage point atop Heinrich Strack’s Victory Column, wrapped in a long coat to keep out the fell wind blowing across the cityscape as Yoko Kanno’s silky smooth “Europe” plays. It’s achingly evocative and only bolstered by the following scene of a clear, blue morning in a park as people pass by in all their winter finery.
It’s no secret that I'm a huge fan of the anime adaptation of Kinoko Nasu’s debut work, and much like Mushishi, Kara No Kyoukai in many ways embodies that ephemeral, intangible wintry feeling throughout, but no more so than the opening of the second movie, Satsujin Kosatsu - Zen (A Study in Murder Pt. 1). Barely two minutes long, the scene precedes even the movie’s title card and sees a young Kokuto trudging up a hill on the outskirts of the city, heavy snow piling on his umbrella. He stops as he spots a girl looking out across the glowing buildings and houses spread out below. Only the distant, muted murmur of the city can be heard. The girl, dressed in a pure white kimono with a bright red haneri turns and looks at him, before smiling evanescently. Yuki Kajiura’s lonely piano melody plays out Kokuto and Shiki’s first meeting. It remains one of my favourite openings to any medium - film, anime, TV or otherwise - for its simplicity, its beauty and for capturing the light and sound that suffuses a city under snow.
Anything with Makoto Shinkai in a directorship position is going to be visually stunning, and by the time Five Centimeters Per Second (Byousoku 5 Centimeter) had been released, his artistic credentials were well established. With the entirety of the first story in this three story compendium set during a particularly vicious snowstorm, there are a lot of scenes that ache of winter. While the two protagonist’s farewell on the empty train platform that closes out the story is personally very dear to me, the best scene is the couple’s journey from the station the night before. Winter has been the antagonist of the piece up to this point, delaying and frustrating Takaki on his journey until, swathed in the great swell of Tenmon’s score, he finally meets up with Akari in a lonely, rural station. What follows is the slow, tender dawning of their situation, both present and future, and as they wander from the warm light of the station into the vast, frozen night the realisation for both of them, like the snow settling, begins to sink in. Just as Kara No Kyoukai captured a luminous winter city, here Five Centimeters Per Second does with the endless silence of the countryside.
A compendium of six adaptations of well known literary works, Osamu Dazai’s “No Longer Human” is the first and longest story in Aoi Bungaku’s run and tells the story of the deeply troubled Oba Youzou. He is ostracised from his family and indulges in a life of hedonism replete with adultery, alcohol and duplicity. His lowest point comes in the third episode as he drunkenly stumbles around a city on the brink of war and already buried under snow, before collapsing on the street letting the misty white landscape consume him. A traditional red umbrella appears over him, and thus begins his relationship with Yoshiko, a forthright and practical young woman. Whereas other scenes in this list epitomise the experience of winter, this one uses the season and the weather to mirror the protagonist’s mindeset; barren and bleak, the juxtaposition of Yoshiko’s blood red kimono and umbrella against the sterile white, signals when Oba begins to find some peace, for a time at least. Much of the last two episodes of “No Longer Human” take place during winter and are bitter, blue and frigid, but it’s the trundling of a snow-capped street car and the rapidly dwindling visibility that really makes it a special scene.
The episode that really kicked off the thinking for this list is Princess Principal’s tenth, “Case 22, Comfort Comrade”. Cheating perhaps to have yet another Yuki Kajiura score on here, but the series does something different to the others by being set in a steampunk vision of Victorian or Edwardian London replete with teenage girls running around as spies. Trussed up in frilly dresses and wrapped in wooly coats to ward against the gloaming snow showers they chase down a defector, dashing through amber hued streets, down icy steps and into regal looking houses before a thrilling chase and showdown on a smoke belching train. Soft lights, copper tankards and wood panelling strike right at the heart of a romantic winter setting and the episode balances running gun battles with sombre, lonely drama. The series' final two episodes echo the same kind of sentiment with sedition and regicide replacing defection and betrayal but opt for bombast over quiet loneliness, so still capturing that wonderful winter landscape but without the feeling to accompany it.
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It seems all it takes to create a wonderful winter scene in anime then is a guy, a girl, snow, some piano music, solitude and a deep existential longing. This is by no means an exhaustive or even a “best of” list for brilliant winter scenes in anime so if you can think of any more, let me know on Twitter. Except if you’re going to say Tokyo Ghoul Root A’s ending in which case just keep it to yourself. Some of the anime that I considered but for one reason or another didn’t make the list: Gunslinger Girl (original series), Black Lagoon (Second Barrage, Japan), Erased, Cowboy Bebop (Jupiter Jazz episodes), Tokyo Godfathers, Seirei no Moribito, From the New World amongst many others.
]]>I was mislead into thinking Princess Principal would run for a full two-cours by the “case number” episode titles and I was somewhat surprised when it finished after only twelve. Far smarter than it has any reason to be, the opening episodes are taut and intriguing and while the remaining ten only occasionally deliver on that high watermark, it oozes style and craftsmanship with some outstanding if predictable Victorian England stereotyping. The characters are likeable and mercurial in equal parts and there is a genuine sense of camaraderie in amongst the affecting drama. The backdrop of a city divided by a wall however is never explored or capitalised upon and ends up being little more than set dressing. By many accounts this was the show of the season and it could have easily supported another, especially if it meant an extended score by Yuki Kajiura.
Purposely oscillating between drop-dead gorgeousness and gurning ugliness is certainly one way that Kakegurui tempers its copious fan-service. I was reticent to start on another series focused on gambling after being left cold by Kaiji’s torturous logic games; but here the enjoyable outlandishness of the characters and the tongue-in-cheek energy that runs through the entire production carries it smartly through to a predictable but satisfying ending. Any more than the aired twelve episodes would likely bog down the series in unneeded backstory and likely indulge in the vicious streak that accompanied some of the later games. The superb opening has stylistic hints of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine while the ending is abject nonsense that, in context at least, kind of works. Knowingly bonkers and all the more enjoyable for it.
A low key, low budget entry into the overripe “isekai” genre, this time without a smart phone but with a restaurant catering to the denizens of a generic fantasy world. Unlike other shows like Food Wars (Shokugeki no Soma) or Gourmet Girl Graffiti (Kofuku Graffiti) that make the meals a character in their own right, here they are only slightly more bland than the actual characters. Each episode generally covers two characters and individually the stories feed into the light, easy going feeling that permeates the lackadaisical diner, collectively though neither the characters nor the other world really measure up. That typically uninspiring “foreign” meals are used to feed foreign guests feels like it should be a point of contention but that would be ascribing too much to what is a lighthearted, fun, but unfulfilling little series.
Good grief these buff fifteen year olds are angry, and apparently just want to repeatedly beat the snot out of each other. I am a latecomer to the franchise, blitzing as I did both the first and second series - all thirty eight episodes - in little over a month. For what is an archetypal shounen series, it works surprisingly well. The second season doesn’t let up, lurching immediately from the excellent tournament arc to the hero killer through to exams. The characters are universally all superbly realised with even auxiliary characters like Ashido and Jirou afforded enough time to be interesting, though its mama Midoriya who acts as the heartfelt voice of reason. With a confirmed third season, whether it can last at the pace it’s set is yet to be seen. With little to no downtime between the different forms of competition and pugilism to really get to grips with the world, watching this can feel like being on a runaway train: exhilarating, but it eventually needs to slow down or crash.
The rural depopulation angle proved a far richer vein of interest than the series itself. The core quintet of young women grow into their roles within the town and as characters but are not explored in enough depth to be truly relatable. Yoshino’s ambivalence may be highlighted when she talks with her sister, but her time prior to Manoyama is still a mystery. Similarly Sanae’s back story - why she became a web entrepreneur and the difficulties that involved - is ignored. In a way it’s a mark of good writing that one would be interested in learning more about them, but conversely damning that the story itself doesn’t serve them anywhere near well enough. The failure to connect and spark interest in a series focused on a single town is perhaps enough evidence of Manoyama’s eventual fate. Ultimately enjoyable and explores that awkward time between teenager and adulthood, but ultimately fizzles rather than shines.
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Elsewhere I’m still catching up on Made in Abyss - another strong contender for show of the season according to many accounts - and Fate Apocrypha continues its careening power slide into lunacy.
]]>The final ending card of *Rage of Bahamut: Genesis’ warned us: “I’ll be back”. For a time that seemed to refer to the indefinitely delayed Manaria Friends (not to be confused with your Italian food research group: marinara friends), until that is, Virgin Soul was announced. A direct sequel to Genesis with the same director - Keiichi Satou - and a returning cast of characters, would this new two-cour series be able to capture the same kind of adventuring fun that typified its predecessor?
Picking up ten years after the sealing of the Bahamut, humanity, under the new rule of King Charioce, have enslaved demons and begun to purge angels from their midsts. The fates of both Favaro and Kaisar are unknown and instead the impossibly cheerful and unusually brawny Nina takes centre stage. Unfortunately for her, she transforms into an enormous red dragon when coming into contact with a member of the opposite sex which has a detrimental effect on the buildings and people surrounding her when she does.
The “Virgin Soul” of the title then is fairly obvious and an appreciably meaty portion of the narrative is dedicated to Nina’s coming of age, both emotional and romantic. The other parts, like Genesis, are a shotgun blast of different influences and plot threads that briskly move the series along despite the roomy twenty four episode run time. Unlike Genesis though, Virgin Soul has loftier ambitions than frantically trying to cram as many fantasy tropes - pirates, dragons, angels and flying castles - into one series.
At first this is tackling the very obvious enslavement of the demons and is what causes Nina to collide with returning characters - first the dead-pan, gravelly voice necromancer Rita, followed by Kaisar and eventually Favaro. It doesn’t take long for the series to start dabbling with imperialism, faith versus enlightenment and agency, loss of innocence, the use of weapons... all while still trying to navigate Nina through a star crossed romance.
If this all sounds like a far cry from the romping travelogue that came before it, you would be absolutely right, and the writing takes a turn for the downright vicious in the second half with deaths and betrayals that are as brutal as they are unexpected. The bittersweet ending of the first series pales in comparison to the finale here and is one that, for better or worse, stuck with me for days after airing. Were you to speak to both Western and Japanese watchers, this would be the tipping point that saw many of them abandoning it, haemorrhaging almost 10,000 viewers from midpoint to closing by some estimates.
It’s not difficult to see why: going from free-to-play mobile game to the fun but largely ignored first series, to a second dealing with Very Important Matters probably isn’t what you signed on for as either a fresh viewer or a returning fan. That’s not to say the topics or their treatment are mishandled, or that the world building or narrative foundations don’t support them, or even that the twists and turns are particularly spiteful, only that tilting towards a darker tone robs a lot of what made, at least me, excited for this sequel.
For a series that is bold, ambitious and confidently executed, I feel an ambivalent desire for the original’s penny-dreadful-esque whimsy. There really is a lot to like here. Nina is a brilliant central character who is fiercely independent yet chipper without being naive. Kaisar and Favaro have aged and grown in ways that feel natural, while Rita, Bacchus and Hamsa still riff off each other brilliantly. Jeanne, despite only being properly reintroduced well into the second act, has an absolutely stunning story arc and the time she spends travelling with Nina is a delight for what it reveals about both characters. Even secondary characters like Azazel and Lavelley come into their own here with pathos and drive while newcomers like Alessand are instrumental in what becomes the series majestically tragic turning point.
A sour note still remains though, and it’s name is Charioce. Pitched immediately as a kind of kitten-eating monster out to annihilate anything he can’t enslave, it’s bone-headedly obvious there is more going on with him. And there is. Except it’s really not that interesting and the story’s attempts to contextualise his motives falls flat and never manages to justify the horrors he presides over.
This, combined with Nina’s inexplicable affections for him, forms the lodestone for the series’ woes. Unable to empathise with him and not ultimately punishing his actions, it doesn’t matter how many grand-scale magic battles or dragon-based tomfoolery there is, the narrative and emotional payoff doesn’t happen. And that’s a shame because, it bears repeating, there is an awful lot to like; be that the incongruous return of SiM for the gorgeous three-colour opening, the superbly animated action or the dramatic highs and lows that follow the different characters. All the components were there for an absolute belter of a finale, yet the ending marrs the rest.
The entire ordeal is reminiscent of Sunrise’s followup to the wonderful [My-HiME](https://chaostangent.com/2009/12/anime-of-the-decade-6/), My-Otome which had a similarly squick inducing central relationship as well a lacklustre overall reception despite initial hype. Barring some woeful, short-lived spin offs, that series was also the death knell for the My-HiME franchise.
Whether the same will happen with Rage of Bahamut is still to be seen. I have a lot of fond memories watching Virgin Soul - and not just because of Jeanne D’Arc - and while it seems a little mean spirited to rubbish the whole series because of an unsatisfying ending, thinking of watching it from the start with that conclusion in mind fills me with dread. If this is the last of the franchise that would be an awful shame, but looking to future instalments to retroactively wash away the sour taste of the past seems equally unlikely and short sighted.
]]>Sakura Quest is the most recent series from studio P.A. Works’ “earnest girls working earnestly” genre that it started back in 2011 with Hanasaku Iroha. Sakura’s story starts charmingly enough with the cherry-blossom haired Yoshino being mistaken for a singer from the 60’s and subsequently being hired by the tourist board as a representative of the rural town, Manoyama. Thus begins twenty five episodes of Yoshino and fellow cohorts Shiori, Maki, Ririko and Sanae trying to revitalise the ailing town.
At its heart, the series is about people fighting against the depopulation of a rural town. Once it moves past its initial two-episode stories of Yoshino attempting (and failing) with quick-fire tourist pulls, there are extended arcs focusing on the aging residents on the outskirts of town, as well as the perils of using flashy media pulls, alongside an undercurrent of resigned acceptance to the situation the town finds itself in. And what ultimately awaits it should the situation continue.
Rural depopulation isn’t a situation that is unique to Japan, much of the developed world is suffering from it with many towns across Europe facing a similar fate. The causes are well understood: the young leave the countryside for the cities to seek better employment opportunities and economic stability leaving an increasingly older population to tend the fields. Strange then that from the outset, Yoshino has the opposite happen to her, struggling as she is to find a job in Tokyo, the call to the countryside is a welcome chance for her.
Though never stated in the show, it’s commonly understood that Manoyama is based upon the town of Nanto which geographically is several hours journey outside of Tokyo. This excludes Manoyama from the effect of counter urbanisation where the movement of people to rural areas with easy access to cities has been a recent phenomenon - probably trying to escape Tokyo living costs.
Yoshino is set the nebulous task of improving Manoyama’s tourism within the year of her contract. She stands on the ruins of past attempts though, the most obvious of which is the Chupakabura town hall that is sporadically used as a base for Yoshino’s efforts. Again, though never stated in the show, it’s likely this hall was built as a result of real life fund injection in the 1980’s by then prime minister Noboru Takeshita. Effectively dumping millions of yen into rural communities to use as they wished, the results were varied only in their ineffectiveness. One town, Tsuna, however purchased a weighty gold nugget with its money, attracting tens of thousands of tourists in the process but ultimately being absorbed along with other surrounding towns into Awaji in 2005, the same fate that Manoyama faces at the end of the series.
There is talk within Sakura Quest of the “kingdom” style rejuvenation projects that happened across Japan in the past, whether this was a real project or not I’ve been unable to verify, but the building of the garish hall is a luridly coloured example of the kind of policies and politics that rural Japanese communities are operating under.
Specifically, the fight against the gravitational pull that is the Tokyo Metropolitan area. More so than many other countries, the seats of power both political and economic lie within Tokyo; yet to remain in power, votes from other areas of the country are needed. So instead of offering tangible but boring long term improvements, far easier is it to dazzle with shock and awe with projects like stadiums, multi-lane highways and “multi-purpose halls” common touchstones for politicians looking to curry rural votes. This might also go some way to explaining the incongruous climbing wall and “observation tower” that Manoyama sports. Beneath this bureaucratic impropriety there is the more complex issue of funding and the industrial construction complex that the majority of Japanese companies are at the mercy of which feeds into the idea of economic power, but not important in terms of Sakura Quest and Manoyama. Suffice it to say, this could explain the egregious rural boondoggles.
With that kind of hostility to long term rejuvenation, it’s no wonder that Manoyama’s small businesses are reticent to change. The revelation part way through the series that many of the shuttered shops are closed but not vacant begins to pick at the cultural mentality underpinning the town’s situation: the young want the town to do well but those able to do something don’t want to change.
There’s a sense of stoic nobility that the shopping district has accepted its fate with dignity, a sentiment borne out by the older community visited by Yoshino and co later in the series. It’s also the point where the narrative takes a turn for the peculiar and dramatic. At the heart of this change in tone is the charismatic Professor, a cultural anthropologist whose presence in the village only seems to underscore its slide towards decline, but does highlight the kind of community thinking at play with the delightfully morbid “we’re alive” lanterns that are later co-opted for the Manoyama festival.
The question then that the series tries to answer (and it’s not alone in trying) is how best to stop the decline and eventual death of a town? For many towns and villages around the world a reprieve has come from immigration. For Manoyama, this seems like an unlikely prospect despite the charming self-insert Sandal-san and the bevvy of foreign tourists that visit throughout the series. It’s no secret that Japan has always taken the mentality of an “island nation” to heart, being notoriously unwelcoming to immigrants yet blithely inviting tourism.
Increasing the birth rate then? While the irony of targeting a typically herbivorous male past-time and medium towards this solution, Japan leads the world with its greying population and plummeting birth rate, so even the quirky dating tourism (husband shopping) shown in the series is unlikely to solve the problem. Other rural villages have historically taken to wooing foreign women in an attempt to ameliorate their decline.
To its definite credit, Sakura Quest doesn’t attempt to offer a single solution, instead ending the series with a dramatically ho-hum summation of efforts. This includes the repurposing of buildings, including the school for a new business centre and empty houses for short-stay residences. The latter a definite improvement over the usual demolition and rebuilding of structures - see also the climax of the “zombie film” Manoyama plays host to - that is so common due to inheritance laws and associated costs. Likewise the celebration of local culture certainly didn’t have the big-bang effect that was maybe expected for a series’ climax, but underscores a more subtle understanding and appreciation of place that is felt more than seen.
Most pleasingly though was the acceptance of new technologies. With terminal murmurer Ririko leading the charge with live webcasts of events, along with the elderly connecting and passing on knowledge with tablets and computers. Even Sanae was a breath of fresh air with her entrepreneurial spirit - especially rare in Japan that lacks the “startup” culture of America - and her meetings with other business minded women hinting at the possibility of remote teleworking, or just simply the ability for certain jobs to work from anywhere.
With that message of hope though is the eventual understanding that all of their efforts likely only prolonged the inevitable: Manoyama is still going to be absorbed and renamed and Yoshino herself dashed off to much warmer climes. Going from dunderheaded quick fixes to understanding and gradual change mirrors Yoshino’s journey from bratty Tokyoite to community do-gooder. The initial “problem-solution?-failure” structure of earlier stories threatens to undermine the later ones’ much stronger, more affecting arcs; indeed, failures like the “school lunch cook in” in the latter half are accepted and learned from rather than dwelt upon.
The conjoining of narrative to message though doesn’t make up for the series’ frequent inconsistency or inability to maintain interest outside of some light-touch iyashikei elements. But in tackling a complex and hugely important social issue with an appreciable amount of depth, it came off better than most. The representation of all the different types of people that contribute to the situation - the elderly, the entrenched, the skeptical, the curmudgeonly, the positive and the resigned - is to be commended, but there is a lingering question as to who Sakura Quest is for.
If the answer to that is foreign viewers with more interest in Japanese socioeconomic issues than their own country’s, then perhaps like Manoyama itself, the series is soon to be forgotten.
]]>It’s finally finished. It feels like I’ve been hearing about the Kizumonogatari movie since I finished watching the first TV anime, Bakemonogatari. In my reviews of past entries in its tangled timeline I was a lot more glowing in my praise than I remembered; but somewhere along the way I didn’t so much lose patience so much as lose interest in continuing with the franchise. I think it was somewhere around the first tranche of episodes for Owarimonogatari.
Kizumonogatari (Scarstory or Woundstory depending on your translator) however is narratively the first story in the now 23 light novel saga so its adaptation holds the potential for newcomers to be introduced to the franchise without its eight years of baggage. A trilogy of movies then, each around an hour long, telling the story of eternal straight man Koyomi Araragi’s first meeting with the mercurial vampire Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade, class president Tsubasa Hanekawa and oddity specialist Meme Oshino.
The most striking element of all the films are their visual fidelity, both in terms of its universally superb character animation but also the pin-sharp rendered backgrounds that crisply sparkle with every sunset and car headlight that is cast upon them. A step up from the TV series that favoured art house abstraction over fine detail. Yes those hard cuts to monocolour text frames are still present, but far less obnoxiously used here, or perhaps I’m just desensitised to them now.
Regardless, everything from schoolyard strolls to visceral fights look stunning if not a little washed out, which means when the plot takes one of its frequent dives into the deviant, the squick and squirm is all the more tangible. Underwear plays an absurdly huge part in Araragi’s story and with only the pneumatically proportioned Hanekawa to provide, the results are… well, just don’t watch any of the films on public transport. The borderline sexually aberrant behaviour that’s on display is on par with other entries in the series though so if newcomers choose to continue watching, they won’t be discombobulated when a toothbrush stops being so innocent.
At the end of the day this is a big-budget, SHAFT × Akiyuki Shinbo production split into three, meaning when it comes to the narrative, every film is baggy and overwrought. The entire story could have been comfortably condensed into a single, standard length film, but then it wouldn’t be Monogatari. Like the other arcs, Kizumonogatari has a point to be made, but author Nisi Oisin will take the most circuitous route to that point. You’ll get to know everything about that point - the neighbourhood, all the back roads, weather, GDP - on this malfunctioning GPS ride towards the story’s final destination. It likely took an immense amount of restraint for the author not to finish the light novel with “but it was the Kizumonogatari’s we made along the way” so familiar are we with the point by the end of it.
That’s not to say the films, both on their own and as a trilogy, aren’t superb fun. They have a great sense of humour with sight-gags and wordplay aplenty, and without the acerbic and exhausting Senjougahara around, the huge swathes of each film dedicated to Hanekawa and Araragi talking feel like playful banter rather than intellectual survival. Even the fight scenes, vicious and gory in equal measure, often devolve into slapstick, taking the edge off the ultraviolence on display.
More than any other entry in the franchise though, Kizumonogatari feels indulgent. This is a franchise that has enjoyed immense popularity both for the light novels and the numerous anime series so it makes sense that money would be spent on it. Too often though it feels like the staff is luxuriating in the comfort that the series has earned. There’s the graceful pirouette of Kiss-Shot as she revels in her newly aged (but still prepubescent, natch) body, the flock of animated crows that scatter as Araragi approaches, the wince-inducing bounce of any movement by Hanekawa, the mock helicopter camera shots with rotor whine and all. At times it feels like the music doesn’t know how to keep up, surging from electronic menace through to piano melody and child-like chants in short order.
In a sense then it is the perfect adaptation of the light novel. The films are as visually and sonically indulgent as the novel is verbose, spending as it does several pages describing underwear or how the protagonist wants to become a plant. The adaptation hits all the same story beats but the action is slicker and the internal monologue thankfully absent.
And therein lies the essence of what gives Monogatari its style and personality. Certainly not to everyone’s taste its greatest flaw seems to lie in the desire to say something meaningful but getting bogged down by the menial. After so long then that style has become humdrum and routine and too easy is it to now see those trivialities in between the flair and trickery.
Perhaps the greatest praise I can give the Kizumonogatari film trilogy then is to say that if you liked the TV series, you’ll like this, and conversely, if you liked this, you’ll like the TV series. For a while at least.
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