Bakemonogatari: Complete Set Blu-ray Review
Interview with the kind of ex-vampire.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, November 15, 2012
Kermit the Frog may lament about how it isn't easy being green, but he has nothing on Koyomi Araragi, a Japanese high
school student who is a "recovering vampire". Koyomi is at least a more or less normal color, but he's dealing both with
the after effects of the vampire attack itself, as well as some unintended consequences, which allows him (to
paraphrase yet another great character from the pop culture universe, Haley Joel Osment's Cole from
The Sixth
Sense) to "see dead people", not to mention all sorts of other ghouls, goblins and scary phenomena that might
make even a one time vampire quake in his anemic boots.
Bakemonogatari is a kind of anecdotal anime based
on a popular light novel series, and while it has something of a through line, it is basically a set of separate stories
which are woven together due to Koyomi's involvement. Aiding and abetting Koyomi is fellow high school classmate
Hitagi Senjyogahara, a pretty young girl who has already attracted Koyomi's interest, but who becomes irresistible to
the boy when she stumbles on a staircase and falls right into his arms (what is it with this recurring anime trope of girls
falling from above into relatively hapless male arms?). Koyomi is shocked to discover that Hitagi weighs nothing, and
evidently not due to bulimia or anorexia, as she is rather nicely proportioned. Hitagi, despite
seeming like a well
behaved young lass, turns out to be something of a
tsundere, upbraiding Koyomi for having the temerity to
wonder about her lack of mass, and ending up kind of viciously attacking him with a weird claw shaped stapler she
carries. That doesn't dissuade Koyomi, who runs after her and show her that his wounds from her attack have already
more or less healed, which at least piques her interest. Koyomi in turn offers to help Hitagi figure out what's going on
with her weightlessness, taking her to meet a sort of mysterious shaman named Meme Oshino. Meme doesn't take
long to figure out what's ailing Hitagi, and that sets the pair up to start meeting others who have various weird and
sundry ailments, typically of a supernatural order.
Each multi-part
Bakemonogatari episode tends to focus on a distraught young girl to whom something
inexplicable
is happening. Of course the lead character in this regard is Hitagi, but we soon meet several other strange young
females
who have various bizarre things happening either to them or in some cases
because of them. First up is Mayoi
Hachikuji, a sweet
very young girl who is desperately trying to find her way home. Koyomi of course wants to
chip
in immediately to help, and Hitagi follows that lead, quite reluctantly. Hitagi's
tsundere tendencies are well on
display here, as she is confrontational not just with Koyomi but with the frightened little girl as well. This episode, as
several of the others in this set, has a kind of surreal
Twilight Zone feeling about it, especially as the reason for
Mayoi's predicament is revealed.
Later we meet such characters as Suruga Kanibaru, a onetime close friend of Hitagi's who, like Hitagi, has come under
the spell of a demonic spirit. In fact most of the "victims" in this series have totemic elements, which is to say they have
various symbols (often animals or other creatures) that somehow figure into their predicaments. In Hitagi's case, it's a
crab (the stapler she uses is actually a crab pincer), in Mayoi's story it's a snail, and in Suruga's yarn it turns out to be a
monkey. Other episodes feature a snake and a cat. This all gives
Bakemonogatari a sort of folklorish quality
that adds to the feeling that we're witnessing very dark and sometimes twisted fairy tales.
This series is also a fascinating example of what might be termed "montage theory", almost as if it's being assembled
by an anime loving version of Sergei Eisenstein. Quick flashes of competing ideas and images whiz by in each episode
virtually at the speed of light. Many of these images contain text (it's almost a necessity to have your pause button
handy to catch
all of the information that zooms by). We get little snippets of imagery that initially might seem
fractured, but which actually pertains to various elements in each of the stories. It's a really interesting technique and
something that really sets
Bakemonogatari apart from its anime kin.
One thing that does hobble the series is that there's a paucity of people to really root for. Hitagi takes being a
tsundere to heretofore unexplored heights, and even Koyomi seems kind of weirdly dissociative a lot of the
time. Most of the supporting characters become repetitive after a while and even Koyomi's confidante Tsubasa ends up
being just another spirit possessed victim. One thing that might have helped the series is a bit more emphasis on
Koyomi's vampiric roots. Meme has helped to mostly cure the boy of
his predicament, with the only "after effect"
being that Koyomi is basically invincible.
Bakemonogatari seems to want to be a more childlike affair than, say,
Hellsing (despite some flirtation with fan service), but it might have been more compelling had it taken a darker,
less playful path.
