Bakemonogatari/Nisemonogatari -- Review ★★★★★
Shaft is easily my favorite animation studio, and Shinbou Akiyuki is one of the best directors in the business. Their recent work is instantly recognizable for its stunning art style. Their work is progressive, if a little over-ambitious, and that ambition accidentally redefined the industry's business model with the release of Bakemonogatari. Shaft's tight schedule seems to always lead to compromises in the animation of their television releases (to the point where whole scenes were replaced with blank cards during episodes of this series), so they regularly redraw entire series for their blu-ray releases. TLDR, Bakemonogatari was the highest grossing Blu-Ray release of any TV anime the last time I checked, and now tons of studios butcher their broadcasts (a.k.a. censor the sexy bits) to make bank on the Blu-Rays/DVDs. But don't hate Bakemonogatari for creating this mess. Embrace it, because it's an awesome show.... Just make sure to find the BD version, because it's better!
With the history lesson/word of advice out of the way, I should probably review the series, bearing in mind that I'm currently only discussing the first two seasons, as the Monogatari franchise has expanded into many sequel and prequel series at this point, and I haven't seen all of them yet.... Anyway, this show looks incredible, just like any other recent Shaft series. The art direction is all the way through the roof and on up to Felix Baumgartner style altitudes. And Shinbou really knows how to keep a scene visually exciting, even when full episodes consist entirely of dialogue and there are no scene changes. That's really what makes the Monogatari series unique. Even though there are plenty of intense action sequences, there's also plenty of downtime, and this is a dialogue-driven show if there ever was one. I could see how some people could be pretty cool toward it for that reason, and yet that's what makes the series work.
The pacing is dictated by the characters' verbosity, and much of the show's humor is based on wordplay (NB: at least a little knowledge of the Japanese language can be helpful, because there's really a lot going on here that won't translate well). Even though this is a supernatural story, with spirits and kami and effin' vampires, I rarely think of it that way because most of the series is just talking heads, which might sound bleak and derogatory, but I genuinely think it's the best thing about this series. The writing is so completely on the ball, and the characters are so emphatically unique and dynamic that you never want them to shut up.
The sequel, Nisemonogatari, is more of the same, but with boatloads more fan service. The series caught a lot of flak at one point for its abrupt spike in nudity, but the detractors seem to have forgotten that the first series opened up with a 20-second panty shot. The show has metric tonnes of moe appeal, and I doubt that all too many people really objected to the nature of the second season. And I mean come on, there's plenty of action, substantive dialogue, plot progression here too. It's sort of a win-win.
The key to any good moe/harem series is variety. Each girl fills a niche that appeals to a certain subset of the audience. I recently reviewed Clannad and praised it's characters, and within the context of that show they are great characters that fit various roles. The Monogatari series is on another level, though, when it comes to moe diversity. Most harem shows will have the clumsy girl, the glasses girl, the tsundere, etc.... and well, Bakemonogatari introduces characters in a similar way (Senjougahara even calls herself out as a tsundere, for example), but they quickly outgrow mere archetypes and become iconic entities that define not only the series, but each distinct story arc therein. In Clannad, the girls are all friends and have similar interests and demeanors and function similarly as plot devices; let's say there's a lot of crossover on their venn diagrams. The Monogatari girls completely lack that sense of similarity because of how exaggerated and over-the-top their personalities are. Indeed, each character's appeal stands entirely unchallenged, and thus I would argue that this is one of the most successful and effective moe series. There is a precision to each character's essence, and that is highlighted by their supernatural plot lines, as different kinds of spirits attack each girl for different reasons.
This review went all over the place, but it had to because the Monogatari series is so incredibly dense in concept and execution. It's also so good that it demands a certain level of analysis that I simply cannot give justice to in this space and format. The best I can say is you have to see this show for yourself to really get it. And the best news is there's plenty more to come, since Shaft has continued to adapt the entire light novel series into anime. I think this series is amazing, and I'm sure you'll get something out of it too.... Most importantly, you'll never look at a toothbrush the same way again.
--The Anime Hipster