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BAKEMONOGATARI

                                                    April 4, 2014
                                                    July 20, 2014

The anime "Bakemonogatari" has a lot of
depth to it, at least on the surface:      [ref]
                                           [ref]
  o  the visual layouts are
     both unusual and affective,

  o  the dialog is striking,
     and verbally complex

  o  the supernatural elements
     are strange and engaging           Even their take on vampires
                                        doesn't quite follow the
  o  the direction works well:          Stoker/Hammer standards
     long static sequences followed
     by sudden rapid cutting,                         The bestiary of animism
     flashing words on the screen                     ("this apparition is a
     without much time for them to                    crab") is where the
     register.                                        action is, though.

  o  the relations between characters
     may follow set patterns, but the
     spin on it is just different enough
     to keep from degenerating into
     stereotype...


But I find that my initial extreme
enthusiasm has cooled to a milder
respect.  "Bakemonogatari" relies      Though at least it does remain very
on a a visually appealing              amusing and engaging throughout, more
"experimental" look, but while much    so than many of it's competitors that
of it has a feel of "avant-garde"      are more obviously dedicated to the
bizarreness about it, there doesn't    gods of Entertainment.
seem to very much there to it that
requires deep thought.

   "The author is hentai" is all
   you really need to get.

   In the first episode, the main
   character (1) meets an
   intriguing young woman with a
   strange condition inflicted by               But intriguing or not,
   "an apparition" and (2) it is                she's immediately
   immediately revealed that he has             recognizeable as a
   a peculiar rapid-healing power.              "tsundere", a very
                                                standard character in
      (He says something about how about        Japanese pop culture.
      how he was a vampire for a while but
      got better, which leaves one feeling                   TSUNDERE
      that one missed an episode.
      A prequel has been discussed.)

    The young man takes the young woman to see a
    beatnik-like fellow living in an abandoned
    school building, who functions as "spirit
    guide": he's the more experienced player
    that acts as an information conduit so
    audience and characters can learn whatever
    is needed to get the plot to work.

    In the immediately following episodes,
    this woman quickly becomes the main
    character's acknowledged girlfriend--
    though their sexual relationship remains   Coming up with workable
    undeveloped, as is not uncommon in         excuses for not having
    anime.  After this, she all but            sex is I supect one of the
    disappears from the following episodes.    main difficulties of
    Instead, it's all about the main           designing an anime/manga.
    character's meetings with various other
    women with strange supernatural                 This particular device
    problems.  There always appears to be           is remarkable in it's
    some mutual sexual attraction at work,          simplicity, it's amazing
    but the main character remains faithful         it isn't used more often.
    to his first (now always offstage)
    girlfriend, in deed if never in thought.           More typical is a
                                                       schlemiel who
    It gradually becomes apparent that                 rejects advances for
    what we're looking at is a harem                   no obvious reason--
    fantasy, in this case a harem of
    "magical girlfriends".

       Two of these magical girlfriends,
       it turns out, *look* like very
       young women, but are actually much
       older (for different reasons: one
       is a ghost, the other a vampire).
       Right: pedophillia, with                        One might compare this
       supernatual sanitizer lathered on.              to something like
                                                       "Ghost in the Shell",
       The main character's superhealing               which certainly has
       power allows him to survive many                material to engage the
       very painful scenes of physical                 hentai-mind, but also
       mutilation-- oh, I see: masochism.              works with some serious
                                                       issues about the nature
       Many of the female characters are very          of humanity.
       tough, powerful women-- the better to
       function as borderline dominatrices.            With Bakemonogatari,
                                                       the serious-side seems
                                                       undeveloped.

 I might take this as an
 example of playing with
 the standard tropes of
 a genre, where the real         OTAKU_BASE
 art is in the way these
 parts are used.

    It could be argued that my vague
    disappointment-in-retrospect is from
    coming at it the wrong way.  Trying                SUPERFLAT
    to look beneath surfaces when the
    surface is where the action is.





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