First Impression – Koyomimonogatari
So, I wonder what character is going to be important to this series?
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Did you happen to catch the latest Monogatari story? Well, it turns out there’s an app for it. Why there would be an smartphone delivery vehicle for an anime is anyone’s guess, but I fully expect the next one to be made available via Nazca-line like communication methods…We can’t leave the crazy space aliens out of the fun, huh? All that kookiness aside, how did this one stack up? |
Koyomi as the pretentious Magritte…
Well, to be honest there is only so much you can get out of a short series. It comes in at 13 minutes, then you take away three minutes for both the OP and ED, both of which are full tv-sized instead of a what should be a standard minute long single song to showcase the series. But for a SHAFT series that would just be two more minutes of full on Shinbu-inspired visual wackery, so no big loss. The OP looks to be recycled from Nekomonogatari:Black, but looks can and will be deceiving. The ED is original to Koyomimonogatari and features Try Sail, who I last heard belting it out for Classroom☆Crisis, and who are doing a great job with this cute little full harem-on-display animated piece.
Koyomimonogatari keeps with the current trend of telling this entire bloody franchise in order, but the order is it’s own choosing. Let’s keep in mind that the long awaited Kizumonogatari film just delivered it’s first part – of three – to Japanese theaters. I would imagine that this creates an entire anime-only audience who’s collective eyebrows arch up with “Oh now I see why that one part was important” moments. Hopefully that will be worth it. I’m long spoiled on most of the LNs thought.
But this outing’s one redeeming feature is that each short will go in calendar order from the near start of the whole story proper to some point near the end. So yeah, we are starting before Bakemonogatari with Koyomi Stone, but we’ll get into the swing of things as the series progresses. So with that in mind, what sort of foolery was our lad up to this time? Well it isn’t very charitable to be honest. I’m way past the point of becoming concerned with Araragi’s mental state. With some of the revelations in Sodachi Lost, this bowl of chowder impersonating a human brain has been losing his clams for quite some time. He can’t seem to remember much of anything lately. Such as, why is there a shrine to a statue on the school grounds? The one he built some two years ago…
Subtle cat-ears are subtle, but not ears…
And that, by and large is the story. He gets advice from both Hanakawa (pre-haircut, pre-badass) and Meme (good to see him back, but at this point he isn’t really gone off) and a might even be dimly concerned that his Shinobu is sulking in the corner (but this is before he befriended her again with Mister Donuts). That advice being, stop forgetting stuff, dude. Well actually it’s a bit more Monogatari-round-a-bout than that but that’s the practical upshot of the story. That’quite a bit to think about for a shine that isn’t one and a statue that was a stone that was just a chunk of discarded masonry all along.
Awwww, she looks sooooo alone….
Throw it away? Eat it? Make a shrine to it from my crappy woodworking project!!!!
You know, I do love the franchise, but this is kind of egregious. I can understand why it came out as a smartphone app rather than as a broadcast series. I suspect that it will be given a full-parade-made-for Blu-ray special release at some point, but this sort of way is best for it, as it feels more like a love letter to the fans than a straight up needful bit of storytelling. It doesn’t add much to the canon, and really serves more as “the way we were” bit of nostalgic fanservice, a loving underline to all that has come before. Not bad, but lets’ see if the story can actually go anywhere in the weeks to come.
A Monogatari Timeline
Cute ED, see you next time for the old Mayoi Snail OP in Koyomi Flower
About skylion
All around nerd that enjoys just about any anime genre. I love history, politics, public policy, the sciences, literature, arts...pretty much anything can make me geeky...except sports. Follow me @theskylion
