Monogatari
Started watching Bakemonogatari, FINALLY. To hell with Japanese, I’ll bear the English subs and maybe rewatch everything when I’m better with the language.
Well, looks like I can understand much of the dialogue so not having to stare continuously at the subs is already a huge improvement and waiting for this long wasn’t in vain.
How is it even possible that they change OPs every few episodes and all of them are among the best in their category? (Update 2019-01-03: Bake and Nise OP/EDs are amazing but after that everything becomes bland.)
I used to think SHAFT’s style was a bit pretentious, but these days I pay more attention to good writing than animation and it feels like the anime is merely casting away unnecessary things in order to focus on the main subject, which also makes it “artistic”. Still I think it works better for Monogatari and Zetsubou Sensei than, say, Madoka. Madoka’s art was nice and very refreshing, but also “a bit too much”, I thought.
Finished Bakemonogatari now including the 3 ONA episodes. I liked the anime, it was great, but I’m a bit sad that it wasn’t quite as magical as I had imagined.
I can finally do this thing now:
Snail > Crab > Bee > Snake > Cat > Bird > Monkey
I have this thing where I get glimpses of some great series/work and I can vaguely imagine just how good it could be. Basically, I imagine the extreme feeling of appreciation, not the actual contents that would make the series as good to deliver such feeling. Although I know such perfection can hardly exist, before jumping into the series I can still hold on to the dream. And then when I finally watch/read the the thing, the magic will be shattered and I forget most of my earlier vague ideas about why the series might be so good as they say. The reality replaces the foggy imagination, but the fog wasn’t all bad. Maybe this is related to “child-like wonder”, something creators apparently should never let go.
I think that even though many great pieces of work start to look “just human” once you analyze them closely, the truth is many of them are actual masterpieces and it’s only the audience who loses the ability to appreciate them by repeated contact to the material. So it’s somewhat dangerous to consume all of the great works first and only then try to make your own. At the very least you need to believe it is possible to create something much more impressive than the merely human level work, or you will be doomed to producing mediocre work.
So now that I’ve begun to watch Monogatari, I can no longer wish to write as well as the Monogatari I imagined — I can only aim to write better than what Monogatari turned out to be, all the while not even remembering most of it.
Started watching Nisemonogatari. So far in the series there’s almost always just Araragi and one other character in the scene, talking. Rarely three or more. And then there are one or two of those long scenes with a character not even related to the current arc, no wonder the arcs are getting longer.
I read somewhere Nisioisin’s work being described as anti-climatic, and the end of first arc with Kaiki definitely was a great example. Of course it actually was very exciting, just not in the way you expect, a fight or something. I notice that the author seems to delight in subverting anime cliches, and he does it really well. Takes a lot of concentration just to parse the dialogue. It really reads more like a book than an anime.
This quote is nice also because the views fit perfectly the three characters:
Suppose people are all born evil. Then if they do a good deed, it’s not their true self but a lie. Lie, fake, artificial, hypocrisy, by definition deliberate. Given the real thing and and indistinguishable fake, which is worth more? I thought obviously the real thing was more valuable, while Oshino asserted they were of equal value. But Kaiki reasoned that the fake was of far greater value. In its deliberate attempt to be real, it’s more real than the real thing.
This series has such great images that it’s a shame how often they are only shown for a split second. To think there exists an anime where I find myself routinely using the next/previous frame command of the video player. No, I don’t mean those flashing text screens which I don’t read at all — I’m talking about the ero scenes obviously. I guess they don’t call the SHAFT anime “slideshows” for nothing.
Does this anime even have background characters? Obviously there aren’t any minor characters, it’s just the core cast, but I mean is there even a single scene where a face or a humanoid shape of an unimportant person is shown? Whenever the characters are in public places such as schools or parks, there is literally no one else there, just emptiness along those bizarre geometric constructions that change along the scenes. Most anime that ignores the background people at least gives them some artistic representation, like gray spheres on top of cylinders. But in Monogatari there is absolutely nothing. People of no consequence to the story literally don’t exist on the screen. (Update: Senjougahara’s and Araragi’s parents are occasionally shown and talk, faceless).