Unreliable narrator

I was reading some discussion on an /a/ thread on why Hanekawa’s tits are so big in Kizumonogatari, and a couple of anons explaining how it’s because Araragi is an unreliable narrator (originally so in the light novels) and at this time he has crush on Hanekawa which distorts his perception of her.

This also explains how Araragi’s bathroom isn’t in reality some ridiculously large gothic cathedral as pictured in the anime, but just how Araragi sees it in his mind or tells to others in narration.

That’s really cool and all, but I tend to agree with another anon pointing out that people always jump into convenient explanations like “unreliable narrator” for specific parts in a story where it happens to fit, but ignore lack of consistency elsewhere in the story. I think the writers did think about this topic, but also largely went with the “rule of cool”.

It would be cool to do an unreliable narrator or some other quirk like that consistently throughout the story so that you could find logic in it. But I doubt the book author or the anime studio even tried to seriously make Araragi an unreliable narrator. Either they didn’t think about it at all, or they did it just for laughs, which is completely fine. For example if they limit the trope to what Araragi thinks about girls and are consistent about it, then it’s already very nice. Anyway, my impression is that Monogatari isn’t really that deep — it has a lot of interesting and good details, with a very consistent and unique style and setting, but it never delivers anything truly profound and has some ugly sides like Gaen Izuko and the time travel bullshit.

Again, I’m not sure if it even tries to be profound. I think I read somewhere that it’s written as a parody of harem/other anime cliches, and looking that way it actually seems a very successful attempt. I tend to agree parodies are a low form of art because they can’t even stand on their own, but mostly because of the cheap way they point out the odd points of the parodied material and make fun of them. The main tool there is exaggeration and comedy. But the way Monogatari goes about parodying is different — it mainly reverses expectations while staying close to the genre conventions. For example Araragi is very physical with the girls from the start and immediately starts to date one, which seems to contradict the whole harem thing but somehow doesn’t.

More importantly, Monogatari manages to have serious drama despite all the parody/comedy. Gintama alternates with serious stuff and comedy, but Monogatari kind of blends them into one. It’s a kind of proper “deconstruction” which starts from the core premise and rethinks the implications. Monogatari sets up the core premise in somewhat arbitrary ways and then extrapolates, which turns out to be comedic. Well, I don’t know if I’m actually describing Monogatari there, but rather something like it which I think would be good. It is one of my favorite things in fiction to have a serious story that has some bizarre aspect at it’s core that is played straight and perfectly consistently.