Overview

Like all the entries in the Monogatari Series Second Season, Hanamonogatari only has one arc, Suruga Devil. However, this arc is different from all the other arcs in the series so far, with the exception of Nekomonogatari White, in that Koyomi Araragi is not the protagonist.

Instead, the protagonist of Hanamonogatari is Suruga Kanbaru. At first one might suspect that this change in protagonist would be a bad thing similar to how it was when Nekomonogatari White followed Tsubasa Hanekawa.

However, this isn’t the case. Kanbaru is actually a fairly similar character to Koyomi in many ways and so this swap feels like a natural progression for the storyline.

Suruga Devil

The Suruga Devil arc takes place after Koyomi, Senjougahara, and Hanekawa graduate from high school. Kanbaru is now a third-year student, and Koyomi’s “bigger younger sister,” Karen, is now a first-year student.

This arc continues Kanbaru’s story from the Suruga Monkey arc of Bakemonogatari. As you may recall, Kanbaru is in possession of a monkey’s paw, which is actually a devil’s hand.

One day Kanbaru hears a rumor from Ougi Oshino, who we’ve briefly met previously in the series, about a “devil” who is helping students with their problems.

I’ll pause the summary here to mention that previously Ougi was depicted as a female when Koyomi was the protagonist, but now that Kanbaru is the protagonist, Ougi is depicted as a male. Once we return to Koyomi as the protagonist, Ougi will also return to being female.

Anyway, Kanbaru investigates the devil who has been helping students with their problems only to find that it’s her old middle school basketball rival, Rouka Numachi. While Kanbaru has a devil’s arm, Rouka has various other devil parts she’s collected from listening to the misfortunes of others.

After their meeting, Kanbaru’s devil’s arm is gone, hinting that it was collected by Rouka as well. After this point, Rouka also disappears until Kanbaru goes searching for her in another nearby town.

It’s at this point that she meets up with Kaiki who is very much alive despite being attacked and left for dead at the end of the Hitagi End arc. Kaiki decides to help Kanbaru because he agreed to look after her if anything happened to her mother.

Kaiki gives Kanbaru a monkey’s (devil’s) head to use as bait to lure out Rouka once again since she’ll appear to collect it. By this point, Kanbaru has learned from Karen that Rouka actually committed suicide years earlier and so the Rouka Kanbaru met as the “devil” is a ghost.

However, unlike Mayoi who recognized she was a ghost and deliberately tried to get people not to follow her and become lost by telling them “don’t talk to me, please. I hate you,” Rouka doesn’t appear to realize that she’s dead.

Kanbaru and Rouka then decide to play 1 round of basketball for possession of all the devil parts. Kanbaru wins and Rouka moves on to the afterlife leaving the devil parts behind.

Conclusion

While Hanamonogatari is the only current anime entry of the Monogatari series to follow Kanbaru as the protagonist, and I don’t know what happens in the light novels that haven’t been adapted to anime yet, I hope that we get to see more of Kanbaru as the protagonist as the series goes on.

Not by this point in the series, but by the point that the series has been animated up to — Owarimonogatari Season 2 — we already know basically everything about Koyomi and how he’ll react in any given situation (I think).

Because of this, I think that transitioning to Kanbaru as the protagonist would be a good choice because it allows for the opportunity to have more protagonist character development without changing Koyomi from who he’s been built up to be.

This was Kanbaru’s first experience dealing with an apparition “on her own” similar to Koyomi’s first interaction with Shinobu. If we think of it like that, how Kanbaru responds to this situation should be the basis for how she’ll respond to any other situation going forward.

Like every other entry of the Monogatari Series so far, other than Nekomonogatari, Hanamonogatari is a 10/10. Next time I review an entry of the Monogatari series, we’ll be taking a look at Tsukimonogatari, the beginning of the “Final Season.”

Overview

The collection known as the Monogatari Series Second Season officially includes Nekomonogatari White through Koimonogatari. However, since we went over Nekomonogatari White with Nekomonogatari Black that one will be excluded from this post.

Another thing to note is that while Hanamonogatari is considered part of the second season, it is not a part of this collective and so will have its own post next time I do a Monogatari series review.

This means that in this post we’ll be taking a look at Kabukimonogatari, Otorimonogatari, Onimonogatari, and Koimonogatari which each only have one arc.

Kabukimonogatari

Kabukimonogatari includes the arc Mayoi Jiangshi in which Koyomi and Shinobu travel back in time and end up saving Mayoi Hachikuji from being killed by a truck 11 years before the start of the series.

While this originally seems like a good thing, it turns out that changing the past isn’t something you should do. Who could have guessed?

Because of their decision to save Mayoi, the current world is now overrun by vampires due to the vampire Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade (Shinobu). As it turns out, Mayoi is a pretty important character as an apparition so her removal changes the whole story.

One day Shinobu went missing and it was none other than Mayoi who first realized she was gone. Because of this, Koyomi was able to find Shinobu in time before she decided to destroy the world and make everyone into vampires.

Without Mayoi as an apparition, however, the world is dying, zombie-like vampires are everywhere, and Koyomi and Shinobu seemingly have no way to return to their normal timeline. However, a hero appears: Mayoi.

Mayoi, now an adult, has managed to survive the apocalypse and carries a message for Koyomi explaining to him how to get back to his own timeline. All he has to do is defeat the vampire Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade.

However, Koyomi never actually defeats her, and instead, she allows him and Shinobu to use her power to return to their own timeline. This is the first time we see the vampire Kiss-Shot recognize Koyomi’s relationship with her.

Otorimonogatari

The arc for Otorimonogatari is the Nadeko Medusa arc. As I mentioned in my review of Bakemonogatari, I actually like Nadeko’s character development over the course of this series despite most people finding her boring.

While in Nadeko Snake she was simply a boring girl in love, in Nadeko Medusa she becomes a yandere goddess.

Basically, in this arc, Nadeko believes she is making amends for killing a bunch of snakes to rid herself of the charm that was cast on her originally by finding the body of a snake god. However, what she really ends up doing is releasing the snake god which had been sealed away.

Nadeko’s body is then used by the apparition and she herself essentially becomes the goddess of the snake shrine and her hair turns into a bunch of snakes. When she’s confronted by Koyomi and Shinobu, she defeats them and plans to kill them because she’s jealous of their relationship, however, Senjougahara intervenes.

It’s then agreed that Nadeko will allow Koyomi and Senjougahara to graduate from high school before killing them both.

Onimonogatari

Onimonogatari includes the arc Shinobu Time which is about what happens when apparitions stop behaving as they should. In this arc, we are introduced to a black hole-like entity which, as it turns out, is a force that corrects the natural order of the world by destroying apparitions that no longer comply.

However, it doesn’t just destroy apparitions, but any living thing in its path. After seeing the entity, Shinobu recognizes it as something she saw 400 years earlier when she first came to Japan.

At this time, She was being revered as a goddess rather than feared as a vampire which is why the black hole appeared. In the end, it went away after Shinobu returned to being a vampire after all of the citizens who worshiped her were killed by it.

This time around, however, Shinobu is not the apparition who has strayed from her path; it’s Mayoi.

As you may recall from the Mayoi Snail arc of Bakemonogatari, Mayoi became a lost cow apparition who leads people astray due to her never making it to her mother’s house before she died. However, at the end of that arc, she made it to her destination and therefore is no longer lost.

Further, since that point, she has no longer led anyone astray which means she isn’t fulfilling her duty as a lost cow apparition.

In the end, Mayoi decides that the only way to save everyone else is for her to disappear. Rather than being destroyed by the black hole, however, she chooses to pass on to the afterlife and thereby cease being an apparition wandering the Earth.

Basically, this arc is why we can’t have nice things. Mayoi becomes a dependable character who we’re used to seeing around, and then the next thing you know she has to disappear forever otherwise everyone else will die.

Koimonogatari

The arc for Koimonogatari is Hitagi End. Despite the names of the arcs not matching up, Hitagi end is actually the continuation of the Nadeko Medusa arc in the same way that the Shinobu Time arc was the continuation of Mayoi Jiangshi.

This arc takes place after Senjougahara convinces Nadeko to wait until after graduation to kill Koyomi, Shinobu, and Senjougahara herself.

Senjougahara contacts best girl Kaiki and hires him to work his magic as a con man and deceive Nadeko into believing that both Koyomi and Senjougahara died in an accident. In the end, Nadeko sees right through Kaiki, but as a master con man, he has a backup plan.

During the Nadeko Snake arc from Bakemonogatari, you may recall there was a closet in Nadeko’s room which she refuses to let Koyomi look inside. It turns out that inside the closet is a bunch of manga that Nadeko drew and doesn’t want anyone to know about.

Kaiki learns of this and uses it to his advantage by telling Nadeko that if she doesn’t return home and stop being a goddess, her parents will eventually open her closet and discover her secret of wanting to be a manga artist.

While most of us realize that her parents discovering she wanted to be a manga artist isn’t really a big deal (especially since she’s a goddess now), we have to remember that Nadeko is still only about 14 years old. And, like many children, she doesn’t quite understand the severity of various things.

In her mind, having her parents, or anyone for that matter, see the manga she drew is so embarrassing that she would rather give up being a goddess than allow that to happen. It’s kind of like how the girls in Mitsuboshi Colors see a dog getting loose in school as a more important case than murder.

Due to the end of this arc, I think many people still believe that Nadeko is a boring character, but I don’t see her that way even once she goes back to being a normal girl. Instead, I see a character who’s actually believable.

The priorities of teenagers don’t make sense; they think being embarrassed is the end of the world. Nadeko acts her age and that’s exactly why I like her as a character.

Conclusion

Overall the Monogatari Series Second Season is a 10/10 even if I include Nekomonogatari White into it. The arcs are mostly about Mayoi and Nadeko, two characters who I love and so why wouldn’t it be perfect?

The Mayoi arcs “hit me right in the feels” as the kids would say and the Nadeko arcs were just enjoyable to watch because of yandere snake goddess Nadeko.

Next time I write about the Monogatari series we’ll be looking at Hanamonogatari which will probably be shorter because it only has one arc.

Overview

Nekomonogatari is split into two parts, Black and White. Nekomonogatari Black is part of what is considered the “first season” of the Monogatari series along with Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari (and technically Kizumonogatari).

However, Nekomonogatari White is part of what is collectively called the Monogatari Series Second Season along with Kabukimonogatari, Otorimonogatari, Onimonogatari, and Koimonogatari. Hanamonogatari is also part of the second season of the Monogatari series but is not part of the collective known as the Monogatari Series Second Season.

Since all of this can get a bit confusing, I decided to make it a bit easier by just reviewing both parts of Nekomonogatari together rather than reviewing White with the Monogatari Series Second Season. Black and White are related to each other and act as the bridge between the two seasons.

Nekomonogatari Black is the final arc of the first season and Nekomonogatari White is the first arc of the second season.

Nekomonogatari Black

Nekomonogatari Black only includes one arc, Tsubasa Family, and chronologically comes just before the events of Bakemonogatari.

This arc is about Tsubasa Hanekawa who we’ve known since the beginning of the series. I think she’s actually the first character introduced to us other than the protagonist, Koyomi.

As I may have mentioned before, Hanekawa is possibly my least favorite character in the series so I don’t actually like this arc as much as most others. Also, because it chronologically comes so early in the series, Koyomi and Shinobu don’t quite get along yet.

In this arc, Hanekawa is taken over by a cursed cat apparition resulting from stress. The main source of Hanekawa’s stress is her family. At home, she sleeps in the hallway, without a room of her own, and is generally excluded from being a part of a family with her adoptive parents.

Each night, the cursed cat takes over Hanekawa’s body and goes on a rampage, attacking people mostly at random in an attempt to relieve stress. In the end, Koyomi and Shinobu are able to temporarily subdue the apparition, and Hanekawa is left with no memories of the events.

Nekomonogatari White

Like Nekomonogatari Black, Nekomonogatari White also follows Hanekawa. However, while in Black, Koyomi was still the protagonist, this time Hanekawa is the protagonist which doesn’t make it any better.

Nekomonogatari White also only covers one arc, Tsubasa Tiger.

The Tsubasa Tiger arc picks up where the Tsubasa Family arc left off in that it continues the story of Hanekawa and her family. This time, Hanekawa comes across a tiger apparition instead of a cursed cat.

The tiger apparition first causes Hanekawa’s house to burn down, then starts burning down everywhere else she happened to spend the night afterward starting with the cram school Meme Oshino once used as a hideout.

After the abandoned cram school, however, Hanekawa had spent the night at Senjougahara’s house and then the Araragi house. Because of this, Hanekawa decides she needs to confront and defeat the tiger apparition to save her friends’ houses from being destroyed.

While the cursed cat appeared because of Hanekawa’s stress from home, the tiger appears because of her jealousy of the families and homes of others. In the end, both the apparitions Hanekawa was afflicted with are similar to the weight crab which once afflicted Senjougahara.

All Hanekawa really has to do is accept her own feelings, but in the end, Koyomi comes to the rescue and once again suppresses the apparitions within Hanekawa.

Conclusion

While I think the Monogatari series overall is a 10, if I had to rate just the Nekomonogatari parts I would give them a 9/10. Specifically Nekomonogatari Black is a 9, I think that White is worse, but we’ll stick with 9 as the rating for them both combined.

The fact that these arcs are focused on my least favorite character doesn’t help their rating, and on top of that, Nekomonogatari White is from the perspective of my least favorite character. Despite this, however, I still love the series and so can’t really give it a bad rating.

The next review will cover the Monogatari Series Second Season (excluding Nekomonogatari White since that was covered here). Hanamonogatari will also be excluded from that review and will be featured on its own afterward.

Overview

Nisemonogatari is the second entry in the Monogatari series following Bakemonogatari. There are only two arcs in this entry, Karen Bee and Tsukihi Phoenix, compared to the five arcs in Bakemonogatari. That said, it’s still 11 episodes long.

This entry in the series focuses on the younger sisters of the protagonist, Koyomi. Karen and Tsukihi Araragi are two middle school girls who go around solving the problems of their classmates and refer to themselves as the Fire Sisters.

Karen is the tomboy who usually wears a tracksuit with shorts and Tsukihi is the more feminine of the two who tends to wear yukata. They each wear one of a matching set of hair clips that look like sunny-side-up eggs.

As with my review of Bakemonogatari, this post will not shy away from spoilers.

Karen Bee

The Karen Bee arc takes up the first seven out of 11 episodes in Nisemonogatari. This arc deals with apparitions that affect people solely because they think they’re being affected; kind of like the placebo effect of apparitions.

We’re also introduced to one of the most hated, then beloved characters of the series, Kaiki Deishuu. Kaiki is an apparition expert, sort of like Oshino Meme who helped Koyomi in the past. However, Kaiki is a self-proclaimed con-man rather than a real professional.

He takes money from middle schoolers in return for “charms” which are more like curses. He then charges a fee to those affected by the charms in order to reverse them.

After Karen is affected by a Bee apparition resulting from one of these charms when she went to confront Kaiki, Koyimi also confronts him and learns that he actually didn’t do anything to Karen or the rest of the middle schoolers. The charms, curses, or apparitions they were experiencing were all in their heads.

This doesn’t mean they were harmless, however. While Karen’s bee apparition was the result of her believing that she had been cursed, the apparition itself was still real.

I liked this arc particularly because of the moral at the end which is that even if something isn’t real, a person’s beliefs can make it “real” which is what makes it dangerous. It’s kind of like conspiracy theories; they aren’t real, but if enough people believe them they can cause problems.

Tsukihi Phoenix

In the Tsukihi Phoenix arc, we are introduced to yet another apparition specialist in the form of Yozuru and her familiar Yotsugi. While Oshino specializes in keeping the peace between humans and apparitions, and Kaiki specializes in being an apparition con-man, Yozuru specializes in exterminating immortal apparitions.

Because of this, Koyomi originally believes she’s appeared to kill both himself and Shinobu, however, it turns out they’re actually there to kill Koyomi’s younger sister, Tsukihi.

Like Mayoi and her first arc, Mayoi Snail, it turns out that Tsukihi is an apparition herself rather than being affected by an apparition. However, unlike Mayoi, Tsukihi doesn’t realize that she’s an apparition and doesn’t necessarily cause humans harm in any way.

As a phoenix apparition, Tsukihi can completely heal from any injury, but other than that she’s still basically a normal girl, which is why the need to exterminate her didn’t make much sense to me. She can reincarnate but doesn’t retain any memories from her previous lives.

She’s not human, but it’s not like she’s taking the place of the real Tsukihi in the Araragi family. She’s more like an adopted family member than anything else.

In the end, Koyomi and Shinobu are able to stop Yozuru and Yotsugi, mainly due to the fact that Koyomi doesn’t care whether Tsukihi is his real sister or not. As far as he’s concerned, she’s his family and nothing is going to change that.

Unfortunately for this arc, it’s the home of the infamous toothbrush scene which people use to judge the series as a whole, but other than that I think that it’s actually a good, wholesome story about family.

Conclusion

As with Bakemonogatari, this entry of the Monogatari series is also a 10/10. Also, while the main focus of the arcs in Nisemonogatari was on the Fire Sisters, the real important characters to pay attention to moving forward are Kaiki, Yozuru, and Yotsugi.

By the end of Nisemonogatari, Kaiki is still the most hated character in the series, but this will eventually change and he’ll earn the title of “best girl” by many in the Monogatari community. But before we get to Kaiki becoming “best girl,” we’ll be taking a look at Nekomonogatari Black and White next.

Overview

Although I’ve already written about the Monogatari series as a whole and included it in my Top 10 Anime post, I’ve decided to also write about each part individually. These posts will probably be done in release order starting with this one, Bakemonogatari.

Bakemonogatari includes five arcs and is made up of 15 episodes. As with all the other parts of the series, Bakemonogatari is animated by Shaft, the same studio that made Madoka Magica.

I’ll mention now that these individual part reviews will most likely contain more spoilers than the review of the overall series or the entry in my Top 10 post.

Hitagi Crab

The first arc, Hitagi Crab, contains the first two episodes of Bakemonogatari. As the start of the series, this is where we’re introduced to our main character, Koyomi Araragi, and the first of what I’ll refer to as the “Monogatari girls,” Hitagi Senjougahara.

Each arc typically centers around a girl who has had a run-in with an apparition, and Koyomi is typically the one who helps them. While Senjougahara is one of the main characters of the series going forward, I wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s the female lead; that would be Shinobu Oshino.

While this arc is short, it sets up the general idea of the rest of the series. When someone is affected by an apparition, it’s typically caused by their own mindset about something.

In Senjougahara’s case, she wanted to forget about the emotional weight she was carrying, so she ended up losing her physical weight too.

Mayoi Snail

The second arc of Bakemonogatari introduces my favorite character of the series, Mayoi Hachikuji. The Mayoi Snail arc is slightly different from the other arcs in Bakemonogatari in that Mayoi isn’t the one affected by an apparition, she is the apparition.

While this arc isn’t really anything special on its own, Mayoi’s character is one of the best reoccurring characters of the series. She fills many different roles as the series goes on, one of which is bringing comedy into the anime.

However, she isn’t simply there for comedic effect. Despite still being a child, she serves as a mentor character for our protagonist, Koyomi. Technically, if she were still alive she would be older than he is so she has more experience with how the world works.

Out of all the characters in the series, I’d argue that Mayoi is the one Koyomi can depend upon the most. Senjougahara, Hanekawa, Kanbaru, and Shinobu are all good choices as well, but Mayoi is always around at the right time with the right piece of information. She’s like Koyomi’s personal informant.

Suruga Monkey

The third arc, Suruga Monkey, introduces the character Suruga Kanbaru. Kanbaru is Koyomi and Senjougahara’s junior who’s the star of the girl’s basketball team.

Kanbaru’s apparition issue is one of mistaken identity. While it appears she’s originally being affected by a monkey’s paw, it turns out to be something much more severe that works in a similar manner.

While a monkey’s paw grants wishes in a way contradictory to how the wisher wanted, the rainy devil grants the dark wishes that people normally keep suppressed. The outcomes of these dark wishes tend to look like the outcomes of wishes made on monkeys’ paws.

This arc introduces what I believe is the first action scene of the series. The bloody and over-the-top fight between Koyomi and the rainy devil (pictured below) is typical of the kinds of action scenes we get throughout the rest of the Monogatari series.

Nadeko Snake

The Nadeko Snake arc introduces one of the most underrated characters of the whole series, Nadeko Sengoku. Nadeko is a friend of Koyomi’s younger sisters who has a crush on Koyomi.

At this point in the series, I can understand why not many people like Nadeko. She’s a pretty boring girl who just wants to be noticed by the boy she likes. However, I do think her character becomes a lot more interesting as the series progresses such as in the Nadeko Medusa arc later on.

This arc looks at what happens to those who attempt to get rid of an apparition in the wrong way. Nadeko has a snake curse placed on her by some of her classmates and she attempted to lift it herself.

Unfortunately for her, the place where she attempted to lift the curse has become somewhat cursed itself and so this just made her curse even more severe.

At the end of this arc one of the two snake apparitions that were affecting Nadeko escapes and will return to affect the person who originally planted the curse. This knowledge is something that Koyomi struggles with, but we don’t necessarily know why he’s so upset about this until a later part, Kizumonogatari, which is a prequel to Bakemonogatari.

With the exception of the first arc, Hitagi Crab, not fully explaining Koyomi’s background, this is the first instance I can think of where Koyomi’s character traits don’t fully make sense until a later part of the series. The fact that the different parts and even the arcs within them aren’t in chronological order is an important storytelling device used in the series.

Tsubasa Cat

Unfortunately for Bakemonogatari, it ends on a low note. Tsubasa Cat is my least favorite arc of Bakemonogatari in part because it’s centered around one of my least favorite characters of the series, Tsubasa Hanekawa.

A further issue with this arc is that in many cases only the first two of the five episodes are included since the third through fifth episodes are ONA’s rather than being broadcast with the rest of Bakemonogatari.

Hanekawa as a character has been around since the first arc and her relationship with Koyomi is one that takes a long time to be fully explained. Other than this arc, Hanekawa’s story is also told in Nekomonogatari Black and White and begins in Kizumonogatari.

Tsubasa Cat, like the other Tsubasa arcs, mainly focuses on apparitions dealing with stress due to family issues and issues at home. The issues at the Hanekawa household are first hinted at in the Mayoi Snail arc when Hanekawa is able to see Mayoi, who can only be seen by those who don’t want to return home.

This intertwining of various arcs is fairly common throughout the rest of the series. Some arcs are going on simultaneously and so we see things from multiple perspectives, while others simply foreshadow or reference other parts of the series.

Conclusion

In the end, Bakemonogatari is a 10/10, as is the Monogatari series as a whole. Next time we’ll be looking at the second part of the series, Nisemonogatari, which includes the arcs Karen Bee and Tsukihi Phoenix.