Bakemonogatari

orpheusx9 Jul 14, 2022

9

TL;DR - So good. Even better than the anime(s). With manga, there's something incredible about the way you can make use of art to tell the story. Lines and shading, angles and perspective, panel shapes and sizes and everything else available to still art. The Monogatari series has always been something of a bizarre enigma, combining your typical shounen fighting and fantasy element with hilarious puns and references and even better nods to real-life literary works and the supernatural. A lot of people have already seen the anime(s) and even read the light novels, but the manga rendition of this is just stellar. The artwork is beautiful, and some scenes are portrayed even better in the manga than did the anime simply because of the amount of excruciating detail that was put into it. The art is borderline surrealism in some panels, other times geometric. Really accurately portrays a lot of the original author's intended message. You also don't have the limitation of 24 mins per episode like anime, meaning that the pacing of the manga is second only to the light novel itself. For people who are already fans of the series, it's an enjoyable read and not at all boring to re-experience the whole story in this format. For people who've never heard of Monogatari before, it's a whimsical, philosophical, often-sexy, funny, and riveting story of supernatural thrills and literary puns.