Sakurada Reset (Light Novel) - Recommendations

• Vol: 1
• 2010

A few months after he first met Mayoi Hachikuji, Araragi set out to deliver something to the young lady. Unable to find her, Araragi gives up and heads home and realises that he has not done any of his summer assignments even though today is the last day of summer break. With help from Shinobu, Koyomi travels back to the past so that he can finish them, but instead, they end up travelling back a full eleven years! The current date is May 13th. It is the day before that Mother's Day when Mayoi left to go see her mother. Koyomi realises that he has an opportunity to save Mayoi! But is he aware of what may result when you change the past like that?

• Vol: 1
• 2014

Just when we thought the darkness menacing the town had been identified, named, and tamed, clear and unclear mysteries of seasons past looming or surfacing, then resolving, not without tears, not without bittersweetness, of course, but satisfyingly, in a tripartite finale, all loose ends tied up into, or at least with, a bow… The End Tale continues—if only for one last time, in a bonus stage for the ages, as our softie of a protagonist who wished for all parties involved, including himself, maturely enough, to end up happy, sees his reflected image freeze in a mirror and regretfully, regrettably, reaches for it to find himself through the looking glass.

• Vol: 1
• 2011

After time travelling to the past with Shinobu Oshino, Koyomi Araragi meets Mayoi Hachikuji and returns her backpack, which she left in Koyomi's room. That is when they witness something unidentifiable - something that can only be expressed as the 'darkness.' Koyomi, instinctively feeling danger, sits Mayoi on his bicycle and attempts to escape, but the ever-elusive 'darkness' tries to swallow the two of them. They barely manage to escape with the help of the young shikigami girl, Yotsugi Ononoki, and they evacuate into the ruins of the cram school. There, Shinobu tells him that she encountered the 'darkness' about 400 years ago. Then a woman named Izuko Gaen, who says she knows Meme Oshino, explains to them the nature of the 'darkness'... and Koyomi has to face Mayoi's tragic fate.

• Vol: 1
• 2011

Our sorry hero, his reformed girlfriend, and the amnesiac class president have all graduated from their high school out in the boondocks, and self-described Sapphist and ex-basketball ace Kanbaru, retired by reason of an “injury,” is starting her senior year. Bereft of the company of her beloved mentors, the only other person around her with any working knowledge of aberrations the junior Ougi Oshino, apparently a relative of the Hawaiian-shirted folklorist, she feels a bit alone and blue, and sick with dread that the devil residing in her left arm courtesy of the Monkey’s Paw might act up again while she sleeps. Investigating a rumor that she fears might lead back to her, the former star ends up peering into an abyss of negativity called Roka—a “wax flower” to take the characters’ meaning. Trapped in a pit the like of which could only be escaped by the one girl who was able to pull off slam-dunks in her basketball nationals, can the penitent Kanbaru, however, still be aggressive?

• Vol: 5; Ch: 36
• 2014 - 2016

"If you could redo your high school life one more time, what would you do?" A mysterious power, "Syndrome," which is contracted simply by enrolling into Wazuki High School. Due to that power, Yokosuka Hiroto had his time forcefully rewound three years back. Without knowing the circumstances, nor who's ability was responsible, what he was left with were merely faint memories. In this situation the goal Hiroto set for himself was: To make these three blank years into the best high school experience!?

• Vol: 1
• 2013

Calendar Tale, narrated by our titular hero, sends us to various earlier points in the story where certain events had yet to occur—when, for instance, the shady “expert” Oshino was still in town, and the ex-legendary vampire Shinobu hadn’t tired of sulking in a corner. Weaving in a motif of ways, paths, roads, and streets—walks of life—the nostalgic vignettes hark back to the “case files” feel of the series-launching Monster Tale, but with a twist. Not all oddities are supernatural: stones and flowers; sand and water; the wind and the tree can just be plain weird without being aberrations. Say hello from the future to class president among class presidents Hanekawa, acid-tongued girlfriend Senjogahara, cheeky lost child Hachikuji, smutty athlete Kanbaru, pathologically shy Sengoku, and justice-loving martial artist Karen, young ladies who love to make our young man sweat.

• Vol: 3
• 2013 - 2014

Before we witness the series’ climactic showdown in the third volume of the End Tale—each part of which forms its own cohesive whole—narrator Araragi wrestles with a crucial bit of history that had turned him into the loner we met at the very beginning, who opined that friendships only lowered his intensity as a human. What initiates his pilgrim’s progress of a reckoning is his first encounter, at school, with the mysterious freshman Ogi Oshino, self-described niece of the equally enigmatic aberration expert Mèmè, and the book’s opening chapter is a harrowing standalone novella of a who-dunit involving a locked room of sorts. Our increasingly well-adjusted hero kept on beingdecent at one thing even when he was just hanging on, but this forte, an unlikely aptitude for math, of all things, becomes the focus of a cheating scandal and a web of recollections that forces him to come to terms with, what do you know, his capacity to connect to people.

• Vol: 1
• 2011

Nadeko encounters a giant snake who claims to be a deity named Kuchinawa. Kuchinawa promises Nadeko that he would grant her wish if she aids him in the search of his object of worship. Little does Nadeko know that obtaining the object of worship will cost her more than what she expected. Koyomi tries to convince Nadeko to let go of the object of worship, but its too late, and Nadeko swallows the object and becomes a snake apparition! To make things worse, now Nadeko wants to kill Koyomi and Shinobu Oshino!

• Vol: 1
• 2011

On January 1st, Hitagi Senjyogahara calls her nemesis, the con-artist Deishu Kaiki, to request his services. "There is someone I d like you to deceive." The request is a bitter one for her to make, but one that would save her and her dear Koyomi Araragi from a "death sentence." Kaiki starts to research his target, Nadeko Sengoku, the junior high school girl who became a god of North Shirahebi Shrine. As Kaiki investigates her background, he finds her secret, which she has never told anyone, including her beloved Koyomi Araragi. Can Kaiki save Hitagi and Koyomi before time is up?!

• Vol: 1
• 2012

Koyomi Araragi is studying hard in preparation for his college entrance exams when he begins to notice something very strange: his reflection no longer appears in a mirror, a characteristic of a true vampire. Worried about the state of his body, he enlists the help of the human-like doll Yotsugi Ononoki and her master Yozuru Kagenui, an immortal oddity specialist. Quickly realizing what is wrong with him, Yozuru gives him two choices: either abstain from using the vampiric abilities he received from Shinobu Oshino, or lose his humanity forever.