You should (Not) watch Monogatari 

Monogatari is my shit. It's a series that actually makes me think about and pay attention to what the characters are saying. One thing that I think helps with that is the active distance I place between myself and Araragi. He's not like other main characters. Whether it be the self-insert protags of certain series or characters that you're supposed to at least see yourself in, to some extent. Araragi is not that at all. While you can feel the emotions that he feels in some scenes, it almost feels more like connecting to another person than what you typically do with a main character. It's just one of the many things that makes Monogatari different from other stories

“Do I mention the scene with tooth secks with his sister” Then, I kid you not, my mom walked in the room. 😂

You're actually the reason I started monogatari. I saw one of your tomboy tuesday posts on twitter where you used Kanbaru as the picture, reversed image searched for it, found out it was from monogatari and without any knowledge about what it was decided to watch it.

all i know about this series is Kanbaru is a cutie and a friend of mine loves it

Dang it, I've only seen Monogatari through once. I've been meaning to watch it again for the last 4 years. With the new season coming out, it seems like the best time to watch it again.

After I finished monogatari, I could not watch just any other show for like half a year. I craved something else like it and I just couldn't find it. Now I rewatch it like every year and I keep finding something new and interesting every single time. There's truly nothing like it in the world. And man, just a single episode (just a single scene even) of the new season made me appreciate all the Nadeko arcs so much more

This video encapsulates all the reasons why I love this show so much. Cheers.

8:29 The Hanekawa mosaic's eyes being made up of close-ups of eyes is _so_ fucking cursed

For me at least, I'd sum up monogatari as an anime about growing up from childhood to adulthood. Characters that first look well rounded are in fact flawed, delusional liars, core ideas of the protagonist shatter as he realizes things can't go his way, he has to learn and embrace his mistakes and flaws to find a way out of things, realising in the process that you can't just fuck around and expect consequences to be non existant. In this anime every character also has to get their shit together and deal with the stuff they've always pretended wasn't there in order to grow past it and prospere in life. I watched this show in high school and man was it an eye opening lesson on life, this will forever remain my favorite show too

I've always called Monogatari a "button-pushing machine". You HAVE to go in wanting to be disgusted, horrified, titilated, angered, bored, shocked, confused and more or else it's going to be a bad time

At this point, I feel like I understand where all those girls Cultured Crusader dated in college are coming from. I get a little excited when I see him, but then I see the short length that he has to offer and then feel nothing but profound disappointment.

Don't forget the music... unforgettable tunes

I started this series when I was around 50 anime complete also, but I had paused it around after Nisemonogatari. Really glad I came back to it a few months later because it's been my favorite series ever since. Totally agree with what you said about recommending it to others. There's such a high benchmark for getting through this series, and the material in it definitely isn't suitable for friends that just watch shonen like most of mine. I'm just glad this series introduced me to Akiyuki Shinbou and his schizo directing style, excited for the new season(s)!

3:24 Of all the Monogatari-isms, this muffled, almost ASMR-like inner voice might just be my favorite. I don't know why or how, but it adds _so_ much to the series. In fact, it's so good that I've been Pavlovian conditioned into loving it unconditionally. Mushoku Tensei's 2nd season has a character who, constantly wearing a mask, has a voice like this all the time. It's no particular artistic choice behind it. She just has a mask, and it being muffled is realistic. But I don't care. There's just that je ne sais quoi goodness to it.

That philosopher of the french persuasion joke and attached meme made for a nice subtle joke about a certain aspect of this anime.

Holy shit! You actually did make that Monogatari video. I was trying to be funny, last video.

I remember getting into Monogatari because of an amv using Into The Labyrinth by Kraddy, it was just so amazing looking, and i liked the design of the characters, and i think because i just watched The World God Only Knows, which i believe do have the same designers?? Or just have very similarities. Once i went down the Monogatari rabbit hole i just went deeper and deeper. And it was just when Second Season was starting to air, so that was like 11 years ago, which dang. And i have mostly been on the internet using this name for majority of my accounts cuz i just really liked Araragi, i dont necessarily live and breathe Monogatari, but it is always on my radar of like having to get into when new things come up which is why for me as an anime only Off and Monster season was my hype for the year. I am collecting the manga as well, and i have the light novels, i did read Kizu right before the movies came out as that was the first light novel released.

It's about depression and overcoming your own inner trauma. That's it. That's the one sentence answer. I could expand on that, but we'd be going into philosophical pontification at that point.

Great video, glad you agree the toothbrush scene is truly CINEMA

I watched monogatari before learning Japanese, and got pretty confused with the fast paced roughly translated puns (translating them is hard, and English being my second language also made it harder). 3 years later after learning Japanese intensively, rewatching the show was such a better experience, I liked it the first time, but understanding triple layers of puns made me love it so much more. Also made me pity the headaches of the translators, as its really a mission impossible. The lightnovels were also a treat to read in Japanese, although quite challenging because of the long winding monologues.

Very accurate video. I happened to stumble upon it one day while looking for a show i saw an ad for that looked interesting and it caught my eye, then i found out it is semi famous. Definitely S tier editing in this show and although i dont get most of the language stuff they more often than not have plots and jokes that have double meanings which carry over language/culture barriers (i loved the manga artist arc). I finished the anime and was so excited but had no one to talk about it to because theres no way i could recommend it to anyone if i wanted them to respect me as a person

Happy to see you talk about the series, i love all your references to it in your other videos. Honestly though, i could listen to people discussing their interpretations and their appreciation of the series for hours on end. My journey started with a picture of the strangest looking girl(?) on the poster of upcoming series on MAL, Ougi & the poster for Owarimonogatari S1 was the first step into my favorite story of all time.

You know you are a monogatari fan if you pause the video to read up the high IQ meme @8:41 out of reflex, even though you already know it by heart.

Monogatari is an almost impossible recommendation, but every time i find someone that watched the entire thing i'm really happy about it. Because if takes a great commitment to watch the entire thing, and uf you do yo are gonna love it.

I think your comment on the "fanservice" actually being more for the characters than the fans is on-point. Don't get me wrong, I'm certain plenty of people got a bit too much enjoyment out of some scenes, but with just how much there is and how wide-ranging it all is, there is absolutely no way that all the perversions are actually meant to "service" every fan. It's more a reflection of how the characters see the world and themselves; once we see the story from a perspective other than Koyomi's, the perversion is noticeably lessened, which makes sense, since Koyomi Araragi is a hormonal teenager trying to navigate a confusing world. And this isn't just for his own satisfaction either, he often doesn't view his perversion as a good thing. Remember in the first movie, on his way back home from buying some raunchy magazines, he basically tried to unalive himself because he couldn't accept the fact that he had just made his first real friend, only to immediately sexualize her (this is a bit more clear in the Kizu novel, to be fair). As he makes more friends and develops genuine love for others, a lot of the series is really just him getting out of his own head. Of course, the fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realize that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. And yes by the way, I DO have a Shinobu Oshino tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. She's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.

As a 34 year old plumber i agree, this Anime is definitely worth watching

Why does bro sound like Garrus over here? What a g

I really like this series because it's smart, funny and beautifully animated, but like you said: I can't recommend it to anyone. When I was younger, I could tolerate the fanservice just fine because even as a female anime watcher, I just expected it. But now that I'm older, it honestly feels like a dirty secret that I like it and a lot of scenes gross me out. I obviously don't want to recommend it to any of my female friends since none of us what to watch little girls being touched. Plus at my age, if the male friends told me they liked the fanservice, I don't think I could stop myself from being a bit creeped out. That's not even mentioning the JP wordplay and quick flashes of text on screen that I cannot ignore and MUST pause to read every time lol. Not sure if anyone else is as intense about not missing anything as me, but sometimes I feel like I'm watching the show frame by frame. Most people I know watch anime to zone out and watch something cool/flashy after work and this show is just not conducive to that at all. That all said, I'm still excited to watch the Off & Monster season (internally cringing at the expected fanservice but I'll push through). I can't wait to see Ononoki and Ougi again! 🥰

Hey I loved your video this is the first time someone explains monogatari the way I feel about it in every Point. Respect. Please make more Monogatari videos 👌

Some of the fan service is service for the creator which he's been up front about.

yo thanks for the content dog, keep up the stuff. Also those longer videos are really awesome!

Thank you for putting into words the jumbled ramblings that I had in my head every time I thought of recommending it to my friends

thank you. had you not posted this video, i would have spent my weekend absolutely miserable.

Shinobu's "AH" will never not be funny to me. Also toothbrush is ironic and the characters realize they are far too ok with it for them to still hide behind the shield of irony, which is in itself, ironic, absolute cinema.

The Dostoyevsky reference both caught me off guard and sent me to the stratosphere 😂😂

"Still amazing despite the degeneracy" Nah, lets be honest with ourselves, it's amazing because the degeneracy. Plus Shinobu best girl

About the healing, we literally see it happen at the beginning of kisu where he is burning in the sun but regenerating as fast as he is burning

You seem very lively. What, did something good happen?

Always great to see Monogatari getting the attention it deserves. I recall watching Bake and Nise as they aired and being mind blown, never having seen anything like it. Earlier this year I managed to collect the entire series on Blu Ray and it was a joy to rewatch it in its entirety along with a few of the “OAV” series that never made it to streaming. So pleased to have physical copies of the entire collection. Really looking forward to the new season.

I love this show. The run time I have is at least 3 time longer than it "needs" to be. I would run the show back, rewatch a scene 4-5 times because I don't speak Japanese, so I'd read subtitles, and then reread them, and then watch what was going on on screen and try to parse out the underlying subtext that wouldn't be completely evident the first couple times thru. The dialogue at times is rapid fire, and extremely dense. It's definitely not a turn brain off and popcorn kind of show. The characters actually grow as the story moves along and you might just feel a bit of investment with that growth. I need to go back and rewatch, and catch myself back up with this one.

Brotherman this is the first time I've seen my opinion on the watch order shared online. Idgaf how the author originally intended it, Kizu wound up being placed in a decent spot despite, or because of whatever went down in production and I'd say Shaft knew what they were doing for this one. I'm on rewatch number 6 atm. I know I know, it's still pretty light. But I'll get back on it after the new season is over.

You actually got everything. This series is really hard to recommend but it is my favorite anime of all time

5:33 the original author of the novel said that he originally created it just to see how characters might interact with each other. He never intended for it to become a complete story let alone getting an anime adaptation.

Monogatari made me realize I really like weird shit in anime. I watched it first when i was 15 and didn't really understand much but i was captivated by just the visuals alone, now I'm a little older and feel like I get the characters more and can appreciate the writing more. What's funny is that even though this show shows so much fan service I've never really felt any sexual feelings for these characters. It just feels wrong to think of them that way which is, I think in a weird way, a testament to the quality of the character writing. After I watched Monogatari I had to see more shows like it so then I went to other shows like Madoka, Eva and eventually Revue Starlight which is now my favourite anime. I also started reading other Nisioisin works like Kubikiri Cycle (which is also really good). I am really happy I watched Monogatari and don't think I will ever forget the feelings it gave me while watching.

this is one of the best mono rundowns i’ve ever seen on youtube and you deserve 3 bajillion subscribers

I've had it in my drive for a years but have to been to scared to start it lol. I'm still in the 13 Episode/24-26 Episode territory. Anything more is too big a commitment.

Glad you finally made your case for this series, Crusader. I've been watching since the beginning of your channel and knew how much you loved it by the memes, so i was always interested to hear your take. You've convinced me to give it a go, thanks

I've had Monogatari sitting on a drive for about 10 years along with watch order recommendations (up-to-date back then). Maybe I'll get around to it one of these days...

I watched the monogatari series, because I'd seen a short clip of Hanekawa as kuroneko and I'm pulled in the rabbit hole. There's no best wifu, because all of them are charming in their own way, though I love Hanekawa the most because of her role in Kizumonogatari.

8:45 perfect. This video is perfect, it’s literally everything I’ve always said, thought or didn’t even know I felt about Monogatari. But that specific sentence is the reason I live for Monogatari. I’ve never been able to experience my feelings about the “fanservice” as clear as you did, and yours is the best way to put it. It’s not serving the fans, it’s not made for us - it’s made for the characters. And when you see it that way, it’s just genius.

After watching Bake centuries ago, I knew, this one will be on my top spot, maybe not forever, but for a very long time. The Art, the characters, the quirks, the suspense, the dialogues, the depths of philosophical standpoints, an actual romantic love story, where i still get shivers watching the forest scene. It is and it was a highlight for my anime history and I hope there is way more to come. I just love it.

I have the entire light novel series in both english and japanese (physical copies for the japanese). It is far and away my favorite series. I'm still learning japanese and want to read through the original japanese eventually.

The best way I have found to watch Monogatari is by reading the light novel watching a few episodes then reading more. You can also watch ahead a bit then catch back up in the novel. Eithier way foreknowledgw is the best weapon to weild while watching this show. Both mediums enriches the experience of the other. Dont get me wrong the novels aren't any easier to digest then the anime. One of my slowest and most frustrating reads was the first book. But once you get your first bitter taste and start to understand the flow you will be blazing through the next ones.

I watched Bake a few years ago without knowing anything about it and thought it was kinda weird and did not continue. But last year I had the courage to start it again once more and I am glad I did. Hanekawa best girl 🍷🍷

Man. Your trip with anime felt a lot like mine until I found this series, but I'm an old guy so I really didn't have access to a millon series. I watched Speed Racer and Battle of the Planet as a kid and then got in to Robotech which then led me to going to a Japanese video store and rending unsubbed stuff or getting it from friends of friends on tape of 4th or 5th generation. Did all the Pioneer stuff in the 90s and was even curating my taste then. Honestly I don't remember watch I watched in the 2000's I still read Ah! My Goddess and some other manga but for anime I don't think I really watched anything. Maybe Bleach for a while or Naruto, but I didn't really get into it. Then I kept seeing a gif of a girl making weird erotic faces as someone's avatar and for some reason that piqued my curiosity enough to find the source and I managed to find Bakemonogatari on Amazon Prime. From the first story I was hooked. It had a lot of talking but it looked beautiful and the music was incredible. It didn't seem to talk down to me but engaged me for some reason. While I love the series, I don't love all the arcs equally, but it is one of my favorites. I think Frieren is on a nice shelf next to it.

Hanekawa only knows what she knows, and that is everything. Also I know those feels of trying to read the subs while watching the show. It's one of the reasons why I am so confused as to why there isn't a dub. They even got separate voice actors from the anime industry to do the audiobooks. It's literally like 2 steps away.

"Back when I had just dip my toes into disappointing my parents" is such a crazy start🤣

One of the best moments when watching this series is when you realize that Araragi is an unreliable narrator.

Someone said to try the 3 ep rule with this show. Drop it if you find it boring. Comeback to it when you’re ready to immerse yourself. Thats what I did and I’ve love it ever since.

Many are called, few are chosen Monogatari must be earned

Ahhh, the Monogatari vid! God bless! 🙏🙏🙏

That’s why I’m so happy Off season started

I actually just finished Monogatari, and omfg the final 2 arcs are some of the best arcs in fiction

"Back when I just dipped my toes into disappointing my parents" goes hard.

It’s a deeply psychological story exploring themes of suppression repression and projection and how we deal with it growing up. It made me think enormously about how people develop mentally and sexually I mean it including how we deal with trauma and how it affects self image our relationships and how we form personal interpretations of the world around us. It hits deeper once you are an adult and think about how you grew up and see so many facets of you and your friends growing up reflected in the characters… and that’s just one way of looking at it. This show Is FILLED with Metaphors and allegory it’s very symbolic To the max even and in no way a straight forward story it’s like watching a mirror and a Inkblot test and contemplate what of your subconscious mind is getting reflected

i dont wanna watch this anime becuz if i start i could never stop making theories and thinking about everything in the series as foreshadowing

It’s a show about life.

Watched the series 10yrs ago and till this day it’s in my top 3

"If you don't read the OMS light novels and Ikusamonogatari in the original Japanese you aren't a real fan" I stammer out as I cry into my pillow every night

monogatari favouriter = instant sub Edit: I'm sad you recommended the objectively wrong watch order. Edit 2: based duay rheims frieren meme at the end, now I gotta binge watch all your videos. God bless ya man.

Found Monogatari in my 3rd year of highschool the novels to be specific the anime man's video about them was how I found them, but funny enough watching Araragi was kathartic, like looking in a mirror and not understanding how my hero complex at the time was just me trying to cope with how much I didn't value my own life maybe saving someone else's life would give me some sort of value but the more I budded into other people's problems the more I put on them and the worse things got for me and them, didn't make this realization until I just graduated and had zero plans no job, no friends, no aspirations and now I write schizophrenic fiction first book comming soon

Good video, bro 😌 Now we only need Dimi to also make a video on it and the time of hope for monogachuds will come 😭

I found this show at the exact same time in my anime watching journey as you did. I watched some amazing stuff, and then started watching everything else. I got bored of it, but seeing just a short clip of this series made me hunt it down. It’s probably because it isn’t anything like any other anime. The animation, camera angles, colors, dialogue, plot, and the way the characters interact with the plot (it’s not just choosing characters and putting them into different plots, they plot is a result of the characters). There’s very few pieces of art i’ve looked at and have had an indescribable feeling pulse through me. I aspire to be an artist that can catch peoples attention by being genuinely different.

Instructions unclear, watched katanagatari and loved it. Will watch mononogatari too tho, looks cool

i've been to a conv where they showed kizumonogatari : koyomi vamp, and i watch it because me and my dad didn't acceed to the other movie. I really didn't knew a single thing about monogatari, but nontheless, i liked it. At first I didn't understand the movie (we even came after the beginning to add more confusion). I couldn't decide at first if the movie was weird and serious or if it was funny. Now that i think of it, i think it just combined all these things, like you said. Anyway it was cool to watch and very surprising.

Bro rolls off Araragi Koiyomi and flubs Monogatari pronunciation. Jokes aside, you did a great job explaining this anime. I love the puns and word play that is persistent in the show. You definitely need to know a bit of Japanese to get some of it unfortunately, the world play is such a big part of it. Having it dubbed or reading the subtitles you kind of miss some of the comedy of the show. Even with as little Japanese as I know I bet there are still some world play jokes that I missed unless they really emphasized them when they said them. Monogatari is practically its own genre as far as I'm concerned. There really isn't anything else that I've ever seen that compares to it.

My take on the visual art is that the artists choose to use text to replace things which do not need to be explained in the way that visuals can be used in a book to skip over describing a scene entirely. The story in a graphic novel, or even just a book with very light illustrations every once in a while, isn’t usually told in the images, it’s told in the text, and the images are just there to offer you a little bit of context for the scene. In this, the text will give us context as to what’s in the scene, but doesn’t offer anything more than that. The power lines are more detailed in it than other people (side note: i wonder how much time the animators took staring at power lines to draw them lol) but they still keep a strict color palette when drawing to keep people away from the stuff in the scene. Unlike power lines, people have movement, and movement is a principle of art. Don’t use principles of art if you don’t want them to mean something!

I'm glad you brought up the toothbrush scene caz I was full send and then I realized my friend recommended this to me but I only saw the toothbrush scene and said fuck no.

100% agree. I think when people ask me about this series, i think im just going to point them here. I get alot of rabid anime fans asking my opinion on this and I usually wind up saying, "I ~love~ it... But youre going to hate it." And then they go watch it anyways and tell me "What the F**k did I just watch"

A story about everything.

They said, “We need more!”, I said “Are you sure? It seems like the truth makes you uncomfortable. Perhaps understanding will arise from repetition.” … silence … Well … I do WANT more!

AYY a fellow phoenix! I dropped ME to pursue dental hygiene, was rough but trust me, follow your gut gang 💯

More Monogatari content PLEASE I PLEAD AND BEG

1:07 is why I find it so hard to rewatch monogatari, it absolutely deserves your full attention and in that sense a casual rewatch is not going to be enjoyable, you need to be in the right headspace to appreciate an anime like this.

Watch it in the shaft order, perfect recommendation

10:15 Now that makes me want another novel called Nandemonogatari, as in　何でもの語　or　何で物語. Nandemo: nothing monogatari: story, of course

lo unico q puedo decir es q el video estan bien editado y da las vibras de literal la serie buena edicion bro

Watch Madoka Magika and the movies, if possible check out the manga which wasn't adapted and the VN.

I used to love monogatari and i was constantly pausing the screen to see the interlude messages, but i think at some point i got lost where i was in the timeline and where it was all going.

I've watched every season and all of the movies, I don't know how. Most of the time I hate drawn out exposition, I dropped Durarara!!! in season 3 because of how much exposition there was.

Trashtaste had mentioned once that this series is something that is better enjoyed if you understand the japanese language. Also said that the translations arent translated correctly due to the complexity of the overall story .

I highly recommend rewatching the series in the novel order if you havent already. I know you say you prefer shaft's order, but a lot of theming is missed. Without Kizu, Araragi and Shinobu's relationship is vague for most of the series, whereas with Kizu it becomes a very clean development - among other things. Hana after Koi messes with the thematic development of second season - so much that I believe Shaft order is the reason Hana is less popular than other arcs. Not to mention it turns a certain "oh haha" moment into a "huh? what?" moment. Koyomi in the middle of Owari is the most acceptable of the reorders, but personally I find it sets up Owari 1 just as much as Owari 2, and the Owari 1 finale becomes much more direct. It isn't too difficult to organize based on arcs as long as you pay attention to the names of the arcs as you watch them. If a new viewer can't figure out how to follow a watch order, I imagine they'd struggle with the show as a whole much more.

I believe monogatari is a story about growing up, that's literally what all the characters do at the end of each arc, grow up, and I don't think it follows the theme of becoming an adult itself, but about the little steps you do towards adulthood, so about "growing up" itself, one step at a time, and I feel this is reflected heavily whenever an adult character appears, it's not explicit (It's explicit some times by them stating how immature araragi is) but there is a clear division between the characters that are adults, and the ones that aren't, and Araragi is clearly placed with the second one (I like to believe that's why the series doesn't hold back showing him getting real close with some of the...younger, or younger looking, heroines) and I really like how you can feel that for those adults, the problems of "the kids" almost look ridiculous and miniscule, but it is not in their place to solve it, so they can only lend a helping hand, or use they knowledge to guide them, yet we see the flaws in these adult characters and even if they are full adults, they still have room to "grow up" and learn.

I saw this series when it came out and read the first two books and kisemonogatari. I really enjoy the series. I have been meaning to watch or finish the novels (or both) for quite some time, this video reminded me why I liked the series so much. That bakemonogatari ending stills hits hard.

Loved the video made wanna re-experience the whole thing again. Thank you

I really love monogatari so much, I watched it for the first time when I was maybe 11 or 12 and it completely changed everything about my tastes in anime another thing I love so much about it, is it feels like it was almost made for me, because I relate to all the characters so much and, it feels like, as you said, it has so much things about it that at least one of them is bound to put most people off, but none of them did so for me, I don't think there is anything that I dislike about it, like at all, everything about it feels perfect and there is nothing I would change about it

It's such a good show, but also such a strange show. When I got to the series, there were only 2 seasons out, so I watched the 2 of them and went on my way. I liked them, but I couldn't really quantify that in any way. Like, it was fun, but also kinda boring and confusing. But then the next season came out, and I was drawn to that, and I watched it. And then the next season when it came out. And so on, until the last season came out and I finished it, and felt empty inside. It's such a good show, and really it's such a unique show, and I feel like Monogatari was there near the start of my anime journey, just to be gone now.

I started monogatari because I was curious about what renai circulation was from and then I continued because of the whiplash I got when araragi got his mouth stapled

didnt watch the video, but yes you should. it's in my top 3 favourite anime, so don't sleep on it fellas

You nailed the watch order thing.