Holiday Review: BAKEMONOGATARI

As far as shonen manga this year, it was mostly dominated by the usual Weekly Shonen Jump suspects, but there were some surprises this year, such as this.

BAKEMONOGATARI, based on the light novel by Nisioisin & art by Oh!Great.  First published in 2018 and first published in North America in 2019.

PLOT:

It all started with an accident on the stairs.  That's how Koyomi Araragi discovered that his distant, haughty classmate Hitagi Senjougahara weighed virtually nothing.  It seems that a strange, supernatural force took her weight in exchange for a dark secret from her past, and Araragi is determined to take her to the one person who might be able to help her.

STORY:

The Monogatari series is one that I've always been weirdly fond of.  While I've only ever glanced at the light novels, I have watched much of the anime.  While my opinion of individual arcs can vary widely, as a whole I enjoy its own particular, arch, and occasionally sleezy brand of stories.  So I can state with some degree of confidence that the Bakemonogatari manga manages to hold its own nicely, managing to not only adapt the original novels but streamline some elements for greater clarity and continuity.

If you're familiar with either the original novel or TV series, then this manga will not hold a lot of surprises.  It recounts the story fairly faithfully, although the volume cuts off shortly before the end of Hitagi's story.  What makes it truly work is how it incorporates not just the source material, but elements of other stories in that series as well as the anime adaptation.

One of the delights of the Monogatari series (and Hitagi's story in particular) is Nisioisin's own brand of wandering, witty dialogues.  While they don't go on as long as they can in the source material, there's still enough of those dialogues here to get across the charm of Nisioisin's writing along with Araragi and Hitagi's personalities.  In particular, I've always loved how he captures Hitagi's unique voice, one that is all at once bitingly sarcastic, formal, jocular, and just a tiny bit vulnerable.

There are a few minor additions.  We don't just meet Shinobu in a corner, but we get a very brief glimpse at Araragi's own supernatural encounter.  The story briefly mentions a previous encounter with class president Tsubasa Hanekawa, as well as a line-up of the other afflicted girls Araragi is about to meet.  These are all elements from later novels (even if the events of some are technically backstory here), but even brief hints about them go a long way towards tying all of these stories together as well as clarifying things for those who might be reading this story for the first time.

ART:

At first it would seem odd to give an adaptation of the Monogatari stories to the mangaka best known for schlocky, pervy action-fests like Tenjo Tenghe and Air Gear.  I'd argue that it's possibly the best pairing this story could have gotten.

People forget that Oh!Great is a brilliant artist.  He has an incredible knack for dynamic action and panel composition, as well as a great eye for detail.  He's also unabashedly horny, but over time he's gotten better at drawing human forms and incorporating those hornier elements in an organic way to the story.  Here he gets to put all of those skills on display, incorporating elements from the anime adaptation without losing his own style.

His eye for fine detail and stark inking make the characters look great (even if all the girls tend to have the same face).  He plays with angles not only for visual excitement or to find a novel angle to ogle Hitagi, but also to evoke the look of SHAFT's adaptation (as well as some more obvious references, including the signature head tilt).  He even uses speech bubble placement for things like playful censorship.

PRESENTATION:

There's a timeline in the back that not only lays out the chronology of the events we've seen so far, but with the Monogatari series as a whole.

RATING:


The Bakemonogatari manga is one of the rare adaptations that manages to stand distinct from both its source material and the anime that proceeded it thanks to smart streamlining and the perfect match of artist and story.

This series is published by Vertical.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 7 volumes available.  1 volume has been released and is currently in print.

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