Crap. This super long review post written for haters got pre-empted by another review in what I thought was close to a necro-thread. Anyway, some context then. I used to be one of those haters, despite being a Shaft and eventually a Nishio fan. That was indeed on account of the seemingly shallow plot which made the series seem like just a (poor) romance between Koyomi and Hitagi, but rewatching it and actually seeing the ending has opened up the story a lot for me. The original post follows:
...Soooo...caught the last two episodes of this a few days ago along with a complete rewatch after checking to see if the Blu-rays were finally completed. And quite surprisingly, a complete turnaround for me. Some of the best parts were not actually as great as I remembered them, but my issues with this show's 'bad' parts practically completed disappeared and by now I am a very happy camper. I will probably go through this series
again even once qIIq's 1080p batch releases the last volume.
Back throughout my post history you can probably find quite a few comments complaining about the forced and pandering 'romance' of this series and the lack of substance of the characters and their conflicts in general. For all the people who complained about similar things, I sincerely recommend a complete rewatch (with actual quality by now, and none of those terrible delays anymore) as the new perspective it offers might be extremely refreshing.
For one thing, throughout this show's entire actual airing I was quite worked up over the seeming emotional
pandering this series brought forth with Koyomi x Hitagi's romantic developments, stirred up further by Senjougahara's rabid fanbase. Going through this series again, I was able to let all of that go and realize that despite what the fanbase said, Senjougahara
wasn't the total focus of what this show had to offer, which led me to not only a greater appreciation of all the other characters, but even Hitagi herself. The essential point which came clearly to me this time is that Araragi is
more than a perverted and desperate stand-in for the audience, that the focus of this series really
is his character development, and that in that context, Senjougahara's relationship with him really
is just a single part of the overall picture. With this elephant out of the room, I was finally able to take in the depth of this series in its totality.
People who deride this show's characters as shallow or caricatures haven't given themselves a chance at really looking at them. Throughout the entire series, two major themes are consistently brought up for the heroines, and I think each of them is handled fairly poignantly. The major theme is family, and the secondary one is love. Araragi is then uniquely separated from them as it is interestingly revealed that he has a comparatively perfect family, and all his weaknesses and failures emerge from his own doing. For Araragi himself, the blessings of family/love are revealed to be minor things, in comparison to his deeply ingrained sense of debt/duty and self-sacrifice.
First, you can see what I mean with the heroines. The emotion lurking behind Hitagi and Mayoi's respective separation from their mothers is real and palpable. Kanbaru and Nadeko are united in loneliness, in empty families and unfriendly peers causing love and admiration to be channeled powerfully elsewhere. Hanekawa's estrangement from her family, most similar to Araragi's feelings, manifests itself in a suppressed passiveness we can each recognize. And as she tragically allows her romantic feelings to be swallowed into that same abyss, Hitagi sweeps Kiyomi away from failure and self-sacrifice with a wish about rebuilding her heart and walking step by step forwards that anyone must admit is heartfelt and beautiful. They are each on their own fully worthy characters.
But, even then again this series is really about Araragi. Beyond that, it is not even about Araragi's relationship strictly with humans, but with monsters. From the same moment he meets and offers salvation to Hitagi, also begins the slow rift that separates him and Oshino. Oshino, who is Araragi's key to meddling in the spirit world as something just barely more than human, also acts throughout the course of the series as the answer to every question, the solver of Araragi's dilemmas. He is the cage of glass which enables this series' very existence. Through Mayoi, to Kanbaru, to Nadeko, however, Araragi is progressively both taught that for spirits and humans, there are no perfect endings, and left further and further alone in his interferences with them. As Koyomi's compulsive sense of self-sacrifice drives him further despite these warnings, his shield finally abandons him, not only in a bid to grant him self-sufficiency, but also to teach him to take responsibility for his own actions/wishes. In this manner, Koyomi is left alone to bear the two debts he himself chose as life burdens: Hanekawa's hidden monster and the shadow within his shadow Shinobu. Now unable to abandon them, Araragi can never be fully human.
The end sets the stage in such a manner. Hitagi, who has only her heart to offer to help him back to humanity, gains a fragile beauty. She represents love, reconciliation with her family; her thematic tie to the realm of man is set in place in the penultimate episode. Koyomi, however, is bound--dangling in the abyss of monsters, unable to turn away from it. At the end. only monsters are left to help him; there is a faint sense he will be lost to them. As he pedals away, Hitagi at his side, in this story's first and maybe last major gathering of characters (the gathering of those who knew Oshino), this series' ending is bittersweet, transient. As the series ends, we are left with the quiet question: is this the end of Araragi's Bakemonogatari, or the unfortunate beginning?
So anyway, as for the technical adaptation itself. Through a second viewing, I came to realize that some of the show's outstanding elements were less than I believed they were. For example, Nadeko's OP loses a bit of it transfixing power after around the 20th viewing; and despite the ED being excellent, the lyrics emerge pretty shallow even after the first three lines are taken into consideration upon deeper reflection upon the story. Episode 12's romantic dialogue loses some feeling when you look at the lack of substance of Araragi's responses; gimmick gags like the gaijin 4koma lose their humour after the joke is recognized; and on a general level, some of the weird stylisms (live action, cartoon faces, etc.) become established as firmly functional, not artistic or captivating. Despite the delays and clear overall effort, it is also somewhat disappointing that even the final version of Bakemonogatari still possesses some of the same animation weaknesses of Shaft's general output. That's in no way to say it's all bad however; on that same note of Shaft mainstays, the characteristic masterful sound direction (both music and voice acting) and unparalleled capacity for fanservicey perversion remain one of the clearest manifestations of Shaft's true potential. In the end Bakemonogatari might not be a true masterpiece, though it contains many inspired pieces individually. However, the full force of the source material was certainly masterfully communicated, so I must also nonetheless call it in total nothing less than brilliant.
To conclude: as someone who has been surprised again and again by an affinity for Nishio Ishin's materials, I am quite pleased that my impression of Bakemonogatari has undergone revision. The widened scope the ending suddenly gave the story mean the prequel/sequels stand to be truly interesting; in the meantime I can also celebrate that my favourite studio has finally put out a genuinely 'complete package', for the first time for me besides their slice of life series. I will uncharacteristically get into this ranking/judging trend to make note of the two best characters (1 - Nadeko for mindcrushing moe and 2 - Hachikuji for joyful hilarity) but skip out on numerically 'scoring' this series as it is really not something I believe in. In any case, I will close on the note of hoping that anyone who watched this with either the style, the weak 'plot' (as the above poster said, at first impression a 'ghost of the week defeated by deus ex Oshino while Araragi builds a harem of blatant cliches and moe tripe' story), or Senjougahara Hitagi worship blinding them decides to revisit Bakemonogatari in time to enjoy the prequel/sequel. As I learned personally, there might be quite a bit more there than there seemed to be
.