Monogatari Series Second Season - Overall Series Impressions & Total Series Rating

[monir]

This thread is to be used for discussing the entire episodes of Monogatari Series Second Season ... your thoughts about the show, overall impressions, expectations and hopes about Blu-Ray/DVD-exclusive footage etc.

A few subjects you might want to ramble on about:

• General impression of the series.
• Opinions on the overall story, writing & plot devices.
• Thoughts about the animation quality.
• Characters/Character Design
• Voice Acting
• Which kind of footage (Blu-Ray/DVD-exclusive) you feel you'd really like to see.
• What the show meant to you.
• What could the creators/animators/writers have done better.

And so on.

The poll represents your total series rating. In other words, how you would rate all the episodes combined (1-10)? If you'd rather rate the whole series by technical/artistic merits, you can do so. An example:

Animation Quality: 1-10
Voice Actors: 1-10
Script: 1-10
Soundtrack: 1-10
Editing: 1-10
Enjoyment: 1-10
Emotional Involvement: 1-10

Average = Total Series Rating

Or a combination of the two. Or your general gut feeling.

Feel free to discuss and more importantly, have fun

[ndqanh_vn]

Well, I think it is the topic where I could give a ranking of my enjoyment of the arcs, can I.

Overall, I don't like this season of Monogatari, and it has a lot to do with production issue. SHAFT is very messy with this one. As Monogatari is their cashcow franchise, I thought they should have done a better job with it. There are a lof problems that reduce my enjoyment of the series.

- The decision of stuffing so many novel in one season is really strange in my opinion. Bake got one whole season, Nise got one pointless season (I really hate Nise so I saw it as pointless, just personal opinion), and around 5 novels was cramped into one season - you really could feel the time issues while watching. Which could have been not that bad if not for...

- ...those pointless recap episodes. Seriously what the... I understand that they have some problem with putting Hana in, but they really break the flow and the season feel more and more disconnected.

- SHAFT'S timing is seriously bad, very very bad. Some arcs are mercilessly rushed, and at one point (Meme's letter) I could found the seiyuu was forced to read it as fast as he can, and it become very hard for viewer to grasp what he's actually saying. Koi on the other hand is reallyyyyy stretched. Too long. I understand that Kaiki is like the coolest thing ever, and Hitagi is SHAFT's poster girl, but still 6 episodes for this is too much, while some other arcs could benefit with one more episodes.

- Production is not consistent. It is SHAFT so I guess this is to expect. But sometimes I feel they got lazy with they creative works. Oni's "Shinobu monologue" for example. The concept is interesting, the story is nice, the artwork is beautiful, but that slideshow episodes really struck me as being lazy. They did not bother to add some effect or other interesting transition to fuel up the story. A wasted opportunity. And I hope that they would fix those CG snakes at the final episode for DVD/Bluray releases.

Well, enough of my ranting. I am really disappointed with SHAFT this season. This series could be interesting, but sometimes I feel like they’re trying damn hard to spoil my enjoyment of it.






On the series itself, some of the arcs were good, some were not.

- Neko White: I like Hanekawa, and this one gave her some closure, so I like it. Hanekawa is not interesting as a narrator, but her point in view really gives a lot of character study into her personality. With 5 eps, it has enough time to build up. Some piece of animation is good. I love that scenes when Hanekawa is writing a letter to Black Hanekawa. It is a solid start.

- Mayoi Jiangshi: A good story, with good concept, and good closure. It has an interesting plot twist, which I have known from the novel, but still remains fresh in the series. But 4 eps is not enough. You could really feel one more episodes could be beneficial here. But it is a good arc, and I could still enjoy it.

- Nadeko Snake: Good story, too sudden ending. I think the character development of Nadeko is forced here, but that “bitchy Nadeko” is nice to watch. It really took me by surprise. The beginning is boring (the slice-of-life one, not the proloque) and the dialoque is forced sometimes, but overall not bad.

- Shinobu time: This one…I am sorry for all Shinobu and Mayoi fans, but I feel it is the weakest arc. Even though it has only 4 episodes, I still feel that it is dragged. A few episodes past with nothing going on screen except Araragi molesting young girls, which get boring very fast. Shinobu is just a side characters. Even though people keep saying she stole the spot in Mayoi Jiangshi, in that story I could still feel the importance of Mayoi, but that one it seemed Shinobu’s only role is to narrate that particular story about her past. The ending is viewed as moving by many viewers, but I feel that an effort to make viewers cry, and Araragi annoyed me greatly. The story is jumpy, there’s absolutely no flow, and this arc is a mess. Mayoi is not a character that I like, and personally I think she should have moved on to afterlife a long time ago, so the ending is not working for me.

- Koimonogatari: I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR IT FOR THE WHOLE SEASON. Just to meet Kaiki. For Kaiki and Kaiki only. Hitagi and Araragi could disappear for all I care (I hate Araragi by now, and it has been a long time since Hitagi having any major roles) But this arc is dragged too much, as I say before, and while I like the closure, I could understand that some viewers may think that it is a cheap cop-out. I enjoy this arc, but only for Kaiki.

Sorry if there’re too much rants here, but after watching the series I really feel like I have to let it out. I like the concept the story of the season, but the execution is bad, and I have not enjoyed it as much as I can. Eh, sorry for the bad English.


Animation Quality: 8
Voice Actors: 9
Script: 7 (for the time issue only)
Soundtrack: 8
Editing: 8
Enjoyment: 7
Emotional Involvement: 7

[shinyaNakagawa]

Well, Neko Shiro is the best adaptation in the second season series so far. We can see Shaft is pretty consistent in the animation and story execution for this arc.

Kabukimonogatari: Heavily rushed. Did Shaft ever consider the possible upcoming plot continuity in the latter yet to be released novels? A lot of important details were left off and ugh... so far the worst arc, adaptation-wise.

Otorimonogatari: It was fine. Executed pretty well, both animation and the story.

Onimogatari: The first episode is rushed but understandable but not for Shinobu's backstory being summarized into an emaki. They should just tell the whole backstory as it was written in the novel.

Koimonogatari: This arc was pretty consistent until the eye cancer snake cgi. IIRC, the whole Nadeko-Kaiki 'battle' is not supposed to be like that. That was just too plain and... lazy.


Animation Quality: 7.5
Voice Actors: 10
Script: 6
Soundtrack: 8
Editing: 6
Enjoyment: 8.5
Emotional Involvement: ... 7

Average Total Series Rating: 7.5

[silvercover]

in general id say that only perhaps a slight decrease in editing, 10 in everything else though.
monogatari kept me amused and interested. some dialogue may have went on a bit longer than desired but wasnt really a problem.

so all in all monogatari gets me a 10/10. for each arc was enjoyable in a different way. though I guess I do miss them not animating kanbaru's arc.

[achirist]

I really enjoyed Monogatari Second Season. Especially once we got past Hanekawa's arc--since her 'cat issues' and disgusting, criminally abusive parents have taken up so much time in the anime thus far, I really couldn't take anymore, especially since sadly her parents still didn't die or end up in jail, and Hanekawa still wasn't able to move out.

But every arc after that I really loved, especially since there was originality. The two arcs focusing on Hajikuji and Shinobu were amazing, and both the Nadeko and Kaiki arcs were also really fascinating. I think the material is great and so was the execution. I'm glad Shaft is going to continue animating the rest of the story.

[Daisu]

Hajikuji part was emotional. I did not like the summaries though, last chapter kinda lulled in places. They could have done shinobu backstory telling better. I love this season and looked forward to each release overall.

9/10 Kaiki and Mayoi added bonus points~

[Monoriu]

I love this season. Nadeko snake, Hitagi end, and Shinobu time were outstanding. Neko white and Mayoi Jiangshi are not as interesting as those, but they are still enjoyable. The whole season is better than Nise.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by ndqanh_vn

- The decision of stuffing so many novel in one season is really strange in my opinion.

Not that I really want to go into a big side-topic, but I think I have a pretty good sense of why they probably did this. It's essentially the result of deciding that they were going to animate the entire novel series, which probably happened after they had already committed to Nisemonogatari. In a way you could sort of see Nisemonogatari as an omake to Bakemonogatari, and between that the (still outstanding, granted) movie, you could basically have called it a day and said "read the books to see how it goes from here"). But when they decided that they were going to animate everything, now you realize that the current pacing is going to take for-freakin'-ever, and fan interest always wanes over time. The novel author is conveniently dragging things out with the last novels, but once those novels are over, it's diminishing returns. So, much better from marketing perspective to "get'er done", even if that means speeding up the pace a bit. The hardest of the hardcore may have been willing to wait for years to see it "done right", but the franchise has already gone cold for a number of people, and it'll only get worse.

So yeah, in the worst case, I'd describe it as a necessary evil. The alternatives probably wouldn't be very good business decisions.

This isn't trying to take away any of your other criticisms or points, or even this one necessarily... just trying to give one reason why this might be.

[MrFalcon]

Overall I really liked the season. I started watching monogatari initially at Nisemonogatari, and that has what formed my basis for judging the others, a little different from most people. I had problems with both Bake and Nise, and also a few with this season, but enjoy them all.

Some people have mentioned the page count. I remember seeing a post on reddit by someone who compared number of pages to episodes. In the second season, the books are a lot shorter than Bake and Nise, and the page to episode ratio was about the same by their calculations. Although those calculations were done before the review episodes were known about.

If the review episodes help newbies understand the show, I'm all for them. I know it's common to do in anime. But it's not good if it takes away from episode count for the rest of the show.

With the second season, the animation quality appears to have gone down slightly, but still good. The artistic backgrounds are still intact and beautiful, as is the musical score especially. Intros are a little weaker. The scenes with real life stills continue to be absent that were in Bakemonogatari (suck as real humans, hands, stills of real food)

-Neko White: Since this book is translated, it's one of the few I can compare to the book. I thought it was very well done and covered most of it. The part with the parents eating breakfast together didn't seem to carry over well; that was the only thing big I thought was missing.

-Mayoi Jiangshi: I was really looking forward to this one since many say this is one of there favorite books, but I didn't feel this watching it. Sounds like the last episode was rushed. In spite of this, I still found the arc amazing to watch. I will say though from the perspective of not reading the book, I found the first episode with Shinobu's story to be quite beautiful with the backdrop and have absolutely no complaints. I hope someone translates this someday.

-Nadeko Snake: I enjoyed this one and especially loved the twist at the end. The animation in this one was stepped up from the other arcs and well done. Although some say Nadeko's character development might be rushed, I think it can be explained by puberty. These are all still preteens here.

-Shinobu time: This one wasn't my favorite. Araragi kissing little girls is weird and Nisioisin should replace that joke with something else. His moves on his sisters was weird in Nise, but at least they were more of age and that was somewhat funny then. Yotsugi confused me with her red herrings regarding Shinobu lying and telling wrong info about the darkness. She was leading me to believe a different sort of twist would result involving Shinobu.

-Koimonogatari: Great arc. I liked the dialogue at the end, and I liked how it was stretched out and took it's time. Some may say they don't like the show to drag on, but I'd argue it's best that way and builds up suspense. Like when dragon ball Z was around, everyone complained how much it dragged on, but they watched the shit out of that. To me it's suspense and teasing; there's none of it that's filler. Monogatari has never had filler.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by MrFalcon

If the review episodes help newbies understand the show, I'm all for them. I know it's common to do in anime. But it's not good if it takes away from episode count for the rest of the show.

For what it's worth on this one as well, this appears to be simply a consequence of pushing the one arc out of the TV broadcast and having it as a special later on, so we should get the same episode count in the end just that one of the arcs will be "fashionably late".

[MrFalcon]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

For what it's worth on this one as well, this appears to be simply a consequence of pushing the one arc out of the TV broadcast and having it as a special later on, so we should get the same episode count in the end just that one of the arcs will be "fashionably late".

That's a great point. That makes the page to episode ratio still just as good as the other series.

[Kotohono]

I could right a full review, but honestly my feelings can be summed as this is the sequel I felt the original season deserved since I felt Nise and Kuro were just a little lacking compared to original and S2 now. And the series looked at each of the characters and expanded on all of them well with great story telling, music, and comedy in each of them (aside from Kanbaru who's arc is delayed). So I rate it the same rating that I gave to bake, a 10/10 because I enjoyed it every bit as much.

[Altima of the Gates]

This season brings to a close a good many of the character studies we got in Monogatari and provides a look at the overarching plotline to come. Favorite arc was a toss-up between Koi and Neko White, leaning closer to Neko White admittedly due to a bit of bias. Though Shaft did have a few hiccups and some parts from the novel removed (and for such a character oriented show, internal monologues are important) almost blasphemous, I found myself enjoying this and eagerly awaiting nee episodes each week. I would rate this a 9-9.5 in some areas, and enjoyed it as much if not more than Bake.

[DGDCOne]

I admit, Monogatari Series: Second Season is the best season so far. It has more episodes than the last three season and the arc looks epic and make sense for each plots.

[Kaoru Chujo]

This may even be better than Bakemonogatari. The genius of Shinbou in full flower. If we're talking ratings, it's hovering between 9 and 10.

I'm now rewatching his early, pre-Shaft, masterpiece, Le Portrait de Petit Cossette (title in misspelled French), after several years, and it is even better than I thought it was. Shinbou unconstrained by commercial reality. High art, but without the high-quality animation that Shaft helped him provide. And the best I have ever liked Inoue Marina's voice work, both as a seiyuu and singing the ED.

[typo]

Overall, I think this season wasn't too shabby.
If only the recap episode was not made, I would've given this season an 8.5/10

The script would be 8/10
The script wasn't too great, just fine.

Anime Quality-8.5/10

Shaft gets me everytime! ^_^

Voice Actors- 9/10

Why the heck not?! It's Kana Hanazawa! ^_^

Soundtrack- 7/10

Didn't like the soundtrack very much... Since I'm pretty much into pianos and some stuff like that. :P

Enjoyment- 8/10

KAIKI DIES!!! :l Wait...