Bakemonogatari is a story that revolves around a hi-school boy, Koyomi Araragi who survived a vampire attack. After that he began to involved in a 'story' with references to various kind of oddities like gods, ghosts, mythical beasts and spirits.
The story began as Koyomi (Araragi) turned into a vampire himself after the vampire attack, but thanks to a guy named Meme (Oshino) he become less vampire and more human again though he still retains some of vampire features like the ability to see clearly in the dark, ridiculously quick wound recovery that he is almost immortal (he can even regenerate his damaged organs), as well as the fear of sudden sunlight.
One day at the school he noticed a girl is falling from the upper stairs. Luckily he managed to catch her but to his surprise, the girl weights almost nothing. To add to his amazement the girl is from his class, Hitagi (Senjougahara), who he never heard her speaking. Having experienced oddities himself Koyomi suspected that Hitagi is also experiencing the same thing too, thus he offered her a hand to help. However instead of accepting his good intention Hitagi intimidatingly refused and in return threatened him that she would harm he and his family if he ever leak her secret (of not having any weight). That is after she injured him using a stapler though.
A few moment later the two met again and that is when Hitagi thought that Koyomi might be able of some help after she noticed that his wound from the earlier stapler attack has completely healed. Then Koyomi brought Hitagi to meet Meme, asking him if Hitagi's 'disease' is curable or not. As a some sort of priest, Meme agreed to help her under certain conditions though he could not guarantee the success.
Before the ritual began, there are some preparations need to be made. This when both Koyomi and Hitagi were found spending some time at Hitagi's residential. Not sure what happened there but Hitagi had shown her full naked body to Koyomi after taking a shower as a mean of either to tease or to thank him for all his effort to help her. However one thing to note here that Hitagi didn't do it in a normal way but with her harsh insulting words. This is what gives Hitagi an impression of having a 'tsundere' personality,
Later, Hitagi revealed to Meme that she was attacked by a giant crab-like creature that is suspected to be some sort of ghost/spirit. Then Meme explained that the crab is one of many gods, and it was not totally responsible for taking away Hitagi's weight. Before the ritual go any further Meme asked Hitagi if she had any bad memories/regrets. At first she was reluctant and after some time she spilled everything, like how she had a weak body, followed by an incident that she was almost raped by her mother's cult leader, and then her broken family. Finally she understood that it was her who submitted to the crab god to forget all her painful pasts, which in return she lost her weight. Then by gaining back her weight, she returned to a normal, rational-minded girl, where she apologized to Koyomi for her harshness.
At this point, it seems that her harshness was probably caused by her being stripped of her painful memories. Even I also wanted to believe it like that but later in Episode 2, I can say I was wrong, seeing that she is still as 'tsundere' as she was. OK, I hate tusundere, yandere, deredere, whatever 'dere' you have out there. Tsundere is an archetype (stereotype?) in many anime these days. For me imposing that kind of personalities in anime is like a cheap way to attract otaku, the largest group of targeted audience of almost any existing anime. I can't understand why there are really people who like those noisy and annoying girls in anime. Being tsundere doesn't make them cute thank you very much.
Alright, back to the anime again. Romance do exist in this anime, though I could say it is more of a forced, one-sided love. Koyomi and Hitagi did become lovers but it is Hitagi who approached Koyomi with romantic feelings. Koyomi is actually an average guy you can imagine who try to be of help to everybody around him (and again why it always have to be females I'm not sure LOL). Koyomi was terribly surprised at first, confused, uneasy, hesitant and stuff but he don't have any reason to reject. Not like he have other options either. Yeah, who'd refuse if your life is at stake? Well, at least Hitagi is hot on the surface and if the condition is right, Koyomi could screw her LOL.
Yeah that's right I hate Hitagi for she's irrational for like most of the time, plus she can easily talk about "kill this, kill that" without the sense of guilt. What the ****! Into the animation itself, I hate the occasional 'cutscreen-like' frame fillers that totally makes no sense at all (crap! Many of them are part of storytelling but they forward too fast nobody can read them!), not to mention some cheap animation FX that looks like some grade-schooler's collage works with real life images as well as "repetitive images to fill the space" (referring to the mountains of books in Episode 7.
Recommended? Hell no! I regret watching it actually but the only thing that keeps me is, of course the hot girls inside how could I resist them LOL
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