Brief Description:
http://myanimelist.net/anime/5081/Bakemonogatari
In this world exist spiritual/magical entities with animal forms known as "aberrations." They're mostly unknown and invisible to the majority of people, but from time to time and for reasons particular to each case they become bonded with human beings, affecting them negatively. More bizarrely, they seem to be bonding with all the girls around high-school student Koyomi Araragi since he had an encounter with a vampire that left him with some residual vampiric powers. Now, with the dubious advice of "expert" Meme Oshino, Koyomi must free his friends from the aberrations, while growing closer with his incredibly cynical and mean new girlfriend, Hitagi Senjougahara.
However, this main premise and encompassing plot is but a background to allow the very defined personalities of the main characters to clash in clever and amiable (or not so much) banter about anything and everything. Several episodes go by as the characters shoot witticisms and counter-witticisms at each other in rapid succession, sometimes for fun, sometimes as the means to reach a deep conclusion. The series is as much a paranormal thriller as it is a tragicomedy about human nature and being a teenager.
The series makes heavy use of innuendo, depicts explicit sexual advances, and has some very graphical violence. As such, it's only recommended for viewers 15 and above.
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"Bakemonogatari" is a portmanteau of Bakemono -monster or ghost and Monogatari -story, so it's usually (but not officially) translated as Ghostory or Monstory, but more widely known by its Japanese name. It's infamous Studio Shaft's adaptation of a series of light novels by the same name, covering the first few arcs of the novels. It is an extremely hard to recommend title as genuinely great it is. Not only because the amount of controversial content that could turn potential new viewers away (more on that later) but because its very unusual structure and dialogue-focused, character-driven narrative.
Koyomi Araragi is an ordinary teenager -or was until his fateful encounter with a female vampire (which is not elaborated in the series,) that left him with some vampiric powers; chief among them, super-fast healing and regeneration. He's a very caring individual and very willing to go out of his way to help others, sometimes recklessly so, relying in his regeneration powers to bear the brunt of the consequences which earns him the respect (and often, much more) of all the damsels in distress that he encounters. And so, he's surrounded by 6 girls with very different personalities who tease, threaten, flirt, and philosophize with him; chief among them is Hitagi Senjougahara a schoolmate whose traumatic past made her into an extremely cynical and distrustful person who weaponizes school supplies to defend herself and who insists to become his girlfriend after he helped her at the beginning of the story. Their unusual "pull-and-shove", but ultimately heartwarming relationship is one of the series' strongest points.
The paranormal plot of the series as described above is then, but a faint blueprint to lead the story forward and connect the characters but it definitely plays a secondary role to the characters' interactions which have been aptly described as "verbal ping-pong". There are running gags, there are action and suspenseful scenes, there are even a few highly emotional moments, but more than all that together there's talking. Almost every single time Koyomi encounters one of these girls, they'll engage him in long-winged, rapid-fire dialectic, clearly bent in outwit him even when talking about the most trivial topics and it's a wondrous and superbly entertaining thing to behold. As they exchange witticisms, we're regaled with with artistic camera pans of the scenery and clever graphical symbolism to emphasize some of the points touched in the conversation. This means that there's not so much /animation/ per-se in the series, but otherwise production values are amazing. Beautiful character design, detailed and colorful background, a great soundtrack and amazing voice-acting will carry you through the series and leave an enduring impression in you.
The brilliance of the execution of those interactions is difficult to convey with other words and "a show about teenagers talking of random topics" is a hard sell. Moreover, the harem-like setup is not coincidental and the series is rife with fanservice, innuendo and open sexual advances (that ultimately amount to nothing) which may disturb or annoy some viewers, specially because two of the characters have the appearance[/] of 10-year old girls (they aren't.) There's also a couple of episodes with very graphical, very brutal violence. It is most definitely not a series for everyone, which makes me a bit sad because there are no other titles that do something even similar to what Bakemonogatari does.
SCORING[b/] (The score above represents my subjective liking of the series, I'll attempt to be more objective in this section)
Base score: 8.0/10.0
Add 0.5 if:
-You like paranormal setups
-You like character-driven stories
-Cliche romance stories' relationships make you roll your eyes and wish there was something different
Add 1.0 if:
-You like strong and intelligent female characters
-You like the so-called "harem" genre
-You like series that make you think
Add 2.0 if:
-You liked Seinfeld and/or Plato's Dialogues
Subtract 1.5 if:
-You can't behold graphic violence
-You dislike the so-called "harem" genre
-You dislike paranormal setups and depictions of eastern magic and myths
Subtract 3.0 if:
-If you cannot stomach fanservice, innuendo and the such
-You think that every minute characters in your fiction spend talking is a minute less of explosions or other cool stuff that could be happening instead.
Subtract 5.0 if:
-"Loli" is a thing that disturbs you
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