Bakemonogatari: tsunderisms and a higher class of fanservice
I know I’m late to the Bakemonogatari party. I shouldn’t be, considering how it’s so Relevant To My Interests: it has a vampire, a tsundere, puns and wordplay with Shinbo occupying the director’s chair, for crying out loud. The first couple of episodes didn’t blow me away immediately though: there’s always this vibe of quirkiness that surrounds everything that Shinbo does, which means I have to do a little mental adjustment to appreciate it so I’m confident that it’s worth sticking with.
The whole catching of a floating girl reminded me of the beginning of Miyazaki’s Laputa for some reason. Oh yeah, the staircase looked like DNA or something
I was a little sceptical about the Nisio Isin connection since he was the author of that Death Note spin-off I had mixed feelings about. This is I think completely his own work however, and fortunately has plenty of potential too. After I’d sat through both halves of the first arc my confusion gave way to a sense of respect for how the visuals and themes worked together. I now have a really good feeling about this one.
David was right about the fact that Bakemonogatari is all about words. This emphasis surprised me since I’ve always considered Shinbo’s forte to be imagery: be it abstract geometrical shapes, colours or scene compositions, the stand-out features of his direction have mostly been visual rather than narrative ones. That said, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei used a lot of puns and on-screen text to convey its comedy, and the underlying concepts behind this show work in the same way.
I’m still at beginner’s level in terms of kana and as for kanji…forget it. No surprise then that I was very reliant on the translation captions, which is better in a show like this than the gag-driven SZS; after all, a joke loses its impact when you need the punchline explained to you. Here it’s not such a problem: when you’ve worked out the connections you appreciate it more rather than less. The first arc dealt with what English speakers refer to as the weight of a burden on one’s shoulders, and after putting the pieces of the verbal jigsaw together I realised how clever it was.
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It reminds me a bit of Natsume Yuujinchou in that it uses a connection with the supernatural to present, then solve, a personal problem. Spirits of folklore, and the effects they have on mortals, are tied to the meaning of words and inevitably offer plenty of insight into the characters’ personalities and motives. After Hitagi is introduced to us as a borderline-psychopath with a peculiar affliction we learn one hell of a lot about her backstory in a short space of time.
Another reason why I warmed to her character was the dialogue. Honestly, I’ve not seen such entertaining character dynamics this side of Spice and Wolf in ages…apart from Haruhi Suzumiya perhaps (just for the record, the dry humour in the dialogue of that show is one thing I loved about it). Koyomi’s and Hitagi’s verbal sparring really brought the affair to life, preventing it from descending into a dizzying montage of meaningless colours and shapes.
The nature of their relationship is one of those not-quite romances which could go either way at any time but its open-endedness maintains an air of unpredicatability that I really appreciate. This is suited to a pair of characters who are themselves unpredictable: Koyomi is no longer a vampire but has retained some of the traits – one of which is very useful when you get a staple gun to the face, apparently. Hitagi’s arsenal of office supplies took me by surprise too: it’s exaggerated for artistic effect but the absurdity of what she carries around cracked me up.
Nuff said?
What also lingers long in the memory is the trauma in Hitagi’s background. It’s all well and good building a character on tsunderisms but without a convincing explanation her character would just be another over-used trope that gets on the viewer’s nerves. In admitting to being a tsundere fanboy I’m admitting a weakness for the well-written examples of the personality type that has hidden depths of tenderness behind a façade of amusing stand-offishness. In Hitagi’s case it’s the broken home and the curse that, interestingly, she herself wished for.
This is pretty heavy stuff. The quirkiness of Hitagi and the exchanges between her and Koyomi are pretty important in lightening the mood, although I’m seeing quite a bit of Shinbo’s own personal input creeping in too. Cosette was a dark work and even SZS’s humour was of the morbid variety so I think his sense of humour is drier, darker and possibly more subtle than the comedy anime fans are familiar with.
Although the staplers were a bit overdone I still love the use of live-action images in this show
It’s almost along the same lines as Hideaki Anno at times, only perhaps without such distaste for the otaku-dom. The fanservice isn’t cheeky on the usual level but the very inclusion of it feels like a knowing wink over a knowing wink, as if the inclusion of cleavage and pantie shots is making fun of its over-use elsewhere. To my mind, the fanservice in these two episodes was too overt, too damned obvious, to be anything but Shinbo finding yet another way to shamelessly play mind games with the viewer and mess with their expectations.
If the gratuitous camera angles were no more than just that I wouldn’t feel the need to comment on them but everything else about this series is trying to do things a little differently; I’d be selling it short by accusing the studio of exploiting Hitagi. That’s just the point though, isn’t it? Given what she’s been through, is it intentional that she’s painted in this light – one in which an apparent shamelessness is a symptom of a loss of self-worth? Is it reiterating how she was perceived by certain people as a sex object, and how that painful experience has skewed her own self-image?
I get the feeling that Shinbo is testing the viewers’ integrity in the same way that Hitagi is testing Koyomi
In two short episodes I found myself fascinated by Hitagi. Aside from the fact that it’s hilarious to watch her verbally beating Koyomi to the ground, the painful memories she tried to shake off have resurfaced in an interesting fashion. Maybe we’re seeing a more purposeful use of ecchi here, or perhaps it’s another case of the Shinbo-isms addressing unsettling topics without unsettling the viewer to an excessive degree. Either way, it still seems that tsunderes still get all the best lines.
It is a good show. It would be so much better of a show though if it didn´t have the one colored screens stuck with words on them. I have nothing against two people talking for 20mins with this kind of quality animation.
But when they flash these one colored screens I get a headache. Which isn´t the slightest fun.
Senjougahara is pretty fun to be around and her talk about various things is really fun.
So the show is a must see. If they could only stop with those screens I´d be a so much more happy man.
I think “fascinating” is the only word that can describe Senjougarahara’s character, and you’ve pretty much nailed it on the head here. She really is a compelling bundle of contradictions; self-assured yet occasionally entirely unsure of herself, aggressive yet passive, and so on – This isn’t just tsundere, this is M&S tsundere. Or something. I won’t go on about her too much more for risk of spoiling future story arcs for you, but some of the points you make here actually develop in some very interesting ways as the show progresses.
What I love about this series is (as per Spice and Wolf) the dialogue – Hitagi’s razor-sharp verbal barbs are the obvious pull initially, but Araragi has some great moments of his own, and other characters later in the series also don’t get short-changed by the script writers. At times, it almost is like a coherent, narrative-driven version of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei for its wordplay and knowing winks to the viewer which you’ve summed up so nicely, and that alone is enough to make me fall deeply in love with the show. Couple it to the fabulous visual polish and unique look that SHAFT have pulled off, and I turn into a melting, gushing fanboy almost instantly.
I’m hoping and praying that someone will work on translating (maybe even licensing?) the light novels from which this series is derived – Quite simply, I *have* to read them.
There’s more to this, I feel: http://welovecomments.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/the-inauthenticity-of-senjougahara-fascination/
Again with the fascination. This girl is really something to a lot of people.
“Given what she’s been through, is it intentional that she’s painted in this light – one in which an apparent shamelessness is a symptom of a loss of self-worth? Is it reiterating how she was perceived by certain people as a sex object, and how that painful experience has skewed her own self-image?”
I’d almost believe it, but the most gratuitous stuff comes before we get that revelation about her past. Granted, it does come RIGHT before, which does makes me wonder if we horny male viewers are supposed to feel guilty when the truth comes out. Unfortunately I’ve been putting off the show, so I can’t comment much further than that. But I enjoyed this entry.
Oh, and I love that stylish bra. Girl knows how to shop, not bad for a not-real person.
I’m a little disappointed that the show has become a “character problem of the week” series, when the first episode suggested a different type of story, Koyomi finds girl with a problem, takes her to The Man, who fixes her up. But I can’t blame the series for not being what I want.
While I’m watching it, it’s a continuous point of frustration for me that I can’t understand half of the puns and verbal play that’s going on. Worse, it’s like Ef, in that its visuals keep distracting me so that I can barely even follow the translation. Again, can’t blame the series …
Well written. I never gave Senjougahara too much thought since I already realized that I love the show either way, but you definitely hit the nail on the head with the “higher class of fanservice” topic. Intentions aside, whatever Shinbo is doing is working: it’s never felt like a moe or fanservice show, but something about the character interactions is alluring on both levels.
@manga: yeah, those things can be a little offputting…the ‘adjustment’ I need to do is due to stuff like that. I don’t like the staplers in the op sequence for instance, but I love the mixture of animation and photographic backgrounds.
@Hanners: I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with her character later on, since she already seems to have undergone the dere-dere breakdown already. With SZS’s manga getting released over here, maybe the light novels shouldn’t be ruled out either…?
@Ghostlightning: cheers for the link! Bookmarked for future reference.
@2DT: that’s exactly what I meant about the nature of the fanservice: is it a service to the horny fans, or a test? I love it when a series makes the viewer look back at themselves like that. And yeah, her dress sense is pretty stylish! ^_^’
@Peter S: I guess that’s the problem with the way the light novels are structured (I’m assuming they’re made up of stand-alone chapters). I’m glad you’ve taken personal first impressions into account here – the rift between our expectations and what the show actually is may well be the reason why Shinbo’s work divides opinion in the way it does. Like ef, I think it has plenty of rewatchability.
@ETERNAL: Shibo is a cheeky bugger in terms of fanservice, but he seems to work on a slightly different level to many other directors. It makes me wish he worked outside the constraints of the TV format more often…
[...] and quite rightly so – in a recent post I just found, Martin made somewhat the same comments in his post about Bakemonogatari and Senjougahara. How can she not be the MVP of the series? Since the first [...]