February 13, 2018

Random Anime Pictures #145: Stadium

-Kizumonogatari III movie

I'm not much of a fan of the Monogatari series.  Oh, I watched the first one, sure, but now that there's... what?  Two dozen of them?  I lost track of what was next in the order and didn't enjoy the first one enough to bother.  After that, I didn't much care.  Until the Kizumonogatari series of films which I watched recently, and therein lies a tale.  

As you may or may not be aware of, I have a job that requires mental distraction lest I go completely insane.  I started out listening to music, graduated to a weekly podcast or two, and then matriculated to audio books (which my mind still calls "books on tape").  Recently, I've begun listening to endurance races via Radio LeMans and their archived broadcasts.  A 24 hour race lasts me a good three or four days, depending on how hard I hit it... but I digress.  Back to books on tape audio books.  At one point, I wondered if any of the Haruhi Suzumiya light novels were available on Audible, so I went a-searchin'.

While the answer was "nope", I did find something vaguely interesting... there was an audio version of the chronologically first, but released... what, 254th?... book of NisiOisiN's Monogatari series, entitled Kizumonogatari.  Now, I would not call myself a fan of this franchise... I watched most of the first season, realized I was spending more time reading the show than watching it, and just sort of... let it peter away.  I basically watched it until I didn't anymore.  Eh, it happens.  However, I was incredibly bored so I picked up the audio book.  It's only nine or 10 hours long, so it took me two days to listen to it.  Decent enough, read and performed by three voice actors that I'm pretty sure worked on the English dub of one or another of the silver platter releases.

When I remembered that there was a movie release of Kizu, I tracked it down, discovered it was in three parts and nearly four hours in length, and settled in to watch it.  And... I dunno how I feel about the thing.  It's awful durn purty at times, like most of the SHAFT adaptations of the franchise, but it's also... um... well... it made me feel kinda greasy.

It's bloody, it comes close to hentai, violence is common, and in-between all that are characters that are, essentially, unlikable.  Having said all that, or perhaps more because of it, the thing is actually rather brilliant more times than not.  But I couldn't shake the feeling that it's one of those things you like because you're supposed to like it because that's what people say you're supposed to do.

So what does all this mean in the end?  Well, I won't be recommending it to anybody that isn't already a fan of the Monogatari franchise, that's for darn sure.  It's an art film, really, with all that moniker entails and suggests.  But as I've written this post, I've actually rewatched the whole thing twice and not just because I was choosing screenshots.  It just kept me watching.

Take that for what it's worth.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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