化物語 (上)

wow!

Bakemonogatari is many things: occult mystery, harem romance, sekaikei, but primarily it's a vehicle for the characters to chat and banter with each other. Most of the writing is dialogue, and most of its length is in conversations that don't themselves push the plot forwards. This book is very much about the journey, not the destination, and that journey goes through countless jokes about language, references to history and Japanese pop and consumer culture that you may never have heard of. I've come across a ton of sayings and expressions in this, and I'm sure there's just as many that went completely over my head; it'll certainly be one to revisit decades down the line when I'm much more well-read in Japanese.

It is many things, but it is parody to all of them, not a mocking parody but a loving one which casts an eye over the tropes of its various genres and of otaku culture, turning them over the way that its dialogue turns over words and sayings. There's actually no harem in the romance, little mystery in the occult, no sekai in the k-, uh, no world-saving stakes arising from people's problems, just personal ones. The norms of light novel genres are half adhered to, half flipped-over. Here I disagree with the (at the time of writing, only) other review that the sexual jokes devalue the experience: sexuality is as much a part of otaku culture as character tropes like the tsundere or the imouto are. Such jokes, and indeed straight-up fanservice, are fully deserving of their place in this love-letter to said culture. This play with tropes is at its best when it's in service of the characters: for all its silliness, there's some truly poignant moments when e.g. we see past the archetype of the tsundere or the school-obsessed class representative to the person underneath and why they're like that. At times I was strongly reminded of people I know who could be described through the lens of such archetypes, and at those times the strength of the author's characterisation really shone through.

For a long time, I struggled to find anything to compare this to. I'm not well-versed in light novels or early anime, though I believe the usual comparison there is to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (seen, not read): the first(?) example of a comedic self-referential, self-critical light novel series in whose footsteps Monogatari clearly follows. A tweet referred to Scott Pilgrim as "Canadian Monogatari" which I thought was apt: both celebrate geek culture of different cultures but of a similar era in a very earnest way. However, a different comparison struck me. Given how much they both use wordplay that cleverly dissects language, given their approach to both parodying and championing their respective genres, I was shocked when I realised the author that nisioisin reminded me of most is probably Sir Terry Pratchett. Very different people writing at very different times, yet perhaps with a strikingly similar mindset. Given that, how could I not be a fan?

Although a fan, there are some flaws preventing me from giving this a full 5 stars. Much as I enjoyed the journey, it was very long at times, occasionally a frustrating read when a conversation kept derailing further. Much as I praised the characterisation above, it wasn't always a success: one character in particular stands out as being an annoying collection of tropes presumably there to appeal to the reader (arguably which should appeal to me specifically), with absolutely none of the underlying personhood or dissection of such tropes seen elsewhere. Finally, the story unfortunately fails to fulfil all of the genres it's trying to be. The fantastic British sitcom Red Dwarf parodies common and well-known sci-fi plots, but also manages to be a truly compelling sci-fi series in its own right. Bakemonogatari has this a little in its romance, but in its occult mystery, the dedication to witty dialogue over plot goes to an extreme where it leaves such things feeling very shallow. I don't think it would have taken much to flesh out the plot and have some more weight, depth and a feeling of a consistent lore behind it, and it's my hope that this is realised as the series goes on.