Kizu was a good time. Just a few points to a short movie that’s more akin to a very long TV episode here.

I watched it twice, once in NYC and once in NJ. The NYC showing gave out better loot, although it’s nothing significant. The crowd was also “better” in NY in that people more or less kept their wits together and it was less like a laugh-a-thon. These are just minor nitpicks for people who care about this stuff. Watching it twice also gives me the chance to focus on stuff other than taking the movie in, at least during the second go-around.

Kizumongoatari is the most impressionistic (for lack of a better term) thing out of Shaft that I’ve seen since maybe that vampire loli anime, or even Soul Taker. Like, that Kizu used French titles (and not even thoroughly!), is both humorously pretentious and yet appropriately chosen. They could’ve gone with a number of other languages, after all.

The feeling I can’t shake was that if I wanted an adaptation of Tsukihime, this is how I wanted it to be done.

The animation is great, I guess this is something you just have to see for yourself. There were a lot of visual references and nods. For people who didn’t come into Kizu with Bake under their belts the jokes might be lost on them, but it is all per se meaningful and perhaps most meaningful in that way to interpret the material. I thought also that if we take a step back and consider Bakemonogatari (and others) in the same way, where the only pitfall of Kizu’s predecessors was the production quality to impart the technical necessity that Kizu did not lack, but the others did, maybe I would not have gotten tired of the Monogatari series so fast.

It’s like unless the prurient stuff were of interest, there isn’t a whole lot that separates Monogatari the series with, say, Mushishi. And I think it’s a certain sort of doom when a subcultural artiste’s work is best compared to a National Geographic documentary (or its anime equivalent), (if) only in terms of content. Well, there were some token pervy jokes as you’d expect, and I’m glad there were, if only to keep the contrasting heavy and light feels of the film going.

The voice acting was good. It’s as you would expect out of our four notable voiced roles, although I think Hocchan stole the show. Sakurai’s Meme was extra irritating, which is credit on his part. Hearing the older-bodied Kiss-Shot was nice, especially in that kind of traumatic state. I guess they had to go to a baby crying to kind of make it sound at least plausible.

Kousaki Satoru’s soundtrack was tops actually, it’s appropriately knock-off in the sense that Kizu’s sense of style is equally knock-off. I was taken most particularly to the music used during the conversation between Hanekawa and Araragi, as if it was kind of ripped half from Evangelion and half from the rest of Kousaki’s works. Please forgive the drawn-and-quartered analogy in advance, but it is kind of like trying to enjoy driving a Lexus makes me want to just get back into a BMW all the more, but you would think the Lexus justifies the price tag, and is a well-appointed mechanism worthy on its own rights.

Which is to say, yeah, there is a visual/sound gag that kept resonating with the weeb audience and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Let’s just say I hope the directorial crew for the movie got that feedback from the test audience in LA. Some jokes westerners get & like, which are sometimes not the same ones as the domestic audience.

I went into the experience already knowing what Kizu was about, and how this is part 1 of three, that you should expect about an hour, and that it is well animated. It was exactly what I expected. And it’s probably worth watching it twice in theaters. But this is mostly because I am already some kind of hardened otaku who is arguably the heart of this target audience, despite my distaste for Nisioisin…well, he has some good stuff, and some stuff not as good. More relevantly, there’s just too much of all of this, what people call TV anime. Having an elevated, polished and well-presented video entertainment as Kizumonogatari Part 1 is a welcomed change, if anything.

Instead of spending my Thanksgiving vacation doing something constructive, I ended up re-watching Bakemonogatari, from Aniplex’s American release. I’m done with the series and about 1/3 of the way on the commentaries.

Some notes:

Senjyogahara. The first time through I already knew she is a really cool customer and deserved, as reflected by the counts of her adorers, “all that.” I think this is also, however, a well-deserved honor. Put me with the people who find her just a little bit disturbing, I guess. Of course, it is all very much just a device, it’s what the likes of Nisio Isin and his ilks do to words and names of Japanese monsters of yore, something deconstructed and reconstituted. I think that’s what makes her interesting–Hitagi is built harder, better, faster, stronger, and simply more desirable with an efficient moe mileage, so to speak. Now it is entirely a different question as to how each of us, as individuals, find that appealing, or find Hitagi likable as a meta construct of some kind, but she serves as some kind of norm–or maybe she just acts out what normal would be in her own clumsy ways. This second viewing gave me the opportunity to really focus on what she is all about, rather than the text flood that serves as the dressing for some rather simple lot of plot. It’s like using the piano as percussion. Hitagi is like that longing but expressive guitar solo that you happen to perfect on your first try on Expert in Rock Band 3. It’s an artifice that leads to joy. She simply cuts; I only wish characters like her are more of  a frequent happenstance.

Commentary tracks. Speaking of dressing, for a series that is drowned in verbal expressions, the last thing it needs is even more verbal expressions, running on its own tracks (not even on parallel tracks in a lot of cases) that comments on the other flood of verbal expressions going on in the show. You know how the factoid about human vision and how our minds are programmed to disregard all but the most useful visual cues, or else we would overload? That is something that could happen with other senses too. To that degree, I have some trouble enjoying the commentary tracks because I had to devote a lot of my attention just to process everything that’s happening. Maybe this is one of those times a dub would’ve been helpful. I guess it’s doubly tough when I was also trying to listen to the Japanese and interpret it as I hear it, and read what the subs are saying. There wasn’t anything particularly problematic about the content of the commentaries, although it feels a little aimless and the jokes are kind of hit and miss–more miss I guess. You can tell how some of it is pre-orchestrated, and let’s just say I doubt Nisio Isin wrote them. With that being said, I’ll probably plow through, because it is kind of cute and kind of interesting.

There are boobies. I was hoping to get the credit-less version of the cosplay Tsubasa Cat OP, but I guess nobody got that, huh. I also totally forgot about it until I saw the two episodes that had it. It’s a bit of a surprise to see ite; I mean the show is pretty much just about people talking till the cows come home; after the first two episodes the fanservice is fairly muted (even including poor Nadeko’s performance). It’s as if late night anime got…late night…ier, after the series hopped on to the web. Tsubasa Cat’s proper opening is kind of graphic too, for that matter.

The packaging is kind of lame, but it is, like most Japanese-style releases, full of attention to details and it’s outstanding only to those of us who look beyond the spec sheet. It’s probably not worth the $150 if all you want is to own it. It’s worth it if you are a fan of Bakemonogatari to any degree, however. The booklet that comes with it has the obligatory story arc spreads and character profiles. The only thing beyond that is the list of all the end cards, which justifies its existence. As far as bare-bones import Blu-ray box sets go, this one is really, really just bare bones. Anything less is too bare bones; but no real complaints from me. One more note: the back cover has this nice Koyomi Arararagi image which is covered by the spec sheet which is glued to the top of the box. I kind of like how they did that with the spec sheet, I don’t like how it covers the back image–it’s possibly the more striking image on the box.

Overall, this is a show that can stand a repeat viewing. It’s no better than the first time I watched it, however.

PS. Otakon really should invite VOFAN or Poyoyon Rock and get one of them to draw some Crabby crossover.