Um, WHAT?! This story was so fragmented and weird. It was broken up in the worst way and so hard to put together. I see it has pretty good reviews and I honestly don't understand. I don't even know what was trying to happen here. I did not like this one at all.

I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

To be honest, the story went over my head. I mean, I get the gist of it but that’s only after trying very hard to piece it together. It was a very weird, fragmented story. I’m sure you’d have to read this several times to really “get it.”

This wasn’t for me.

I received a reviewer copy of Bakemonogatari through NetGallery.

I've heard about this series long before this release of the English Version of the manga. The memory of the clips with the weightless girl and the infinite number of weaponized stationary has stuck with me over the years.

Bakemonogatari or Monster's story is a manga adaptation of a light novel of the same name by NISIOISIN. It is labelled as a horror comic but it falls under mystery, urban fantasy, and it could be easily a slice of life story.

It follows Koyomi Araragi as he helps his female classmates deal with fairly recent brushes with the supernatural. Araragi himself was attacked by a vampire over the two week school break before the manga starts.

Volume one follows Hitagi Senjougahara who has been rendered virtually weightless by a stone crab for two years. Hitagi used to be a track star but she stopped and no longer participates in any school sports.

Araragi becomes interested in her after she slips on a banana peel and he catches her as she falls down the stairs and uncovers her secret.

I won't get into too much more due to spoilers but this is a dialogue heavy manga with very few action scenes which is contrary to OH! Great's series, Tenjou Tenge, which might be disappointing to fans expecting something similar. There is some light cheesecake type of shonen panels and mild sexual humor but the subject is heavy.

This issue's overall theme is acceptance. What would you be willing to sacrifice to alleviate an emotional burden?

I like the reoccurring tagline of "Monsters don't come to you. They are there from the start." It sets the tone as you read through. It is a strange story but it is just a start of what sounds like is episodic stories dealing with a central emotional theme. It is a breath of fresh air from the countless fighting, dsytopian future and isekai mangas that have become popular recently.

This warrants more than one read through to really get.

Confusing to say the least. I almost didn't get the point of the story. It was just a bunch of characters, scenes and dialogues with no sense of order or pacing. I liked a bit how it all ended, but I never got to understand what was happening.

'Bakemonogatari, Vol. 1' by NisOisiN with art by Oh! Great is a manga about the monsters all around us and the weird ways they manifest.

This book had a somewhat confusing start, but it's basically about a guy named Koyomi Araragi trying to help a girl named Hitagi Senjougahara. Her problem is that she weighs hardly anything and her weight has been stolen by a monster crab. Koyomi has a strange friend that is good at helping, so he is taking Hitagi to him for help.

This story had some coherence problems. I like the idea of this, but things jumped around to other stories and things were not explained. I don't know why it's important that Koyomi is a virgin. I don't know why the class president storyline is even in this book.

What I did really like is the art. I really liked the style of art and the way panels were laid out. From an art and design standpoint, this was great.

I received a review copy of this manga from Vertical Comics, Kodansha Comics, and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A unique take on the concept of monsters from folklore in the modern world, Bakemonogatari boasts a dramatic storyline and awesome artwork. Like, the first thing to catch your eye about this manga would be the artwork style - it is evocative, and the storyboard is impressive. It plays with angles and shadows to give the story that extra punch of mystique, which elevates the plot to a more intriguing level. The story is about these high school teens who are bound to monsters, with Araragi as the protagonist who helps out his classmate whose weight has been taken by a monster. Since he himself has had an encounter with a monster, he takes her to the person who helped him and they all perform an exorcism of sorts, which then reveals the nature of the bond.

I will add, though, that the brilliance of the plotline is undercut by the fact that this manga also indulges fanservice - like, are you really asking me to believe that this guy's hands just lands on her private parts not once, but twice? There are a couple of other instances where unnecessarily panels are devoted to make suggestive scenes. Also, I never understood how a girl who finds it difficult to even change clothes because it is much heavier for her, carries around practically an entire stationery shop of sharp objects with her? Like, I get it - the scenes with her displaying that array are pretty cool, and detailed well, but it is just a glaring plot hole, or an excuse to have him help her dress, so either way I am calling bull.

Short version: brilliant story, and expressive artwork, but pointless panty shots ruin it somewhat.

Bakemonogatari is a story about a high-school student Koyomi Araragi who catches a girl named Hitagi Senjougahara when she trips. He quickly notices that she weighs almost nothing because of a paranormal encounter with a crab who stole it.

I enjoyed the story line and mythology of this manga as well as the Fullmetal Alchemist/Alchemy references. The main character Koyomi is endearing even though a little nerdy and easily irritated. I'm always a sucker for a good vampire boy.

Some things that lowered my rating were the unnecessary fan service shots, the story pace, and the translation. I always find that most nudity in manga is there for the male gaze and can get old very quickly. I don't believe this story benefited from it. The story at first seemed too rushed and then at the end was almost all over the place. The translation can't always be helped but I found Ko Ransom's grammar to be a little confusing.

This is something I may personally read but not something I'd recommend for my library's collection.

If you'd like to see a few panels' worth of the art, visit my blog, The Grimoire Reliquary.

ALRIGHT, I’M APPARENTLY BRANCHING OUT INTO MANGA — first time for everything. I was looking through NetGalley a few days ago, searching for something new and intriguing and what do I come across but the first Volume of a manga adaptation to something I’m familiar with? I saw the Bakemonogatari anime years ago, and was struck by how unique its visual style was — on par only with the eeriness, the sheer bloody strangeness, of its story.

THE ART IS PRAISE-WORTHY. Oh!Great’s art consists of clear lines, which was a relief since I often struggle with the visual overload so frequently present in a lot of manga art. It properly communicates the moods of characters and their intentions. The writer-artist is enormously talented with the pencil, that’s for sure, and I am looking forward to how this looks on paper as compared to digital. The few double-spreads in this first volume showcased the kind of art I’d put in a frame on the wall, and looking at them cut in half in a .pdf file felt very wrong indeed.

Onto the bad…or at least the mildly, wildly annoying bits. There’s a fair amount of fan-service here, which works great for my sixteen-year-old self but at twenty-four comes across as gratuitous and unnecessary. Pretty art, sure, but I could do without the panty-shots and several even more over-sexualized elements included inside.

It doesn’t quite capture the quirky nature of the story as presented in the anime. It doesn’t have to – they’re two different adaptations of the same core material but this operates in a different medium entirely and it’s a good way to reacquaint myself with a franchise I never got to explore in full.

THE STORY, ALAS, LACKS CLARITY. Some will find it difficult to comprehend, which is where my familiarity came in use. I had at least some knowledge about what was going on, and I’m not entirely sure the dialogue succeeded in recapturing the eery feel of the light novel as much as it was confusing. It gets clearer about midway through.

If you like manga, if you’ve heard about the Monogatari franchise but prefer this medium to anime — I’d say, GO FOR IT! The release is in October — my personal score is 3.25 stars out of 5, or a 6.5 out of 10. It lacks that extra something to give it a score of 3.5/5; as it is, the art pushes it to a level just above the utter averageness of most 3-stars.

Thanks, NetGalley, for providing me with a review copy.

Monogatari series is one of the most well known anime series out there, following complicated story line with bunch of characters. It's also beloved for its magnificent and breathtaking art style. That's why I was surprised there was no translation of manga, up until now. I was planning to dive into the series in the anime format but I haven't yet. Is it worth it? First volume of Bakemonogatari convinced me that it is.

First of all, I'd like to talk about artstyle. It is truly beautiful and eventhough it might not be everyone's taste, I was mesmerized. Eventhough some say it has its ecchi moments, I would disagree. Sure, there are some, but original artstyle and the beauty of the moment turn it into something else. It's not lewd at all... Second of all, storyline. This one was a little bit confusing. At least for me. I was not entirely sure what was happening in the beginning, but I caught up in the end. At least on some level. A lot of stuff is still a mystery to me, but I am pretty sure we'll get to that later. I am a big fan of any yokai/monster elements in my manga/anime, meaning I was sold immediately. Third of all, characters. I am pretty sure whole series is pretty character driven. From what I've seen so far, we get bunch of diversity. In a good way. My favorite one was Senjougahara - her weapons made me love her immediately.

Would I recommend Bakemonogatari to everyone? No. I think it's one of those series you either love or hate. It is a little bit confusing in the beginning and if you don't know about whole complicated structure, you might get lost. On the other hand, art style is totally worth it.

"BAKEMONOGATARI (manga), volume 1" wasn't really for me. It is the usual type of manga. Panty shots and high school drama. Nothing new.

Sadly this one was not upto my taste. I am easily pleased by anything and everything that is illustrated including manga with great art sequence and just ignore everything about it including the characters or the plot or the dialogues. But this one, I just cannot pinpoint which one I must like for the two stars. I would say it's solely for representing a female main character and for the first two colour pages. Other than these, I cannot find anything else to appreciate this one. The characters are cringy, the art sequence is really haphazard, the plot is messy with no ultimate explanation or a proper presentation. If it was a confusing plot, I would have been happier. And to enjoy a manga either you have to enjoy the characters or enjoy the art sequence or the plot or the mystery or anything to enjoy a manga. This one lacked in any of this. And to say this is of a fantasy/action genre, it represented the vampire/fantasy part or the characters being strongly represented totally lacking. And what's with the nude scene. It was so irrevalant and made the characters look really bad. I will not continue with the series.

Thank you #NetGalley for the book #Bakemonogatari.

I really enjoyed this, it was strange, very quirky and odd, but I think that’s what I loved so much. The humour is brilliant and the art is amazing, so beautiful, such a talent. If you love manga and want something unique , but brilliant, this is the manga you need to read.


Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

I didn't care for this manga. I liked the art. I liked that she hid weapons in her skirt but I didn't like any of the characters or the subject matter. The translator was really choppy too. It seemed like they were using direct translation at times instead of getting the spirit of the phrase and turning it into English that was normal to see. (I speak Japanese so I get it)

This was a book i read through a pdf i recieved in exchange of a review on Netgalley!

I. Fucking. Loved. This.

I've heared about this series and vaguely know the plot through the anime community and well.....the tiktoks and memes. Didn't know anything when going into this which definitely made me love it even more. The art style, the eccentricty, the magic sytem, everythig was amazing!

I have no idea what I read as the format was a bit weird for me. Manga fans will eat this up as it features some nice sea creature and quite a bit of fan service. Thank you Net Galley for accepting my request. Art work is astounding in this.

Firstly, the artwork in Bakemonogatari is beautiful. I loved studying the gorgeous images. From a story point of view, though, I struggled a little. I liked the fantasy elements, but it took me nearly until the end of the volume before I thought I had a (vague) grasp of what was going on. Perhaps that wouldn't be an issue if you were coming to this after reading the novels or watching the manga, but for someone like myself with no background knowledge of the story, it was confusing at times. I liked it enough that I would read on; however, had the plot been clearer, I would have enjoyed it more. As such, this was a 3.5-star read for me.

It was ok, but I don't know if I will read the other volumes, it seems not such a new plot.....

Non era male, ma non so ancora se leggeró il seguito, perché mi sembra una trama giá vista....

THANKS NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW!

Series

Bakemonogatari: Monster Tale (Manga) #1

Rating: 3 .5

A team-up made in manga heaven! The wildly popular Monogatari novel series by renowned bestselling author NISIOISIN has now been reimagined into a knockout manga adapation by none other than legendary artist Oh!Great (Tenjo Tenghe, Air Gear)!

One day, high-school student Koyomi Araragi catches a girl named Hitagi Senjougahara when she trips. But—much to his surprise—she doesn’t weigh anything. At all. She says an encounter with a so-called “crab” took away all her weight …

Monsters have been here since the beginning. Always. Everywhere



My thoughts

Would I recommend it ? yes if you like or love manga

Will I go on with this series? I don't know

Manga is't something I pick up to read , in fact I don't read it at but as soon as I saw this one I was like I'll give it a try. there was times I was a little confused or a lot confused on what was going on and what the story was about , but the story does show promising . With that said I want to thank Netgalley for letting me read and review it exchange for my honest opinion

As someone with limited knowledge of this series, I went into this first volume confused and left confused. But lets start with the good.

The art is BEAUTIFUL It's a sight for sore eyes, really. Disclosure, I haven't read very many super recent manga (stuff from the last five years or so) and that may be heightening my perceptions but I love the use of shadows and often quirky details. Everything looks clean and the sense of scale is palpable. Honestly, this art style is too good for the standard sized manga volume with soft beige pages. It would look best on a high quality 10-inch tablet to really showcase the level of detail.

I like the character designs, they remind me vaguely of the Persona series. If you're a fan of tsundere girls and risque shounen romance series that are on the darker side with some action sequences, I think this would be easily recommendable. It's very fast-paced and the ending hints at deeper character development in subsequent volumes.

But for some drawbacks, if you're not into that any of that aforementioned stuff this is not a series that I think would change people's minds.

As previously stated, I am still utterly confused by the story and its aims. And finally, the inside of people's mouths being put in mortal danger seems to be a terrifying trigger point for me so hopefully future volumes don't have as much of that.

Note : Thanks goes to Netgalley and Kodansha for providing an e-ARC of this title for review.

About a year ago, I read the light novel version of Bakemonogatari and I loved the story. The concept is so unique and I still find myself fascinated by it. The story loosely ties in Japanese folklore and tells the story of how a crab god stole the weight from a teen girl, leaving her 9/10 of the weight she previously was. It sounds like a very strange story, but it is absolutely so interesting to read. I think that the art was a beautiful depiction of how the story is told in the light novel, and it does an amazing job of telling the same exact story with illustrations to back it up. The strangeness of the storyline draws you in and keeps you reading, and the added humor creates an even better experience. Overall, I thought this was a great read, and I recommend it to anyone it to anyone who is looking for a manga with light fantasy elements to it.