Bakemonogatari

## Bakemonogatari **Bakemonogatari** (化物語, lit. *Ghost Story*) is a 2009 anime television series produced by Shaft, directed by Akiyuki Shinbo, and adapted from the first two volumes of Nisio Isin's *Monogatari* light novel series. The first entry in one of anime's most beloved and idiosyncratic franchises, Bakemonogatari is a sui generis work: part supernatural mystery, part witty romantic comedy, part experimental art film, with a visual language all its own. Its influence on subsequent anime aesthetics has been enormous. Koyomi Araragi is a third-year high school student who, after a spring break encounter with a vampire, is now mostly human again — retaining only enhanced healing abilities. He has kept his experience hidden and lives a fairly quiet life, caught between his childhood friend Hanekawa and the school's supposedly standoffish beauty Hitagi Senjougahara. When Araragi discovers that Senjougahara has been rendered nearly weightless by an apparition — a supernatural entity called an oddity — he connects her with the oddity-specialist Meme Oshino. Thus begins Araragi's role as a helper to girls afflicted by oddities: supernatural creatures that gravitate to human vulnerabilities and unresolved emotional wounds. Each arc focuses on a different girl and a different oddity, building a portrait of adolescent pain expressed through the language of the supernatural.