#kabuki-mono

[merakiui]

Triplet scaramouche puhLEASE

>:) this is such a hentai concept, but something something you become their step-sibling after your parent marries Ei and they're all so weird about you........ orz there's no real plot to this other than they're all obsessed with you in their own gross ways and the end goal here (for them) is to fuck you. :^)

Kunikuzushi (Scara) who immediately doesn't like you from the moment he meets you and the two of you often bicker (which is essentially foreplay to him because everything he does out of (supposed) hatred is just his own complicated love for you). He makes your life so much harder and you make him hard every time you get into an argument. Kuni is such an annoying pest, but that same pest is digging through your laundry just to find something skimpy. Whether he's going to laugh at you for having something like that (after all, just who do you think you're trying to impress dressing like that?) or he's keeping it for his own personal, private time...... who knows!!!

Kabuki(mono) who thinks you're just the sweetest thing. <3 he adores you to pieces and uses his own awkward, albeit endearing charm to get closer to you (in very non-platonic, non-familial ways). He loved you as soon as he laid eyes on you and always sees the best in you and his own brothers even though they can be utter brats. ^^;;; he just wants everyone to get along. He plays innocent most times and acts like most things go over his head, but he's not as dense as some may think.

And then Wanderer (although perhaps he's called Kasacchi here). AAAAA Kasacchi who is so gentle with you behind closed doors. He teases you a lot, but he's not nearly as mean as your other stepbrother. While Kuni's a bully, Kasacchi is your typical brother who pokes fun in lighthearted manners and will sometimes argue with you, but at the end of the day you're family and he does love you (even though you'd have to pry that admission out of his mouth). He insists he finds you more of a nuisance than anything, but the blush on his cheeks says otherwise. So huffy,,, so tsundere...

[crossbellfan472]

she bake/kizu/nise/neko-kuro/neko-shiro/kabuki/hana/otori/oni/koi/tsuki/koyomi/owari/zoku owari/oroka/waza/nade/musubi/shinobu/yoi/amari/ougi/shinomo/ikusa/tsugi on my mono til I gatari

[strawberry-sticky-autism]

Awakening

(related to this: https://strawberry-sticky-autism.tumblr.com/post/702678377095675904/before-the-nightmare#notes)

Neko Zombie: "No no no no no no… I don't want… I didn't mean… I never meant… I'M SORRY! MUM! DAD! SIS! COME BACK! DON'T LEAVE ME ALL ALONE!"

Lost Doll: "My doll… My precious dolly… Why… Why can't you let me be happy… Why can't you let me have what I want… WHY MUST YOU TAKE AWAY EVERYTHING I LOVE?!"

Hell's Chef: "I tried so, so hard to escape… I thought I could be better… But now, I can't get their voices out of my head… Why… Why did you have to do this… Why did you have to make me remember…"

Catherine: "Hehe… Oh, I know it hurts. It hurts so much. But it hurt for me too. What's wrong with a bit of revenge? Doesn't matter if you weren't here for it. I just need to take my suffering out on something."

Mummy Dog: "Daddy, why do they hate us? Did we do something wrong?" Mummy Papa: "No… No, we didn't. The world is just awfully cruel sometimes."

Judgement Boy: "Don't look at me like that. I just… I just wanted to help. I never meant to hurt anyone, never meant to offend anyone. I can't help the way I was born…"

Cactus Gunman: "I failed my family… I failed my team… I'm a disgrace."

TV Fish: "Help? I don't need help. Just… Just let me help you."

Public Phone: "I don't really care about consequences or punishments, or anything like that. There's nothing I won't do to catch my pare- anyone's attention. Nothing."

Clock Master: "I'm sorry Maino… I just can't handle things by myself. I'm a failure of a father…" My Son/Maisan: "It's okay father, I love you anyways."

Frog Fortune Teller: "They took everything from me… My husband, my children… What did I do to deserve this…"

Roulette Boy: "Hey! Hey! Look at me! Play with me! Listen to me! C'moooon! …Mama? Papa? …Please don't ignore me."

Mutant Ducks: "It was an accident, we didn't mean it!" "Ple-Please don't sue us! We hardly have any money as is!"

Mirror Man: "Please, you have to believe me! They're a liar! DON'T LEAVE ME WITH THEM!"

Inko & Kinko: "If they don't accept us, then we'll have to find a place that will! Right, silver bell?" "Heh… Yeah, of course, songbird."

Angel/Devil Dog: "No more please… I'll be a good girl… I promise…" "Why are you so mad at me? You're the ones who made me!"

Dead Bodies: "A life well-spent? Heh… Yeah right…"

Judgement Boy Gold: "No… No, stop it… Stop it! Don't call me that! That… That isn't my name! THAT'S NOT MY NAME!"

James: "No… NO! I-I promise I'll be good. Just please… don't hit me anymore…"

Sleepy Sheep: "No… Not again… Just let me have a peaceful sleep, for once…"

Bonsai Kabuki: "Guess I went a bit too far, huh? This is probably why patients' confidentiality is a thing…"

Cactus Girl: "Brother, please come back. I'm not mad, I promise. I just… I just want you back home."

Poor Conductor: "Cadence, why did you have to leave me? Don't you know I'm lost without you? Both of us are…"

Mono Eye Wizard: "I did everything for them. Everything they asked. So then why… Why couldn't they just leave them alone…"

Dr Fritz: "Cathy, I'm so sorry. I was such a coward back then. Let me make it up to you."

[31stday]

26 - Kuroneko

or 藪の中の黒猫 - Yabu no naka no Kuroneko (Eng: "Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove") in its original Japanese release

Synopsis: In feudal Japan, two women are brutally killed becoming vengeful spirits, who take the shape of black cats in the daylight, set on taking revenge on samurai.

Year/Country:  1968, Japan

Subgenres: haunting, j-horror, kaibyō eiga or bake neko mono ("moster cat" or "ghost cat" movies)

Reason for watching: Kuroneko means "black cat" in Japanese and I have two black cats. ;) Also, I am a big fan of Japanese horror but really only know j-horror starting with the Ringu and Ju-on era so was excited to see an earlier example.

Highlights: There was so much I loved about this movie, but perhaps the thing I loved the most was the low-tech theatre-like effects! The flying and various other pieces were straight out of kabuki (a type of traditional Japanese theatre that I, coincidentally, actually focused on in my studies for my master's of fine arts degree). Also the lighting was so theatrical and I loved it.

Lowlights: I think what I found to be a highlight could really be a lowlight for someone else - it was very over the top which isn't for everyone.

Rewatchabilty: Yes

Overall review: This movie was wild. First, in full disclosure, I should share that I watched in Japanese with Spanish subtitles because that was the only version I found, so I definitely missed some of the depth of the movie in my multi-language translation while watching. However, it was straightforward and very visually fun to watch. I was also somewhat shocked by how graphic without showing much the opening scene was, particularly for 1960s Japan.

Who should watch it: J-horror fans (also that small subset of Japanese theatre nerds like me)

For fun, here's a related kabuki reference:

Woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi featuring the kabuki play Ume no Haru Gojūsantsugi (eng: "Plum Spring: The Fifty-three Stations"). It was performed in 1835 in Ichimura-za. It depicts a cat that has shapeshifted into an old woman, a cat wearing a napkin and dancing, and the shadow of a cat licking a lamp (indicating that it's a bakeneko, or monster cat). The actors featured: Mimasu Gennosuke I as Shirasuga Jûemon (right), Onoe Kikugorô III as Neko-ishi no Kai (Spirit of the Cat Stone, center) and Ichimura Uzaemon XII as Inabanosuke (left).

[byjannee]

YAKUZA

Sejarah Yakuza dimulai pada awal tahun 1612, ketika orang-orang yang dikenal sebagai kabuki-mono (“orang gila”), mulai menarik perhatian para pejabat setempat. Mulai dari Pakaian dan potongan rambut serta perilaku mereka yang aneh, mereka juga membawa pedang yang panjang, di mana gaya tersebut membuat mereka cukup nyentrik. Kabuki-mono membuat kebiasaan untuk memusuhi dan meneror siapa pun di waktu luang mereka, bahkan sampai menusuk seseorang hanya untuk kesenangan belaka. Para kabuki-mono adalah samurai eksentrik, membuat nama-nama yang aneh untuk kelompok mereka dan banyak berbicara dalam bahasa gaul.slotgacor.polagacor

Loyalitas mereka satu sama lain sangat luar biasa. Mereka akan saling melindungi dari ancaman apa pun, termasuk terhadap keluarga mereka sendiri. Kenyataannya, kabuki-mono adalah pelayan shogun, dan juga mengambil nama hatamoto-yakko (“Hamba shogun”).permatabet88

[ondessiderales]

Monde flottant

« L'ukiyo (浮世, « monde flottant ») est un mot d'origine bouddhique qui désigne initialement le monde présent, c'est-à-dire un monde illusoire, empli de peines et de souffrances selon la pensée bouddhique. Passé de mode, le terme réapparait dans le vocabulaire japonais du XVIIe siècle sous une graphie différente ukiyo-e (浮世絵, terme japonais signifiant « image du monde flottant »). Il devient une allusion ironique à l'homophone « triste monde » (憂き世), le parcours terrestre de la mort et de la renaissance dont les bouddhistes cherchent à se libérer. S'il désigne la même réalité à savoir le monde présent, il met l'accent non plus sur la tristesse mais sur l'inclination au plaisir et à la jouissance.

Il décrit le mode de vie urbain japonais durant l'époque d'Edo (1600-1867). La culture « monde flottant » se développe à Yoshiwara, le quartier chaud autorisé d'Edo (aujourd'hui Tokyo), lieu où sont situés nombre de bordels, chashitsu (salons de thé), de théâtres kabuki et de théâtres de marionnettes, fréquentés par la classe moyenne japonaise alors croissante. La culture ukiyo apparaît également dans d'autres ville telles qu'Osaka et Kyoto. Les fameuses estampes japonaises appelées ukiyo-e ou « images du monde flottant » trouvent leurs origines dans ces arrondissements et représentent souvent des scènes du monde flottant lui-même comme les geishas, les acteurs de kabuki, les lutteurs de sumo, les samouraïs, les chōnin et les prostituées.

En 1661 dans sa préface au Dit du monde flottant (Ukiyo-monogarari), le romancier Asai Ryoi en propose cette définition : « Vivre seulement pour l'instant, contempler la lune, la neige, les cerisiers en fleurs et les feuilles d'automne, aimer le vin, les femmes et les chansons, se laisser porter par le courant de la vie comme la gourde flotte au fil de l'eau. ». Accolé à des mots courants, le terme en vient à désigner l'« homme du monde flottant » (ukiyo-otoko), le « roman du monde flottant » (ukiyo-züshi) ou encore les « images du monde flottant » (ukiyo-e). »

[littleeyesofpallas]

Kabuki-mono

So there’s this thing Japan does a lot in their history where, because they utilize an ideographic written language in which some characters can be read and pronounced different ways, when certain words kind of become obsolete or taboo subcultures will make up a kind of homonym that retains the spoken word but changes the written characters and thus the meaning while sort of carrying on the spirit of the thing.  One of these is the word Kabuki[歌舞伎] which is written with the characters for “Song”+”Dance”+”Skill.”  But is derived in part from Kabuki-mono[傾奇者] written as “Strange”+”Trend/Inclined/Leaning”+”Person.”

The Kabuki-mono are often described as a “gang” but that is a somewhat disingenuous phrase as it carries with it a lot of implications that I don’t think reflect accurately what they really were...  Even a popular Japanese-English online dictionary defines the term as:

dandy;

peacock;

early-17th-century equivalent of present-day yakuza;

Edo-period eccentric who attracted public attention with their eye-catching clothes, peculiar hairstyle, and weird behavior

And while these are all fairly accurate in their own ways, I don’t think it paints a particularly complete picture.  So, allow me to try and add some context...

The Kabuki-mono have been recorded as a trend during the mid-late 1500s (the tail end of the period of Japan’s first major unification under Nobunaga Oda and his direct successor, Hideyoshi Toyotomi; of note is that the unification had ended the preceding Sengoku Jidai/Warring States era) into the turn of the 1600s.(Around which time the rise of the Tokugawa shogunate brought with it strict social rules that quashed a number of different social customs and trends, the Kabuki-mono among them.)

What this means is that for nearly 200 years Japan had been in a state of constant war; this same time period is where the romantic images of the cultural myths of the samurai were cultivated.  For nearly 200 years Japanese society had built itself around the inevitability of war: profit and loss came from raiding and conquering of territory, the warrior caste earned its social value according to its very real measures of worth in battle, and the dynamic of courtly politics was sustained by the privileged ruling class propped up on their military power and holdings.  For 200 years and all the generations that were born raised and died in it amassing soldiers, training for war, and winning social status and wealth in battle were a way of life.  And then peace came.

(So jarring in fact was the shift towards peace that the need to justify a bloated military force even pushed Japan to try and invade the Asian mainland, just to give their restless and disenfranchised soldiers something to do.)

But the awkward shift in life styles meant that while the highest echelons of Japanese society adapted to more peaceful politics, the middling ranks of aristocracy found themselves without wars to fight, without real political influence, and without roles in society: Many families found their heirs provided for, spoiled even, but aimless.  Herein came the ronin and wandering samurai that would become the beloved trope of samurai fiction for centuries to follow.

But among these disenfranchised yet financially well off (and very frequently well educated and cultured) soldiers were some who took to posturing their status, very probably as a direct result of their losing real power in courtly affairs as practices skewed toward the nuance of peacetime politics.  So, as if to announce their wealth and culture they would being to dress lavishly to show off their money, both to one another and to the peasantry.  Their tastes leaned into the gaudy, favoring bright colors, elaborate patterns, and exotic fabrics like leathers, animal furs, and light catching materials.  They also adorned themselves in beaded charms, metals, and even decorated their swords and sword sheathes.  Also popular became the almost comically large swords, again commissioned as a matter of social posturing; often depictions of Kabuki-mono will show them leaning on their swords while standing upright, using them as walking sticks, or slung over their shoulder to bare the heavy load.

From this M.O. there came a fairly logical development in style; many of these fashionable ex-samurai began to collect women’s clothing, because of the available clothes women’s possessed all the traits they found desirable.  For some this amounted to cross dressing, but because women’s clothes were often too small for the men to wear properly, they would drape them as capes, or fashion them into sashes.  This in turn lead to layering many articles of clothing over one another, as it allowed for a maximum of patterns and fabrics to be incorporated into a single ensemble.  But for those who were able to wear women’s clothes comfortably, or who had women’s styles fashioned in their own sizes, the fuller feminine aesthetic carried over with, and accessories also came into vogue for the Kabuki-mono.  Moreover, many would also wear their hair down (but not cut, as the length was still indicative of status, but the topknot itself being explicitly masculine) rather than in the traditional topknot, which had the effect of also evoking a more feminine style.

In practice these boastful and again financially frivolous groups of eccentric fashionistas would spend their time wandering lively urban areas to show off their visible wealth, or spending their time smoking* and drinking together in taverns where they were frequently known to skip bills. (it’s entirely likely many of them didn’t even have real money left to their name after the benefits of the war economy subsided)

Keeping in mind that this was an era in which their samurai status, however impractical in courtly politics, did still technically afford them a kind of diplomatic immunity and power over peasantry.  So when I say they “skip  their bills” it wasn’t so much a tricky dine and dash as it was a bold and arrogant saunter out the door with the utmost confidence that if a pub owner were to try and stop them, they could beat the commoner even to death with relative impunity.

In this same vein they were known to get quite readily into drunken brawls and wrestle in the streets with other “gangs.”  But of course “wrestling” here is actually the jujutsu that had commonly been part of a samurai’s military training.

And in this way common hang outs for different groups of displaced soldiers would become centers of what were basically gang turf, and these casually belligerent interactions and retaliations to them would begin to carry with them larger consequences.

A small aside that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else here: Another accessory to their aesthetic were large custom made Kiseru (a kind of Japanese smoking pipe with metal mouth piece and bowl) like their swords, crafted comically large as to make a loud statement.  Some accounts of fights between gangs actually describe pipes so large and with such prominent metal components that they could be used as weapons to fend off an unexpected attack, even from a sword or dagger. (ironically this trope has developed in one of two ways over the years, either exaggerating the size of the pipe further, or downplaying its size to that of a regular pipe to create a kind of dissonance where a skilled fighter can wield even a small inconspicuous object as a weapon.)

As these kinds of gangs grew in size, activity, and influence they did eventually attract the attention and ire of their superiors.  By the time the Tokugawa shogunate took over, they were on a short list of black listed groups targeted by legal reforms that outlawed, not the groups themselves, but much of their behavior and practices, affording the shongunate the impetus to act on arrests, that would do away with key leaders, until the gangs eventually dissipated on their own.

But there was another set of eyes that had been following the kabuki-mono activity, even in its waning years: one Izumo no Ikuni.  The woman who would go on to found Kabuki theatre while the memory of the Kabuki-mono was still in the public mind even as they vanished from the bars and streets.  It is from the kabuki-mono that Kabuki theatre would develop its audacious costume and distinctly pronounced mannerisms and even characterization of samurai.  It is also the alluring androgyny of the Kabuki-mono’s fashionable men that led Izumo no Ikuni and her all female troupe to so readily and confidently assume the masculine roles. (Ikuni herself was known to address her audiences directly, with no formal traditions of a 4th wall, and flirt with women while in character to great if often notorious effect.)

A curious side effect of this passing of the torch is that the strong associations with theatre fashion actually caused a lot of other media to distance themselves from various associations with theatre by effectively relegating the kabuki-mono fashion to the domain of theatre almost exclusively.  So stories about poor and disenfranchised samurai in the years following the Warring States period adopted a kind of universal trope of the plain clothes samurai, in rough and worn kimonos, or else distinguished formal wear befitting the status of the higher rungs, but nearly eradicating the image of the Kabuki-mono from any fiction that didn’t specifically feature them.

I guess my point is just that it's super cool to me that there was this whole brief era where a bunch of war hardened, genderbending, fashionista thugs were just kicking around Kyoto picking fights and showing off. And its a damn shame that circumstances as they are have kind of erased them. Also they so very much embody and legit pioneered the spirit of Bad Suit Energy that sustains me.

[bandagegirl]

According to google translated Lost Qualia, Mono Eye Wizard is Frog Fortune Teller's husband? Good for them. Good for them.

[ghsxreader]

Promo Post !!

Hello! This is a Gregory Horror Show x Reader blog since there hasn’t been any x reader content for GHS on Tumblr that I’ve seen. This blog will focus around readers who have already turned into permanent residents. If specified, it can also be a human protag ! I will do:

SFW

Headcanons

Short drabbles

I will NOT do:

NSFW

Angst (Unless I’m in the mood don’t expect it)

this one is IMPORTANT.

I WILL NOT DO x READERS WITH ANY OF THE CHARACTERS BELOW 18. THE ONLY EXCEPTION TO THIS IS IF THE RELATIONSHIP IS PLATONIC OR FAMILIAL. THIS NEEDS TO BE SPECIFIED IN REQUEST.

With that said, requests are open!

[nyan-ryder]

Welcome to episode 2647568272919 of When The Hell Did I draw This? featuring Gregory Horror Show

[eternity-box]

Full collection of figures for Gregory horror show collectible game experience. I have tonnes of double ups for nearly every character that I'm willing to part with for any other fans of this obscure game.

[ghostjetshell]

Tamashii Nations | Marvel Manga Realization | Kabuki Mono (Deadpool)

[redrumrose]

Little nightmore au

Mono and six au swap

Imajen pls

(I tried lol xDD  I gave Thin Man a kabuki mask ^w^)

[deadscanlations]

Kabuki mono - MITSUMOTO Yoshiharu

A oneshot from AX v.83.  

Download

[rouge-la-flamme]

My friends, bless you for your patience! I return from a dry spell (partly literal, as in weather too hot to use a damn tablet) bearing an experiment with the style of woodblock prints representing kabuki! In my usual clothing research, kabuki prints are things to beware of, as they contain often-unrealistic stage costumes,* but I had to indulge in this…kabuki-esque presentation of Japanese Les Mis? inspired by kabuki prints by Utagawa Kunisada II, which date from the 1860s, the period of the Brick’s publication.

It so happens that kabuki started to take an interest in Les Mis-style characters right in the era of Les Mis. My kabuki costume book** notes that the Bunka-Bunsei era (=Brick Era) was particularly good for kabuki, as money poured into the theaters and the repertoire expanded. Two new genres were: “kaidan-mono, ghost plays of grotesque theme with a ghost as the protagonist instead of as a bit player as had been the custom previously;” and “kizewa-mono (ki, raw or real; sewa, worldly […]).” The protagonists of the new gritty kizewa-mono “are not only from the lower classes but are often lawless characters,” including “thieves, gamblers, prostitutes, vagabonds, ne’er-do-wells, and hinin.” Genteel folks appear, but only in minor roles. A female villain—akuba—in a kizewa-mono is played by a prominent actor and must therefore have a sympathetic aspect. “Perhaps she is stealing money to help re-establish her impoverished lord, or she is a bad woman who realizes she is wrong and commits suicide at the end of the play.”

(I count ghosts as Valjean-relevant characters because: (1) Japanese ghosts generally live to avenge a terrible grievance, which mirrors Valjean’s state of mind when we first meet him—and also, in a way, his determination to make amends for his unwitting injury to Fantine; and (2) Valjean is constantly transcending symbolic deaths. Like, constantly.)

So without further ado, pictures coming right up...

* Kabuki costumes did influence Tokugawa-era fashion; the costume-fashion relationship is complex and interesting. Kabuki (as opposed to the aristocratic Nō) was commoners’ theater. Kabuki costumes had to dodge (or dared to flout) sumptuary regulations, like everyday dress. Some costume elements stood in symbolically for things that they could not practically or legally replicate: armor, court dress. Kabuki stars were pop idols—though the whole profession technically belonged to the hinin outcaste group—and their fashion choices were emulated. (I have my eye on this milieu for Japanese Montparnasse, who would make a beautiful onnagata—actor for female roles—if he would, yknow, actually work at a craft.) Up through the Bunka-Bunsei era, actors had to buy or make their own costumes. Stars could afford lavish ones, while others had to cobble together embarrassing workarounds using everyday clothes. (Or, if you are Montparnasse, you knife the owner of your desired outfit.) All this makes for a dialogue between costume and fashion that can be…difficult to follow. ^^’

** Ruth Shaver, Kabuki Costume, illustrations by Sōma Akira and Ōta Gakō.

[canmom]

Animation Night 51 - Kizumonogatari

Look, we’ve gone several weeks without anything deeply weebish, I have a reputation to maintain here!

Hey friends, I have somehow avoided getting kicked off this website. I have backed up the Animation Night posts locally, though it’s going to take a bit of work to publish the archive on my giþub site!

So, what’s this week about? Studio SHAFT were in their heyday known for two things: the rightly legendary Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which we watched back on Animation Night 10, and is apparently soon to receive a new film... but mostly, the much longer Monogatari series. Starting with Bakemonogatari (2009), this stood out a great deal (and did a lot to establish the SHAFT style): a distinctive blend formal experimentation, dense literary allusions, tight blink-and-you’ll miss it editing with creative use of text, and a wry, discomforting sense of humour.

Monogatari entered the world as a series of light novels by the startlingly prolific Nisio Isin (or NisiOisiN as he prefers it!), centred on a boy named Koyomi Araragi who falls into the orbit of a long succession of supernaturally-afflicted girls. Though that premise probably makes it sound sorta harem-adjacent, and Araragi does get together with one of said girls by the end of Bake-, what I’ve seen of it primarily treats this premise more as a framing device for quite varied supernatural stories; some more horror-oriented, some more comedic. Each entry in the series is titled a pun in the template of [something]monogatari, after a traditional literary form that connotes similarly to ‘tale’. Typically these pormanteau with the kanji 物 (mono, roughly just ‘thing’), so...

化物語 Bakemonogatari (after 化物 bakemono meaning monster)

偽物語 Nisemonogatari (after 偽物 nisemono meaning counterfit)

猫物語 Nekomonogatari (not really a pun, just 猫 neko meaning cat lol)

傾物語 Kabukimonogatari (傾 meaning slope, with afaict a very unusual reading presumably to bring to mind kabuki theatre? or the flamboyant kabukimono samurai gangs? i don’t get this one)

and so on...

I can’t say too much about the light novel series, or how it compares with others of the genre, beyond that it’s reputed to be very wordy! I do know the task of adapting this fell into the hands of directors Akiyuki Shinbo and Tatsuya Oishi at SHAFT, and they evidently wanted to make something rather avant-garde!

Some of their ideas included things like attempting to capture the interiority of a character by blacking out the screen as if for blinking with ‘black’ or ‘red’ scenes:

...which along with the editing gives the whole production a distinctive rhythm. Other tricks involve extensive use of typography (e.g. flashing up a definition for a few frames), editing to kabuki sounds (each episode beginning with the an accelerating series of beats with passages from the original novel alongside them), and heavy use of geometric patterns and digital effects in the photography: gradients, stark silhouettes, a very stylised modern world yet strangely sterile and empty of people beyond the MCs. They would moreover do unusual things like using real photographs in backgrounds to create constant variation.

And while the drawing count wasn’t unusually large or anything like that - quite the opposite, often there would be almost entirely static, lingering scenes - even those static talking heads scenes would be shot with an unusual pose or composition to make it interesting. Then at key moments, they would drop some really innovative, heavily impactful key animation, such as this legendary fight scene [continued, cw gore, incredible sequence ^^] by Hironori Tanaka, Genki Matsumoto, Gen’ichiro Abe and Ryo Imamura, which made full use of the protagonist’s healing factor.

This approach proved a hit, and they were set to make many, many more adaptations of Monogatari. For a detailed retrospective on the series and its influences, kVin has you covered. (Literally I would be totally at sea without this guy lol.)

Starting in 2011, Oishi went to work on the film series, 傷物語 Kizumonogatari (which we could translate as 'Would Tale’), which was released from 2016-17, telling the first part of the story as a prequel to Bakemonogatari. Although the production was delayed years thanks to Oishi’s ambition, leaving the main series in the hands of an at first much less experienced Tomoyuki Itamura, the final result seems to have paid off, at least going by kVin’s enthusiasm...

The biggest fan of NisiOisiN’s prose is NisiOisiN himself, and so the Monogatari series is renowned for being verbose by both fans and critics. Kizumonogatari is written as the chaotic stream of consciousness of Koyomi Araragi, but Oishi decided to do away with narration and monologues entirely; he took a book that exists inside the mind of a character and tried to make all his feelings explicit and yet portrayed in an unobtrusive way. Not dropping any relevant details without outright stating anything was by all means a crazy idea. And what’s even more outrageous is that he succeeded with his elegant but thoroughly insane solution – eventually at least, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had to redraw his storyboards countless times to achieve it. The Show, Don’t Tell principle has become a bit of a poisonous idea on the internet thanks to reductive fans interpreting it as a rule rather than a powerful approach, but this film pulls it off to an extreme that shouldn’t even be possible.

For a very detailed blow by blow of the various creative things being done, you can read more here.

Unlike the more static TV series, these films are carried throughout by some frankly incredible kagenashi (unshaded) character animation, full of intense expression and inventive touches. These lively animation designs consciously contrast with the (apparently somewhat controversial) decision to set everything in realistic CGI backdrops - which do not attempt to look cel shaded or painted at all, but it seems to fit a production like this much better than the overly-shiny cars in Psycho-Pass, and fits the studio’s habit of being ahead of the curve in adopting digital tech.

So what’s all this in service of telling? In Kizu-, Araragi gets his first encounter with a supernatural girl in the form of (deep breath) the vampire Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade. Moved to offer his blood up to save her from vampire hunters, he finds himself made a vampire thrall tasked with retrieving her lost limbs.

As far as content: some gore is p much a given in this scenario, but heads up that Monogatari is also known for its improbable fanservice shots. In terms of artistic intent, this is perhaps another element in drawing us into the subjectivity of a teenage boy. And in terms of what to expect, it definitely sounds like these are sometimes used, as in here, in a way designed to discomfort rather than gratify the audience.

My impetus for picking this one out is a fascinating series of staff interviews that were translated on Sakuga Blog over the past month. Something that got this much attention, and kVin’s obvious immense enthusiasm - not to mention the clips picked out! - definitely got my interest. I’m looking forward to seeing it all together.

With the density of allusions and complex typography, this series is quite a challenge to subtitle - but luckily various groups have risen to the challenge over the years. In this case we have a kind of improbably sophisticated sub by Commie, who went to the trouble of not just matching all the fonts and such but even animating the colour changes to match the typography in the series...

Luckily for Animation Night scheduling, most of these movies are pretty short - just over an hour typically - so we should easily be able to get through all of them in one night. Animation Night 51 will begin at 7pm UK time, 3 hours from this post, at the usual spot - twitch.tv/canmom!