How shocking, Shaft’s new show is the best thing so far this season. What an unexpected upset (not).

I literally do not give a fuck what Bakemonogatari is about because almost every frame is total art porn (and no not just the extended panty shot at the beginning).

Nyoro~n: awesome LOL
Nyro~n: i like this anime
The Fin: shaft could do anything and I would like it
E Minor: shaft owns, haters can get out
E Minor: their animation style is different

Here comes the meta!

E Minor: oh damn
E Minor: it’s an anime just for us

E Minor: squint
E Minor: <_<
The Fin: ~_~

The Fin: good lord
Nyoro~n: sounds like fin
Nyoro~n: heh
Nyoro~n: 97kg spite
The Fin: she fucking owns

Bakemonogatari has more visual impact than every other summer 2009 show so far put together (minus Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei which was made by the same people). The bare-bones Anon subs and what’s likely to be the heavy use of Japanese wordplay and referential humor might make it hard to understand, but honestly, you could watch it without any dialogue at all and still come away satisfied because it’s so damn easy on the eyes. Definitely unique and well worth watching, although it may bear re-watching when and if it’s picked up by a more thorough fansub group because of the many brief flashes of subliminal text that remain untranslated for now. Edit: a combination of II and one of the numberless gg spinoffs subbed the first episode and hopefully will be doing the rest, unfortunately most of the flashes of text were just excerpts from the Bakemonogatari light novel. Here is the link for the Google-impaired.

One last note: although the first ED is certainly no ‘Kimi ni Mune Kyun‘ (given the history of Shaft EDs it’s likely to be punched up in the next few episodes though), VOCALOID fans may recognize a tune by ryo, of Supercell fame (‘Melt‘, ‘Black Rock Shooter‘, ‘The World is Mine‘, the list goes on). The song is performed by a live singer rather than Hatsune Miku, but it’s nice to see the ever-popular NicoNico hitmaker moving up in the world.