In case you've forgotten, the first part of this serial movie release had Shinobu get turned into a little girl for reasons that I can't be assed to explain the biology of, and Araragi must use his newly acquired vampire powers to defeat a group of supernatural individuals "shonen tournament"-style in order to get the body parts our Heart-Angel-Blade needs to swallow in order to go from "you masturbate to her and you'll get arrested" to "you masturbate to her and you'll get Let's talk about whether Kizumonogatari actually lived up to its promise this time with its second installment. well, at least watch this one right after Tekketsu, since it'll probably be hard to wait for the Reiketsu BDs.īut enough about the price. And if Reiketsu doesn't come to theaters near you. It's best to have the entire story fresh in your mind as you watch each one. Watch Tekketsu, then watch this, and then go to the theater and watch Reiketsu. Wait until Reiketsu is in theaters near you. In short, here's what I'm saying: watch this movie, but not yet. The Kizu movies are more suited to the binge-watcher than the theatergoer: it's much better to see all three in one sitting, with maybe short intermissions between each act. And a movie needs to have more than one act in it to be interesting - with only one act per movie, the tone is more or less the same throughout each one, until the next movie comes out and it changes. However, this begs the question: why did this have to be split into three movies? Other people have said this before, but Kizu is a very textbook three-act story.
Nekketsu gives us the action scenes that were promised in the first movie and provides nice set-up for the third movie, where the careful character development we've seen in our vampires will reach its climax. The guy's a hunk! No wonder Hanekawa got so flustered when he took off his shirt. Strangely, though, this is actually overshadowed by the Araragi fan service. We get a nude shot, we get some thigh shots, and we even get some butt shots. I really shouldn't even have to talk about this.Īdditionally, Kissshot gains the body of a teenager in this movie, so Shaft is now allowed to sexualize her. Of course, the main focus of the character development is on Araragi and Hanekawa, and they get it in spades. As Araragi grows more accustomed to using his vampire powers, we learn more and more how strong Kissshot was, which leads us to think about how she got into her current predicament and what values she holds. Dramaturgy, Episode, and Guillotinecutter exist mainly as devices to illustrate how strong the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, and cold-blooded vampire really is - this is made clear immediately with the reasoning under which the Dramaturgy fight ends. The "intensity as a human" theme in particular receives very heavy focus, with the story developments constantly encouraging the viewer to evaluate Araragi's "intensity as a human," in both a literal and figurative sense. The story here is geared heavily toward developing Araragi as a character and showing how special he and Kissshot are compared to other vampires. It's easy to tell where each character is at any given time (unless you're not supposed to), and the developments in each fight are believable. Additionally, the fights are very well-choreographed. The comedic timing, the visual metaphors, the sound effects, and so on enhance the humor of each scene. The direction is noticeably good, especially in the comedy department. These VAs have proven themselves countless times over the course of this series. Additionally, the voice acting and soundtrack continue to be There's no single moment as glorious as the "Araragi on fire" scene from the first movie, but a great many scenes look very neat. So I don't count that against this movie. But that's Aniplex's problem, not Kizu's. It just doesn't work, for reasons I'll discuss below. Kizu should never have been split into three parts. I'm giving it a perfect ten out of ten, but it does have a problem: the way it was presented. Shaft continues to adapt the best Monogatari story extremely well.
(Spoilers for the first movie, obviously.)