Kizumonogatari III: Reiketsu-hen

After helping revive the legendary vampire Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade, Koyomi Araragi has become a vampire himself and her servant. Kiss-shot is certain she can turn him back into a human, but only once regaining her full power.

Araragi has hunted down the three vampire hunters that defeated Kiss-shot and retrieved her limbs to return her to full strength. However, now that Araragi has almost accomplished what he’s been fighting for this whole time, he has to consider if this is what he really wants. Once he revives this powerful immortal vampire, there is no telling what she might do, and there would be no way of stopping her.

But there is more to the story that Araragi doesn’t understand. If a newborn vampire like him could defeat the hunters, how did they overpower Kiss-shot? Can he trust her to turn him back to a human? And how is that even possible in the first place?

Araragi is at his limit but he must come to a decision, and it may not be possible to resolve this situation without doing something he’ll regret…

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Oshino, Shinobu Main

Sakamoto, Maaya Japanese

Araragi, Koyomi Main

Kamiya, Hiroshi Japanese

Hanekawa, Tsubasa Main

Horie, Yui Japanese

Oshino, Meme ing

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Guillotinecutter ing

Shishirui, Seishirou ing

Iwakami, Atsuhiro Producer

Kubota, Mitsutoshi Producer

Matsushita, Takuya Producer

Ishikawa, Tatsuya Assistant Producer

Reviews

Jan 6, 2017

DubstepKazoo

Recommended

EDIT: People, people. I went and saw this in a movie theater. In real life. Please stop asking me where you can it, because I don't know. Thank you!

As perfect as they were, I almost regret giving the other two movies tens, for now I have no numerical way of showing that this one is far superior to even them. Spoilers for those movies, obviously.

Anyone who's seen the main Monogatari series can tell you that the difference between pre-Kizu Araragi and post-Kizu Araragi is like night and day. The question, though, is this: what happened in Kizu to change him so dramatically? There were ... two catalysts: Hanekawa and Kissshot. In Nekketsu, we saw him learn the joy of true friendship when Hanekawa obstinately stuck by him where any sane human wouldn't have. In Reiketsu, we see the effect Kissshot had on him. This relied on buildup from the previous two movies - through them, the viewer and Araragi had to come to like Kissshot. But this is a review for Reiketsu, so I'll quickly move on to why that's important here and now. You know how Kizu has been devoid of the signature Araragi narration that pervades the main series? It comes back after a certain scene in this movie. My belief is that it's intended as a delineator between pre- and post-Kizu Araragi. "This scene is where the transition was complete." I don't want to go into further detail because I don't want to force my interpretation on you, but the takeaway from this paragraph is this: Araragi's character arc in Kizu is very cleverly done, making use of both female leads, who themselves have character arcs.

Readers of the book know that there's a very long talk scene in this movie (after the one I was just alluding to), meaning that Shaft has to pull out all their Monogatari tricks to keep the viewer's eyes open. And they do it well. The tone shifts at a moment's notice, with the OST and the animation style as its indicators, keeping it from becoming monotonous. The comedic timing was brilliant, enhancing jokes to be even more funny. The symbolism is cheesy and heavy-handed - to comedic effect. It was clear that Shaft knew they were being ridiculous with the symbolism in this scene.

This has nothing to do with Shaft, but the juxtaposition of the two talk scenes (both of which I talked about, believe it or not) really is brilliant. It's like a modified Hero's Journey template that has two Audience with the Father sections. It raises the stakes for the Ultimate Boon section.

Speaking of which, let's talk about that, shall we? The fight scene in this movie was a lot longer and more action-packed than I it being in the novel. Frankly, it was amazing. Several parts of it were somehow silly and badass at the same time. The best part, though, was that we knew our characters. They were both unique, well-developed, and interesting. Think about - REALLY think about the climactic showdowns you've seen and name one that fits all three of those criteria. Ain't easy, is it?

But as any reader of the novel knows, the real climax of this story is the very, very end. that legendary narration from the last few paragraphs of the novel? They kept it. Every last word. A huge number of factors make it so that the end of the fight scene isn't also the end of the movie's tension. Your socks will be blown off.

After writing so much about this movie, it made me realize why I consider it so much better than the first two, though they were perfect too: out of the three Kizu installments, this is the one that feels most like a standalone movie. Its tone shifts multiple times, its pacing is extremely varied, and it feels like it has a proper climax. What was Tekketsu's climax? "Pleasure doin' business with you." It was hard to say that that movie was anything more than set-up (albeit very good set-up) for the next two. What was Nekketsu's climax? "I'm not a human anymore." The story was quite obviously nowhere near any satisfying endpoint, and we had two character arcs very openly unresolved. It was, again, hard to argue that it had merit as a standalone movie. These problems were borne of Aniplex's decision to cut Kizu into three, which is why they didn't affect my scores for the movies themselves, but it's worth noting why Reiketsu is so much better than Tekketsu and Nekketsu.

Now that I've talked at you for five friggin' hours, I'd like to end my review with this. Out of all the anime movies I've seen here in Japan so far (Kimi no Na wa, KnK, Nekketsu, Planetarian, Kagerou Daze, AC...), this is the only one where I've walked out of the theater and thought to myself, "I want to see this again, right now."

Oh, and there's no post-credits scene. Sorry! No "Owari S2 soon" or "Musubi in stores now" or anything.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Feb 9, 2018

black0678

Mixed Feelings

Ive seen monogatari series from the season 1 and all the movies and mini series/side arcs. Shaft doing really good job in making this series interesting if not for them i'd definetely alrdy dropped this series long time ago, definetely will give 9 score to the main arc bakemonogatari and nisemonogatari and 7-8 score for some of the side arcs.

This series feels really dragged already. and it basically have almost the same pattern for every arcs after bakemonogatari and nisemonogatari, things going down hill from there and boring for me,

Araragi likes girls and surrounded by girls but seriously just go fuck hanekawa or ... senjougahara already, the series always have that kind of scene where araragi want to fondle breast or he is feeling horny and some scene with foreplay(but not actually doing anything) thats getting old and really dumb.

In this movie he did it again we can see hanekawa running naked but without nipples and vagina so its not censored and they both do some bs foreplay but ended up not doing anything and suddenly after araragi sees hanekawa massive tits he somehow got massive spirit coming from nowhere to fight kiss shot and this kind of things have happened basically in almost every arcs, this series can be easily turned into the hentai series. I was laughing real hard watching this movie especially hanekawa parts where she become slut for araragi it isnt a serious thing anymore for me its been going on from season 1 until now.

So basically the pattern is a new girl with big trouble is appearing-breakdown-horny phase-sudden enlightment-defeating enemies-adding a new girl to his harem. Well after seeing araragi so long i started to feel disgusted bcs he seems like something that the creator of this series wanted to become in his dope fantasy the guy who got backups in higher place which is pretty chicks except oshino and beats badass alpha male to save pretty chicks and save the day, its just become repetitive and the story isnt that interesting anymore, well with all the money he made from this series alone will be enough to fuck all the girls in his fantasy or even roleplaying. I started to get that thoughts in some of the recents monogatari series and thats disgusting.

Ps: for any weird people out there who likes to jerk off with anime and likes harem bs bcs your life is miserable, this is just my opinion and save me from your bs and just scroll down if your fragile little heart is hurt and you feel like to debate this.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jul 18, 2017

red_yen-z

Not Recommended

Note: my native language isn't English. Sorry for any grammar/spelling mistakes.
Also: this is my opinion. Im not here to regulate thoughts or influence the way you look at this movie. If you loved it: great! More power to you. However, I would like you to that I also am entitled to having an opinion.
Also: yes, I've read the book and watched every part of the series till Owarimonogatari.

I'm planning on working this critique out a bit further sometime in the future, but for now, here is my critique of Kizumonogatari part 3.

-

This movie tried too hard.

As a mild fan of the Monogatari series (mainly ... bake, Kizu 1 and the Nadeko arcs) This movie really disappoints. It tries too hard to be a work of art while also trying too hard to pander to the otaku crowd, coupled with being inconsistent with/to it's thematic messages/the rest of the series. This doesn't try to be a quirky/semi-serious movie like previous instillments in the series, and coupled with some weird directing choices I think that it hurts this movie overall, on a thematic and artistic level.

-

While critiquing individual categories of this movie, I will try to bring to light my main problem with it.

Starting with the:

Art: The base animation and more experimental animation cuts were lovely. Stylistically, I liked this movie a lot. The varying styles/art design could've been used a bit more tactfully, but in the end, they both were okay. The birth imagery and the visual callbacks to the other instalments in the series were interesting, but more on the imagery later. A more questionable addition was the idea of the non-chronological shots during this movie. I get what their trying to do with the idea of the unreliable narrator and the nuances between story and plot, but it was really hit or miss. It was a bit too overused.

the imagery: in my opinion, it was mediocre.
The shots constantly try to evoke underlying thematic deepness, which is unachievable with the:

1. inconsistent tone throughout the movie (first being about the choice between humanity and vampirism, then about the worth of a human life, then about sex, etc. Stick to one theme. Meanwhile it also tried to be otaku-ish with the close to rape scene of Hanekawa which was played off like comedy and was drawn to look very sexual, obviously for bait , while also dangling the message in front of us that hunger is comparable to indulging into someone sexually. This isn't the original series where sexual imagery was just a thing, and the constant popping up of it conveyed the themes of puberty, hormones and sexuality.)

2. wonky shot compositions (no film-school theory applied, except to the colour design)

3. hyperactive (enological) cutting, and scenes that drag on for too long, which prevents a consistent theme from developing in a scene.

This isn't The end of evangelion where the characters can actually the imagery because of their realism; the characters in the Monogatari series are archetypes of harem anime; just a bit more developed ones.


However, it wasn't all too bad, because it sometimes did the imagery well. A great example is the first scene, where the positions of Araragi and Oshino, the cutting, the shot of the hallway behind them, the lenght of the shots and the color design really complimented each other well to make an engaging, atmospheric, and thematic scene.


Sound: good voice acting. Soundtrack was meh compared to the first and second movie, sound design was okay. Nothing special but not bad.
A thing which irritated me a lot was the amount of dialogue; unlike the first and second movie, this one was very strong on dialogue. Why would you add in a lot of dialogue in a film? It doesn't add to the tone here, (In the original Bake it added to the quirkiness, which wasn't as apparent here as there.) and weakens the effect of the more strongly staged scenes/shots. There is no reason you should have any advantages watching this over reading this because of the amount of info-dumping and dialogue, unlike the first 2 movies.


Character and story: this is a hard one. As I stated earlier, this movie tries too hard to be standalone and tries too hard to be part of the series. What do I mean by that? These movies try to develop their own, interesting narrative (which, is a decent one for the most part. Just poorly executed on every level.), while forgetting that it is:

1. inconsistent with the series (all the character development here is completely thrown out of the window when entering bake, where only a few elements of this story matter. Why try to make a dramatic narrative out of it when it doesn't even add to the story? This is a big problem the Monogatari series has in general.)

2. doesn't awnser many questions in a satisfying or deep/new way. (what is the worth of a human life?, What is the food chain and how does it influence our way of thinking about each other? What is the effect of the male gaze on the perception of female power? The answers provided here, if at all, aren't new, particularly deep or special.)

The character development was decent, for working out some archetypes in the harem genre. However, it suffers from the same fault as the story, with being inconsistent with the rest of the series. Again people, this isn't The end of evangelion, and in the end, these characters are meant as archetypes. Just some well-developed ones.

-

Final verdict:

In the end, this movie is okay. This isn't a masterpiece, or a work of art in my opinion, but I just hate the attitude of this movie. It really, really wasn't my thing. I love the Monogatari series as a small, quirky series, but this really wasn't like that experience. And I know that my critique/score for the most part is very personal, but I'm trying to bring some legit problems with this movie to light.

This movie isn't as deep as it looks to be, because of meh craftsmanship or because everything that happens here, doesn't matter in the long run. Nisioisin isn't the next Shakespeare and I feel like people forget that in-between all the ittedly clever wordplay, In the end, he is an otaku, writing stories for otaku while being just being a bit above the norm. Same goes for the staff at studio Shaft. And I do not hate these peope! What I hate however, is the attitude of the fans towards non-fans, declaring them dumb for critiquing this/these movies for legit flaws, while not even looking into the thing that completely panders to their interest. Always look at something critically, don't buy into something blind.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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