Score: 8.56/10
Zoku Owarimonogatari
Synopsis
Graduation day is finally here, marking the end of Koyomi Araragi's eccentric high school life full of peculiar relationships with otherworldly beings. However, Araragi is unexpectedly absorbed into his own bathroom mirror and trapped inside a bizarre world where everything he knows is completely reversed—the haughty Karen Araragi is shorter than usual, poker-faced Yotsugi Ononoki is brimming with emotion, and cute ghost girl Mayoi Hachikuji is a grown woman! But not everything is as it seems. Zoku Owarimonogatari details the story of Araragi's endeavors in this new world as he struggles to return to his home and understand the nature of this bizarre dimension. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
Perplexing has been the word to describe the world of the Monogatari series, and perplexing is how this final story of the series is gonna be.
After a quick review of the different adventures our main protagonist have been through in his high-school life, he now finds himself graduated and in that crucial crossroad of life’s waiting room of a doctors clinic. Waking up one day, Araragi ponders about this when he suddenly notices his reflection in the bathroom mirror to be somewhat disjointed to his person. Touching the mirror pulls him in inexplicably into it. He wokes up naturally in a world like his own where everything is inverted, even the other characters are different to their real world counterparts.
Now, before we go “Through the looking glass” kind of thing of a simple total inversion of this world to the other, there’s more to it than just a simple reflection of our workd. Anyway, Araragi must work his way around this delimma.
I like the look of movie in the openning part. It mimics the style of the book illustration of the series. Sadly it reverted back it’s default look throughout the rest of it. The Monogatari series is well known for it’s nonsensical exercise of visual display and shifting shots, Zuko is no different. It’s like the Airplane movie of visuals “Don’t like that graphics?! Dont worry we have 100 different more.”
Watching the movie with a limited Japanese is a trial of forbearance, especially it running at 2 and a half so running time. Most of the film are static talking heads, so I do suggest to those language impaired to wait for a good translation of the film to come out. There are a lot of delightful moments to be sure, but not enough throughout the film to keep out the monotony of the long languid moments.
In the end I find it an intriguing film. The looking glass aspect is sure present, but not in a superficial sense, more of a personal and introspective one to Araragi. We never get to see our true selves when we look at a mirror, only a skewed and dim version of what others can see. At the very end, the reflection Araragi see is right in front of him in the beginning.
Intriguing, yes. Fun, somewhat. Perplexing, most definitely, …. as it should be.
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