Nisioisin’s long-running “Monogatari” series has always buzzed with a specific brand of teenage psychosexuality. The threshold of horror, manifesting in grotesque supernatural encounters, becomes gateways for coiled emotional turmoil hounding high school student Koyomi Araragi, which is cushioned with farcical humor that feels both slight and profound. The “Kizumonogatari” film trilogy delves into the catalyst for Araragi’s transformation — a rite of passage into adulthood, if you will — by plunging him into a maddening world of blood, guts, and severed limbs, while he contends with the clumsy horniness inherent within the teenage experience, which the films take to rather indulgent ends.
For all intents and purposes, “Kizumonogatari: Koyomi Vamp” (2024) is a compilation experience carved into a more brisk arc that aims to introduce the light novel adaptation to a more general audience, adding certain scenes while trimming out others to simulate a more fluid pacing. Those already familiar with the trilogy might find little value in the revamped compilation, but “Kizumonogatari: Koyomi Vamp” offers an intriguing, discombobulating entry point into the “Monogatari” series for those completely unaware of what it entails. That being said, the series has always catered to a hyper-specific audience — a discomfitingly male-dominated one — where most of the nuances of the narrative have perenially been filtered through the male gaze, as the series is a conscious exercise to cater to this very gaze from start to finish.
The film opens with a harrowing sequence that comes alive in dynamic, frenetic bursts: a hyperventilating Koyomi (voiced by Hiroshi Kamiya) navigates the dizzying spaces of the cram school, lulled in by the promise of light, and stumbles out into the open. The mix of hyperrealistic backdrops and janky hand-drawn animation injects the sequence with a gothic sense of dread, with scores of crows eyeing the frazzled Koyomi, who languidly walks beneath the cloudy skies. Once the clouds part and the sun burst into view, Koyomi is set aflame, and he stumbles aimlessly in excruciating pain, his oncoming demise slow and agonizing. Is this really the end? Not quite, but we are swerved back in time, where the beginning of a new era is marked with a mix of the mundane and the supernatural.
It is impossible to critique the film’s tendency to reduce its female characters to hypersexual fanservice vehicles without pointing out that Nisioisin’s light novels lean heavily into this unfortunate trope — a trope liked, favored, and coveted by the intended audience who refuse to discuss the problematic connotations of such character treatment. If anything, “Kizumonogatari: Koyomi Vamp” is a reined-in version of the trilogy, where some of the indulgences have been trimmed in favor of more urgent themes and narrative threads, but this hypersexual aspect is ever-present, insistent, a part of its very DNA. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with exploring psychosexuality through the lens of fanservice, especially when it comes to the messy, awkward teenage emotions that function on an intuitive, hormonal level, but the series’ brand of slapstick humor and sexual farce very distinctly edges towards gooner territory.
Even though Kiss-shot Acerola-Orion Heart-under-blade (Maaya Sakamoto) is not exempt from this treatment, her characterization drives Koyomi’s arc forward and not the other way around, and the layers of hunger, savagery, erotic need, and ultraviolence that define her motivations emerge as the beating heart of this tale. It is no wonder that a traumatized Koyomi throws his life away after glimpsing Kiss-shot in the subway for the first time: limbs dismembered, platinum-blonde hair alight, mesmerizing eyes clawing into the depths of his soul, as she begs him to let her drain him of blood. There’s no discernible logic to Koyomi’s sacrifice, but there doesn’t need to be one, as he has experienced a kind of beauty and terror so viscerally lifechanging that he’s ready to walk back to her and offer his throat as a banquet, without regrets.
The film’s most crucial strength is its visual beauty that isn’t afraid to veer into ugliness, and the humor latent in its irreverent violence works infinitely better than the ones rooted in voyeuristic (and often dehumanizing) lens of male sexuality. Guts spilled out are haphazardly shoved back at the height of tragic grief, limbs are torn apart to the dramatic beat of torrential downpour, and physical comedy goes hand in hand with grotesque body horror. These aren’t drawbacks by any means, as they emerge as artistic strengths, where the series’ singular, eclectic style of editing imbues excitement into a tale that could very well be ordinary if not for a more mature and nuanced treatment.
The advent of the vampire hunters introduces much-needed panache and stakes, and every momentous fight sets the screen ablaze, the adrenaline-pumping soundtrack bringing every exaggerated facet full circle. There’s a strong individuality to the artistic identity of this compilation experience, which has forever been tinged with discomfort and grim realities yielding mixed sensations, offering half a picture of adolescent growing pains that feels somewhat meaningful nonetheless. This is a niche spectacle in the end, perhaps never meant for a more mainstream sensibility, but the stylistic ultraviolence and unconventional visual dynamism merit appreciation as they mold “Kizumonogatari: Koyomi Vamp” into something more pleasantly surreal.
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