Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Officially the second part of MONOGATARI's second arc, KABUKI dives into the past of one of the MONOGATARI's first heorines - Mayoi Hachikuji. With an animated series by SONY, KABUKIMONOGATARI is a must read for BAKE fans, and a must for fans of Japanese YA fiction. A few months after he first met Mayoi Hachikuji (BAKEMONOGATARI), Araragi set out to deliver something to the young lady. Unable to find her, Araragi gives up and heads home and realizes that he has not done any of his summer assignments even though today is the last day of summer break. With help from Shinobu, Koyomi travels back to the past so that he can finish them, but instead, they end up traveling back a full eleven years
The current date is May 13th. It is the day before that Mother's Day when Mayoi left to go see her mother. Koyomi realizes that he has an opportunity to save Mayoi But is he aware of what may result when you change the past like that...
Synopsis
How far does one go to help a lost child? In the case of returning narrator Araragi, the answer is too far, across the veil of time. Dutifully (if unknowingly) following up on Hachikuji's cheeky foreshadowing, he concerns himself with his young lady friend and her fate in this installment of the cult-hit series, heroically unable, once again, to find his own way home.
Thus the tale is also, or more so, about the journey itself, the dark honeymoon of a trip he takes into the past with the dweller in his shadow, Shinobu. Even among a cast that routinely disrespects chronology with their meta-commentary, she takes the cake, or the donut, by rewinding the clock for a perverse road movie, one that by and large goes nowhere, spatially.
It's Kabuki not as in the theater, but with the character for "tilt"--as in a slanted attitude toward the world, the posture of a bohemian. Or, perhaps, of a legendary vampire who once sought death, and of a high school senior who once tuned out life doing their dandy best to attend to an embarrassing wealth of aberrations in a provincial town.