The Monogatari series follows Koyomi Araragi, a third-year high school student who survives a vampire attack. After recovering, he quickly finds himself wrapped up solving the problems of various other students and residents of his small town who are involved with beings of the supernatural, such as apparitions, ghosts, spirits, and so on.
Originally a light novel series, the Monogatari series has been faithfully adapted into an anime, translating Araragi’s life into full color. Whether you’ve read the books or watched the show, or maybe even done both, you may be wondering how these two different versions of Monogatari compare to one another, and that’s just what we’ll attempt to answer today.
8Dialogue
Light Novels
Dialogue is the cornerstone of the Monogatari series, with the vast majority of its content being made up of conversations between two or more characters. These conversations give life to the story’s characters, subtly showing their personalities and motives as they interact with each other.
Because of this, Monogatari’s dialogue is incredibly important to its story, and luckily, the anime nails its character interactions. That said, due to the time constraints on an episode of anime versus a book, not every conversation or piece of dialogue makes it into the anime, so the light novels are technically better in this regard, as there is simply more dialogue to enjoy.
7Details
Another aspect that is most apparent in the translation from book to anime is the amount of details you learn about each character. Since the light novel can fit so much more than the anime can, there’s bound to be details that are cut from the anime.
This means you definitely learn more about the characters, world, and setting of Monogatari in its light novels, but this by no means diminishes the amount of details they managed to cram into even a single episode of the anime.
The text frames in particular essentially cut dialogue or narration from the light novels directly into the anime, giving a brief glimpse at an extra detail or two. These definitely aren’t necessary to get the full story or character interactions, but they do help alleviate some of the missing details inherent to an anime adaptation from a light novel.
6Character Development
Character development is another category that is extremely important to Monogatari’s story. Each new character Araragi meets has some sort of issue, which, through solving it, reveals that character’s personality and serves as their development into a better, or at least different, person.
Every single character is changed in some way through their interactions with Araragi, whether through solving their aberrations or helping others solve theirs. Once again, the light novels have more room to work with and are able to develop the story’s characters much more effectively. Like the two previous categories, the anime is very close to perfect in this regard, but there’s just more detail in the light novels that reinforce each character’s development.
5Immersion
Anime
With characters that are so deep and interesting, it’s easy to find yourself lost in their conversations, no matter whether you’re reading them or listening to them. However, the anime’s additions of voice acting, music, and, of course, animation, make it a much more immersive experience overall.
For example, Araragi and Senjougara’s date under the stars is great in the light novel, but nearly perfect in the anime, because you can see the same beautiful starry sky that the characters are looking at. It’s moments like this that pull you into the world of the story, and why the anime wins this category.
4Pacing
Tie
Overall, the Monogatari series has a relatively slow pace. Despite being about how Araragi, a half-vampire, deals with supernatural beings, there aren’t really that many fight scenes throughout, and as mentioned above, most of the story is characters talking to each other, making the pace sometimes feel on the slower side.
However, compared to the light novels, where you have time to digest every bit of information as it comes, the anime is much faster paced, since it needs to be more concise overall. This can sometimes be overwhelming for new viewers as conversation topics change at a rapid pace. That said, both the anime and light novels' respective pacing works for their medium, so this one comes down to a tie.
3Emotional Impact
A typical Monogatari episode or chapter will expertly blend the comedy, tragedy, slice of life, mystery, and romance genres without missing a beat. The character’s conversations seamlessly flow between pointless banter to serious discussions in a matter of moments, and when the emotions start coming, they don’t stop for anything.
This point goes hand in hand with the immersion afforded by the anime’s voice acting and music, making each emotional scene hit all the more intensely. At its core, Monogatari is a series about the emotions and psychology of its characters, and the anime perfectly represents them.
2Ease Of Access
This category goes outside the actual content of the story of Monogatari, but is important to mention regardless. As of the time of writing, there are nearly 30 light novels in the series, with 20 of them translated into English. In comparison, there are a little over 100 anime episodes throughout its various seasons.
While that may seem like a lot more, watching an entire season of the anime takes a lot less time than reading the light novel it’s adapting from. Plus, unless your local library has access to all of the light novels, you’ll be spending a lot more money to read them all, compared to a subscription to whatever streaming service has every season of the anime, like Crunchyroll.
If cost-effectiveness and ease of access are a concern for you, the anime is definitely more approachable and easier to find than the light novels.
1Verdict
The Monogatari anime is a perfect adaptation of its source material, so you really can’t go wrong with either medium. What really matters is the story and characters, and the anime definitely does justice to these.
It can also be a good idea to experience both the anime and the light novels, in either order you prefer. If you watch the anime first, there are more details in the light novel that you’ll discover and appreciate, while those who read the light novels first will get to experience the characters they love fully voiced and animated.
