Recently I had the chance to see “Kizumonogatari -Koyomi Vamp” via Fantasia 2024. The name rang a bell, but I knew nothing about the franchise that it’s part of. As an experiment, being this project a prequel, I decided to jump in and see if a total newbie could get hooked on this universe.
Wow, what a trip this was…
As for how this film goes, it is the story of a student called Koyomi Aragi, who one day while going back home, finds a trail of blood on the stairs to the subway platform. Following the trail, he finds a beautiful lady vampire called Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade. To his horror, he discovers that she is horribly mutilated after being attacked by 3 vampire hunters. Against all common sense, Aragi takes pity on her and lets her drink his blood so the vampire can regenerate.
The next day, he finds himself not dead, as expected, but turned into a semi-vampire, with some of the powers and weakness that comes with that according to the lore.
Things get tricky when he realizes that Kiss-shot is, at the moment, with the appearance of a young girl and not that powerful, since she needs more blood to fully regenerate. As she has made Aragi her minion, he is now bound with the mission of fighting the 3 Vampire hunters and recovering the body parts they took from Kiss-shot.
Ok, this movie has a LOT to unpack.
But just to make it easy for the people who have no idea what this series is, I will say that this series of light novels (and mangas, anime, etc) tells the adventures of a high school student called Koyomi Araragi, who after surviving being attacked by a vampire (THIS ONE), goes around helping girls with different types of supernatural entities. These creatures may or may not have some relation to their mental and emotional issues. (I am not judging!)
This franchise is MASSIVE, and Crunchyroll, who has most of the material, has a guide of how to tackle the anime series if you are interested in immersing yourself in it. You can see it here.
(Next stop, ONE PIECE!!.. OK, maybe not)
Now, let’s talk about this movie in particular.
As I said before, I was aware of the franchise, but I have never seen anything of it (‘cause… reasons). I decided to check out this movie as part of the Fantasia 2024 festival since it was announced as a prequel to the whole series.
BUT, I did not read the small print where it also explained that this is a Crash Course of sorts because it condenses not one, not two, but THREE whole films that were released between 2016 and 2017.
The result… A very trippy editing mess… both in a good and not-so-good way.
The pace is very irregular, the story is told in a very choppy manner for several stretches and then we get very lengthy scenes with tons of exposure in dialogues. Normally this could be useful to catch our breath after action scenes and to make it easier to jump into the main plot, but the movie does very little to make us care for the main character or Tsubasa Hanekawa, who is hinted could be his love interest later on. 
This problem is in part because the film is constantly mixing scenes of battles, weird dream-like sequences, and more exposition, but now with different characters that will not be in the film that long, but… look cool… I guess? This makes you wonder if you should bother to even learn their names or just read the many, many title cards that appear very frequently and for no apparent reason. I don’t know if they serve a bigger purpose in the original films, but here they just become annoying very fast.
I found the animation very interesting, and I say this because it is constantly mixing styles that go from the traditional animation looking, to CGI with various levels of quality. At times they blend beautifully, but not so much in another, and this is done on purpose.
There are also shots with live-action footage and several shots that resemble a very vivid fever dream. Sadly it doesn’t make sense every time as to WHY those shots are inserted at that specific moment in the story.
But what really disconcerted me was the fact that in several battles, in moments that should be very serious or dramatic, we can hear sounds that seemed to come from an American Cartoon like “Tom and Jerry” or even something out of the Looney Toons, or worse, a sit-com, and get this: some of them are used when somebody is losing a limb or worse.
Sure, SOME characters can regenerate, but to me, it did not make sense to do this in the middle of a fight where the stakes are high. If you saw “Devil Man: Crybaby” and remember a certain scene where a girl starts braying like a donkey, you might get the idea.
Is this a good way to start your dive into the franchise? I think not. But made me want to try the 3 prequel films in their original form to give it a fair chance. I think this is more for the fans (and hardcore ones, at that) and this film is a collection of highlights meant to refresh their memory. But, I guess if they liked it, it served its purpose.
And I will be reviewing more films doing our remote coverage, so stay tuned!
