Genre: Drama, supernatural, romance
Score: Good
Koyomi has experienced the supernatural before, so he’s prepared to accept the strange fact that his classmate Senjogahara is almost weightless – that her mass was taken from her by a passing god. He’s not quite as prepared for the moment she shoves a Stanley knife in his mouth.
This series consists of a few short story arcs that each tackle one person’s supernatural problem: a girl who’s cursed to get lost when finding her way home, one whose left arm is a monkey paw, and one who’s being constricted by invisible snakes. Many of the issues seem to be based in wordplay of a sort, as if supernatural creatures evolved to match the language used to describe them. Koyomi is the sort of guy who ends up trying to help everybody, but he’s in a world where the supernatural doesn’t care about people and there often aren’t neat solutions.
Running in the background is the odd romance between Koyomi and Senjogahara, neither of whom are particularly romantic people. Senjogahara (who has a first name, but Koyomi almost never uses it) is cold, matter-of-fact, jealous and beyond tsundere in her ability to be nasty. Koyomi is awkward, sceptical and more than a bit clueless.
The animation is very much in the Shaft style, but that’s another rant. Gimicks aside it is quite pretty, and is based on good source material – I get the feeling the books it’s based on are a small selection of a much bigger story. It does have an odd habit of using unique opening for several of the episodes, and really quite catchy music. I was particularly impressed with the way the ending these was tied into the last episode: having heard them all this time, you realise the lyrics are lifted from the last scene of the series, describing a particularly touching scene.