Bakemonogatari (manga)

The story revolves around Koyomi Araragi, a third-year high school student, now a quasi-vampire after surviving a vampire attack, with the help of Meme Oshino, a specialist in the supernatural. Despite having some superhuman abilities, such as regeneration, Koyomi tries his best to live life as a normal student, but keeps encountering girls with supernatural problems. As Koyomi walks up the stairs, he notices a woman falling from the top of the staircase. He catches her, but notices that the woman, Hitagi Senjougahara has no weight to her. Naturally, Koyomi finds this unusual and realizes something is wrong. Determined to help her, he goes to Tsubasa Hanekawa to learn more about Hitagi. However, after attempting to confront her, she refuses his help and then proceeds to staple his mouth threatening him to not mess with her. Koyomi however not listening to her insists, and then runs after her to show that the wound she made in Koyomi's mouth has fully healed. Convinced with this and realizing he has been involved with oddities, she accepts the help of Koyomi. Koyomi takes Hitagi to the same person that helped him, Oshino Meme. In the past, Hitagi Senjougahara's mother was involved with a cult and brought a member of the cult to their house. The cult member attempted to sexually assault Hitagi, and her mother did nothing to stop it. Hitagi then hurt the man in self-defense. As punishment, the cult took the mother away from the family. Oshino tells her that the curse is a crab, an oddity that cuts the host's weight. In Hitagi's case, she had family affairs and had intentionally removed the guilt and burden of the issues, leading to being bitten by the crab oddity that stripped her of her weight. Oshino suggests they return at midnight for the ritual. After a while, Koyomi and Hitagi head to the cram school again. They see Oshino who has prepared the ritual and it starts immediately. The crab becomes visible and attacks Hitagi but she realizes to get rid of it, she must bear the weight of all the guilt of her family affairs. Gaining her normal weight back, she thanks Koyomi and befriends him. ==Production==

On January 10, 2018, Nisio Isin announced via Twitter that Bakemonogatari, from his Monogatari series, would receive a manga adaptation. On February 13, 2018, Kodansha revealed three pieces of character art and opened a contest for Twitter users to guess the identity of the artist who would illustrate the series. On February 28, 2018, it was announced that manga artist Oh! great would be illustrating the series. In comments on the website Mantan Web, Oh! great explained his reasons for adding Kizumonogatari into the Bakemonogatari manga adaptation. He stated that for the Tsubasa Cat arc to work properly, he needed to adapt Kizumonogatari and Nekomonogatari, because in that way the readers would sympathize more for Hanekawa, and it would explain Senjougahara's position in the story thus far. He received Isin's permission to include Kizumonogatari in-between the arcs Nadeko Snake and Tsubasa Cat, but stated that he does not know if he will adapt Nekomonogatari yet, although he has an idea in mind if he does. He finished saying that his plan is to end the manga in the same way the novels ended with the high school festival. ==Publication==

Bakemonogatari is illustrated by Oh! great, based on the light novel series Monogatari written by Nisio Isin. It was serialized in Kodansha's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine from March 14, 2018, to March 15, 2023. Kodansha collected its chapters into individual tankōbon| volumes. The first volume was released on June 15, 2018. The 22nd and last volume was released on May 17, 2023. The first volume was released on October 1, 2019, and the last on August 20, 2024. Volumes ==Reception==

The first three volumes of the Bakemonogatari had over one million copies in circulation by January 2019. The first nine volumes of Bakemonogatari had over 2.4 million copies in circulation by August 2020, including digital versions. ==Notes==