With my completion of Monogatari Series: Second Season (Monogatari), I have watched over 50 episodes of Nisio Isin’s Monogatari franchise. That’s a lot of time to spend with the same group of characters, and yet my experience of watching Monogatari Series: Second Season (SHAFT, 2013) was utterly unlike my previous encounters with Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari, and Nekomonogatari: Kuro. Part of the tag for Monogatari Series: Second Season was as follows:

 “Their soliloquies, confessions—and goodbyes.”

If the previous entries into the franchise were beginnings, Monogatari Series: Second Season was most certainly a story of seperations, of departures, and of change.

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