From VOFAN, the star illustrator of the Monogatari series of novels written by NISIOISIN, comes a full-color artbook of his best personal works. Praised by the fans around the world as "The Magician of Light and Shadow from Taiwan", VOFAN is famous for using a vibrant art style combined with unique camera techniques in his art.As the main illustrator for NISIOISIN's novel series for over a decade, VOFAN has illustrated more than 30 book covers and has created dozens of original cha...

"Launching into new territory that the author hadn’t mapped out when he embarked on the series, NEKOMONOGATARI (White) tells the tale of heroine Tsubasa Hanekawa from her own perspective, in her own voice—if that can hold true for a damaged soul who, depending on who you’re asking, suffers from a split personality or a supernatural aberration.The bone-chilling brokenness of her household, where father and mother and daughter keep three separate sets of cookware in the same kitchen and only...

There’s a girl at their school who is always ill. She routinely arrives late, leaves early, or doesn’t show up at all, and skips gym as a matter of course. She’s pretty, and the boys take to whispering that she’s a cloistered princess. As the self-described worst loser in her class soon finds out, they just don’t know what a monster she is. So begins a tale of mysterious maladies that are supernatural in origin yet deeply revealing of the human psyche, a set of case files as given to unexp...

Originally planned to be the series' conclusion, “final” chapter “Tsukihi Phoenix” invites us back to the seemingly eventless country burg where supernatural afflictions abound and characters change their trademark hairstyles at the drop of a hat. Rest assured, dear reader, that the story continued in Japanese and will do so in translation. In the first half of Fake Tale, lost soul Araragi helped resolve his bigger little sister Karen's feverish run-in with a fraud. In this second half, he...

A class president among class presidents, a bespectacled model student who soars to the top of honors lists without fail, Tsubasa Hanekawa also happens to be a decent human being. True, she does have a habit of making single-minded assumptions, but they come from a good place and turn out to be fortuitous as often as not. Loser extraordinaire Koyomi Araragi owes her his post of class vice president and a more significant debt of gratitude for her unstinting support during the darkest sprin...

How far does one go to help a lost child? In the case of returning narrator Araragi, the answer is too far, across the veil of time. Dutifully (if unknowingly) following up on Hachikuji's cheeky foreshadowing, he concerns himself with his young lady friend and her fate in this installment of the cult-hit series, heroically unable, once again, to find his own way home. Thus the tale is also, or more so, about the journey itself, the dark honeymoon of a trip he takes into the past with the d...

"Circling back to a middle school girl’s apotheosis, if we can call it that, in Otorimonogatari, and the mortal threat it poses to the hero and his girl, this “Season Two” finale is narrated, for the first time in the series, by a grown-up—but if the word conjures a sense of reliability, of stability and certainty to you, dear reader, then the lesson to take home from this is to trust no one.Because the teller of the tale, who has been summoned by the heroine to defuse the situation, despi...

Bakemono, literally “altered thing,” which translates as “monster.” Monogatari, literally “thing narrated,” which translates as “tale.” Combined into a neologism by he of the reversible nom de plume, they yield BAKEMONOGATARI, the monster tale that kicked off a series whose anime adaptations have enjoyed international popularity and critical acclaim. A self-described loser, Koyomi Araragi is struggling at a prep school that he should never have gotten into. He has all but quit caring, but ...

Unlike ne'er-do-well former vampire Araragi, his two younger sisters Karen and Tsukihi, who attend a private junior high, are little balls of energy and charisma that their peers look up to. That the “ka” in Karen and “hi” in Tsukihi are both written with the character for “fire” isn't the only reason they've come to be known as the Fire Sisters. Karen is the brawn and Tsukihi the brains of a vigilantism that the pair sees not merely as defending justice but as justice itself. They can't e...

Just when we thought the darkness menacing the town had been identified, named, and tamed, clear and unclear mysteries of seasons past looming or surfacing, then resolving, not without tears, not without bittersweetness, of course, but satisfyingly, in a tripartite finale, all loose ends tied up into, or at least with, a bow… The End Tale continues- if only for one last time, in a bonus stage for the ages, as our softie of a protagonist who wished for all parties involved, including himsel...

""A certain middle school girl has a fondness for hats, which serve as a line of defense against eye contact along with the overlong bangs she's worn ever since she was little. Speaking in fits and starts when she doesn't fall completely silent, her go-to line is “I'm sorry,” and she's given to referring to herself in third person. Nadeko Sengoku is pretty, and not just cute. When a jealous classmate tried to hex her with a fraudulent charm, Miss Bangs went and got cursed in earnest all by...

Our sorry hero, his reformed girlfriend, and the amnesiac class president have all graduated from their high school out in the boondocks, and self-described Sapphist and ex-basketball ace Kanbaru, retired by reason of an “injury,” is starting her senior year and the narrator of this volume-her voice far more introspective than the smutty jock's we thought we knew. Bereft of the company of her beloved mentors, the only other person around her with any working knowledge of aberrations the ju...