The Monogatari series is mostly two people talking in a room, and it is one of the most visually inventive things ever animated. Studio Shaft's approach - jump cuts, text flashes, impossible architecture, colour that changes mid-sentence - exists to make conversation cinematic, and it works.

Nisio Isin's writing is relentlessly verbal. Characters talk in wordplay, digressions and arguments about the conversation they're having, and the plots are usually resolved by someone being talked into a different understanding of their own problem.

The supernatural elements - oddities, apparitions, half-vampires - function as externalised psychology. Every arc is a character with something unresolved, given a monster shape.

Hitagi Senjougahara's introduction, with a stapler, remains one of the most memorable character debuts in anime, and her verbal cruelty toward Araragi is the series' best running dynamic.

This collection covers Araragi, Hitagi and the oddities.