Kirkus Style Review: Kizumonogatari

Kizumonogatari: Wound Tale by Nisioisin

Kizumonogatari is the first book of Nisioisin’s popular Monogatari  series, a Japanese novel series about a teenage boy who helps his classmates with paranormal problems that plague them. Though this is the debut of the book series in English, the series is very popular in Japan, spawning dozens of books, an anime series, and a plethora of merchandise.

                The story begins with the protagonist, Koyomi Araragi, walking home from school. His classmate, Tsubasa Hanekawa, attempts to befriend our social outcast protagonist by striking up a conversation as they walk home. Eventually, the conversation shifts to a recent rumor of a vampire that has been attacking students in the area at night. Later that evening, Araragi encounters this vampire, but not through an attack. The vampire is laying in the street, missing all four of her limbs. She begs Araragi for help, and taking pity on her, he allows her to drain his blood to stay alive. While the vampire is saved, she is now without her vampire powers. Instead, Araragi is now a vampire, and he agrees to help the vampire find her attackers, and reclaim her lost limbs to fully restore her. In exchange, he will be returned to his normal human form, and continue his ordinary life. The rest of the tale is Araragi’s journey to help the vampire, and along the way he learns the value of having friends, as well as helping others in need. The story was indeed enjoyable, but the true beauty (as well as the most frustrating part) of this book lies within the author’s writing style. Nisioisin is well known for his dialogue-heavy writing, filled with dry humor and wordplay (Even his penname is a palindrome). This makes even lengthy exposition scenes highly enjoyable, as the characters are both humorous and clever. However, because wordplay is involved, it is obvious that some of the humor is lost in translation. More than a few times, an awkward, nonsensical pun would take the place of what was probably a very clever joke in Japanese. While this is unfortunate, there were still several moments where careful translation did manage to preserve the humor of the story. The translator, Ko Ransom, did a remarkable job, but there are some jokes that are simply impossible to translate.

Overall, Kizumonogatari is a humorous and clever story, in spite of some incongruencies between the jokes in the English and original Japanese versions.