Is the New Kizumonogatari Movie Different From the Original Trilogy — and When Will We Be Able to Watch It?

Summary:

• Kizumonogatari got a remake movie in 2024, and Japanese fans seem to love it.
• It cut some amount of fanservice content, but also was mostly animated from scratch, with the sound being recorded anew as well.
• The release date in the West is currently unknown, but it surely is coming in the future.

Despite the fact that it practically lacks any action, the Monogatari series has a lot of fans — especially among the more enfranchised otaku. There’s something incredibly entertaining about dialogue-driven anime, especially when they have a unique visual style.

The Kizumonogatari trilogy, originally released in 2016-2017, adapts the novel that is the prequel to the original series, Bakemonogatari. Despite the fact that it was supposed to be released just after the first series, it spent half a decade in production hell.

When fans finally received it, they were very happy with the result. And now, they’re getting a compilation of all three movies as one, but how is it different?

What is the new movie?

Kizumonogatari already had a very different visual style from the rest of the franchise — and, naturally, from all other anime. With the series being full of dialogues and internal monologues, the movies, however, cut down on them, opting for artsy visual presentation instead. The result was a success with the fans.

The compilation movie is already out in Japan, and it doesn’t change that part, at least according to the reviews. Since the original movies are all pretty short — just around 3.5 hours in total — compiling them into a 2.5-hour-long movie is not as hard as it sounds.

That said, content still had to be cut. Most of the cut content was fanservice scenes, of which there were plenty — the series is known for having a lot of it. While that decision was met with a mixed reception, something had to be cut, and this seems like an obvious choice.

The changes

Most of the movie has been re-animated, and the dialogue was re-recorded. An entire new soundtrack has been made, and the compilation seems to be a passion project of the director. There are even new scenes, although they are minor.

Overall, the amount of work put into the compilation movie is clearly noticeable, and fans seem to like it. However, it’s not really made for the new fans, as a couple of important scenes were also cut, which made the movie somewhat confusing.

Expectations for the future

The apparent success of the movie in Japan makes fans hope for more adaptations of the Monogatari series. According to a yet unconfirmed leak, Shaft is developing more Monogatari anime — possibly adapting the novels further.

Fans in the West are questioning when the Kizumonogatari remake movie is going to be released outside of Japan. Sadly, there’s currently no information on it. However, with the amount of resources poured into the projects, we’ll definitely see a Blu-Ray release one day