LogFAQs > #952390323

Itachi157 posted...

I thought the Bakemonogatari author was supposed to be pretty hard? Used a lot of wordplay and such.

I think the reason people feel Bakemonogatari is hard is because for a lot of people it's likely one of the first LNs they read. I see people often point out that the Monogatari series has 2000 kanji, but what people fail to mention is that it's 2000 kanji over the course of 20 books and any rare kanji will have furigana. Compare that to Shiki which has over 2000 kanji in a single book and just assumes you know how to read them, even if they're the names of obscure historical figures or some random species of trees.

The really tricky part of Monogatari is the constant references to Japanese media, celebrities and shinto/buddhist stuff (though the religious stuff in Monogatari is nowhere near as hard as in Shiki). Not having grown up in Japan most of those references will just go over your head. Just the act of reading it is not that hard, though, since in the end the target audience is teenagers. Shiki on the other hand is a horror novel for adults, and it really shows. Even eroge visual novels like Fate/stay night are easy in comparison.