Scattered between each major event of the first novel is a series of conversations between the narrator and himself, the narrator and Kunagisa, and the narrator and the residents of the island. These conversations are the meat of the story and are what gives the series its distinct flavour of doom, gloom, and sadness. You’re meant to sympathize with the narrator’s state of mind but Nisioisin tries so hard to convey a sense of pain and depression that it loops all the way around the emotional spectrum and ends up being funny. Characters, without any prompting, will walk up to the narrator and tell him to kill himself. These moments come out of nowhere, and happen for no discernible reason. One of the geniuses secluded on the island, a psychic named Maki Himena, tells him he’s dirt and that he’s worthless. It’s funny in an ironic way. The narrator also has a very quirky way of walking into areas of clear and immediate danger without any regard for his safety and with no means of defense.
The level of perversion is actually pretty low for Nisioisin standards, and the first three novels are pretty tame. It only really ramps up at the middle and near the end. His status as a pervert has always kind of troubled me, not in a moral sense, more so because it’s seemingly at odds with his very righteous attitude. He’s very liberal when it comes to expressing his attraction to women, and so you assume that he’s equally liberal everywhere else, but he’s more conservative in his mindset than anything. He’s very concerned with making sure that his protagonists are shown to be doing the right thing, to the point that he feels the need to point out the guilt of his protagonists every time they do something unlawful, even if it’s as something as minor as when Araragi hops the school gates in Kizumonogatari.
There’s also the very strange prejudices his protagonists have towards certain characters. Araragi’s dislike of Oshino Meme’s general demeanour always seemed to me to be unjustified, and the same thing goes for the narrator of Zaregoto and his dislike of his science teacher from foster’s home for imaginary characters. I don’t really have a point to make with this, it's just weird.
The first book is the most professionally put together. It has the best mystery, cast of characters, the most work put into the foundation and structure, and best showcases Nisioisin’s general mentality when it comes it writing the series, as shown by the ending. The best detective in the world, Jun Aikawa, invalidates the narrator’s hard work and shows him that while he may have thought he had the mystery figured out, he was merely scratching the surface. More than the authorially professed theme of the series, ‘people never change’, its this mentality of nihilism, or futility, that best sums up the series as a whole.
The second novel, Kubishime Romanticist, is the best novel in the series, a contender for the best light novel ever written, and is close to being literature. It is also the sloppiest entry in the series, with a very aimless narrative and with numerous digressions that serve very little purpose. It depicts the narrator’s isolation in a very sympathetic light, as well as the siege mentality that people get forced into and the doubts they have about themselves when they feel they're being pushed to the fringes of society. But there are far too many digressions. The Zerozaki sections in particular feel completely irrelevant to the main story. They don’t suit the realistic tone of the narrative, and the conversations between the narrator and Zerozaki aren’t very memorable, funny or interesting. You could take Zerozaki out and you wouldn’t lose out on anything in the novel itself. I also don’t like how the narrator lies to the reader at the end, it’s a cheap trick.
The remaining novels in the series aren’t nearly as interesting to look at and aren’t worth the effort to read. The third novel is an action story, the fourth and fifth are an attempt to return to the roots of the series, and six through nine concern themselves with an antagonist known as Mr. Fox. Mr Fox has been expelled from causality and seeks to use that one girl that’s been alluded to throughout the novels to get himself back into a position to where he, Mr. Fox, can directly affect the story. It’s very meta and pretty stupid. A bunch of characters die in an attempt to make you feel something, which doesn’t work.
The epilogue of the last novel is pretty satisfying, but it’s a slog to get through it all. All the characters in the series are pretty one-dimensional, and Nisioisin not having the sensibilities that I normally take for granted in a writer made it tiring for me to put up with him. The first two are good.