Monogatari (Seasons 1–5)

Monogatari (Bakemonogatari, 2009) is a Studio Shaft anime series you can watch online on iFILM. High schooler Koyomi Araragi catches a classmate as she tumbles down the stairs and realizes she weighs almost nothing. A crab deity, it turns out, has stolen her weight.

Araragi himself barely survived a brush with a vampire and only clawed back his humanity thanks to Meme Oshino, an oddball expert in the supernatural. Now he spends his days helping girls tangled up in strange "oddities," and each arc hands one of them her own affliction and her own long, razor-sharp conversation. Chiwa Saito voices the sharp-tongued Hitagi Senjougahara, with Hiroshi Kamiya as Araragi.

Adapted from Nisio Isin's light novels under chief director Akiyuki Shinbo, the show is unmistakable from the first cut: jagged editing, full-screen text flashes and dialogue that runs longer than any fight. It rewards viewers who like talk over plot and character study over monster-of-the-week. Stream Monogatari online on iFILM.