Shaft doesn't animate this so much as conduct an argument with the frame itself, stretching fifteen minutes of plot across an hour just to see what they can do with negative space and color and a single conversation. The visual experimentation is so aggressive it becomes the story. Araragi's spring break surrender to a vampire isn't really about the encounter, it's about watching a director refuse to move the camera when standing still is more interesting, and trusting you enough to stay with him while he does.

Koyomi Araragi, a second-year student at Naoetsu High School, is spending an ordinary spring break when he gets talking with Tsubasa Hanekawa, the top honor student in his class. She passes on a rumor about a blonde vampire seen around town. That night, a trail of blood leads him down into a subway station, where he finds the vampire herself, Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade, lying with all four limbs severed and begging him to save her. When she asks for his blood and he gives it, he wakes to find himself reborn as her vampire kin, left struggling to accept what he has become. Kizumonogatari is a supernatural film with action, drama and psychological mystery, and it adapts the first part of the Kizumonogatari light novel.