Nisio Isin (born 1981), stylized as NisiOisiN to emphasize the palindrome, is a writer, best known for his work on the Zaregoto and Monogatari series.
If there's one thing Nisio knows how to do, it's play with the audience's expectations and mess with their feelings. He regularly makes an effort to work within whatever genre he can, however he can, and still come out screwing the audience by sheer writing prowess alone. He may pull the same tricks on the viewer, but you will never read the same plot twice from this guy. His works tend to be heavy on the text; so much so, that by the time an anniversary exhibition rolled around, it was advertised as a dictionary of his stories rather than a showcase.
Check out his body of work here
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Works by Nisio:
Long Form Series:- Zaregoto
- Ningen
- Saikyō
- Sekai
- Mahou Shoujo Risuka
- Bakemonogatari
- Katanagatari
- Densetsu
- The Forgetful Detective
- Pretty Boy Detective Club
Short Series and One-offs:
- Death Note: Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Over Heaven
- Juni Taisen: Zodiac War
Manga
- Cool Shock Old B.T. (one-shot)
- Henshin Gambo! (one-shot)
- Medaka Box
- Ill Boy, Ill Girl
- Cipher Academy
Tropes associated with Nisio Isin:
- Animal Motifs:
- In the Monogatari series, the heroines are linked to aberrations with animal forms, and the associations range from simple visual cues (like Senjougahara's staplers resembling a crab's pincers or the huge backpack and twintails of Hachikuji resembling the shell and the eyestalks of a snail) to Japanese puns (Hanekawa, whose animal motif is a cat, wears glasses, and girls wearing them in Japan are usually referred to as Meganekko; with "neko", the Japanese word for cat, found in the word, it would pun out to "big cat" from a literal standpoint).
- Katanagatari has the Maniwa ninjas, who have ostentatious costumes mimicking the animals whom they represent.
- In Juni Taisen: Zodiac War the fighters representing the Eastern Zodiac dress in ways resembling the animal they symbolize.
- Anti-Climax: A staple of many of his works. Guaranteed there is a 50/50 chance that a serious, much hyped scene will end in a second if he's given the chance.
- Fun with Palindromes: His pen name works like this, to the point where he structured it to read as one solid mirrored word to get the palindrome across. (Doesn't work as much in his native language, though, as it's spelled as 西尾 維新 in Japan and the individual sounds can't make a palindrome as there's no way to start a word with "n".)
- High School AU: Not written by him, but there is a crossover manga involving Zaregoto, Monogatari, and the Bishounen series called Seishun Kijinden! 240 Gakuen.
- Pungeon Master: Nisio likes to play with his words. Nearly everything in his body of work has some relation to a Japanese pun or another, and most of them don't quite make it in transit.
