I can explain it to you if you want. The truth is there is no symbolism or hidden meaning in Monogatari. It's a very shallow show where the characters literally explain everything to you. Some episodes are nothing but characters elaborating on a topic until there's nothing left to consider.

The visuals are there for spice. How do you animate a story that is mostly talking? There's not much to animate most of the time. So Shaft takes liberties with the dialogue and monologue scenes and throws in some interesting visuals so there's something to look at besides people in a room and the frame doing shot, reverse shot for 20 minutes. Had you given this project to a novice director it could have been terrible regardless of fantastic voice talents assembled to work on it. Shinbo saw Monogatari as a mostly blank canvas and filled in the white space with his own visual style, breathing a surreal life into the series without sacrificing its narrative cohesion. Basically he's brilliant, and Monogatari is widely acclaimed for this reason, not just because of the star-studded voice cast and popularity of its author.

That's probably not what you wanted to here, but it's the truth. I'm sure there's no shortage of bloggers out there with half-baked psychoanalytic readings of the imagery or claiming that this or that is an allusion to something meaningful but none of that is at all relevant to the story or to its general aesthetic. If you have to reach for "deeper meaning" with this show I'm afraid you've missed the point.

Those symbols are mostly shows where they are, places. Like traffic signs in a city. Shaft express background in this way.

This is what you talking about, right?

>>154849
>implying the baobab tree symbolism wasn't mind-blowing