If you've had your finger on the pulse of Bakemonogatari murmurs on the web, you might have noticed that volume three of the series has come out in Japan last week. In it, you might find a revamped action scene to the Suruga Monkey story arc climax. Somehow, the TV broadcast was lacking or incomplete, but SHAFT made it better on the home video release.

It seems that every Bakemonogatari fan has crawled out from under the mountains of stationary supplies and bought a copy. A total of 41,000 copies of the thing was shoved into hands of eager fans all week last week, making it the second highest weekly gross for Blu-Ray in Japan, ever. Only Evangelion: 1.11 sold more copies at 49,000 in its first week.

For reference, the number of BD sold on launch week for Bakemonogatari has only gone up since the first volume, which clocked in at 29,000 copies in its first week. Volume 2 sold 39,000 copies in its first week a month ago. We thought that was impressive then.

Volume 4, which will contains the notorious Nadeko Snake episode that was largely unfinished during broadcast, will street on December 23, 2009. Want to guess how many copies that one will sell? Maybe it will break that 49,000 figure! Maybe SHAFT's next new hit anime will also have unfinished episodes that they will fix up later on home video! We live in some exciting times.

Will someone license this otaku money trap already?