What anime are you watching right now? Summer 2016 to now

[Dr. Nick]

Baxingar, first 13 episodes:

The second part of the J9 trilogy finds its footing. I wasn't a fan of Braiger/Bryger, as it always felt to me like it was simply a very low-rent imitation of Lupin the 3rd's edginess in space, but it did have good music, some promising vibes of the more accomplished space westerns to come, and a doubtlessly amazing main antagonist. So total was Khamen Khamen's victory that the success of his villain plan in part 1 serves as the basis for the sequels' worldbuilding, centuries in the future.

Baxingar's killer concept is that it's a biker version of the story of the Shinsengumi... iiin space!

Tired of the lawlessness of the feudal solar system outside of the Earth Sphere, which is now also threatened by the arrival of black ships from Barnard's Star, our protagonists set up a paramilitary troop of their own to bring peace and justice to the frontier. Of course, by doing so they are also explicitly protecting the status quo of the ruling Bakufu government. Because Baxingar is adapting, however loosely, actual events from a turbulent historical period, its edginess has actual edge to it, and it's remarkably morally complicated stuff for a super robot anime. Then again, Dougram was airing at the same time and the real robot genre was at the zenith of its realness, so I don't want to oversell Baxingar as some sort of subtle real robot mimic. It is fantastically goofy and visually cheap, and a lot of its charm comes from this contradiction of cheese and darkness. And knowing what happened to the real-life Shinsengumi, my guess is the story's headed to the downer territory again.

The thing with the J9 series is that the mecha parts come off as contractually mandated blemishes on Yuu Yamamoto's vision. These are not shows that revel in the robot action the same way as many of their contemporaries did. Tomino may have resented the toy executives for pushing crap designs on him, but his shows always built good action beats around the toys. In Yamamoto's shows the toy seethe is more palpable, as the episodes seem to be going out of their way to minimize the robot screen time. Where did this new team of heroes, who are all fanboys of the original Braiger crew, obtain the former's size-changing machine technology? From the toy company sponsors, seems to be the unsaid in-universe answer.

But there is one piece of mechanical kit the show genuinely loves: the Cosmobikes. They are a hoot, and they imbue it with lots of individuality. Imagine normal motorcycles, but which also double as budget starfighters. They don't transform or anything; they have antigrav engines and dinky double lasers facing forward, and they can be flown in space as is. Or even in atmosphere, as is sometimes done, but the show does visually imply that such maneuvers require extraordinary skill. No surprise, considering the bikes don't even have small pop-out wings like those in Megaforce. Fuel economy seems to be an additional concern, so outside of battles the bikes are mostly driven normally on roads. Thanks to these little fuckers, the action parts have a whole new absurd energy to them, especially when dudes are swordfighting in mid-air. And even when the giant robots do come out for their obligated 30 seconds of screen time, the quick showdowns, which are usually over after a single sword slash, are a better fit to the jidaigeki trappings of the story.

In terms of mecha follow-ups that greatly improve upon their originals, Baxingar is so far right up there with Voltes V, and that's high praise. Here's hoping nobody jumps the shark on their flying motorcycle.

[EvangelionFan]

been watching some things...

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (English dub)



This past month the English dub of Frieren was available to watch for free on the Sony Pictures app one of the TVs at home, and in light of the shows' popularity and the announcement of a second season arriving next year I thought it'd be a good opportunity to give it a go. The dub is very good, and the show sets a high bar in animation, screenwriting, and overall quality.

I am happy I spent time with this show as although I haven't begun to read the original Sousou no Frieren manga, it's apparent that this adaptation is authentic to the source material all the while animating new material to expand on existing scenes.

And it never seems to stumble in how it balances its introspection (namely meditations on how perspectives adjust with age, and the importance of spending time with people dear to us) and its humour, and I saw no hesitation in how it allowed scenes to breathe where they needed to. In the first half of season this is particularly important because there are many scenes where we're still beginning to understand the past tense of Frieren's story alongside Frieren & Fern's lives in the present, so it needs that steady hand to succeed.

If the first half of the season is where I fell in love with the characters and the storytelling, the second half of the season - the First-class mage test arc - shows much thought has been put into the world, and proves how well the premise of the story is able to step beyond (pun intended) the normal playing field of fantasy adventure stories. The additions to the cast in this arc all add their own spin to situation, and though early on in the 1st test I was unsure if it was a wise move to spend so many scenes away from the main heroines, those separate stories soon tie together as the teams face-off in a satisfying showdown. The 2nd test builds on the new dynamics and it delivers. At this moment in the arc I think the standout newcomers are Übel, and Denken. The 3rd test ties almost everything about the arc and the show to this point together in such a way that I have no lingering questions about anything I've seen, apart for the question of what's next? And that's how a great show should be.

If all the praise and cultural impact of Frieren isn't enough to make it essential viewing for anime enthusiasts today, it's a fair bet the second season airing next year will see a lot of people picking it up so that they can join in on the conversation and keep up with the memes.


If there's one final note I'll add about Frieren (for now) it's that I feel this series would've garnered fair amount of appreciation on these forums in the early 2010s', when these What anime are you watching right now? threads were quite active.

* * *

... speaking about posting in these threads in the early 2010s, these past two nights I've re-watched Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid



I first watched FMP: TSR in June 2011 - at that time, I said that I was 'reasonably satisfied' with it. It's almost fourteen years since, and as the show approaches its twentieth anniversary, it is now about the age I was when I first watched it. I admit that I didn't remember as much as I thought I remembered about it; in fact there's a fair amount of content in this that surprised me, mainly the cast additions in this season, and the intensity of the violence in some scenes.

Before I say a bit more about my new thoughts on the TSR overall, bear with me for a sidebar here as I address one new character in particular who I had completely forgotten, and who is the standout source of a lot of the aforementioned violent intensity in the show:

sidebar  SPOILER: Show

FMP!: TSR introduces a new antagonist, a weapons dealer / arm slave operator by the name of Mr. Gates.

Here he is shooting up someone in a blink of an eye:

Here he is a few frames later, as a shoot-up carries on around him, swaying his hips back and forth as he sings 'Ave Maria':

Here he is after finishing singing, abruptly shifting his mood again as he asks who among his group shot one of his soldiers, after shooting said soldier in the head himself for daring to criticise him:


He's an unhinged man. If this season had been adapted into Hollywood live-action, I imagine he would've been played by Javier Bardem - because between Bardem's roles in No Country for Old Men and Skyfall there's absolutely precedent for Bardem to nail this kind of a character.

But if it initially appears that Mr. Gates doesn't give a f*** about anyone or anything, after he is forced to abandon his initial arm slave confrontation with Sousuke it becomes apparent that Mr. Gates is kind of a tsundere:

I-i-i-i-it's not like I wanted to fight you in our arm slaves or anything, baka Arbalest operator!

And he's also implied to be a serious degenerate:


All of this is to say: how in the heck have I not remembered this character in this show? It's insane that KyoAni of all studios included him as he is, and his inclusion brings some amazing entertainment value in an otherwise unassuming anime series.

(For contrast, I remember Gauron getting a little off his rocker a few times in the first season, and in his sole appearance this season - though he didn't go nearly as off-kilter out there as this Gates guy does. I did remember Gauron over the years - but not by name - as he is the anime's original antagonist.)

ahem to get back on track about my new impressions ...



I knew I would enjoy watching FMP!: TSR again, but I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated. I especially appreciated how well it handles the personal conflicts of the cast, and how it handles their interpersonal drama alongside the stakes at hand. It's actually a very well done season. Sequences such as "Don't talk and drive!" are an excellent example of what KyoAni was able to accomplish here in striking the balance between serious action and humour. Adding to the already high quality here is the touch to have the voice actors speak some lines in Italian for a scene set in Sicily, and Cantonese (I'm guessing) for a few of the scenes set in Hong Kong. I have to say I had almost no memory of how the subplot with Sousuke attempting to operate the Arbalest's lambda driver unfolded, though watching the final episodes last night it's apparent once again that subplot had arguably been the main storyline all along; all of the main trio (that being Sousuke, Kaname, Tessa) had arcs which were primarily about how they had needed to accept themselves as they are and acknowledge each other's strengths in order to move forward, and they came across very well.

If there's one thing that felt short it's that the season could've included a refresher as to why exactly Tessa is in the Captain's chair of the submarine at her age, as I feel it'd help in underlining her position for new and returning viewers - that said I can understand why KyoAni allowed this to aspect of the season to lean more on show rather than tell, and it's that the season overall is rather tight on time to achieve what it needs to achieve. (Or is it a latent feeling that I could've appreciated more scenes with Tessa? And besides, as the final episodes demonstrate, Tessa may be young and at times immature but she is ultimately beyond reproach in her position). As it stands there isn't any time in this season that was misspent - for example, the curtailing of the High School cast (who I recall were embellished for a fair amount of filler content in FMP!'s first season) works to TSR's advantage; and if it wasn't already apparent from my sidebar above, the time allocated to the new characters in this season pays off.

I am happy I took some evenings to watch TSR again after all this time, as the only other part of the franchise I've engaged with in the intervening years was another re-watch of Fumoffu! halfway through 2019. And I thought I needed to touch base with the main part of the story again, because, well, if you haven't suspected this already -

* * *

Next time: Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory

[The Killer of Heroes]

Loved Freiren and FMP The Second Raid (Though it's been quite a while since I've seen the latter). Invisible Victory is pretty fun too, though its a huge bummer the franchise has been left hanging again anime-wise for several years now...

[EvangelionFan]

Loved Freiren and FMP The Second Raid (Though it's been quite a while since I've seen the latter). Invisible Victory is pretty fun too, though its a huge bummer the franchise has been left hanging again anime-wise for several years now...

Glad to hear you enjoyed Frieren too!
And I agree, it's a bummer that another season of the FMP anime has not been able to get off the ground since Invisible Victory ...


Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory (subbed)



Initially I thought I'd watch this over two nights, but I ended up enjoying the first half so much that I stayed up to binge the whole twelve episodes. I think Invisible Victory (2018) is a very good season, and after all this time since the original Studio Gonzo series (2002) and the KyoAni sequels (2004, 2005) it's impressive that Studio Xebec were able to pull off as much as they have here in adapting these sections of the original light novels and nailing the majority of the animation style established by the earlier seasons. It's almost as if it never went away!

However, before I expand on my experience with IV it's worth acknowledging that the version of the season available to buy or stream today is more polished than the on-air versions, which suffered from quality some assurance issues predominantly in the second half of the season. In addition, the broadcast of IV utilised not one but two recap episodes, which indicates production issues that Studio Xebec and assisting studios may have had in meeting the timelines set for the broadcast. I say 'assisting studios' here because the Anime News Network encyclopaedia page for IV lists over a dozen different studios which assisted in 2nd Key animation, In-Between animation and more, suggesting that the production of IV was ultimately financed by a broad set of production partners. I'll have more to say about this near the end of the post, but I thought it would be useful for some Geeks who haven't yet seen IV to know a lot of hands were involved in bringing it to our screens, and as such several aspects of the production aren't up to the standards set by previous seasons.

And the use of 3D CGI in IV is certainly a stylistic choice some find issue in - I found it worked out well overall, though I'll address a few cases of it in the spoilers below.



Invisible Victory starts off from the story threads introduced in The Second Raid involving Tessa's enigmatic brother Leonard and his role in the rival organisation, Amalgam, who have had enough of Mithril's interference in their activities. Amalgam are taking their gloves off, and it isn't long until Sousuke and Kaname's idyllic life at Jindai Municipal High School is interrupted by Leonard, who arrives to persuade Kaname to accompany him in peace before Amalgam acts to apprehend her by any means necessary. As attacks on Mithril bases around the globe unfold and Sousuke and Kaname are forced on the run, it's clear that there is no going back to the status quo for anyone - the opening four episodes focusing on this are arguably the most thrilling that FMP has ever had and will ever have.

And on that note it's hard to ignore any longer that IV is best understood as three individual arcs, as the season adapts three of the original light novels. I'll separate spoilers as such.

Episodes 1-4, 'Continuing On My Own' arc  SPOILER: Show

I knew very little about the story of Invisible Victory going in - I anticipated it'd be another season similar to The Second Raid. In fact it came as a surprise to find it change course into something so serious in Episode 2 - innocent folk are caught up in the intense combat as a civilian is shot in the leg from Sousuke's small arms fire aimed at an Amalgalm Alastor-type AS, and Kaname's stress accumulates as they are forced to stay on the move, and as her guardian guns down Amalgam soldiers in the double-digits on his own. The arrival of the helicopter and the Arbalest bring both further carnage to Amalgam forces and the assurance of safety to our heroic couple.

And actually, the confirmation of their couple status is one of the best points of the opening episode: on their walk back to Kaname's apartment after school, Sousuke asks Kaname to hold hands. It's a heartfelt and long-awaited moment that informs the rest of the couple's development in the season and lays the goundwork for Kaname to share her feelings about how peaceful their lives has been up to this point, and for Sousuke to actually share with her why goes to such lengths to protect her.



If it were any other franchise I feel that the showrunners would've tucked away that scene for the final episode rather than serving it up for the first episode as IV does. It's so important that they include it early on though, as the scene directly following that is the one in which Leonard interrupts their after-school cooking plans, and the cold reality of Amalgam's intentions is laid bare.

I believe these four episodes are among the strongest in the whole franchise, though there's undoubtedly some shortcomings, namely that 3D CGI car chase in Episode 2:




Fortunately it's the only car chase in the season, and in comparison the 3D rendering and movement of the M9-size arm slaves is usually quite well done and suited to the style of the series:




If you've seen the original seasons and are on the fence about Invisible Victory, I feel the the strength of this storyline in these initial episodes are a strong case to at least give it a shot, as I loved it.

There is a B-plot in these four episodes - about Amalgam's assault of Mithril's Merida Island base - and it's also good, but not as satisfying as the A-plot about Sousuke and Kaname. Our supporting heroes such as Tessa, Melissa, and Kurz have opportunities to shine here, and they do, but the attempts to defend the base before the submarine is suitable for escape aren't without significant personnel and material losses for Mithril. My isuses with the B-plot are that there isn't as much in the way of background music, and that the 3D CGI for the Behemoth-sized arm slaves isn't as believable as those for the M9-sized arm slaves; these aspects taken together with their somewhat easy escape undermined the tension and made the assault on the island seem not as serious as they had been making it out to be.

Best of all it had Tessa! And early on when one of the M9 pilots expressed interest in mutinying to escape the assault on Mithril, in comes Tessa to lay down the law of the sea:



SAY MY NAME.
You're the Captain.
You're goddamn right.

Episodes 5-8, 'Burning One Man Force' arc  SPOILER: Show

Okay so this is something of a departure from the storyline of the first four episodes and from the familiar zones of the franchise. It's a few weeks later, and we're in a foreign country called NAMSAC, where a plucky young lady by the name of Nami leads a team of mechanics that maintain an arm slave for NAMSAC'S non-lethal AS arena. When the the teams' regular pilot winds up dead just hours before a match, in walks Sousuke - he'd wanted to speak to the late pilot who was a former war buddy, but upon examining the teams' old school Savage-type AS Sousuke decides to offers his expertise as replacement pilot. It takes some convincing ... though he gets the job, and it leads to some great arena scenes that reinforce the production's choice to use 3D CGI animation models for the arm slaves this season.



As this NAMSAC arc carries off in this fairly laid-back form, it's a little longer until it gets serious again. Whilst out shopping, Sousuke and a photographer accomplice are arrested by the police chief, who informs Sousuke that the arena matches are supposed to be rigged, and that he's winning too much. Sousuke spins the corrupt Chief's extortion attempt into a request to participate in the off-the-books arm slave deathmatches using lethal gear, and the Chief agrees. Nami takes some effort to convince - Sousuke confides in her that he's using the matches as a way to get close to Amalgam, as Mithril intelligence previously determined that Amalgam pilots were involved in the death matches. And to no-one's surprise, Amalgam is very much involved and looking to use Sousuke's involvement as an opportunity to dispose of him.

It starts out as a good reprieve from the first four episodes, though without spoiling more than I feel I ought to, I'll say that the new Amalgam antagonist is completely serious about job and not at all insane like the last two. The antagonist's demeanour leads to a surprising choice for Sousuke's opponent in the slave deathmatch, and a full-on gunfight finale that I'd not at all anticipated after all of the AS-focused fights. It's frankly great, gut punches and all.

Episodes 9-12, 'Come Make My Day' arc  SPOILER: Show

In Episodes 9-12 we see what happened to the Mithril survivors aboard the submarine, how Kaname is handling her isolation, and how Sousuke is preparing to take on Amalgam again in the hopes of saving her and bringing her back home.



I believe this arc of IV needed one more episode - not to extend beyond where the story leaves off, but to better fill us in Sousuke's headspace after all the suffering that he's been through this season, and on Kaname's headspace about her situation amidst the luxury of Leonard's mansion. It's the inverse of the issue that a lot of other television and movies struggle with - which would be 'show, don't tell' - but here, I am satisfied with what was shown, but not satisfied enough with what's been said by the heroes themselves. It's a bizarre point to be making about any narrative, but apparently there's a lot more internal monologue by both Sousuke and Kaname at this point in the original light novels, and I suppose neither enough time nor enough budget to work more of that material into this production.



In that light, these four episodes - as entertaining as they are - are almost an exercise in edging the audience. And as a Destiny 2 player, I believe I know a thing or two about being edged by entertainment media.
- I am happy with how Tessa's arc went with Episode 9 & 10, however she and the submarine bridge crew supporting cast aren't all that present in Episodes 11 & 12. I would've appreciated their insight in some moments, such as the new Amalgam arm slaves, or arrival and show-off of the ARX-8.
- All of the training and planning scenes at the Yankee base are amusing and make for a a good break from the side serious of the season, but as with the submarine bridge crew, the build-up with the support they provide to Sousoke brings them almost no presence in how Episode 11 & 12 unfold beyond putting his boots on the ground in a US-supplied M6 AS. I suppose they facilitate the delivery of the ARX-8 to the battlefield after Sousuke trashes the M6, but the ARX-8 was brought along by Wraith. (Have I mentioned that this season does well with all the technical details about the different Arm Slaves? I think it made more of an impact here than in TSR)
- About those new Amalgam arm slaves - they are teased at the end of Episode 11 in a stunning shot against the backdrop of a lunar eclipse, and in Episode 12 they're shown to be in something of cat-and-mouse game with the Mithril AS team ... but barely a minute into it the enemy pilots are asked to fall back to defend the mansion from other Amalgam factions! All of the enemy pilots were established in previous episodes so they aren't throw-away baddies, but after this brief scene they don't appear again at all.
- After being teased all season in the OP (which by the way I prefer the OP & ED for IV over those of TSR), the arrival of the new ARX-8 is a welcome reunion for Sousuke and Al. It's satisfying to see them together again in battle, but it's also kind of a baffling instance of powerscaling, as the ARX-8 absolutely dominates against the reinforcements sent by the other Amalgam factions. It's fun of course, I just am not 100% sure if it's earnt, or if it's the right call for it to receive all of the focus that it does given the aforementioned limitations of the character writing.



Though that last exchange with Kaname and Sousuke - I wouldn't change a thing about it.

As satisfied as I am with Invisible Victory, there are enough small points that are off about the overall picture which I would've wanted to be see done better to say that although it is worth watching, it isn't the new high bar of the series.


* * *
Bringing back that point above about how many animation studios had been involved in bringing IV to our screens, it feels unlikely that there'll be another anime adaptation to pick up at the spot it left off. For as good as Full Metal Panic! is, it's also not lucrative enough for the studios that are able to meet the animation needs of this kind of an I.P. - there's almost always going to be another I.P. that's more worth their while to adapt, an I.P. that will hit a bigger share of today's market, sell more Blu-Rays, and more merch. We're far more likely to hear Yukana play C.C. again than hear her play Tessa again. I read that the Japanese Blu-Rays for IV sold well on release, though seven years on I'd imagine FMP BD sales in Japan and abroad are slow indeed.

If interest in more FMP anime arises on the industry side, it's unlikely to be from more sales of older releases, but from sales in new material such as the spin-off Full Metal Panic! Family light novels. Two novels were released last year, and the second novel was promoted with an advertisement voiced by Satsuki Yukino and Tomokazu Seki. Kadokawa certainly thought it was worth booking the series' two main voice actors for a two minute promotion and selecting two new cast members to voice Sousuke and Kaname's children in the promotion. And the light novels are apparently already being adapted as a manga. If there's a slim chance of a future for more FMP anime ... it's unclear if it'll continue on from IV.

* * *

Next time: I've been unsure about what to watch next so unless I pick something over the weekend, next time I might write some thoughts on two or three shows I watched in 2024.

[EvangelionFan]

Back again!

Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines! (subbed)



A new high school romcom light novel adaptation approaches! Makeine is not your average high school romcom. If the title isn’t giving the game away, it’s not only aware of popular genre tropes, but also turning them upside down and having a good time of it. In fact this series is so good of a time that it might actually be one of the standout shows in its genre. It’s a realist romcom, not a fantasy romcom like Haruhi or an action romcom like Full Metal Panic!, and though there are some ecchi moments they aren’t overdone. And no matter how many romcoms you’ve seen, this series has some of the best animation and background art out there, and it’s much more entertaining than I anticipated.

Cue the story: our first-year hero Nukumizu is a light novel afficionado, who's read enough romance LNs to immediately realize when a real life romcom rejection is going down! In the opening scene, Nukimizu happens to recognise fellow classmate and star losing heroine Anna in a cafe with her childhood friend, and witnesses her dreams of high school love come to a heart-breaking end ... until it becomes awkward, and then hilarious. Boy oh boy does Nukumizu set off a chain of events just by making eye contact with Anna at this crucial intersection of their lives... his social life and his wallet will never be the same!

From a certain point of view, Nukumizu is in a bit of a bind hanging out with Anna as she pays off her debt to him with school lunches – but soon, he’s roped into the school literature club, and is involved in helping not only Anna steer herself through her feelings about her lost opportunity at love, but also two other first-year girls who are about to face the realities of their own romantic aspirations. It’s less about Nukumizu getting in the middle of things as it is about him happening to be along for the ride and offering his new friends someone to lean on as they figure out their romantic struggles, and his support in fulfilling the commitments of the literature club. It’s a lot of fun watching these silly kids work things out ... and wondering all the while if Nukuzmizu is actually secretly romantically interested in any of the girls he's come to count on as his friends, or if any of three titular losing heroines (Anna, Lemon, & Chika) are over their past love interests enough to start to feel something about him.

And not only that, the series is visually on another level to everything else. It’s as if Shinkai worked on this at times, I had to be sure at points because there are so many scenes that seem as if they are straight out of Garden of Words or Your Name:

Studio: A-1 Pictures  SPOILER: Show

Shinkai doesn’t have anything to do with Makeine, but seeing the above, you understand why it’s natural to think of his work whilst watching this series, yeah? A-1 Pictures has shown off a very strong sense of lighting and shading in this series; in outdoor scenes the greenery is a natural relief, and indoors scenes with sunlight appear appropriately lived in or underused.




I also appreciate that this series is set in the medium-sized city of Toyohashi instead of a major city like Tokyo or Kyoto, and that the school setting is a somewhat more aged set of buildings instead of the usually ultra-clean and brand-new-looking schools in a lot of other anime series and films.




Also: I know sometimes studios trace off of locations in real life to be authentic to the setting, and several elements of the school setting and almost all of the locations visited in the series are drawn from life ... or just straight up from life, somehow. It all looks really good, okay?!

For those who might be interested in the light novels, episodes 1-11 adapt Volumes 1-3, with Volume 4 also available in English (Japan is currently up to Volume 8). The twelfth/final episode is an anime original written by the LN author specifically for the series, and I am very happy with that choice for the ending as although episode 11 ends on a good note, I think stretching those arcs of the anime to 12 episodes might’ve spoiled the otherwise excellent pacing. And without that original 12th episode we would’ve missed out on a few Anna’s best reaction faces in the series - sorry but no more samples for the Anna reaction faces, I assure you it's far more fun to see her reactions to things fresh in the moment, and then you'll understand me when I say that she's the fan favourite for a reason and that you should buy Anna stocks and short Lemon and Chika stocks ahead of the second season.

I absolutely recommend Makeine, and I am eagerly awaiting the second season arriving sometime next year.


* * * *

Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku (subbed)



Romcoms about working adults appear to be a rarity in anime, and as Wotakoi was available on Amazon while I had the service back in December, I gave it a shot. It’s quite good!

Wotakoi features two main couples who all work together in the same office, and a third couple that comes up later in the series. As you can see above from the screenshot I included - there weren’t many good quality screenshots around to pick from to downscale for this post, and this one’s pretty funny – the leading lady (pictured right) and supporting lady (pictured left) get up to mischief in discussing BL in some episodes. The leading man is a massive video game nerd, and the supporting male lead (their supervisor in the office, no less) is a closet magical girl fan. Fun couple dynamics and double dates ensue … and I learnt more about BL genre tropes from discussions in Wotakoi and in Makeine than I knew before, which is more than I wanted to know ... though I'll confess it was all fun and funny in-context. The Mario Kart and Pokémon Go! references more than made up for the BL mischief in Wotakoi, though Makeine still has its own BL joke to answer for …

Also, both Makeine and Wotakoi are animated by the excellent A-1 Pictures.

I recommend at least the first couple of episodes of Wotakoi for fellow EvaGeeks as there’s a clever Evangelion reference early on that the characters follow up with a chat about their favourite characters from the franchise. The anime and the manga Wotakoi is adapted from are several years old now; I recall many of the other references are to series or games which were popular in the mid-2010s but which still fit even if they are not ones I’ve personally watched or played. The comedy is great, and the relationship development is done very well too – though the supporting couple is already established at the start of the series and are the more dramatic couple, the main couple are just starting out and there are some very sweet moments for them. I’ll definitely return to this series someday.

Please note that if you plan to watch this on Amazon Prime, the service only has the original 11 episodes – for the 3 OVAs, they’re available on the DVD set, or you might want to see them on the high seas.


* * *

My Deer Friend Nokotan (subbed)



I’d heard of Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan and had also seen some segments of it on the internet before I saw it on Amazon one day in September (by that time, who on the internet hadn’t?) and as the whole season was there, I thought I’d give it a go.

It’s about former delinquent Koshitan, who is forced into assuming responsibility for the well-being of deer-antlered-girl Nokotan, and her schools’ new ‘Deer Club’. Also, there are 3D CGI deer that appear as if out of a fever dream. To be any clearer about this series’ sense of reality unreality could spoil the fun.

It’s a good time for a light-hearted show. It is also, however, a gag anime – and that means your mileage may vary from episode to episode. I know that for some who watched it, it struggles to measure up to the enormous amount of hype it attracted from the opening and other pre-season advertising. I agree with the sentiment insofar as it applies to some of the material adapted in the second half of the show, where in episodes seven through ten the studio appears to pare back on the kind of wild interpretations of the source material that made the early episodes so enjoyable. Episodes eleven and twelve bring the hijinks back up a notch, and as was the case with Makeine, the twelfth episode of Nokotan is an anime original.

Nokotan a lot better than the manga it’s based off – the manga Is okay on its own, but the studio injects a lot of creativity into the anime that it needed if was going to keep up in this medium, and they mostly knock it out of the park.

…out of the Park  SPOILER: Show

Is that a pun? A tourist park pun in my Nokotan write-up?

All of the IRL tourist attraction imagery is unique to the anime. I initially thought the studio added it all in as variety content to complement the recurring storylines about live deer and deer parks, though remember how I mentioned that the twelfth episode is an anime original?
You see, Nokotan is the key to all of this.

Nokotan is supposed to be working as a mascot at a tourist attraction, but she’s been slacking off! I recommend that final episode just for the training sequence on its own. Or you could watch it in the video segment I linked right there, noko.

So – should you watch Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan?

I had a good time, the deer club had a good time ...  SPOILER: Show

Yes, thank goodness.

[Evil Eye]

My wife and I have been watching Frieren: Beyond Journey's End recently. Safe to say it absolutely lives up to its reputation. It's very, VERY good- perfect balance of action, funny bits (notably Frieren's endlessly amusing facial expressions) and genuine poignancy. 100% worth a watch.

[EvangelionFan]

I’ve spent the last few months in a Monogatari series catch-up.


pictured: Koyomi Araragi in the trash, where he most probably belongs

I originally saw the famous Bakemonogatari on Blu-Ray in 2019 and followed up with the infamous Nisemonogatari on Blu-Ray in 2021. I re-watched the two series in the last couple of years, and following the airing of Off & Monster season last year, I read a good chunk of the Bakemonogatari manga illustrated by Oh!Great. Around about the time I was writing my last post I decided to resume the anime series, starting from the film compilation version of Kizumonogatari.


Kizumonogatari: Koyomi Vamp

A couple of years ago SHAFT released a film compilation of the original Kizumonogatari shorts - it comes in at around two and a half hours, and cuts roughly an hour of the original shorts' combined content. It came out on Crunchyroll some months ago ago – a good home for it considering most of the monogatari series is currently there, though unfortunately streaming options for the original three shorts in full are limited to the rent-or-buy options on the Amazon store.
(sidenote: I could only see the listings from the Amazon UK website - I couldn't find them through the app on my family's Samsung TV, so it could be that Amazon is only letting NA & UK/EU users rent or buy the shorts)

Kizumonogatari: Koyomi Vamp  SPOILER: Show

Kizumonogatari is one of the most striking anime productions I’ve seen:





The above screenshots are all from the Kizumonogatari: 01. Tekketsu short – IIRC all of the scenes shown also appear in the Koyomi Vamp compilation.

If you've already started the series from Bakemonogatari, it's recommended that you follow it up one of the two versions of Kizumonogatari: the original shorts, or the Koyomi Vamp compilation. In the interest of convenience, I chose the Koyomi Vamp film – it’s a good if not great film on its own, though I found the deeper I got into it the more I relied on my memory of the manga adaptation as a crutch for a sense of connection to the characters’ situations. From what I’ve read since, the Koyomi Vamp compilation cuts not only a few of the shorts’ more comedic scenes, it cuts a fair amount of Araragi’s internal monologue, and one or more scenes containing plot relevant information. The result is more dramatic interpretation of the original light novel, and one that remains coherent despite an inkling that it cut a little more from a few scenes than it ought’ve.
If there’s one thing though that frustrates me about the experience – and it’s not the director’s nor SHAFT’s choices about the cut content – it’s that the Crunchyroll subtitles for Koyomi Vamp were wholly white with no shadow or outline, and no option to change them on the Smart TV app. It was a struggle reading their subtitles in any scene with a light shaded background. I’ve not read anything about that issue occurring during the films’ theatrical run in NA last year, so AFAIK it’s just a Crunchyroll issue (though it could already be fixed).

Do I recommend Kizumonogatari: Koyomi Vamp? Of course – it’s a fun ride, it’s got gorgeous animation, it’s the starting point for Koyomi Araragi’s story, and all monogatari series following Bakemonogatari refer to it in some capacity. You can absolutely go for the three shorts instead of the compilation, in fact fans consider it the superior option if available. If you’ve not delved into the monogatari series up until now I’d rather recommend Bakemonogatari as first watch and Kizu as a follow-up, as Bake released first and is famous for its animation style, and Kizu has a rather contrasting cinematic style compared to it and to the rest of the series for reasons that’ll come clear as you watch it.

* * *

Nekomonogatari: Black

It’s a good thing I’ve got Bakemonogatari on Blu-Ray, as the final three episodes of the series – the main section of the ‘Tsubasa Cat’ arc – are not only the rightful conclusion to the original series, they’re crucial for the context of this prequel miniseries, Nekomonogatari Black, which continues on from Kizumonogatari and tells the story of how dear ol’ Hanekawa Tsubasa unwittingly turned herself into a sawari neko apparition in the first place.

Nekomonogatari: Black – Episodes 01-04  SPOILER: Show

pictured: KNEEL BEFORE ZOD


Nekomonogatari: Black (‘Tsubasa Family’ arc) is a good watch, though if you’ve seen Bake a couple of times, the value in my opinion is less in seeing this part of Hanekawa’s backstory play out, and more from all the other scenes that came up for Araragi along the way. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important, though if I rewatch this it’ll be more for Araragi’s banter with his younger sisters and conversations with Oshino rather than his scenes with Hanekawa. It’s as if, once that thin veil of mystery is lifted and as all is said done, there isn’t all that much there to chew on about Nekomonogatari: Black.



I do appreciate that the façade about Hanekawa that has been in place since the beginning of Bake is given its first shadow in this arc without undermining that series’ climax. It remains rather difficult to read her as a character, though that continues to be a limitation of following Araragi’s point of view: it’s fair enough that Araragi regards Hanekawa as if she’s a guardian angel (see image above – thanks SHAFT for the interpretation lol) given that the events of Kizumonogatari are still fresh for the both of them, but Hanekawa still holds a lot about herself close to her chest. Araragi is steadfastly confident about Hanekawa, but specialist Meme Oshino is uncertain about her, and that lends to the ongoing feeling of incompleteness about the audience’s window into her character.

I feel this is my least favourite instalment in monogatari’s so-called first season, I suppose on account of the smaller cast, the seemingly inconsequential finer details of the plot, and that it’s all kind of awkward to take in, as although it’s set before Bakemonogatari it’s positioned after both it and Kizumonogatari in the light novel order and the community’s recommended watch order.

I do feel that Nekomonogatari: Black is worth watching at least once if you enjoyed Bakemonogatari (it is more monogatari after all!)
If you’re a first-time watcher intending to go for the full run of the series, it’s important that you see it before starting Monogatari Second Season, as the first arc of that season assumes that the audience is up to speed with all of Hanekawa’s story beats so far.

* * * * *
Next Time: Monogatari Second Season
As I write this, I’ve already watched all of Monogatari Second Season and the so-called Monogatari Final Season over the last two months – there is much I’ve wanted to write about, though to keep my posts at a more digestible length I’ll split my thoughts about the subsequent instalments across several posts over the coming weeks.
Hope you're all having a good summer, or, erm, winter.

[The Killer of Heroes]

I'm kinda torn on both Koyomi Vamp and Neko Black. For Koyomi Vamp, if this was the only version of Kizumonogatari we had on film since like 2017 I think it'd be loved just fine today. It flows well, still looks amazing (Barring occasionally janky new interstitial shots created for it), and well its still fundamentally Kizumonogatari. But its not the oldest animated version we have, we got the trilogy first and its hard to know under what circumstances you'd ever recommend the compilation film over the trilogy (Assuming equal access to both). The trilogy is still only like an hourish longer overall so its not much more of a time commitment, its not like you can market it purely to uh "shonen bros" or whatever that'd be put off by the fanservice and such since there's still a fair amount of that in the compilation movie (And you can't exactly funnel such hypothetical fans to Bake or Nise or whatever later on), and well its not like its controversial trilogy that fans feel need to reclaim or "fix" a la Star Wars "Phantom Edit" and such.

Koyomi Vamp really only makes sense as a like a purely filmic exercise of editing the trilogy down into one movie (In a commercial context), and less so as a Monogatari work to me... I think its successful as that, mind you, but it really only seems to be for the completists to me.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Neko Black, but yeah I'm not sure it adds much that we didn't already get from Hanekawa's arc in Bake. It's short at least, and its nice to get immediate parallel with Neko White arc that opens Second Season but idk. Its still fun for what it is but maybe the only arc that feels genuinely superfluous to me.

[EvangelionFan]

Thanks for reading my post & thanks for the reply!

I absolutely agree about Koyomi Vamp as more of a commercial purpose than an artistic one in light of its theatrical release in Japan and in North America – it’s sensible for the studio to re-release Kizu in a cut-down format as Japanese audiences generally accept compilations for theatrical anime releases, and it could’ve served to recoup some of the costs from the multi-year production of the original Kizu trilogy. Like other anime compilations, if it stands up, it’s on account of the quality of the original shorts and the selected cuts; I feel Koyomi Vamp has just enough to hold its own as a feature-length flick.
For contrast: although the abridged OVA of GITS: SAC's first season – Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – The Laughing Man – contains all the important cuts for The Laughing Man’s storyline, the story beats don’t flow as well in a feature-length presentation, and I’ve always remembered that the OVA for the second season was such a slog that my stepfather fell asleep.

And it sounds like we see the eye to eye about Nekomonogatari Black – you’re on the mark about how it kinda parallels with ‘Nekomonogatari White’ in Monogatari Second Season.

* * * * *

Monogatari Second Season


pictured: picking up from where Nisemonogatari ended … if you skip ahead to the second arc

The first signature detail about Monogatari Second Season is that four out of the six arcs employ a narrator other than Koyomi Araragi, who up until now has been the series’ sole point of view protagonist. Although there’s strength in seeing the story and ’the world of monogatari’ from perspectives other than Koyomi Araragi’s, audiences may want to adjust how they think about the established personas whilst watching through other points of view (particularly Hanekawa’s, who I will address soon below). The second signature detail is that all of the arcs in Monogatari Second Season are presented out of order, and some take place months apart, with several story beats occurring in-between or off-screen only hinted at until subsequent instalments. (see the ‘Order’ section of the Suggested Watch Order, then scroll to the ‘Timeline’ to see where the arcs actually occur on the series timeline)


Episodes 01-05: Tsubasa Tiger
For those continuing on into Monoogatari Second Season, the first arc of the season assumes you’re familiar with the events of Nekomonogatari Black – as I said above it’s a short watch so check it out least once as I’ve done, or alternatively “Episode 06: Summary One” of Monogatari Second Season on Crunchyroll offers a rough summary of the events involving Hanekawa Tsubasa from that arc. It’s worth noting that although I’ll refer to this arc as ‘Tsubasa Tiger’, the original light novel and some physical releases refer to it as ‘Nekomonogatari White’.

Tsubasa Tiger / Nekomonogatari White  SPOILER: Show

As Killer of Heroes mentioned in his post above, ‘Tsubasa Tiger’ – or ‘Nekomonogatari White’ – as the opener to Monogatari Second Season is something of a parallel to the previous arcs about Tsubasa Hanekawa. At the start of the new school term after summer break, Hanekawa encounters a new oddity: a white tiger. The White Tiger is Hanekawa’s own oddity, both in the sense that she is the one to identify it, and in that it is similar to ‘Black Hanekawa’, a byproduct of Hanekawa’s inner struggles. Where Black Hanekawa had assaulted Hanekawa’s stepparents and other bystanders as a method of processing Hanekawa’s stress about her home situation, one night while Hanekawa is away the White Tiger burns down her stepparents’ house, then on another night she spends at Senjougahara’s house, the White Tiger burns down the abandoned cram school. All the while, the story skips ahead in its chapter count and Hanekawa expresses bewilderment about her own memory gaps.


pictured: sizing up the competition / practicing bedroom eyes / ‘paint me like one of your French girls’ energy

As Hanekawa spends at least one night at Senjougahara’s house, it allows Senjougahara to appear in the story outside of Araragi’s point of view for the first time. It’s safe to say that if you aren’t all that on board with Hanekawa’s arcs and aren’t all that interested in seeing the stories and settings of monogatari from her point of view, Senjougahara’s involvement as a kind of sidekick is a saving grace.

It isn’t too long into Hanekawa’s stay that Senjougahara poses the question we’ve all been wondering: Does Hanekawa still love Araragi-kun? Although Black Hanekawa had revealed Hanekawa’s feelings for Araragi in Bakemonogatari Episodes 13-15, and although Araragi acknowledged it, he and Hanekawa apparently haven’t spoken to each other about it. For Hanekawa herself, her feelings are still unresolved as she has yet to personally confess to Araragi, and nor has she fully accepted the reality that Araragi has already chosen Senjougahara as his lover. Over the course of the girls’ time together – the initial conversation, the fanservice shower scene, Senjougahara’s twilight conversation with Black Hanekawa, the breakfast conversation about condiments – Senjougahara is sizing up the kind of person Hanekawa is in private. It’s another perspective on both – though Araragi sees Hanekawa as a guardian angel and a modest know-it-all, Hanekawa in fact does not have a lot of self-confidence.


pictured: Hanekawa staying in Araragi’s room in his absence, wearing his pyjamas, sleeping in his bed lol

This new question of Hankawa’s self-confidence comes to the fore in the introduction of Izuko Gaen – Kanburu’s Aunt – who is an oddities specialist like Meme Oshino, and who has recruited Episode (from Kizu) for some unclear reason. Gaen doesn’t regard Hanekawa like other supporting characters do, instead Gaen criticises Hanekawa, as if to repeat Hanekawa’s own insecurities aloud to her. It’s an unsettling scene that foreshadows a lot of stuff that’s to come up later and further instils a sense that Hanekawa is an unreliable narrator about her own life.

The audience’s window into Hanekawa’s life had been deliberately incomplete in Bakemonogatari to hit us with the double whammy of how she had been hiding her affection for Araragi, and how she had been hiding her treatment by her stepparents at home: here, it’s literally incomplete on account of her memory gaps about the nighttime activities of her Black Hanekawa personality, and her unwillingness to acknowledge and accept her unkind feelings about herself and others.



Although I found value in finally seeing all of this from Hanekawa’s perspective, it’s also somewhat awkward, as up until this point audiences have become used to seeing her placed on a pedestal by Araragim or shown as ‘a strange girl’ who is spoken about with varying degrees of apprehension by Meme Oshino, Senjougahara, and others. Of course, Senjougahara has something of a shift of opinion about Hanekawa here, however the other impressions still stand, and as such there’s something of an adjustment to be had once Hanekawa’s issues of self-confidence ingrain into the narrative.

How well does Tbusaba Tiger bring viewers along with the shift of perspective about Hanekawa – about seeing the setting and her private life from her point of view? About how Araragi & others have treated her, versus how she sees herself? About how she must be the one who solves her own problem?

After something of an intervention from Araragi’s mother – and this is the only occasion in all of the monogatari anime that we actually see one of Araragi’s parents, more on that below – who informs Hanekawa that though she is welcome as guest in their home, it’s not possible for her to stand in for anyone else, Hanekawa is only able to be herself. As such, she must accept the negative aspects of herself that her oddities have embodied and accept them back into herself before they bring about more harm to others.



That’s the arc here, in the end, and that also means Hanekawa must accept that Araragi isn’t in love with her, after he arrives with THE SWORD (TM) to incapacitate the White Tiger. Araragi is something of a hero figure to her in this instance – one could assume that this is also the case in Kizu – in any case Araragi rejects Hanekawa and affirms his feelings for her love rival, Senjougahara, and Hanekawa has to let it all out. It’s cathartic seeing her process her emotions after all the time we’ve spent with her.

As one last critique I’ll admit that as ‘Tsubasa Tiger’ is the third run-around examining Hakekawa’s situationship with Araragi, I was a tad tired of that aspect of it, and I found more value in how Hanekawa’s perspective offered us insight into other aspects of monogatari’s setting and world. Which brings me back to the appearance of Araragi’s mother: Araragi’s mother has his ahoge, his sisters’ eyes, and the typical SHAFT head tilt, so it’s unmistakably his mother. More importantly – his parents do exist, and as his sisters tell Hanekawa the night before, their parents are police officers. This singular piece of information sheds more light on Araragi’s belief system and the attitudes of the ‘Fire Sisters’ than almost all of Nisemonogatari, and though it’s both brilliant and kind of hilarious that we’re only now hearing about it, it’s sadly also more interesting than most of what happens with Hanekawa in this arc.

Though it is not among the strongest of monogatari’s story arcs, ‘Tsubasa Tiger’ is an enjoyable watch, and it ties up threads and answers minor questions that have been hanging around in the background since the beginning of Bakemonogatari. And with that stuff out of the way, Hanekawa can move on, and we the audience are hopefully able to move on to new adventures.


Episodes 07-10: Mayoi Jiangshi
The second arc of the season returns to Koyomi Araragi’s point of view and picks up on his story from where Nisemonogatari left off.

Mayoi Jiangshi  SPOILER: Show

I’ll begin by acknowledging that although Mayoi Jiangshi is an enjoyable side adventure that asks ‘how would the story change if Hachikuji hadn’t become an apparition?’ and ‘how would the story change if her connection to Araragi changed?’, in afterthoughts it settled in my mind as one of the more baffling instalments. It’s kind of an It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and Back to the Future (1985) slanted adventure that sees Araragi and Shinobu step backwards in time eleven years to attempt to save Hachikuji from the tragic accident that ended her human life. It’s all initiated by Araragi’s introspection and Shinobu’s newest deus ex machina ability through which she’s able to bring the pair backwards through time using the untapped energies at North Shirahebi Shrine. (sidenote: Nisio Isin includes a fourth wall-breaking one-liner about Shinobu’s OP abilities in Zoku Owarimonogatari)

It goes something like this:
Araragi: I appreciate Hachikuji a lot, but it’s such a shame that she passed away so young. It’d be good if she had been able to have a proper life.
Shinobu: Sure bud, but you haven’t done your summer homework, and term starts tomorrow. How about I turn time back a day so that you have something to hand in?
Araragi: Wow, how about we go do that now? And how about as I act as though I want to turn time back only a day, but I’m subconsciously dwelling on thoughts of helping Hachikuji, which instead sends us back in time eleven years?
Shinobu: Sure bud
SMASH CUT TO NISIO ISIN’S MOST QUESTIONABLE PROCLIVITIES:




Araragi and Shinobu absolutely aren’t trustworthy as a time travel pairing and that’s the humour here – however, as it happens, the humour is about all that happens here. The pairs’ somewhat baffling adventure into the past is more of an indulgence of Nisio Isin’s than an adequate preamble into the pairs’ subsequent injection into an alternate timeline.

Araragi and Shinobu’s intervention in the past had been successful, but their attempt to head back home instead sees them arrive in an alternate present in which the world is a vacant lot in the daytime, and a monogatari shaded zombie apocalypse in the nighttime. And although Hachikuji is revealed to be alive in this alternate world, both the alternate world and her inclusion in it are something of a bait and switch: after the adult Hachikuji passes on Oshino’s message (monologue), Araragi and Shinobu opt to have nothing to do with her on account of how she isn’t their Hachikuji, instead she is a young adult who has no memory of Araragi.



It’s almost a heartfelt moment – Araragi demonstrates growth here in acknowledging that this Hachikuji is a different person to the one he knew – however, though Araragi and Shinobu in this instance are more the mind about how to handle the Kiss-Shot of this alternate timeline than asking Hachikuji about herself, Araragi opting not to ask the adult Hachikuji about herself undermines the instigating motivation of the arc to save Hachikuji in the past so that she could live a life through to the present. And however much they might be strangers, if it’s heartfelt it’s also heartbreaking that he isn’t interested in hearing about how this Hachikuji has lived the life he’s given her. (and also something of a shortsightedness on Nisio Isin’s and SHAFT’s parts in not seeing this key point about their story, and ignoring that audiences might be more interested in that than the new plot point about saving the alternate world from Kiss-Shot)

And so – if Mayoi Jiangshi isn’t about Hachikuji, who or what is it about?

What started out as a reprisal of Araragi’s arc in “Mayoi Snail” in Bakemonogatari ultimately becomes about Araragi and Shinobi’s shared arc from … arguably all of the series up to this point, but specifically the ending to Kizumonogatari, the final three episodes of Bakemonogatari, and their new understanding as of Nisemonogatari. You see, in saving Hachikuji in the past, she is no longer around as a ghost to alert Araragi to Shinobu’s disappearance at the end of Bake – long story short alternate Shinobu isn’t around to save alternate Araragi from alternate Black Hanekawa, and without alternate Araragi alternate Shinobu became alternate Kiss-Shot again and wrecked the world.

Anyway, Araragi and Shinobu save the day in the alternate world, demonstrate that they’re both better for being around for each other, and go back to their appropriate timeline, normal Hachikuji is there, and then it’s over because no matter whether you’re watching the suggested watch order or the airing order, the show is shifting perspectives and skipping ahead in time once again for the next arc.

* * * * *
Oh, and one more thing:
Mayoi Jiangshi starts off with a scene nonchalantly set sometime later that introduces a new first year student by the name of Ougi Oshino. Somehow, she and Araragi already know each other, so it’s a given that it’s skipped ahead. Ougi and Araragi talk about crossing lights.


mspaint meme courtesy of r/araragi subreddit

Naturally this dialogue about crossing lights has almost no significance in Mayoi Jiangshi but later arcs feature fleeting visual callbacks to it, and Ougi herself has no role in Mayoi Jiangshi but her mystery deepens the more she appears in upcoming arcs. And that’s the gist of Araragi’s two arcs in Monogatari Second Season: a mixed bag of mysteries with a tad too much hinting about more interesting adventures on offer sometime down the line.

‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ is among my least favourite of all the arcs in monogatari. It’s got more to it than Nekomonogatari Black, but it isn’t as straightforward as there’s a bit of a bait and switch halfway through, and in both instances the stakes are undercut and the attention is split too thin on key points to see it as anything more than decent overall. That said, it is the start of a multi-arc story with Araragi which – whether you’re watching the suggested watch order or the airing order – you’ll have to wait until the second half of Monogatari Second Season to see the next part.


* * * * *
Next Time: Hanamonogatari and the middle arc of Monogatari Second Season
I had wanted to include my thoughts on Hanamonogatari in this post but it’s already very long, so I’ll split my thoughts on Monogatari Second Season into three posts instead.

[Giji Shinka]

Really enjoyed Takopi's original sin, very short story but impactful and it felt like not a single second was wasted and it always built towards something.

[EvangelionFan]

Monogatari Second Season (continued)


pictured: Nadeko standing in for everyone hoping that Ougi SHAFT sticks the landing

Two more arcs to talk about today. In the watch order we’re up to Hanamonogatari, and from there we go onto the ‘Nadeko Medusa’ arc, and out of the six arcs in Monogatari Second Season, these two are my favourites.


Hanamonogatari



Hanamonogatari (or ‘Suruga Devil’) consists of five episodes – though as they’re together under the one listing on Crunchyroll, it’s fair to consider it a movie-length episode told in five chapters. Originally, all five parts aired in Japan on the same night almost eight months after Monogatari Second Season – an airing gap resulting from a combination of production delays and broadcast scheduling. It’s intended be watched with Monogatari Second Season after ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ but before ‘Nadeko Medusa’ – as although it’s set after the events of the last episodes of the second season, this is the original light novel order, and there are thematic and plot threads all through the subsequent arcs of the second season that are more appreciable if you’ve already seen all of Hana.

Hanamonogatari / ‘Suruga Devil’  SPOILER: Show

Hanamonogatari is a new story with Kanbaru Suruga as the point of view protagonist. It’s also a timeskip into the next year at Naoetsu Private High School – Kanbaru is now a third year, Araragi and his classmates have graduated, Ougi Oshino is somehow now a boy and is an underclassman to Kanbaru, and an old athletic rival from Kanbaru’s middle school years reappears.


pictured: a new challenger approaches! … actually it’s an old challenger for Kanbaru but I wanted to meme

While investigating a rumour about a ‘devil’ who solves the problems of other students, Kanbaru runs into her former middle school basketball rival Rouka Numachi, who has not been attending High School due to an injury that ruined her athletics career years ago. As a recluse, Rouka collects stories of misfortune from school students, and claims that she doesn’t solve their problems – rather, in listening to their stories, she relieves their worries. Rouka’s claims don’t satisfy all of Kanbaru’s questions nor her sense of justice, and so the former rivals compare points of view until Kanbaru leaves, unconvinced about the authenticity of Rouka’s motivations.

The next morning, Kanbaru awakes and notices that her left arm – her cursed arm – has returned to normal. In the following investigation Kanbaru learns it’s not just that Rouka acted as a good listener – she carries her own oddity, and in listening to other students’ sorrows, she steals more components of The Rainy Devil for herself. Rouka isn’t only Kanbaru’s former basketball rival, she’s a literal and thematic rival to Kanbaru’s struggles with The Rainy Devil oddity from the original ‘Suruga Monkey’ arc in Bakemonogatari.



pictured: going out for a scenic morning run

Hanamonogatari is light on action and tension. It’s more talk-oriented, more about individual choice and the implications of our choices. I could characterise it as one of the more detached instalments in monogatari, for the feeling that outside of a few moments the supporting cast only appear on-screen one at a time, and most of the story focuses on Kanbaru and Rouka in isolation from the rest of the cast. It nonetheless feels more cohesive than other instalments, or at least the most complete of the instalments in Monogatari Second Season. That could be due to the additional production time, or more because Hana occurs after all the other arcs in Monogatari are already over and therefore isn’t distracted by foreshadowing about other characters’ stories.

Kanbaru is arguably the best narrator for the series next to Araragi – Kanbaru has had her own issues, but in Hana she’s grounded in her home life and school life, she doesn’t have the same kind of baggage that Araragi had, and nor does she have the inner personality conflict that other narrators such as Hanekawa have. None of the supporting cast who are still in school picture Kanbaru on a pedestal like Araragi did for Hanekawa, so there’s no major adjustments to Kanbaru’s perspective as her views about herself are already a known quantity. She does see Ougi as a boy, and she sees Araragi as kinda ‘suave’ on the occasions that he appears – Araragi’s still her senpai and he’s a college student now, so that tracks for her point of view.
In other words, Kanbaru’s is a fresher viewpoint that isn’t mired by the ingrained perspectives of the rest of the established cast.

Speaking of the supporting cast, there’s a very good argument (warning: link contains spoilers) to watch Hana before going on to the ‘Nadeko Medusa’ arc, and it’s the reappearance of Kaiki Deishuu, who you’ll recall as the antagonist of the ‘Karen Bee’ arc from Nisemonogatari:



pictured: run from it, dread from it, destiny still arrives

Kaiki’s appearance in Hana is, as far as I’m aware, his final chronological appearance in the monogatari series – Kaiki is still not allowed back in town after the event of ‘Karen Bee’ arc, but he is able to intercept Kanbaru at a train station outside of town. Kanbaru isn’t able to outrun Kaiki, who states that he isn’t there to swindle her; he needs to talk to her. Over the course of a conversation a yakiniku restaurant, Kaiku is uncovered to be something more of a neutral party in this story, though he’s had offscreen involvement with Rouka Numachi, he also knew and admired Kanbaru’s late mother, Tooe Gaen. And as an oddities specialist, he knows Izuko Gaen as well.

At this interval I believe I've offered enough about Hana's story to provide an idea of its style, tone, and direction – as I said above, it’s a more dialogue-oriented arc, though don’t let that dissuade you from watching it as in my opinion it’s the highest quality set of episodes in Monogatari Second Season and it’s one of the best-told story arcs in the monogatari anime.


pictured: the Nisio Isin trope of girls getting haircuts at the end of a character arc continues

Hanamonogatari answers the question of whether the adaptation SHAFT has built is able to adjust to a change in narrator other than Koyomi Araragi and still sell as great a story as any of the arcs in the original Bakemonogatari – and it’s a resounding yes. SHAFT’s approach in adapting Hana for the anime not only accommodates for a new point of view storyteller, it succeeds in a key area that Monogatari Second Season needs to in order to shine. Hana also showcases Nisio Isin’s strengths as a dialogue writer, and how well he understands the human natures of the distinct personalities he’s written.

Above all though, Hanamonogatari is a whole story from start to finish, and it satisfies almost all the major questions it introduces in the story beats that it sets out. I usually wouldn’t mention that about any other anime, but in light of my previous post about the ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ arc (and all that I’ll say about ‘Shinobu Time’ in the week ahead), I needed to stress how relieving it is to arrive at the end of a story arc and not have to worry about where I’ll be able to pick up on ‘more of the story’ or ‘that other story that was hinted at’, which are ongoing problems with the other arcs in Monogatari Second Season.
I just don’t recall any personal complaints about Hanamonogatari – it’s a straight shooter. It gets solid marks from me all-round.


pictured: young Rouka Numachi

tl;dr Hanamonogatari is very good, I recommend it.

Up next in the watch order –


Monogatari Second Season Episodes 12-15: Nadeko Medusa

Watching the original ‘Nadeko Snake’ arc in Bakemonogatari years ago, I thought of it as a quaint arc – short and good, though not as good as the others. Fan sentiment, I’ve read, feels about the same. It’s surprise then that what is otherwise considered the weakest of the original arcs is now the groundwork for ‘Nadeko Medusa’, one of the standout arcs in Monogatari Second Season.

Nadeko Medusa  SPOILER: Show

Nadeko Medusa starts off from a flashbang: middle schooler Nadeko Sengoku – sporting a new hairdo of white snakelike strands – is sheltering from the rain in the ruins of North Shirahebi Shrine. She’s speaking with a White Snake. Then, Araragi arrives, and he’s injured – and though he initially hesitates, soon Shinobu appears and together they attack the white-haired Nadeko … and the young girl knocks down Shinobu and summons unseen-before powers to impale Araragi.



How’s that work? Well. It works well.
I’ll be blunt: this seasons’ story needed some appropriate serious stakes that stick around a while, and holy shit does Nadeko going absolute tilt at Araragi & Shinobu bring both the stakes the series needs at this time, and an appropriate hook: how has one of the series’ minor heroines become its newest antagonist?

Nadeko Medusa is about uncovering who Nadeko Sengoku is behind her apparently innocent and mild-mannered persona. Her arc properly begins about a week before she beats up Araragi and Shinobu, some months after her previous appearance in Nisemonogatari. It’s the end of October, and Nadeko is walking to school one morning when she encounters Ougi Oshino: Ougi already knows who Nadeko is, and knows about her incident involving the snake charms from the ‘Nadeko Snake’ arc. Ougi gently interrogates the idea of whether Nadeko had been a genuine victim in that story, and states that ‘this story’ might make that clear. The conversation confuses Nadeko, and once Ougi leaves, she feels as though she’s spent more time in the conversation than she remembers.



At school, Nadeko opens her locker and sees her hand wrapped in white snakes: she recoils, only for her hand to seem normal. She sullenly walks to class – the class of students who won’t talk to one another after all the drama about the false charms – only to leave to use one of the schools’ payphones (apparently that was a thing) to call Koyomi Araragi for advice about her hallucination. As they have no clues about any new oddities in Nadeko’s life, Koyomi has to rely on Shinobu, and that means waiting until she awakes in the night – and though Nadeko is unsure about Shinobu, she agrees to meet them at night, and says She’s looking forward to it.

Nadeko’s slip of her normal demure personality naturally puzzles Araragi, and as he asks if she’s okay, she scrambles to cover for herself. She pretends that she’s out of credit before cutting the call. As she regains her composure and contemplates what she’s going through, a voice comes through the phone receiever. Nadeko and the audience are introduced to a new voice that only Nadeko is able to hear – the voice of the Snake God Kuchinawa, who instructs her to go to North Shirahebi Shrine. There, Kuchinawa scolds Nadeko on killing the white snakes which brought about her original curse in Bakemonogatari, and says that, to atone, Nadeko needs to locate the snake god’s dead body so that it can become a god at the shrine once again.



Kuchinawa – as the new voice in Nadeko’s head, the new personality that she attempts to handle in private at home and at school – sets in motion a series of incidents that slowly but methodically peel back how Nadeko sees herself and how she approaches the issues in her own life.

Naturally, Araragi soon catches up to Nadeko’s outings, and brings her over to the Araragi household to talk it out. Nadeko isn’t forthcoming with him about hearing ‘Kuchinawa’ or her intentions to find the Snake God’s corpse, and so Araragi has nothing … I needn’t say the inclination that Araragi nearly indulges next, though Shinobu knocks him out before anything untoward happens to the middle schooler. Shinobu’s scene with Nadeko – in which Shinobu wonders aloud if Nadeko’s ‘normal’ persona is a subconscious act on Nadeko’s part – pokes and prods at what’s really going on underneath the young girl’s shy personality.

The next morning, Araragi’s youngest sister Tsukihi has a similar quizzing exchange with her schoolmate Nadeko, and in the scenes’ tensest moment Nisio Isin’s trope of ‘young girls getting a haircut to showcase character growth’ goes through something of an inversion: without asking and without warning, Tsukihi’s swiftly cuts Nadeko’s bangs. This forces a character change for Nadeko – or rather, now that she can’t perfectly and unconsciously play her outward persona, the façade starts to snap, and she just lets loose at the sources of her frustrations – the teacher who wants Nadeko to ‘fix’ the forlorn atmosphere of her middle school class, and her classmates who can’t get over the drama of the failed charms. The scene in class where Nadeko confronts her classmates is a contender for the best scene in Monogatari Second Season.



In contrast to some of the other arcs this season, this is character development and foreshadowing that pays off.

I said this season needed a sense of ‘stakes that stick around’ – the developments in Nadeko’s arc here offers stakes aplenty for all. Once Nadeko follows Kuchinawa's intuition to sneak into Araragi’s bedroom, it isn't long before she uncovers a specialists' scroll inside one of his lewd magazines - and although Araragi arrives at the critical moment, his attempts to talk her out of it only push her to swallow the Talisman and turn herself into the Snake God. Though this scene and the follow-through at the Shrine are peak monogatari, it’s worth keeping in mind that it’s not good for Nadeko Sengoku to be this way – as without the angle of the ‘apparitions’ and ‘godhood’ it’s as if she’s a runaway middle school student, and out of her mind. The final scene is something of a mock preview for the future arc, as Nadeko imagines how her arranged showdown with Araragi and co. will unfold at the end of the school year – it’s unhinged in an amazing style, and it offers audiences two clear questions: can Nadeko be saved, and if not, can Araragi and co. survive her intentions?

Top marks for this arc - apart from Araragi, who should've had nothing but wholesome ideas about having a wayward middle schooler over at his house in the middle of the night, and who should've known better to than hide something as important as a 'Talisman That Turns People into Gods' (TM) inside of the lad's mags that he normally tries to keep a secret.

I absolutely recommend the ‘Nadeko Medusa’ arc, it’s arguably the best on offer in the season.

We’ll be back with Nadeko’s situation in the last arc of Monogatari Second Season, which will skip ahead a whiles again – but not before we skip backwards again for the not-at-all-connected ‘Shinobu Time’ arc.



* * * * *
Next Time: the last two arcs of Monogatari Second Season

bonus Ougi BICYCLE  SPOILER: Show

BICYCLE, BICYCLE, BICYCLE

bonus Araragi  SPOILER: Show

College-student Araragi is something of a suave figure – though it’s just as likely that this is the one unreliable component of Kanbaru’s point of view


in contrast, this image comes courtesy of Araragi’s imagination I’ll say no more

[EvangelionFan]

Monogatari Second Season (continued)

Episodes 17-20: Shinobu Time

‘Shinobu Time’ brings us back to where we previously saw Araragi, Shinobu, and Hachikuji at the end of the ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ arc, and starts to show what the three had been up to off-screen in Hanekawa’s ‘Tsubasa Tiger’ arc.

Shinobu Time  SPOILER: Show

Years ago, a bloke by the name of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote : “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

Some of you may know this advice as “Kill Your Darlings” – in short, sometimes an idea is better off on the cutting room floor than in the final product, but as human beings authors & artists are liable to becoming too attached to an idea to recognise when it’s best to let it go. Based on what I’ve said before about the ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ arc, I want you to keep this adage in mind as I talk about ‘Shinobu Time’, an arc that sees Shinobu begin to share more about her past life as the legendary vampire Kiss-Shot … but which becomes more about Koyomi Araragi and Mayoi Hachikuji’s situationship.



Araragi and Hachikuji’s ongoing banter-ship has been a mixed bag: on the one hand some of their exchanges – such as their wordplay in the opening episode of Nisemonogatari – are highlights of the series’ writerly humour. On the other hand, Nisio Isin is by now inclined to use these scenes to indulge Araragi’s inappropriate behaviour towards Hachikuji – such as, again, in that opening episode of Nisemonogatari. I know that it’s played as humourous, but it's inseparable from, to put it lightly, the awkwardness of watching Araragi behave as he does.

So it’s something of a surprise when Araragi and Hachikuji’s daytime banter is interrupted by an event: the pair simultaneously become aware that they’ve being pursued by an inexplicable new oddity, ‘The Darkness’. On this initial encounter with The Darkness – a spherical shape of anti-space – our heroes act on instinct and speed away on Araragi’s bicycle, but it’s no use as The Darkness keeps up, and Shinobu is asleep. The day is saved when they stumble into Yotsugi; the doll-girl uses UNLIMITED RULEBOOK (a rulebook of mostly exceptions) to fly them out, which knocks out Hachikuji; Yotsugi leaves her with Araragi at the abandoned cram school (which has not yet been burnt down by Hanekawa’s White Tiger apparition).

It’s soon clear that The Darkness only delayed Araragi’s unsavoury inclinations; as the seventeen-year-old attempts to move on a sleeping Hachikuji, he’s interrupted by an awakened Shinobu. I’ll condense the scenes that follow and just say that, there’s shenanigans before Shinobu’s monologue about her past life as Kiss-Shot in feudal Japan, and shenanigans afterward once it’s revealed that Yotsugi was only standing out the door all along, and Hachikuji awakes to an overexcited Araragi. The three shorties team up on the high schooler, they look like they’ll win so he calls for a truce, then the girls act as if they’re about to square off against one another.



Is this the arc that I noticed I am not all that keen on Araragi & Shinobu’s on-screen dynamic? You see, The Darkness arrives once again, and Yotsugi deploys UNLIMITED RULEBOOK (a rulebook of mostly exceptions) to blast the gang off once again … but Araragi is knocked out this time, and after he comes to, he realises that Shinobu isn’t in his shadow anymore.

Actually it’s more than that, Shinobu disappears from the rest of the arc! And it's arguably better in her absence!

It’s not that I don’t appreciate Araragi & Shinobu’s scenes together; the story-time segment about Shinobu’s past life as Kiss-Shot was very well done, and I did like seeing how the pair worked together at the end of Nisemonogatari and from Nadeko’s point of view in ‘Nadeko Medusa’. Shinobu recounted that chapter from her past life as Kiss-Shot to fill in Araragi and the audience on how she’d also fled from The Darkness once centuries ago – though in the present, after The Darkness severs her connection to Araragi and he and the others become stranded in the countryside, she doesn’t get to participate in the arc’s resolution.



As I said above, this arc is more about Hachikuji Mayoi – her personality, her nature as a ‘Lost Snail’ apparition (or ‘Lost Cow’, the naming goes back and forth), and her situationship with one Koyomi Araragi. Yotsugi guides Araragi and Hacikuji through the countryside to a contact of hers – no surprise, it’s Izuko Gaen. Her appearance in this arc comes a few days before her first run-in with Hanekawa in ‘Tsubasa Cat’, and though their acquaintance was implied later on in ‘Nadeko Medusa’, this is her introduction to Araragi. It’s worth remembering that, from a certain point of view Araragi had kind of been Oshino Meme’s apprentice/understudy, and as Oshino had been Gaen’s student, her subsequent schooling of Araragi about what’s-going-on is also a slap at Oshino’s approach to the problem of … the Lost Snail.

Izuko Gaen’s monologuing is on one layer an explanation about the nature of The Darkness as a universal balancing act that expunges apparitions which aren’t acting out their assigned roles – for instance Kiss-Shot during her years in feudal Japan had not been behaving ‘as a Vampire’ and eventually drew its attention, and now Hachikuji, who by forgoing her role as the Lost Snail and accompanying Araragi at her leisure has also begun attracting The Darkness to herself … apart from when he’s been lost, like right now, sitting at Gaen’s retreat out in the mountains. On another layer it’s a lot more foreshadowing or forecasting for more interesting stories some other time, as while the nature of ‘The Darkness’ had been something of a mystery in plain sight which is probably satisfyingly solved for the audience by Gaen … I guess I gotta ask, why is it done this way?

Though the stakes about The Darkness are clear as soon as it appears, the stakes about Hachkuji’s situation aren’t clear until Izuko Gaen explicitly explains them to us: “Y’see kid … your friend … since she can’t stay a Lost Cow, she’s gotta leave the world of the living, or she’ll be chased by The Darkness”. It comes up late in the arc, late enough that through the course of Gaen’s dialogue I started looking forward to that other story involving Araragi and Gaen, the one previously foreshadowed in ‘Tsubasa Cat’ and ‘Nadeko Medusa’. I thought less of the otherwise good story unfolding in front of me.

Nisio Isin’s plotting in both ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ and ‘Shinobu Time’ means that this tearful goodbye to Hachikuji kind of arrives out of nowhere, and that’s how it hits Araragi: it’s human how he acts as he does after Gaen lays it all out to him, and Hachikuji soon acknowledges that there’s no better option and accepts her fate. For Hachikuji fans, you’ll find the goodbye scene a massive tearjerker. For me, since this story about ‘The Darkness’ is the more important and compelling of Araragi’s & Hachikuji’s two storylines this season, I’ve come to wonder: why not begin with it? Why have the previous story about travelling back in time and an alternate world which barely added anything to Araragi and co.’s overall story?


pictured: Araragi has to ‘kill his darling’ and allow Hachikuji to pass on from the living world.

Which brings us back to that old advice – “Kill Your Darlings”

Ask yourself: how many of the scenes in these two arcs – if any – are darlings of Nisio Isin which he hadn’t the heart to better scrutinise himself before sending to his publishers? I know both books of Nisemonogatari had been something Nisio Isin wrote for himself which his publishers saw and pushed ahead with – but though they had success with that editorial indulgence, was it the best move to indulge his unconventional story structure priorities here as well? The sales would say yes – that the indulgence had no negative impact on the quality of the end product. I am not so sure.

As I see it, my irritations stem from how the publishing order of the light novels and the production timeline of Monogatari Second Season presented something of story structure problem in the anime. In Nisio Isin’s set of stories which make up the ‘second season’, this newest arc centred around Araragi is arguably a three-part story beginning with ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ as Part 1, which was published in December 2010. Nisio Isin wrote three other stories before writing ‘Shinobu Time’ as a Part 2, published in September 2011. SHAFT’s anime adaptation of these books as part of Second Season would have been in the early production stages then or shortly after, as it began airing in August 2013. Meanwhile, Nisio Isin wrote four more novels before he published ‘Shinobu Mail’ in early 2014 – it is the Part 3 to this Araragi-centred story arc, but because of Nisio Isin’s inclinations, it hadn’t been written in time to be included alongside the other two parts in the Monogatari Second Season anime.

On the one hand - I understand if Nisio Isin had better inspiration about other stories and so went ahead in writing them out of order. And there are some thematic throughlines in the other stories that kinda matter in the end destination, when we eventually arrive at Owarimonogatari Part II. On the other hand, in the long view of the series is this nonlinear approach in Second Season satisfying? Is it overdone? Beginning ‘Tsubasa Tiger’ with all of that signnalling about an off-screen Araragi story, backpedalling to ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ as a prelude to that Araragi story, skipping ahead to the unrelated Hanamonogatari, stepping back to tell ‘Nadeko Medusa’, then backpedalling again to ‘Shinobu Time’ – and whether you’re following the books or watching the anime, it’s about to skip ahead again for ‘Hitagi End’. And sure, those intermittent stories are very good in the anime – I’ve acknowledged as much – but still, to see the next part to ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ and ‘Shinobu Time’ audiences had to wait until the corresponding episodes of Owarimonogatari aired in November 2015.



Nonetheless, as I got deeper into Second Season, I sighed and sat through all the irreverent foreshadowing in faith of a good outcome down the line (and for the dialogue). ‘Shinobu Time’ is an improvement over ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’, namely in that it includes two very good long scenes in the Kiss-Shot story-time and the Gaen monologue/Hachikuji goodbye scene, though as far as monogatari content goes – and in light of the issues I've outlined – I felt it’s only okay overall.

Oh no! Anyway…

* * * * *
Next Time: I'd also wanted to include my thoughts on the last arc of Monogatari Second Season in this post – but in addition to writing much more than I’d anticipated above, I’ve been a bit pressed for time of late as I am about to head overseas. I may take a break from writing & posting until I am back home next month. Until then, take care.

[Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion]

After successfully watching every anime I wanted to see/was on my backlog back in January I managed to watch a bunch of other stuff before finally getting ready to watch that which I consider twelve years back as "the end of the backlog", where a journey would end of sorts back in my college days. I diversified quite a bit in the realm of anime, but now the send off is here with Legend of The Galactic Heroes. I had a feeling I might not have liked it, but if it really is praised as one of the best science fiction stories in all of fiction I figured, yeah, take it on. So... Forty episodes into this....

Guys here is what the empire is doing, aren't Reinheart and Sieg just best pals? Now look at what Yang is doing over at the alliance. Now back to the empire. Now back to the alliance. Empire. Alliance. Empire. Alliance. And it just keeps juxtaposing the two. It wasn't even until episode 40 they finally explained just who Kaiser Rudolph was and why he was basically Colonel Kerensky/Horus Luprecal but with hair. After episode 26 the animation got slightly better, but dang, for an OVA I expected better. Action scenes are not that great, maybe I'm spoiled by Matsumoto stuff like Yamato and Harlock or other space stuff like Crusher Joe or Starship Operators, but the main warship fights don't have much going for them... Hell, I can barely tell them apart. I know Reinheart uses a white small one, but I can never tell what Yang is in. The ships on both sides look and attack too similar. For battles that are supposed to have dozens of thousands of ships it really doesn't come across that way, Glass Fleet acted in smaller numbers but managed to pull of scaling a lot better. Then there are moments that get glossed over pretty quickly you'd think would have their own episode but just don't (I'm assuming they had to cut things for time? Usually I don't excuse this, but with 110 episodes and aimed at adults I'm going to expect that to be managed properly). And when getting into the 30s the pacing takes a down turn, things just got less interesting, I am beginning to think a certain someone before the animation ramp up was unintentionally pulling way more weight than he seemed. Oh yeah, and Earth cults are a thing in the background despite us not seeing Earth/Terra on the map in episode 40 (does this take place between the Sirius and Orion constellations? Because if not the map looks too simple). And soldiers are using axes instead of guns for space battles because... The space fortresses use liquid metal (mercury?)? I'm trying to give this space and there just isn't anything to go off on. I knew this would be more political than actiony going in. It's technically going somewhere. It's fine, basically. Maybe it'll get better, time will tell.

[Mr. Tines]

And soldiers are using axes instead of guns for space battles because...

The books are more forthcoming on details like that - an area-denial tactic of flooding invaded spaces with incendiary dust that would make use of firearms self-defeating. But I suspect that the real reason is that van Buskirk and his Space Marines did so in the Lensman books, and were cool doing so, and those had a very strong influence on Japanese sci-fi.

[Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion]

^Thank you for that, Mr. Tines. Anyway, made it to episode 50. It has definitely improved in execution starting in episode 43, it actually started looking like the grand space battles I was told. Latest episode actually added creativity with a black hole as part of the battlefield. Also episode 49 is where that out of context sequence I've seen passed around is from that made Yang seem racist when he isn't; you can't have everyone on your warship derelict their posts like that.

[EvangelionFan]

Monogatari Second Season (final arc) Episodes 21-26

Hey look kids, it’s everyone’s lovable Hawaiian-shirt wearing oddities specialist-


pictured: now playing – ‘Island in the Sun’ – Weezer

… Kaiki Deishuu? No no, there must be some mistake. That old bag wouldn’t wear a shirt and sunglasses combo set like that-

Episodes 21-26  SPOILER: Show

Episodes 21-26: Hitagi End arc

… unless it was to one-up our other faux holidaying tsundere, Hitagi Senjougahara.


pictured: one of many of Senjougahara’s disguises in this opening episode

It’s the first week of January, and Senjougahara has broken a personal rule and contacted her former adversary – the conman and oddities specialist Kaiki Deishuu, of ‘Karen Bee’ arc infamy – and asked to meet in a tourist spot airport, far away from town, so that they are not seen by Araragi or anyone else they know. Senjougahara sought out Kaiki because she’s out of options – she needs to save Araragi, she needs to save herself, and she needs the specialists' assistance in addressing the problem posed by one Nadeko Sengoku.

Kaiki, of course, has no interest in being of use to Araragi. He has no affection to the boy, and the boy said never to visit the town again – and with the Fire Sisters inclined to go for a punch-up if they spot Kaiki on the streets, he’s more incentivised to reject Senjougahara's request for help than to accept it. But he hears her out anyway. Is he hiding a soft spot for her? He played her game by donning the Hawaiian shirt after all. As Kaiki mulls over the young woman's' request, he asks himself if he would take the job to help her, or Araragi, and the answer is no … but would he take the job if it helped their friend Kanbaru Suruga? That’s a yes. (Kaiki’s heel-turn from adversary to ally at the thought of being of help to Kanbaru makes immediate sense if you’ve already seen Hanamonogatari in the light novel order, as in their Yakiniku scene he more or less admits he had been in love with her late mother)

So begins the last arc of Monogatari Second Season, a detective story told from the viewpoint of Kaikii Deishuu, who from the outset warns us to be sceptical of his account. It does have some of the monogatari anime’s hallmark zany moments, such as the opening episode at the airport café with Senjougahara, but as Kaiki is an adult – and a normally serious and steady person – those moments are at a minimum in this arc.

And that’s okay, because ‘Hitagi End’ is accompanied by the series’ most amusing OP thus far. You’re used to the character songs, sung solo by that characters’ voice actress, yeah? This OP features a duet between Senjougahara and Kaiki’s VA’s – yes, Kaiki sings. It’s a seaside outing which blends the series’ familiar style with a nostalgic 90s hand-drawn style, showing how both characters hold idealised versions of the other in their minds: Senjougahara imagines Kaiki as a wild and free man who drives a red convertible; Kaiki imagines her as a sundress-wearing girl whose wide-brimmed hat is blown away in the summer wind …
It's a visually arresting OP in how it shows these idyllic personages stuck inside the others’ heads, and how they are both still trapped by the shadow of the story of the crab-oddity, and now the story of the snake-oddity. Of course, for all that they might be daydreaming about kinder versions of each other under the surface, they’re rather closed off individuals, not unlike the cast of a certain famous 90s anime which we’re all familiar with.


pictured: Asuka’s classic Get in the robot, Shinji! pose

Senjougahara is perfect foil for this outing – as instigator of Kaikii’s mission to return Nadeko Sengoku from Godhood to a more harmless middle school persona, they communicate frequently, firstly as Kaiki poses as the concerned parent of one of Nadeko’s middle school classmate to learn more about Nadeko’s private life from her parents, and secondly about Kaiki’s gambit to donate to God-Nadeko at the shrine once a day in the aim of forming an acquaintanceship. Kaiki’s long-term goal in this daily contact is to one day convincingly lie to God-Nadeko about Araragi’s demise, to deflate her dreams of killing Araragi and Senjoughara on their graduation day. Senjoughara doesn’t hold back her normal banter, but there is another side of her on display here, as although she’s steadfast and questioning about Kaiki’s approach and his worries that he’s being tailed by someone, her playfulness gives way at the halfway point to a deep relief and gratitude to the conman/specialist for accepting the case and addressing the threat of the Snake God hanging over her and her boyfriends’ futures.


pictured: SHAFT referencing Blade Runner went unnoticed until I read the comments about it on r/araragi

For now, I’ll skip over the finer details of the middle of the story – the scene in Kaiki’s hotel room that likens him to Deckard from Blade Runner, and Senjougahara to the geishas on the gigantic screens; his trick of luring Nadeko’s parents away from their house so that he can break-in and inspect her bedroom closet; his meeting with Yotsugi at a Starbucks where she passes on a stack of cash from Gaen to get him to ‘walk off the job’; his run-in with Hanekawa, who returned from abroad just to speak with him – all that matters is that Kaiki stays on the job, uses Gaen’s cash as donations to continue daily conversations with God-Nadeko, and retains the secret about the contents of Nadeko’s bedroom closet until the climax.


pictured: according to Monogatari Second Season, middle schoolers who attain Godhead can access Sake through donations to their shrine. This is not a public good.

On a cloudy day in February, the conman’s gambit fails: for all the time and money invested, Kaiki’s lie does not convince Nadeko, and nor does she forgive the attempt at deception. In her insanity God-Nadeko interprets it as something of a game to him, so it becomes a game to her, and she uses her powers to conjure a field of white snakes, and begins to toy with his life.

If in this final episode of ‘Hitagi End’ it appears as if SHAFT hasn’t appropriately used all that the Second Season built up in ‘Nadeko Medusa’ – not the least the attraction of a final boss for Araragi and the girls to overcome – this abrupt ramp-up in stakes cures some of that. In my opinion there is a shortcoming in that it’s said that Araragi goes to the shrine every other day to try to help Nadeko and is beaten up by her, but IT’S. NEVER. SHOWN. Beat him up! Anyway, Araragi doesn’t interrupt this final showdown between Kaiki and God-Nadeko until it’s all over, and that ends up being a saving grace about the episode and the arc, because Kaiki’s ploy to save his life – and hopefully Nadeko – is to address her directly about the contents of her bedroom closet:

Then do you want to become a manga artist? Kaiki asks. God-Nadeko’s initial reaction speaks for itself. As if I could quit being a god for such a stupid reason! she exclaims.

And now, to persuade Nadeko to let go of her godhood, Kaiki must reach deep into his heart … speak from his heart … actually, he only needs to dab the surface of his feelings, because all he really cares about is money. It lets you buy happiness! (Note that Love still costs 298 yen, but it’s sold out since its first appearance in Nisemonogatari.) It lets you buy dreams! Yes, to save his own skin, Kaiki extolls the virtues of money, claiming that there isn’t any single special thing in the world that one has to hold to, and that anything is able to be acquired in this world if one has the money for it. Nadeko’s godhood won’t help her become a manga artist, but Kaiki points out that the money he donated could be spent on art supplies and tools for her work.

And it just works. It’s an out for Kaiki which no-one had anticipated, one that leads on from the little that others know about him, and an out that Nadeko accepts for herself to return to her humanity, as this is the first time that an adult has learnt about her dream and has accepted her for her dream instead of criticising her for it like she’d long feared.



Kaiki saves Nadeko, and therefore, saves Sengouhara, Araragi, and their school friends. As Nadeko falls unconsciousness and the Shrine returns to normal, a bewildered Araragi arrives on the scene. Kaiki covers for Senjougahara by saying he’s there on Gaen’s request … which is kinda true, as Kaiki later acknowledges in narration that Gaen probably only said to take the money and walk away because she knew that was how to get him to take the money and use it to finish the job. Kaiki removes the 'Talisman That Turns People into Gods' (TM) from Nadeko to return her to normal, advises Araragi to stay out of the middle school girls’ life from here on out, and exits the scene.

If I say ‘Hitagi End’ is good, it’s because I found it a welcome change of perspective from the previous arcs in the season, it offers fresh developments for the supporting casts’ relationships, and abandons the series’ more problematic indulgences. If I say it’s great, it’s for the fact that the climax of final episode – the confrontation at the shrine – feels satisfying for Kaiki and Nadeko, despite it not leaving a lot of reflection on the original involvement of Araragi and & Shinobu (and whose own storyline is still waiting in the wings to be completed in the Owarimonogatari sections of ‘Monogatari Final Season’). If not for that climactic reveal in the final episode I am almost certain I would’ve criticised the second season overall for not living up to its potential. It’s more of a mixed season without it – when I was watching that final episode some months ago I had to pause it a couple of minutes before the reveal and couldn’t return to finish it for several days, and in that interval I couldn’t get over the feeling that the season lacked something, a punch or a profound insight or revelation about all of the adventures so far. The final episodes’ climax at least feels to me to be a natural conclusion for Kaiki Deishuu’s and Nadeko Sengoku’s character arcs, and for that, it allows Monogatari Second Season to stick the landing.

In Summary: Monogatari Second Season

So – does Monogatari Second Season stick the landing? Yes, though It’s not a perfect landing. It’s good – sometimes it’s great – but it doesn’t stand up to the straightforward narrative quality standards set by Bakemonogatari and I believe that is solely on account of how Nisio Isin wrote the original light novels. It’s a simultaneously a structural choice and a stylistic choice, as although the arcs aren’t ordered chronologically, a few of the seasons’ overarching themes are seeded and developed in this nonlinear order. This approach is not an issue for the ‘Tsubasa Tiger’ arc and for ‘Hanamonogatari’ as these mostly work off of material from previous instalments, it doesn’t pay off for ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ and ‘Shinobu Time’ until Monogatari Final Season, though it does seem to pay off for ‘Nadeko Medusa’ and the final arc inside of their screentime.

The usual monogatari banter and analytical moments are as much the hook here as they had been in the original series – and they’re worth the time – though after an arc is over, it’s those kinds of moments that aren't as memorable as in Bake because of all the occasions in which something important is hinted at happening off-screen. Sure, we eventually see what adventure Araragi and Shinobu were away on in ‘Tsubasa Tiger’ when we watch ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ and then ‘Shinobu Time’, but there’s still plenty of pieces missing about those stories by the end of it, and plenty of importance that’s said about Araragi and others’ offscreen adventures that isn’t allowed much more than a mention.

To be more specific…  SPOILER: Show

To be more specific about my irritations around ‘hints about stuff we’re told but not shown’ –

It’s involving backstory when Bakemonogatari brings up the events of Golden Week (Nekomonogatari Black) to bring viewers on board with the ‘Black Hanekawa’ situation, but it’s almost admitting you’re showing us a side story if a key scene in ‘Hitagi End’ involves Kaiki and Ononoki sitting outside a Starbucks talking offhand about how Gaen planned for Shinobu to be installed as a God at the Shrine but something something Araragi wouldn’t play along and so everyone ended up with Nadeko becoming the God there in ‘Nadeko Medusa’. Despite dropping this major plot point as if it’s a disposable cup, from memory Second Season never lets on about the situation that led to Gaen entrusting Araragi with the Talisman, and nor does it allow us to infer if Araragi or Shinobu knew about Gaen’s original intentions for the Talisman. And I don’t feel comfortable calling it ‘foreshadowing’ as the Starbucks scene occurs months after said plot point that Kaiki and Ononoki talk offhand about (and said plot point is left on the floor for ages until it comes up as minor piece of an almost separate puzzle at the end of Owarimonogatari).

At that moment – and in others in the ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ arc, which I wrote about in my previous post – I thought about skipping ahead and finding out which episodes in Final Season would show me that other story. It led me to question how much of we’ve been shown in Second Season is important at all, and that’s not a good impression to go forward with – whether one had an amazing time along the way or a mostly good time as I have on this initial watch through.

I also want to acknowledge that stray plot points such as those are all part of a bigger picture that involves subsequent monogatari instalments – and that normally isn’t an issue on its own in a longer series. My nascent irritation with Monogatari Second Season is that its handling of an out-of-order story structure isn’t working here in the way that, say, the original twelve episodes of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya had, where they were watchable in both the broadcast order and the narrative order thanks to a single, simple story idea threading through it all. Here it’s six arcs – twenty-six episodes, or thirty-one if you include Hanamonogatari – with multiple ‘main threads’ across them, shown mostly out of order, and unanswered questions strewn through in the intent to woo people into buying the next light novel and to watch whichever anime instalment adapts it.

All the advantages of presenting the story arcs out of order – and SHAFT adapting it in its hallmark style and standards – aren’t able absolve the Second Season of how it arrives at the end as a mostly satisfying but still sometimes bothersome hodgepodge of offbeat arcs and advertisements about adventures to be told at another time. It’s normal if hints about other plotlines help generate interest in sequels; it’s not normal when hints about plotlines outside of Second Season make me question if what I’m watching is worth the investment in it. I’ll say again that it’s good most of the time, but gosh does it have an awkward sense about its' audiences' investment of time and attention.

I believe I enjoyed Monogatari Second Season on balance, but with these posts I’ve wanted to write my praises as much as write about what I think are shortcomings big and small. I wanted to hash out how I had been bothered along the way whilst acknowledging what I had enjoyed, and how I had been engaged with it.
Is it worth watching? If you were already into Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari then yes Second Season is worth trying out – but if you were on the fence about monogatari, I think it’s unlikely that these extended outings with Araragi & co. will bring you aboard.

* * * * *
Next Time: I’ll be back home soon, so after I’ve had some time to settle back in, I’ll begin sharing my thoughts about Monogatari ‘Final Season’ starting with Tsukumonogatari. It’ll be good to talk about Ononoki for a change, though thinking further ahead, I am more looking forward to talking about Ougi Oshino and Math Girl (TM).

bonus Ononoki  SPOILER: Show

Say the line, Ononoki, say the line! Or don’t. That’s okay too.

[C.A.P.]

Man it's eerie to see EvangelionFan go through Monogatari right now...and that I'm ahead of him. As of this writing I wrapped up Koyomimonogatari with some friends back on Saturday. If all goes well we dive into the start of Owarimonogatari 2nd Season next Saturday and spend the rest of this month and October absorbing that and Zoku Owarimonogatari. I have no idea what the gameplan is for Off & Monster Season, but I wouldn't be surprised if we tackle all of that the rest of the year. We shall see.

I'm not going to waste my time going indepth on my thoughts about each anime (I got a PDF to still read for my Library Studies), but just know that it's been one of the vast joys of my otakudom this year finally getting to this after being in the dark during the 2010s. I can't explain why it took me forever. I'm going to pretend I wasn't at the right age for it. Maybe if someone responds to this I'll go more indepth.

[Mr. Tines]

After a quiet spell, this season I've actually been watching something - the independent ONA series Milky☆Subway. It's about a bunch of loveable delinquents doing community service by cleaning a galactic subway train, and everything that goes wrong. If you've not watched it, it's on YouTube, so go do yourself a favour, starting with the one-shot prequel Milky☆Highway

[EvangelionFan]

Man it's eerie to see EvangelionFan go through Monogatari right now...and that I'm ahead of him. As of this writing I wrapped up Koyomimonogatari with some friends back on Saturday. If all goes well we dive into the start of Owarimonogatari 2nd Season next Saturday and spend the rest of this month and October absorbing that and Zoku Owarimonogatari. I have no idea what the gameplan is for Off & Monster Season, but I wouldn't be surprised if we tackle all of that the rest of the year. We shall see.

I'm not going to waste my time going indepth on my thoughts about each anime (I got a PDF to still read for my Library Studies), but just know that it's been one of the vast joys of my otakudom this year finally getting to this after being in the dark during the 2010s. I can't explain why it took me forever. I'm going to pretend I wasn't at the right age for it. Maybe if someone responds to this I'll go more indepth.

Thanks for reading my posts! You might've missed where I mentioned this above - I actually finished all of Monogatari Second Season in June and all of Monogatari Final Season in July, I've just procrastinated about my write-ups! The only season I’ve yet to watch is Off+Monster season. Some arcs are easier to write about than others – e.g. I wrote several paragraphs about the final arc of Owarimonogatari in July and I’ve sat on those while I’ve caught up with my notes on the other arcs.

That said I agree about enjoying watching these monogatari instalments after abstaining for so many years. If you do have any thoughts about the series that you’d like to share here, I’ll be happy to read them!

* * * *

Monogatari Final Season overview

Although Nisio Isin is still writing monogatari series light novels, a decade ago he elected to group this subsequent set of stories together not as a Third Season but as a so-called ‘Final Season’. For those of us in 2025, it’s certainly not the final set of stories as the author has since released books in ‘Off Season’ and ‘Monster Season’, which SHAFT has already partially adapted in one season a year ago with a second season anticipated sometime next year.

So why call these stories ‘Final Season’? The simplest explanation is that these are the last stories to take place during Koyomi Araragi’s high school life. This isn’t to say that they all take place straight after Second Season – though Tsukimonogatari may pick up from there, the mini-episodes of Koyomimonogatari hop through different points of Araragi’s last year at the school (from the aftermath of Kizumonogatari through to his last day of school), Owarimonogatari Part 1 takes place about halfway through that last year (after Nisemonogatari but before the ‘Nadeko Medusa’ arc), while Part 2 and Zoku Owarimonogatari are set at the end of the school year. These arcs also tie off most of the unresolved story threads that Koyomi Araragi was involved in since the beginning of the series.

Though there is some debate about whether to watch the Koyomimonogatari shorts before or after Owarimonogatari Part 1, I watched it beforehand. (for more information on the monogatari series watch order, check the ‘Order’ section of the Suggested Watch Order, or for a chronological ordering, scroll to ‘Timeline’ on the same page to see when each arc occurs during Araragi’s last year of high school)


Tsukimonogatari

Tsukimonogatari (otherwise known as the ‘Yotsugi Doll’ arc) is a four-episode arc advertising itself to be about Yotsugi, though it’s fairer to say I remember it as less about what everyone’s favourite living doll says and does – more rather, the commentary on Yotsugi’s condition is a complementary piece to an inquiry about how Koyomi Araragi’s vampiric nature has changed since the events of Monogatari Second Season. Araragi once again acts as our point-of-view protagonist – and although I would’ve welcomed an arc narrated by Yotsugi, it’s sensible that the high schooler is back in the seat here as not only does he narrate all subsequent instalments in Final Season, he’s about to learn that there’s still a lot going on around him (and about himself) that he has no idea about.


pictured: the cold opening to the first episode of Tsukimonogatari features some fantastic shots, such as this one of Yotsugi and [REDACTED]’s origami cranes

Similar to Hanamonogatari, Tsukimonogatari is presented on Crunchyroll as one block of four episodes with one opening sequence no in-between episode openings/endings. Unlike Nekomonogatari Black and Hanamonogatari however, Tsukimonogatari features more of the extended cast – of course there’s Yotsugi Ononoki acting as a narrative glue, Shinobu Oshino is featured more prominently due to her association with Araragi, Ougi Oshino shows up for another quirky conversation, and Yozuru Kagenui returns for her first appearance since Nisemonogatari. And there’s a good amount of that signature Nisio Isin dialogue to be had amongst this assortment of misfits.

Tsukimonogatari / ‘Yotsugi Doll’  SPOILER: Show

Once Koyomi Araragi and his youngest Tsukihi Araragi have had almost an episodes’ worth of their not-so-brotherly and not-so-sisterly amusements in their arthouses’ luxurious bathroom (kudos to Karen Araragi for arriving to take her own bath and interrupting the scene with a kick as it was about to become too salacious – but this does not absolve the middle sister of her past misbehaviours!), our story begins as Araragi notices that he is no longer able to see himself in a mirror. He seeks help from Shinobu in his shadow, who agrees that he is now almost wholly a Vampire, and advises that he should stay out of sunlight and seek out a specialist such as Yotsugi Ononoki and Yozuru Kagenui. This isn’t an inviting prospect, as he doesn’t know how to contact Ononoki, and the last time he spoke with Kagenui was the same day when she threw him through face-first through multiple floors of the abandoned cram school, squished his heart with her bare hand, and punched him back down through those same floors for good measure.

As soon as Araragi settles on contacting Ononoki, he is messaged by Izuko Gaen, who has already arranged a meeting between the two. Then, Tsukihi interrupts, and Koyomi takes the moment to send both her and Karen over to Kanbaru’s house for the night to keep them out of the way while he meets Ononoki and Kagenui. Later that night Araragi and Shinobu arrive at an arcade anticipating a meeting, only to have to claim an immobile Ononoki as a prize from the inside of a claw crane machine.


pictured: Ononoki can play the part of an arcade game prize, but she and Shinobu are about to learn that Araragi is not good at claw crane games.

At this interval I want to mention how much I enjoyed the first two episodes. I appreciated the stylistic adjustments – the new screen flashes are presented in a scrapbook style instead of the previous solid colour frames, the dialogue on the screen flashes is sometimes animated, and overall, they’re uniquely themed to match the arc. All of this is a refreshing and welcome change to the homogenous presentation style of Monogatari Second Season, alongside a relieving change in that there are none of the paragraph-filled flash frames which were both a narrative boon to and a pause button frustration in the original Bakemonogatari.

As far as style and tone go, Yotsugi Doll is one of the more satisfyingly consistent arcs in the franchise. As the screenshots I included above showcase, there is fair amount of colourful Yotsugi fanservice along the way, which includes the vibrant episode opening (which is one of my favourite OPs in the series) and extends to Yotsugi’s tokusatsu-inspired poses in the first episode's cold open and her referential poses in other episodes. This fanservice isn’t undermining of any of the story thrusts in this arc, and nor is the almost-too-usual Araragi sibling fanservice scene in the first episode as it's buoyed by some relevant reflection about the aftermath of the ‘Nadeko Medusa’ and ‘Hitagi End’ arcs. Other lengthy conversations are lightened by some of the series’ most indulgent instances of non-literal locations and off-stage shenanigans.


pictured: This interior conversation is punctuated by exterior shots of Yotsugi and Shinobu building snowmen and battling with snowballs.

But back to our main man, the young Mr. Koyomi Araragi. The short of the situation is that, in all that time Araragi spent off-screen being beaten up by Nadeko Sengoku in fruitless attempts to bring her back to humanity, his overuse of his vampiric healing ability brought him nearer and nearer to becoming a full vampire and away from his own humanity. In the course of an at first awkward and then unsettling conversation with Yotsugi, Kagenui, and Shinobu, Araragi is informed that there is no chance that he’ll be able to reverse his current condition and become human again, and that the most he can do to help himself is to refrain from using his vampiric powers again.

Araragi is maturing here despite not having a good year. He shows this in how he swears not to use his powers again, whilst acknowledging he’s unsure if he could stop himself from powering up if his friends’ lives came under threat. This is tested almost immediately as Kagenui is interrupted by a phone call and instructs Araragi to take Yotsugi to the Kanbaru residence in case Kanbaru and Araragi’s sisters are no longer there – and true to her prediction, the three girls are missing, and the only clue to their disappearance a paper crane. Cue an info dump about an oddity specialist and puppetmaster who I’ll refer to as The Origami Guy, and a determination about The Origami Guy’s interest as less in the girls and more in Yotsugi and Araragi (who can’t use his powers and therefore has to rely on Yotsugi’s powers).

Speaking of relying on Yotsugi’s powers, when Ougi shows up at Yotsugi and Araragi’s landing spot outside the Shrine in the fourth episode, it’s a surprise on account of the timing as Ougi normally pops up earlier. I’ve also found the shtick of Ougi’s appearances to be exhausted after Kaiki’s inner monologue in the closing of ‘Hitagi End’. Anyway, Ougi has her odd exchange with Araragi, but after how Araragi and Kagenui had spent the previous scene saying that there’s too many peculiar events happening about Araragi at the same time, by the time Yotsugi breaks the fourth wall in the next scene to acknowledge that Ougi is indeed the final boss for Final Season, it’s more like she’s saying Yes, this is all Ougi’s doing, but we aren’t here to talk about that.



I suppose after watching the second season I became numb to how Nisio Isin tends to hint at or outright advertise significant plot information and in the same scene wave it away as another story for another time, so I went with it here without any whiplash. I was enjoying the actual mystery and the banter, but the climax in which Araragi and The Origami Guy are almost at the point of understanding why the situation between the two of them involved meeting at the Shrine but hadn’t the pause nor the screentime arrive at a shared ah-ha! moment, turns out to be average.


pictured: Who’s that specialist? It’s The Origami Guy! Who hired him to arrange the kidnapping? If only we had a hint …

You see there’s time for The Origami Guy to address Yotsugi – who’s hiding behind the screen door – to ask her to say her old Nisemonogatari line before she erases him from mortal existence. And sure, it was well animated, and sure, it solved Araragi’s immediate situation about needing to save the girls without using his powers … but it brought almost nothing new to the ongoing mysteries of Why is all of this happening at this Shrine? and What’s the deal with Ougi? other than a sliver of acknowledgement that they’re still important. Is that better than nothing at all? Again, these are mysteries we’ll hopefully see addressed in subsequent instalments.

In the closing scenes we’re treated to a Valentine’s Day moment as Araragi goes over to Senjouhara’s place for a date. I don’t recall the centrepiece couple receiving any scenes together for some time, so it’s just as well we get a few minutes with them until she tops him and the curtain closes.


pictured: in case you needed a reminder of who’s top and who’s bottom in this paring …

One final development sees Araragi returns to his arthouse only to find Yotsugi on Tsukihi’s bed: Yotsugi was again strategically placed inside an arcade machine so that his sister could conveniently win the doll and bring it home! All so that Yotsugi could discretely watch over him on Gaen and Kagenui’s instructions, as the mysteries around town persist…

I acknowledge I am being a little overcritical of the last episode of Tsukimonogatari in the above – I had mifs about it which I wanted to air – but as ever, all the talk about apparitions is engaging, the banter and voice acting are on point, and there are some new stylistic approaches to the adaption which were a personal highlight. Overall I think this was one of the better monogatari anime instalments since the original, but only by a smidge.


Koyomimonogatari


pictured: AND WE DANCED

Originally exclusive to a now-unavailable mobile app and currently unavailable on Crunchyroll, the Koyomimonogatari miniseries consists of twelve ONA episodes each around twelve to fourteen minutes in length. The stories included are at least loosely associated with story threads in the main instalments, except for the last two episodes, which are essential viewing before Owarimonogatari Part 2 or, in the light novel order, before Owarimonogatari Part 1.

Koyomimonogatari  SPOILER: Show

The Koyomimonogatari short stories are scattered across the last year of Koyomi Araragi’s life on High School. Each short features a different female supporting character, in the chronological order that their oddities cases first came up – for example, the first episode is set after Kizumonogatari and features Hanekawa while using the OP from Nekomonogatari Black, and the second episode is set after ‘Hitagi Crab’ and features Senjougahara while using the original ‘Stable Staple’ OP. Other favourites such as ‘Renai Circulation’ also appear, however, for those watching this miniseries before Owarimonogatari there are also two newer OPs featuring Ougi and Shinobu which originally aired during Owarimonogatari Part 1 in late 2015 prior to Koyomimonogatari’s release in 2016.

I’ll skip going into great detail about all of the shorts – I’ll outline them and add thoughts about the more memorable/important stories.

1. ‘Koyomi Stone’ – After the events of Kizumonogatari Araragi and Hanekawa investigate a mysterious stone enshrined at their High School. Who added the shrine there? Was the stone there beforehand? How is the significance of the stone adjusted by the addition of the shrine? Spoilers: Araragi built the shrine in a first-year class and was ashamed of his work, so he abandoned it at the stone until Hanekawa helped him to remember. The key detail here – which will come up again soon – is that Araragi has something of a memory gap about his first year at High School.
2. ‘Koyomi Flower’ – Araragi and Senjougahara investigate the appearance of mysterious flower bouquets.
3. ‘Koyomi Sand’ – Hachikuji tells Araragi about a peculiar sandbox that has the likeness of an oddity in it. He digs it all out. It has a hole in the bottom.
4. ‘Koyomi Water’ – Araragi and Kanbaru discuss a myth about the bath water used at the Kanbaru Residence. This’ll come up again much later.
5. ‘Koyomi Wind’ – Set after the ‘Karen Bee’ arc, Araragi and Nadeko talk in his bedroom about … according to the Fan Wiki they talked about Kaiki’s ability to spread rumours? I more remember Nadeko spying out the spot where he hides his lad’s mags, and also, the Talisman.
6. ‘Koyomi Tree’ – Araragi and Karen talk about a tree that has ‘appeared’ at Karen’s Dojo. Karen is worried that the other martial arts will decide to cut down the tree. Koyomi phones up Hanekawa for advice about it, Hanekawa gently guides him to a solution to pass on to Karen.


pictured: Whilst on the phone with Hanekawa in one of the shorts, Araragi starts a new hobby! I believe this is a reference to the boob/bra climbing wall from The Tatami Galaxy.

7. ‘Koyomi Tea’ – Araragi and Tsukihi talk about a ‘Ghost’ that has allegedly appeared in Tsukihi’s middle school club. Spoiler: there’s no Ghost, it’s just Tsukihi taking more things from the club than she should, which led the club to cook the books to account for it and invented the story of a ghost to gently clue Tsukihi into her greed. Araragi goes to Kanbaru for advice which he passes onto his sister, but he does not ask his sister to stop taking more than her fair share from club, probably because when she talked with him about it the first time, she almost jabbed a pen into his eye. Or at least that’s how I remember interpreting this short, the Fan Wiki has a different interpretation.
8. ‘Koyomi Mountain’ – This is the one featuring Ougi. I watched these ten weeks ago and apart from some screenshots I downloaded I don’t remember anything about this one.
9. ‘Koyomi Torus’ – Araragi and Shinobu play a game of hide-and-seek with Donuts. So after blindfolding Araragi, Shinobu hides the donuts… but then Araragi calls Hanekawa … to ask Hanekawa where she thinks Shinobu hid the last donut? He’s hopeless! Anyway, Shinobu hid the last donut inside the largest donut! Apparently, Mister Donut and other specialty bakeries in Japan have a broader definition of a ‘Donut’ than what I’m used to in Australia… I would've needed Hanekawa's advice on this one, too. And what was all that about donuts and love!?!?!?!
10. ‘Koyomi Seed’ – Set during the events of ‘Hitagi End’, Yotsugi asks for Araragi’s assistance in searching for something around town … whilst asking him to stand on her finger.


pictured: as users on r/araragi pointed out, the car that passes Araragi & Yotsugi in this shot is Kaiki’s taxi from one of the middle episodes of ‘Hitagi End’: in platforming Araragi atop her finger, Yotsugi helped Kaiki avoid him.

11. ‘Koyomi Nothing’ – Set after Tsukimonogatari, Araragi and Kagenui discuss her fighting style at the Shrine as he seeks an approach that doesn’t involve relying on his vampiric powers. The following day, she disappears.
12. ‘Koyomi Dead’ – Yes, Koyomi Dead! Oh no! It’s the last day of school and Araragi decides to go for a walk all on his lonesome up to the top of the mountain where North Shirahebi Shrine sits, and who should be waiting for him at the Shrine? It’s none other than Izuko Gaen! She’s as strange as usual, and oh no before you know she’s sliced poor Araragi to bits with The Apparition-Killing Sword(TM)! As Araragi disintegrates into nothingness, we’re left wondering how Gaen got hold of the sword, and how in the hell Araragi is going to come back from this one.

Spoilers: We won’t find out what happens next until we get to Owarimonogatari Part 2. This is naturally why some folks suggest watching Koyomimonogatari in-between Owarimonogatari Parts 1 & 2, but having watched it in this order, I think it’s better off having some stakes develop now instead of holding them off to what would be nearly the end of the main story. That Izuko Gaen has a more prominent part in the ‘Shinobu Mail’ arc of Owarimonogatari Part 1 helps keep that air of suspense going.

The value in the Koyomimonogatari shorts is in how they add little insights that expand on familiar characters, settings, and events. The last few shorts are crucial for fans continuing on to Owarimonogatari – they move the storyline forward from Tsukimonogatari, and though there’s still the same mysteries in town, we end in a spot with new stakes about Araragi’s involvement, and which set an appropriate tone for the arcs ahead.

* * * * *
Next Time: continuing my thoughts on Monogatari ‘Final Season’ with Owarimonogatari Part 1 – including the awaited chronological introduction of Ougi Oshino, the mystery of the Math Girl, and tying together the threads of that oft-hinted Shinobu storyline.

[C.A.P.]

Huh, so someone actually spotted me. I feel like a ghost posting here lately that refuses to leave his resting ground, so I’m startled.

So quick update with this franchise, turns out my friend stalled on his end. Decided on my end to just go for broke and wrap it all myself on my own terms. I believe I got it all done two weeks ago. So I’ve done it, I can rest on my laurels with that statue; I can say I’ve seen it all and can look back at everything with as much fondness and interest as one can be an anime-only watcher. Perhaps one day I’ll read the light novels and find a way to see what makes the SHAFT adaption click. But for now, crab is my girl still.

There’s too much rattling in my brain about it all (and it’s all positive), so for my sanity I’ll add some brief comments that EF talked about already:

-FINAL SEASON makes sense to me as a title. The franchise is about this kid learning “to become human” in a supernatural environment, so it makes sense “to end it” with him confronting the central theme that defines him as a character: for a kid consumed by self-haters, why does he have the need to help others away? The anime basically comes to the conclusion of “because that’s who he is, he doesn’t want to admit it. He doesn’t want to admit he wants to be loved and hides it through perversion, riddles, wordplay, and all the like.” So it only makes sense to end his story confronting himself and coming to grasps with this conclusion the audience has already pierced together by paying close attention to what information the anime tells us through the dialogue and play-like visuals. If one was paying attention, it all naturally fits.

-The order doesn’t matter. At the insistence of a friend I went by airing order. Worked out perfectly fine with me.

-Tsuki- is a good argument from everyone involved in the anime that this story can be told from different perspectives outside of Araragi. The important key is that there’s someone who can look at the events of the anime not from a “objective” lenses but rather from an angle that invokes a keen mixture of subjective critical thinking and observation based on what is happening on screen. There’s a thrill throughout the 4 episodes seeing someone make the same prose Aragai can conceive, but told in a way that is plausible through another lens’s.

-Koyomi-, it seems to me, exists as a vaccum for everyone involved to fill in some loose ends on how these characters would interact with one another if the main thrust of the narrative wasn’t directly tied to what’s going on. So there’s a playfulness that exists in most of these episodes that’s not present beforehand. Which, of course, makes the final episodes pack a powerful punch when it’s revealed there’s actually dire consequences for these tales, highlighting that, no, everything that happens in this universe is important to defining who all these characters are. It’s a unquie spin on this sort of arc, that’s for sure.

That’s the best I got for now. I normally don’t get a way to talk about anime much in this form nowadays, so I welcome the chance.

If you read this post Evangelionfan, let’s find a way to keep in touch.