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

[EvangelionFan]

Thank you for your post and thanks again for reading my write-ups!

-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.

This is a succinct appraisal of Araragi's arc and I particularly appreciate your highlighting of his use of wordplay to hide his inner self from others and from the audience. As an anime-only fan I've had my share of moments where one aspect or another of Araragi's point of view masks what might normally be plain to see by any other: a good example of this would be the Araragi + Hachikuji dynamic as their banter is almost always the first cab off the rank (and her nature as an apparition is often second), and so Araragi's genuine concern for the welfare of younger people isn't as front of mind in her case as it in say Nadeko's case, in how he prioritises addressing Nadeko's curse in Bake and how he answers when she phones him from the school payphone in Second Season.

I also agree that having Araragi address himself/his beliefs through to the end of his story is a natural fit for all that he's been through. Though Second Season and Koyomimonogatari add bits and pieces towards understanding how he sees himself, it's more in Owarimonogatari that the overarching narrative questions of 'How has Koyomi Araragi become the person he is?' and 'How does he interpret the value of his actions or inaction in the world?' properly begin.

* * * *

Monogatari ‘Final Season’ continued - Owarimonogatari PART 1

Episodes 01-02: Ougi Formula (two-parter!)
A new backstory! A new character! and Spoilers spoilers spoilers

Ougi Formula  SPOILER: Show

FINALLY, SHE ARRIVES FINALLY, SHE’S INTRODUCED


pictured: A wild Ougi Oshino appears! What will Koyomi Araragi do?

Koyomi Araragi and Ougi Oshino are stuck inside a locked classroom. It isn’t a normal locked classroom – the clock in this classroom doesn’t move, and sound doesn’t pass in or out of the room. It’s a liminal interruption to Araragi’s normal school life - of course, it’s an oddity situation! Classic Nisio Isin. Classic SHAFT. Or is it?

It started as an ordinary October afternoon at Naoetsu Private High School, until Kanbaru brought a strange new girl over to Araragi – a first-year student who sought advice about oddities, and who claimed to be related to the Hawaiian-shirt-wearing-specialist Meme Oshino. Ougi presented Araragi with a paper map of their school and said that there’s something odd about the size of an audiovisual room. Together, they went to investigate. Now they’re stuck inside.

Why this room? Why now? And what’s with Araragi’s memory? Remember that first short in Koyomimonogatari in which he forgot something he’d done in first year? Something about this room is intensifying Araragi’s flashbacks to that year. Is there a reason he chooses a specific desk to sit at? Araragi appears nonchalant about it all. Ougi, however, is interested in what’s going on in Araragi-senpai’s head.


pictured: What will Koyomi Araragi do? Fight Call Hanekawa Bag Run => Can’t escape!

Araragi and Ougi’s situation inside this odd classroom is a simulacrum of an incident in Araragi’s first year at the school. In a specific classroom, on a specific day of that first year, something went down that disrupted Araragi’s sense of normality and he began a metamorphization into the kind of person he is as a third-year student. On that day, Araragi participated in a classroom trial staged by his class, aimed at uncovering who among them cheated on a mathematics exam – and as he steadily recounts the details of that incident through Ougi’s prompts and questions, literal and surrealist scenes from his memory play out in the theatre of the liminal classroom.

Apart from Araragi, who were the major figures in this classroom trial? Not Tsubasa Hanekawa, who doesn’t figure into the tale at all. Nor Hitagi Senjougahara, who hadn’t been a noteworthy classmate to Araragi at that point in his life. Indeed, as per his backstory up until now, Araragi’s student life then saw him almost an isolationist. The only other major character – in both the narrative sense, and in the budget sense because she’s the only other animated character – is the-then class president Sodachi Oikura, who was a mathematics enthusiast, who joined a study group that met the day before the exam, and who had a persistent if unclear animosity towards Araragi.

This double-episode of ‘Ougi Formula’ is the best the series has been in a while. I found it more engaging and enjoyable than the majority of Monogatari Second Season, one on account of how it goes straight to the point about the mystery, two for the fact that we’re finally seeing Ougi as an active participant in an arc from start to finish, and three for the fact that it’s got a straightforward start, middle, and end, without any of the side adventures or hints about adventures ahead whilst Araragi and Ougi work at uncovering Araragi’s memory of the incident. There’s no ‘scene with the sister(s)’ lined up ahead of the main mystery, no overindulgent fanservice moments, and little to no recycling of old monogatari background music. It’s the kind of monogatari anime arc I hadn’t known I needed.



pictured: new mystery, new characters, new weird art style, and though you won’t hear it in this post, new music!

Upon entering the classroom and learning of the impromptu class assembly, Araragi had been assigned as presiding member of the assembly by Sodachi, as he scored better in the exam than those who participated in the study group (Araragi scored 100, Sodachi scored 99, and on average those who attended the study goup scored 20 points higher than those who hadn’t). As Sodachi allows no-one to leave the classroom until the culprit is identified, the assembly goes on for hours, steadily straining all of the students’ attention and patience with one another to breaking point.

Araragi’s memories of the arguments among his first-year classmates on that day is interposed with Ougi’s queries about the incident, and remarks about his character as he understood it. It’s almost as if Ougi knows more than she ought to – it isn’t unsettling to see her act this way when we’ve seen it in other arcs, although it is unsettling that, for this first time that Ougi and Araragi are spending together, they’re stuck in this liminal space together, and he isn’t bothered by her. This goes a step further as Araragi acknowledges that, on the day of the incident, the class together couldn’t conclude who the culprit was – only for Ougi to postulate that the only path out of the liminal classroom they’re stuck in is for Araragi to solve that cold case.

I feel there’s nothing superfluous about ‘Ougi Forumula’ – it’s the tightest that the screenwriting’s been since ‘Hitagi Crab’ at the beginning of Bakemonogatari, and unlike say a trip through an alternate timeline, this is about something that matters more to Araragi, about who he is. This is the core of the arc, and the core of Owarimonogatari – it’s about time we work out who Araragi is, and why he stands in the world the way that he does. This arc delivers on that, and it’s one of the best double-episode openers you could ask for after all of the quagmires of the tease and denial during his arcs in Monogatari Second Season and a minute or two in Tsukimonogatari.


pictured: the implication of this shot is that Ougi is setting herself up as another top to Araragi’s bottom

And speaking of tease and denial, the other outstanding question is the nature of one Ougi Oshino – on the one hand she’s another younger classmate and potential Araragi harem member, on the other hand we the audience have been aware awhile about how she goes on to have a hand in the ‘Nadeko Medusa’ fiasco and also the Tsukimonogatari kidnappings, but before all of that she was all up in the weirdness that’s unfolding here!

As an anime-only fan I have no idea if the visuals of Ougi physically imposing herself over and around Araragi are true to the text or an interpretation on SHAFT’s part, nonetheless it’s true to how Ougi asserts herself and her line of questioning over Araragi’s almost-too-impersonal attitude in this abstract space. She’s arguably the active persona in this arc, as she does most of the questioning – and leading – of Araragi through his memories. And she’s not solely doing it to get out of the room – she’s prodding him, helping him to address his memories. It’s a good dynamic and a welcome break from the normal dynamics that Araragi has with Hanekawa, Senjougahara, and so on.

That the simple brilliance of ‘Ougi Formula’ only came about once Nisio Isin wrote a scenario in which his protagonist and coded antagonist got stuck in a room together I think says something about how self-indulgent he is sometimes. As I’ve said before, it’s as if he has a bit of a bent against ‘killing his darlings’, and so we end up with arcs that take an age to arrive at the heart of the matter, and arcs that take an age to actually arrive (we will eventually both arrive at and skip backwards to the much-telegraphed ‘Shinobu Mail’ arc halfway through Owarimonogatari, and afterwards, skip ahead but back again to the aftermath of Araragi’s death shown in the last Koyomimonogatari short).



In the end, although the arguments in the classroom carried on through the afternoon, Sodachi called for the class to settle the issue through a majority vote on the suspects – herself, Araragi, Senjougahara, and one or two others. Sodachi voted for Araragi. The rest of the class voted for Sodachi. In her despair, Sodachi soon dropped out of school – Araragi doesn’t believe Sodachi to be the culprit, as she called for the assembly and for the vote. Ougi thinks there’s more to it – that Araragi knows. And he does. I’m not going to spoil it – sufficed to say, Ougi identifies the gaps and silences in Araragi’s retelling to unveil the actual perpetrator, and once he's acknowledged who he hasn't included in the story up to this point you understand why he buried the memory of this incident, you understand his underlying motivation in the self-isolating student life he lived from then through to the events of Kizumonogatari.

Having solved the mystery, Araragi and Ougi are able to leave the room.

And that’s the end of the story about Sodachi Oikura, former class president. Except it isn’t the end of the story about Koyomi Araragi and Sodachi Oikura, as the very next day, Hanekawa halts Araragi before he can enter their classroom – Sodachi Oikura has returned to school.

‘Ougi Formula’ is one of my favourite arcs in Monogatari – it may seem straightforward against some of the other mysteries (and ongoing mysteries) in the series, but it’s blessing to be able to have a solid start, middle, and end to a mystery after all of ups and downs and bouncing around in the previous season. It’s also a neat introduction to a new character we’re about to see much more of, and no I’m not talking about Ougi Oshino.

* * * * *

I’ve been writing much more about Part 1 of Owarimonogatari than I think is sensible to stick together in one post so I’m splitting it across three. I’ll be back on another weekday soon with my thoughts on the ‘Sodachi Riddle’ and ‘Sodachi Lost’ arcs.

[EvangelionFan]

Monogatari ‘Final Season’ continued


Congratulations for making it this far! You win – an apparition of a car! and an apparition of a goat, I suppose

Owarimonogatari PART 1 continued

Episodes 03-04: Sodachi Riddle
+ Episodes 05-07: Sodachi Lost

Nisio Isin hopes you liked the new math girl from Ougi Formula – here’s two more stories about her!



Candid Admission: I very much liked the stories about the math girl.

Sodachi Riddle + Sodachi Lost  SPOILER: Show

I brought my thoughts on ‘Sodachi Riddle’ and ‘Sodachi Lost’ under one spoiler together for simplicity – they pick up from the scene in ‘Ougi Formula’ which teased Sodachi’s return. In addition, they are also chronologically sequential, which I see as another plus for the first part of Owarimonogatari.

Episodes 03-04: Sodachi Riddle

Initially it might seem counterintuitive to introduce a new supporting character so late in the ongoing narrative arc about Araragi, in the chronological middle of Araragi’s school year. Is the story of Sodachi Oikura close to the centre of what makes Araragi, Araragi? From what we’ve seen, Sodachi isn’t a part of future events in ‘Nadeko Medusa’, ‘Hitagi End’, Tsukimonogatari, or Koyomimonogatari, or even Hanamonogatari – if there’s something to Sodachi’s involvement at this point, it’s about her past, and about Araragi’s past. To wit: I mentioned in my previous post that Sodachi had an animosity towards Araragi, and apart from noting that he scored a point higher on an exam than she had, it happened to go by unexplained.

As Araragi meets Sodachi again, she isn’t about to tell him why she treats him as she does. He attempts to talk it out, but not before she implodes in a bout of angst about how Araragi’s high school life seems to have turned out so well whilst hers hasn’t been happy at all. Araragi has friends! And to top it off, Araragi even has a lover!


pictured: the world of monogatari is about to be served some much-needed High School Drama

I can see the situation from Sodachi’s eyes: it’s heartbreaking to be made an outcast – and harder to come back and see that someone who was around for what you went through is seemingly unaffected by any suffering themselves through the intervening years, and to boot, seems to be incapable of seeing you for who you are. Araragi is perplexed, something’s still missing in his memories about her – however, Hanekawa and Senjougahara interrupt. In a short exchange, Sodachi ups the stakes and slaps Senjougahara – and Senjougahara punches her out.

Sodachi subsequently takes the day and the following day off of school to recover, and Senjougahara takes the days off too, though out of a sense of shame for knocking out a classmate. Araragi will eventually have to see both girls, separately – before that though, he takes the afternoon to investigate a scene from a memory, an abandoned mansion he used to visit one summer as a middle school student, and begins to remember the young girl he would meet there to learn about the wonders of mathematics.


pictured: a window into a more innocent time in Araragi’s life – or are his memories hiding something more serious in plain sight?

Accompanying Araragi on this afternoon through his memories of summer days away from middle school, is Ougi Oshino. It’s a sensitive subject for Araragi, though she shows a steadier hand here, and helps him as an accomplice. Her goals otherwise are still somewhat airy, as she is.

To approach the heart of why I enjoyed these arcs so much: it’s because here, Nisio Isin has stripped away almost all of the side story threads and questionable humour that held back about half of Monogatari Second Season, and instead harks back to the groundwork of Bakamonogatari: this is a story about a young woman with issues that she’s struggling to address on her own, and it falls upon Araragi and co. to investigate and support her through it.

In most monogatari arcs the narrative of Araragi, Oshino, or Gaen helping someone sort out an apparition is allegorical to helping people address the stress or trauma under the surface of their outward lives – in this instance it’s not allegorical, as there isn’t an apparition at all: it’s about Araragi searching for what’s underneath all of the twisted emotion that Sodachi is aiming towards him again after their years apart, and that means uncovering his memories of that one youthful summer he spent meeting with her.



Araragi learns that there’s a mature subject matter attached to his memories of learning mathematics from Sodachi: as Ougi points out that the mansion they’re in – Sodachi’s home years ago – hadn’t been abandoned back then, the implication is that Sodachi had potentially been a victim of domestic violence. Ougi speculates that Sodachi had somehow ascertained that Araragi’s parents were police officers, and that Sodachi invited him over often in an attempt to clue him in to her situation as she was worried about the consequences of asking him for help outright. When Sodachi moved away with her mother, she wrote nothing for Araragi to say why she’d vanished – she had given up on involving him – and they wouldn’t see each other again until years afterward in high school, around which time he’d already forgotten their many hours together, but she had not.

The other mystery Hanekawa points out afterward is how Ougi knew about Araragi’s parent’s occupations.

As an aside before I press on to ‘Sodachi Lost’, I love the OP for ‘Sodachi Riddle’ though I’ll acknowledge that the theming of it might leave an impression that the arc is about Sodachi’s womanhood or about her as a potential love rival for Senjougahara, it isn’t, though it is another possible dimension of her which isn’t explored in Owarimonogatari. Also, ‘Sodachi Lost’ does have its own unique OP that’s available on the Blu-Ray Editions, but Crunchyroll streams the broadcast version, which continues to use the otherwise excellent Sodachi Lost OP.


Episodes 05-07: Sodachi Lost

Araragi has recovered his memories of his clandestine meetings with Sodachi one summer in middle school. It’s now the next day, and as class vice president to Hanekawa, Araragi has to help her out in checking up on both Sodachi and Senjougahara at their residences. In any other scenario, Araragi would go to Senjougahara’s to check on her as he’s her boyfriend, though in this instance, Araragi has a sense of obligation about understanding more of Sodachi’s situation, since he’s affirmed through others that Sodachi knows the occupation of his parents.

According to anyone with their head screwed on properly, Araragi going to Sodachi’s apartment on his own and not to Senjougahara’s house is a no-no. And so Ougi Oshino appears, offering a solution: she’ll accompany Araragi-senpai to see Sodachi, and Hanekawa will see Senjougahara on her own. Hanekawa ain’t having this proposal from the fresh underclassman, whom she knows barely anything about, and who hadn’t been in the picture at all before this week! And so they ask Araragi: who will you pick to accompany you?


pictured: fast times at Naoetsu Private High

Hanekawa and Ougi’s argument over who should accompany Araragi to Sodachi’s apartment is one of the best arguments in the series: it’s a showcase of how the ways in which the young women in the infamous ‘Araragi Harem’ are as much there because he helped them out and became friends with each other as it is because having them around means they perform some of his thinking for him. It’s initially subtle, but as the argument escalates and the traffic goes into gridlock in a clever visual simile that doubles as a callback to a conversation from Season Season, one can’t ignore the truth that it’s so much easier on Araragi when he only has to think about what one girl wants at a time.

Araragi’s stuck in the middle between two assertive but very different young women – Hanekawa is highly intelligent and open-hearted, but Ougi is charming and intuitive in solving mysteries. He’s meant to be the main man in this moment, but he’s taking too long to decide. In the end, Hanekawa takes the decision away from him by appealing to a higher power. Ougi doesn’t have a counterpoint.



Sometime afterwards as they wait outside Sodachi’s apartment, Hanekawa is unhappy that Araragi picked her on account of an offer he couldn’t refuse, and he’s at pains to persuade Hanekawa that he picked her for a pure, wholesome reason. He’s unsuccessful in convincing the class president, but he sticks with the point in his inner monologue.

Anyway, back to the situation at Sodachi’s apartment –



Sodachi Oikura lives on her own in an apartment provided by the government, and as Hanekawa had to pressure her to put on proper attire before she and Araragi entered to speak, it’s apparent Sodachi doesn’t have a good handle on her life. It’s not surprising, and it’s unsettling though not stocking to see her implode at Araragi again (though Araragi stands untouched as Hanekawa intercepts anything Sodachi throws at him!). He knows now through his parents that Sodachi had stayed at their house a while years ago in an attempt to shelter her from her parents (and this is how she knew they were police officers) – but as Sodachi acknowledges now, home life at the Araragi’s had been too happy to handle against the backdrop of her parents’ household, and so she went back to, where her mother was sometimes beaten, and where her mother would beat her as an outlet to the misery. After moving out the mansion with her mother in middle school, Sodachi lived with her mother despite how her mother ignored her and shut herself away. Sodachi survived on social welfare money until one day, her mother vanished.

Here it’s worth acknowledging that the sources of Sodachi’s depression appear to share pieces with each of the other members in Ararag’s harem: she had an unhappy home life and her parents split up (same with Senjouagahara, Hanekawa, Hachikuji), she had been physically abused by one or both of her parents (as were Senjougahara, Hanekawa), she had been ignored / neglected by one or both of her parents (as were Hanekawa, Hachikuji), she is physically frail (Senjougahara was frail while under the influence of the crab apparition), one of her parents is dead (Kanbaru’s mother is also dead), she suffers from low self-esteem and low self-efficacy (as had Nadeko and likely others), and she has delusions about herself and about her situation (as does Nadeko). On that point about delusions, although Sengoku Nadeko deluded herself about her differing desires and personalities, Sodachi deludes herself about how she arrived in her current situation and has suppressed aspects of her trauma.



The disappearance of Sodachi’s mother – who Sodachi states had sealed herself away in a bedroom, until she vanished – is less a practical mystery and more of a matter of the gaps and silences in Sodachi’s story. Initially diverting from the topic to put pressure on Araragi to act as her antagonist and validate her unhappiness, Sodachi sees the wisdom in Hanekawa’s insight that she’s unhappy because she is unwilling to try to be happy – and asks if Araragi and Hanekawa are able to help in solving the mystery of her mother. Away from the apartment, Hanekawa and once again Ougi are able to solve it on their own and begin to quiz Araragi about it, to the point that he has to accept that the most horrible guess is the only possible one: Sodachi’s mother starved herself to death inside the room, and Sodachi ignored this and attended to the corpse for two years.



In light of how real Sodachi Oikura felt as a person through until this instant, the reveal that she’s suppressed the trauma of not only her mother’s death from starvation but her memories of attending to her mother’s corpse is one that’s tested my suspension of disbelief. If you include the events depicted in ‘Ougi Formula’, it’s as if Sodachi is set up to be something of a punching bag of a character – she’s been dumped with almost all of the trauma that Nisio Isin is able to stick to a teenage girl without breaking her as a person.

That said, the audience – and Araragi, Hanekawa, and I suppose Ougi – are able to see how Sodachi is acting out in school and acknowledge that it’s wrong yet still sympathise with how she is struggling to process her traumas. It’s easy to sympathise with her knowing what she’s endured, and that’s why it’s surprising but cathartic to see that is able to accept the truth about her mother from Araragi so openly and so calmly, and sad to know that although they’ve made amends and she’s beginning to turn her attitude around and turn her life around, her social housing arrangement has changed so she has to move away and transfer to another school.



Also, all of this happened without any ‘apparition’ associated with Sodachi – if there was an apparition in ‘Ougi Formula’, it was mostly likely the liminal classroom and Araragi’s associated memory issues, but in both Sodachi arcs if there’s anything approaching an ‘oddity’ it’s Ougi’s ongoing streak of underexplained insights into Araragi’s thought process and the situation(s) at hand.


pictured: Ougi’s shadow looms large over Araragi and Hanekawa’s final year of school

If it isn’t already obvious, Ougi’s persistence to be of use to Araragi in his affairs is an additional sign that there's something odd about her, and it so happens that Ougi’s next move after this is to stand and wait around the public spot where one Sengoku Nadeko will fatefully encounter her. Ononoki already said the quiet part out loud in Tsukimonogatari, so rather than call Ougi a secret final boss, I feel it's fair to describe her as more of a shadow jack-in-the-box that Nisio Isin has been winding up all the while.

As for Sodachi, she has/had a cameo shot in Koyomigatari and appears in the still-somewhat-new Off/Monster Season, though for now, her final note in Koyomi Araragi’s school life is a literal note left for him in his student desk drawer, assumedly in place of the one she ought’ve left for him at her old house all those summers ago. Although the contents of her letter aren’t shown nor articulated in Araragi’s monologue, at the end I am satisfied in the knowledge that they’re both happier and healthier for having met one another again.

In summary - with ‘Ougi Formula’ and now ‘Sodachi Riddle’ & ‘Sodachi Lost’, Owarimonogatari Part 1 is on a solid win streak. There’s only one arc remaining in Part 1, and it rewinds the narrative a couple of months to a story thread that started off in Monogatari Second Season – and in that, there are some outstanding plot points that could be addressed, and an open question of whether or not the quality of the season so far will carry forward as focus returns to Koyomi Araragi’s agreement to introduce Suruga Kanbaru to Izuko Gaen, and to his kinship with former legendary vampire Shinobu Oshino.

* * * * *
Next Week: Next Time: my write-up on Owarimonogatari’s ‘Shinobu Mail’ arc

[Twin Drive Sigma Aquarion]

Finally finished Legends of The Galactic Heroes. Well, this ended up being kind of horrible overall, not going to lie. I'll start with positives: None of the characters were annoying per say, the production values remained mostly competent outside of a handful of episodes in the last quarter, in terms of music only the last opening theme was bad, no cliffhangers, and the world building was strong. Now for spoiler heavy complaints.

SPOILER: Show

Fist 55 episodes are almost solid and are pretty decent, if I could break this series in half this would be a solid okay in my book. Very overhyped, but easy to get the appeal although it had a decent place to end. Unfortunately from episode 56 to 86 most of it felt like plot points that only needed one episode took 2 or 3 for no reason to the point where I was wondering why it took so long to get anywhere. Out of every anime I could compare this to at first I was thinking this had the same problems as Patlabor or Bokurano, but its flaws in the second half remind me more of Iron Leauger as it had multiple points to just end and chose to kept going. The Church of Terra was such a major threat yet nobody did anything or did so little about it after episode 64 knowing full well they were still around after the Earth raid that ended up causing multiple cities being set on fire and major characters like Yang getting offed. Weird plot points like Kaiser Erwin being kidnapped went nowhere, major characters like Oberstein just disappear into the background for forty five episodes at a time, stuff like this make it so decompressed and just pop in again at random... Makes me believe there was some sort of focus issue. Episode 87 onward was a big pile of "... Why are we even continuing right now?" Most of it was just Reinhard being sick (by collagen disease?) and somehow the far future lost so much medical tech we have in the modern day while his marshals have a pissing contest because they can't see through an obvious Church of Terra ploy. The former democratic republicans just stop being part of the story for fifteen episodes, shortly after that Adrian gets arrested offscreen-



Why didn't they just show that? Visual medium, they could have shown this in a fifteen or twenty second scene. This is an OVA and it has extended episode lengths. I get with a story this big you want to gloss over things, but main characters capturing the main antagonist is a major event. JUST. I'd make a Horus comparison, but De Ville went fully Alpharius in the last episode. I don't know. So many off beat decisions, death by a thousand slow paced cuts. Okay, I'm done.

Might check out the movies and those gaidens later. Welp, that's the end of the backlog. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

[C.A.P.]

It’s almost heartening that 15 years later TDSA still has anime takes that baffle me.

[EvangelionFan]

Apologies to those who may have been waiting on my next write-up - I wanted to wait for someone else to post in this thread first so that I didn't wind up triple-posting.


Monogatari ‘Final Season’ continued

Owarimonogatari PART 1 continued / finale

Episodes 08-13: Shinobu Mail


pictured: another glimpse into the long history of former legendary vampire Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade

The midpoint of Monogatari Final Season brings us back to the adventures of Koyomi Araragi and Shinobu Oshino after the ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ and ‘Shinobu Time’ arcs in Monogatari Second Season. As I’ve described both in humour and in irritation across my posts about the series, this arc has been heavily hinted at – which is why it’s natural to be happy that it’s included here in Owarimonogatari, and also natural to hope that it lives up to the importance it’s implied to have.

Shinobu Mail  SPOILER: Show

In many ways, ‘Shinobu Mail’ is the story I was waiting on. The story we were made to wait on. I have the impression that Nisio Isin has his own sense of humour about this, though there are also thematic interests in positioning this story here in Owarimonogatari and not after ‘Shinobu Time’ in Second Season: this is about uncovering how Araragi sees himself as an active participant in the events surrounding him, about how Shinobu does and doesn’t see herself similarly, about how Gaen Izuko plans for contingencies, and assuming you’ve already seen the ending of the Koyomimonogatari shorts, it’s about how what Araragi and Shinobu both do and don’t do here inevitably lead them to the events of the exam day at North Shirahebi Shrine.


pictured: Araragi narrowly survives the torching of the abandoned cram school by Hanekawa’s subconscious White Tiger apparition

To start, the overlaps with the events of the ‘Tsubasa Tiger’ arc are more overt here as Kanbaru’s arranged meeting with Araragi at the abandoned cram school is interrupted by a giant suit of samurai armour that attacks them. As they battle it, they learn that armour has nobody inside, it assembles itself again after it’s knocked down, and it saps their strength each time they touch it – an energy drain ability, similar to a Vampires’. It soon outmanoeuvres Araragi and holds him by the neck, but before it’s able to harm him any more the building is engulfed in white flames, forcing it to release him. In its retreat, a ghostly copy of Araragi’s voice announces that it’s searching for ‘Kiss-Shot’ and ‘Kokorowatari’, the apparition-killing sword.

The short of it (pun intended) is that Shinobu’s long-dead first servant – the first oddity slayer and original owner of the apparition-killing sword – is in fact not so dead (despite Shinobu’s stated disbelief) and is almost nearly 100% alive again after hundreds of years (Izuko Gaen’s assertion).

The long of it is that Izuko Gaen is going to occupy a not-insignificant amount of screentime to fill in Araragi, Shinobu, Kanbaru, and the audience on the details involved.


pictured: another Evangelion reference – speaking of, have you heard that the original series first aired thirty years ago this October? Of course you have! You’re on the EvaGeeks.org Forum!

To surmise: the ashes of the first servant scattered on air until one day fifteen years ago they settled at North Shirahebi Shrine. Similar to how the arrival of Kiss-Shot in town had attracted other apparitions, in that ‘air spot’ at the Shrine the servant over the years absorbed strength from other apparitions gathering at the Shrine, and although the Talisman that Meme Oshino asked Araragi to place at the Shrine starved the servant, the arrival of Shinobu one night allowed him to acquire the strength needed to abandon it and the motivation to head out into the world to hunt her down.

Izuko Gaen intends to stop the servant before he is able to attack a human, and as it isn’t a problem that the other specialists are appropriate for, she’s phoned in outside help – who we know to be the vampire hunter Episode from Kizumonogatari, as he appeared alongside Gaen early on in Second Season. Gaen leaves some money for Araragi and the others to go get breakfast and then wanders off (I presumed she goes to pick up Episode).


pictured: SHAFT’s allegory of Izuko Gaen’s overbearing influence on the narrative allows her to neatly illustrate her interpretation of the power standings in the series and, in her view, the narrow significance of Araragi, Hanekawa, and co. as set pieces in her grand designs

At this point I’ll pull a Nisio Isin and backtrack to Araragi and Kanbaru in the burning building: the high schoolers are about break out through the windows when they’re interrupted by the abrupt arrival of Yotsugi, immediately knocking out Kanbaru. Outside, Yotsugi says it’s a coincidence that she saves them, they chat, then Yotsugi flies off to look for the ghost samurai, leaving Araragi and Kanbaru to somehow get themselves lost in the streets on their way to meet Izuko Gaen.

Instead of meeting Izuko at the park, they encounter Shinobu Oshino at the swings. It’s not explained how Shinobu survived The Darkness after being separated from Araragi in ‘Shinobu Time’, but she’s here albeit a bit beat up after apparently battling an apparition alongside Hanekawa-Neko and ‘The Doll’ (Yotsugi). Her pairing with Araragi is still in something of a limbo, though she still has Kokorowatari – she passes it to Araragi when an amalgamated apparition attacks the trio at the park; the sword initially does the job, but Shinobu has to step in to eat it. Shinobu’s mention of another offscreen apparition battle, and the subsequent battle here are arguably irrelevant to the central storyline of the reappearance of Shinobu’s first servant slash former minion – it seems more foreshadowing for the finale of Owarimonogatari, though thankfully less on the nose.

At North Shirahebi Shrine, the trio meet with Izuko Gaen – who introduces herself to Kanbaru and Shinobu as ‘Izuko Oshino’, hiding her true identity as Kanbaru’s estranged Aunt. After Izuko’s overnight monologue and departure at the start of the new day, Araragi volunteers to go into town to shop – and Kanbaru says she’ll watch Shinobu if he buys her a new bra and a newly released BL novel.


pictured: the absence of adult supervision

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Araragi out on his own, and now that Shinobu isn’t hiding in his shadow, he’s able to indulge himself at the bookstore and pick out a photo book of mature women, though he’s unsuccessful in shielding himself from the public’s amusement at seeing him with the BL book he’s hoping to not be seen buying by himself for Kanbaru. It’s one of the better humour scenes we’ve had in a while.

The next worst thing to happen is that on his way out the bookstore, he bumps into a kid who asks him if he gave his message to Kiss-Shot.

I’d not anticipated that Seishirou – the first apparition slayer and Kiss-Shot’s first minion – would appear as a shota similar to Shinobu’s lolli appearance, but here he is, and he wants Araragi to break it off with Shinobu. They argue it out a bit, but before Araragi drinks from a bottle provided by the shota, the bottle is sliced in twain by Episode’s enormous cross: the bottle contained holy water, and had Araragi drank it, he’d be dead. As Gaen and Episode aren’t able to persuade Seishirou to negotiate, he declares that it should be settled between him and Araragi in a duel and then departs, leaving Araragi and the specialists alone. Araragi survived the encounter with Seishioru but still suffers another loss to his image as Episode and Gaen peruse the suspicious books that fell from his bag! He attempts in vain to explain away the books, but they’ve already made up their minds. It’s a great anime moment.

In fact, since the scene at the park ‘Shinobu Mail’ as been on an upwards trajectory, and as Araragi returns to North Shirahebi Shrine to discover Kanbaru and Shinobu arguing with one another, one of Shinobu’s best scenes in the series unfolds. It’s not a scene with Araragi as an active participant – Yotsugi pulls him aside into the bushes so they’re able to overhear but not be seen – and that’s one of the reasons it’s able to shine, as Kanbaru tries to persuade Shinobu to go see Seishirou again. Although Kanbaru has the power disadvantage in the argument, she doesn’t back down from her point that Seishirou spent hundreds of years attempting to revive to see Shinobu again, and after Shinobu threatens her, Kanbaru doubles down on her belief that Shinobu should stop ignoring her feelings about the past and figure out her desires for the future.

It’s not uncommon for people to have better insight into others than they do themselves – Kanbaru seeing into Shinobu’s state of mind here but not seeing her own on the whole in Bakemonogatari or in Hanamonogatari is in line to her character growth through the series, and her argument with Shinobu solidifies my impression from the ‘Mayoi Jiangshi’ and ‘Shinobu Time’ arcs in Monogatari Second Season that the Araragi and Shinobu’s pairing isn’t as interesting to me as the dynamics Shinobu has with other characters (as additional examples of this, consider Shinobu’s conversations with Hanekawa-Neko in ‘Tsubasa Cat’ and with Sengoku Nadeko in ‘Nadeko Medusa’).

And so, for the final showdown that Gaen and Episode set up for Araragi and Seishirou at the track and field area at Naoetsu Private High School, Shinobu observes from afar – and from off-screen, she throws Kokorowatari into the field: the first to deliver a strike with the sword is the winner.


pictured: the format for this final showdown of the minions could make for a decent Ninja Warrior challenge

The ‘rules box’ of the fight up to this point is understood as follows: it’s a run-off for the sword, and Koyomi Araragi is at a significant disadvantage as he’s refused to restore his vampiric pairing to Shinobu and is refraining from relying on her power. Kanbaru coaches Araragi on sprint technique for the duel. On the other side Seishirou is close to full strength, clad in samurai armour – and at the sound of the firing gun, he instantly sheds it to reveal that he’s levelled up from shota vampire to shōnen vampire and goes full sprint for the sword, collecting it before Araragi is halfway. And so how does Araragi get out of this situation? How does he cheat the rules box that Nisio Isin and SHAFT set up for this confrontation, and survive?


pictured: “Hi Phil Swift here for Flex Tape! Did you know that you can stick a Talisman-that-supresses-apparitions (TM) onto a speedy shōnen vampire’s frontpiece with double-sided Flex Tape? You can! Just follow these simple steps!”

It’s incredibly clever for Araragi to deploy Meme Oshino’s original talisman from Bakemonogatari: it’s an item that’s gone largely unnoticed throughout the series, and though Izuko Gaen acknowledged that Araragi placing it at North Shirahebi Shrine forestalled Seishirou’s attempts to regain strength from the apparitions gathering there, she did not foresee that Araragi would remove it and slap it on his opponent in the flesh – and judging from Seishirou’s shock as his body freezes on the spot halfway into his first strike, neither did he.

I do carry a little doubt about Araragi figuring out on his own that he could use the talisman from the Shrine against Seishioru in the fight – for now I feel it fits fine, as it’s more important that it contributes to a satisfactory conclusion for this chapter of the story. Having survived, Araragi retrieves Kokorowatari from Seishirou as he, in a death panic, starts to decay, and Shinobu arrives on scene to console her former minion, consume the remains of his spirit, and grant him a final death. And as for the samurai armour? For Araragi and Shinobu, it’s another detail that goes unnoticed that day …


Sometime afterward, Araragi finishes recounting the story to Ougi Oshino, who points out that if Izuko Gaen retrieved the samurai armour from the fight, it could be used to forge another apparition-killing sword. Araragi – always himself – doesn’t believe it … until, on his last day of school, Izuko Gaen shows up at North Shirahebi Shrine and attacks him with a freshly forged copy of Kokorowatari.


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For a lengthy narrative arc that began in Monogatari Second Season, the narrative importance of ‘Shinobu Mail’ arriving midway through Monogatari Final Season is fairly clear though likely more appreciable in the light novels themselves – as far as one can discern from SHAFT’s adapation, the intent is for the thematic overtures in ‘Shinobu Mail’ to connect immediately to the remainder of Owarimonogatari, which is about to pick up from Koyomi Araragi’s death in the last Koyomimonogatari short. The arcs ahead build on Izuko Gaen’s expositions about the history of North Shirahebi Shrine and the audience’s familiarity to her approach in addressing apparitions. It’s also important to have seen here how Araragi had to reach outside the boundaries of Gaen’s designs to have a proper sense of agency in handling his own affairs.

I am happy though that ‘Shinobu Mail’ arrived at this interval in the light novel order as overall the arc benefits from the adjustments to the adaptations’ directorial style introduced in Tsukimonogatari, though as with the preceding arcs in Owarimonogatari ‘Shinobu Mail’ arrives with its own stylistic static frames, its own ED edit, and an immaculate new OP sequence and character song.

In summary – I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Shinobu Mail’, though I have been half-half about whether it was worth the wait, and whether it measures up to the hype that previous instalments had been building up. But having arrived at the end of writing up my thoughts about it, I think yeah, it was worth sticking it out through the more average instalments to see this one and the others in Owarimonogatari, and I believe it’s one of the better monogatari sequel arcs even as my preferences are inclined more towards arcs such as ‘Nadeko Medusa’ and ‘Ougi Formula’.

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Next time: the thoughts I wrote up months ago about Owarimonogatari Part 2 when it was fresh in mind – but hopefully, in one post this time. I'll make it to the end of my write-ups about monogatari soon, I promise!