Zyl on February 13, 2012 · in Nisemonogatari

Summary:

So Koyomi did kiss Karen but viewers wanting some siscon got Shafted; we are jumped straight to the conclusion which is that Koyomi only managed to draw out half of the wreathe fire bee’s poison which his vampiric healing copes with and Karen is a little better but still in bed. Tsukihi, by the pure coincidence that is plot convenience (more on this later), is also under the weather.

Koyomi sets off for Hitagi’s and runs into Mayoi but his no sexual harrasment policy receives a withering response from wandering snail girl. After a long trek and much verbal violence, Koyomi is enlightened by his best friend: his sisters are just like him and they’ve probably saved a lot of people like the way Koyomi saved Mayoi. Furthermore they agree that the Fire Sisters may just be kids who don’t realize they’re not adults yet but adults who don’t recognize they aren’t kids anymore are worse.

Arriving at his girlfriend’s home, Koyomi is horrified to find her preparing to show Deishu that the pencil is mightier than the sword (or box cutter). Since Koyomi’s refused her kidnapping-type protection, she’s decided that a good offense is a good defense and has arranged to meet Deishu directly, threatening Koyomi in a pointedly familiar fashion when he wants to accompany her. She tsunderes that it isn’t really for Koyomi’s sake but because she can’t forgive Deishu for causing her parents to divorce. They were going to divorce anyway (later than sooner) but letting bygones be bygones would also cause her to lose her own sense of self. Koyomi eventually persuades her to let him protect her (from committing a crime) while she protects him from harm in a grand and manly declaration of love after agreeing to Hitagi’s condition which she’ll only tell him after they meet Deishu; whatever the result, just as Tsubasa has moved on by cutting her hair, Hitagi is going to move forward too.

Koyomi returns home to find Tsukihi in a panic – she’s just arisen from her own coincidental fever to find that Karen has left the house. Worried and angry, Koyomi tells her to stay home, in case she does find Karen and gets persuaded to get along with her schemes, and sets out to search for Karen himself. His panic rings Shinobu’s direct line and the vampire emerges and smells fee fi fo fum the blood of an Araragi imouto from just around the corner…

Reaction:

What a long arc! But, still, another great episode with lots of things to sink one’s teeth into. Even though we weren’t shown it, I’m wagering that Karen let Koyomi kiss her. She might be feverish and weak but we’ve seen that she’s still got lots of bite. It might be obvious to us but I loved how Mayoi got Koyomi to finally realize and accept that Karen and Tsukihi are just like him. Sometimes the truth hurts, like when Hitagi mocked her boyfriend and his sister for being Justice Men, but the closeness of Koyomi’s and Mayoi’s friendship was on full force here – sometimes you’ll only accept something you know and which everyone else has been telling you only when you hear it from your most trusted friend.

Which is probably why Hitagi hates Mayoi and Koyomi had to remind her to turn back before they got too close to her house. It’s said that your lover should also be your closest friend and that certainly seems to be what Hitagi expects but, in Koyomi’s case, this arrangement seems to work well. Which probably does nothing but inflame Hitagi’s resentment given that it does seem alright when she feels that it should not be.

On the topic of Hitagi’s relations with the other girls, Koyomi was really careful – in front of Hitagi – to refer to Karen and Tsukihi as “uchi no imouto” (my sisters) instead of “Karen-chan” and “Tsukihi-chan” which he uses to their faces, which he let the cat out of the bag (re: possible mutual brother-sister complex) in front of Tsubasa and does not pretend in front of Shinobu since she’s been watching from his shadow. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the Fire Sisters talk about Hitagi and even for them to meet.

On another front, Hitagi has clearly met her match, or rather her Master, in Tsubasa. Her Freudian slips of the tongue, calling Tsubasa with the respectful “-sama” honorific and later referring to her as “her Master” was both shocking and delightful (especially in her awkward denial poses), compounded by the way she dug herself into a deeper hole by giving concrete examples of how Tsubasa is not bossing her around by getting her to polish her shoes every morning because she likes to do so and kneeling in her presence because that’s the natural thing to do. I suppose the reason why Black Hanekawa hasn’t returned (aside from having gotten the Shinobu Treatment to conclude the Tsubasa Cat arc) is that she’s dealing with her stress and frustration, at how Koyomi was snatched from under her nose by Hitagi, by using her unnatural intelligence to terrorize the hitherto formidable Hitagi and thus transfer some of that stress to the source of her problem.

Tsundere was also a recurrent theme in this episode, with all three girls exhibiting and then explicitly explaining it because Koyomi’s no Nick Marshall. After learning what it feels like to be on the receiving end of sexual harassment from Suruga, Koyomi did what he thought was the principled thing only for Mayoi to be really disappointed (you’ve become a boring person) and saying that she acted like she hated it to get him to do it more. Okay, that’s probably another reason why Hitagi hates her. My rational side tells me that why a girl says “No”, I should know that she means “No” but then again there is also probably the other side of when I ask her “Are you angry?” and she tells me “No, I’m not angry.” it means that she’s absolutely raging furious.

In Exhibit Two, Hitagi even uses “tsundere” as a verb – she’s meeting Deishu (not) for Koyomi’s sake and (not) for the sake of getting back at him for bringing about her parents’ inevitable divorce. Clearly these are all factors (and now when I read the Evangelion rebuild movie titles I hear them in Asuka’s voice) but, above all, is how all of these reflect her own choices and her own responsibility for what’s happened. Given how strong and powerful Tsubasa has become (again, but much less brittle and fragile inside) after she’s moved on, I wonder if Hitagi will also cut her hair and, even more astoundingly, start to live like a normal and cheerful girl (again, like the girl that first captured Suruga’s heart, but again less fragile): that would be a sight to see and a joy to behold. Oh, also it means that Koyomi will have more to look forward to than kissing.

Shinobu rounds off Exhibit Three. “That’s an order!” has never been more moe. The Crunchy Roll sub-titles (21:50) don’t do justice to Shinobu’s magnificient and pithy explanation of how she obviously wanted to help but wants to save face by having Koyomi order her to do so – “rippana” was left untranslated, not an unimportant omission imho: Shinobu’s not “a tsundere, too.” She’s a splendid tsundere, too. (By the by, LOL at how “tsundere” is left untranslated.)

A final point – I meant to comment on this in Ep 04 but now that the concept of what is a fake has come up again, it’s a good opportunity to make a note of it. Earlier Shinobu had said that there’s no reason why a fake can’t do what the real thing can and that a fake can be more powerful than the real thing. Moreover, a fake wielding power without the necessary talent, unlike the real thing with talent, is unnatural and thus more like a supernatural oddity. Hitagi’s back history also opines, in response to Koyomi’s observation that if Deishu was a fake and a con man, how was he able to see her crab, that a fake with power is more troublesome than the real thing, that Deishu’s fakery could have been how he feigned a lack of power in order to get money out of his victims. Perhaps herein lies the seed of how Koyomi can hope to win against Deishu. As Hitagi has astutely pointed out, Koyomi is strong against against hypocrites but will be weak, like Karen, against someone truly evil. The difference with Karen is that Koyomi has just enough residual vampirism to make him a fake vampire and if he can cross that elusive border where the fake becomes stronger than the real thing, Deishu will finally met his match. Something that I think Meme foresaw and thus deliberately withheld the knowledge of how to treat the wreathe fire bee’s poison so that it would be necessary for Hitagi to confront her past and move on and for the intrepid couple to deal with Deishu.