Zyl on February 19, 2012 · in Nisemonogatari

Summary:

Karen refuses to go back when Kiss Man Koyomi catches up with her. Even though she’s still ill from the remaining half of the wreathefire bee poison, she’s sufficiently buzzed to get seriously hot and heavy with her Niichan. But even after raining punches and kicks on him, and destroying white elephant public infrastructure in the process, she’s unable to break his will. Instead it’s Koyomi, ordering Shinobu to stay put, who breaks her with the power of siscon brotherly love: even though he calls the Fire Sisters fakes, he’s never said that they were wrong, acknowledges how they hold fast to their beliefs while living with their own inferiority thus he’s always been proud of them – moreover he’s mad that someone did this to her and he’ll deal with him. Karen finally relents and Koyomi takes additional measures to make sure both will stay at home this time.

Deishu keeps his appointment with Hitagi. Surprisingly, without prompting, he agrees to stop cheating the middle schoolers and to leave town by tomorrow. He also tells Koyomi that the wreathefire bee is a fake oddity; the illness was induced by instant hypnosis and Karen will make a full recovery in less than three days. He takes his leave after learning of Hitagi and Koyomi’s relationship but not before telling her that the man who tried to rape her was knocked down by a car and has died as well as to love her current love without having to hate her old flame (i.e., him) out of loyalty. Having had this talk, Hitagi has her catharsis and moves on by telling Koyomi to “be gentle with her tonight.” In the morning after, the Yuri Fire Sisters charge out of the house, telling (O)Niichan that they’re setting off to track down the remaining charms and to repair the damaged relationships and, this time, he does not try to stop them.

Reaction:

It’s hard to disagree with Nazarielle’s observation was that it was “a bit too easy” – right from the start, Deishu folded without a fight and gave in to the couple’s main demands. The grist in the mill is, of course, in the word “seemed” as Naz probably felt the same undercurrents as me – nothing is what it seems when you’re dealing with the consummate fake and conman. I argue that Hitagi and Koyomi did win decisively but Deishu did not lose and that the two do not contradict and both are, in fact,  necessary for each other to come to pass.

In my mind, Hitagi and Koyomi won the encounter when two conditions were fulfilled: the first (necessary) condition was that Hitagi was able to contact Deishu and to get him to meet her in person; the second (sufficient) condition was that Koyomi was able to persuade Hitagi to let him ride shotgun. We know from Karen’s encounter with Deishu that his primary defence is obscurity: the Fist of Justice doesn’t work if it can’t find the Face of Evil to connect to. Hitagi did not lose to herself earlier on when she managed to not destroy his namecard and to actually dial his (unchanged) number. Tsubasa’s abnormal intel had broken through this once but thereafter Deishu said that he had learnt the lesson of not meeting his clients in person where he is at his most vulnerable. Yet he agreed to meet Hitagi in person, showing how AARs don’t always translate into lessons truly learned and practiced. That’s the power of Senjougahara Fascination for you. It is also likely that he felt confident that he could deal with Hitagi alone and to use the foundation of his earlier con to further build on the artifice of her suffering. But he did not reckon on Koyomi coming along. As he pointed out himself, Karen had done everything correctly – except for not bringing others along as there is strength in numbers be it in a fistfight (more fists) or a con (another point of view to call BS). Upon Hitagi and Koyomi’s arrival, Deishu must have immediately recognized that this was one of those near ideal-type situations where, if the opponent did not play their cards wrong, he would not be able to defeat them. So, like Yang Wenli who never fights a fight he’ll definitely lose, he did the sensible thing and folded – but it was not rout or ruin, merely a tactical retreat and loss minimization strategy.

Hitagi and Koyomi won the day and Hitagi got her life back but an important condition for victory is not to over-stretch and lose sight of your original objectives, over-extending beyond your strength, opening yourself up for that devastating counter-attack which overturns your win in this battle, causes you to lose the next and perhaps even the war. Koyomi got what he needed: a way to cure Karen and to stop Deishu, on her behalf, from continuing to cheat middle schoolers. Hitagi also got what she needed: now that she’s in love, she wants to be able to be a normal girl; when he called her “boring” and then delivered the news about her would-be rapist, that was closure for her. I’m sure she wanted a lot more but wisely recognized that Deishu is not going to change, he’s too much of what he is and proud of it to boot and therefore asking for repentance and to ask him turn over a new leaf was too much to ask. So they did not. Deishu did not actually apologize for what happened to Hitagi’s mom; Hitagi recognized that it was pointless to get an insincere apology. She was also able to refuse his offer of getting her father’s money back as it would not return her family to the way it was. And it also avoided the knock-on effect of depriving him of working another con to get the funds, with the attendant indirect responsibility and bad karma. When Hitagi said The Most Cruel Thing In the World, that the kids deserved what they got for allowing themselves to be cheated by Deishu, she was also really talking about herself. But, by accepting her own responsibility and by learning the lesson from being cheated once, she is now able to finally move on. And so the conman loses when he can’t cheat the people he’s talking and has to leave town but he left unscathed, with his head still held high with a farewell freebie and tease, and, hasta la vista baby, he’ll be back. Given his second mention of Suruga (the abandoned Gaen child), I’m sure he must have known her mom and he’ll turn up again if there’s any more supernatural monkey business. I certainly would love to see him up to his old tricks again; he’s certainly got some skills (e.g. being able to sense Shinobu and the other half of the poison in Koyomi’s shadow) and knowledge (the exact chapter reference for the wreathefire bee story) but it looks like his real skill, ironically, is in fake oddities.

Like Naz’s tweet, it’s hard to argue against Kabitzin’s quip about this episode being very talky. I suspect he did not mean it as a compliment but I suppose Nisemonogatari will do so anyway. This is the ~gatari series after all and the witty dialogue is the main reason why I watch it. Ok, that was a lie and attempted con job – a lot of talk is good because they have to put something on the screen to keep our imagination while all the blah blah is going on  that that something is usually fan servicey. Back on the defence, there was a spectacular fight scene in the first segment but it was Koyomi’s words that destroyed Karen’s will to resist any further after he eroded it with his refusal to be beaten down and she then gave him an opening into her heart by starting the argument. In the Deishu segment, Hitagi’s lack of armament was also commented on (the monopoly of the pencil was much discussed over at Scamp’s wrt the previous episode) – from a purely practical point of view, previously when she weighed on 5kg under the influence of her crab, she needed the stationery just to stay stationary in a gust of wind, but since Meme helped her make peace with it and send it along its way, how’s she going to carry the office around anymore? More importantly, was her ability to control her desire to kill him – she no longer simmers like pure darkness and, thus, is no more fun to toy with. When Hitagi said, in response to him teasing her about her being fatter and heavier now, that she won’t allow him to damage the current her which Koyomi loves, these words sealed the deal and it was then that he prepared to leave, moving from standing before/above them and then walking past them just as Hitagi lets go of the past and takes a step to the future; a future that, in operational terms,  where she is able to be able to have sex with Koyomi, something that she still wasn’t able to do when they looked up at that starry night together.