Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences.
What They Say:
The bee apparition is now gone, and summer vacation where the phoenix apparition averted harm is over– Around Koyomi Araragi and the girls who started a new trimester, apparitions, or perhaps threats even worse, were creeping in ever closer.
Tsubasa Hanekawa, Mayoi Hachikuji, Suruga Kanbaru, Nadeko Sengoku, Shinobu Oshino, and Hitagi Senjyogahara. Their soliloquies, confessions – and farewells. 6 new are starting now.
The Review:
11 years back – where Araragi finds himself after Shinobu’s slightly awry time-travel. She thinks she knows what she’s done wrong, but getting back to the present day may not be exactly straightforward. That’s a piece of news Araragi’s not happy to hear, but since he’s here, he’s determined to make an impact. Starting with a little fun at the expense of the younger version of Hanekawa…
Oh, and Shinobu seems keen to molest Araragi’s younger self, too. For some reason, he’s not so keen on that. The episode kicks off feeling like it’s going to be another outing that’s just about having a lot of fun, but it soon becomes clear that there’s a more serious purpose running through it as Araragi works out that, in their new timeline, tomorrow will be the day that Hachikuji is killed. This is his opportunity to save her – and perhaps undo a few other injustices that those around him suffered. Except that messing with the timeline, as anyone who’s ever seen a timetravel show before will be able to tell you, has Consequences. As he and Shinobu discover when they return to their natural time.
This plays out as a little of the expected, and a little of the not-so-expected, wrapped in some flimsy reasoning around the inability to dodge fate. Save Hachikuji today, she’ll just end up being killed tomorrow, or the next day – a rather defeatist attitude I don’t buy into myself, and fortunately neither does Araragi. The Law of Unintended Consequences is most definitely at work, though, in how his efforts seem to backfire and leave us with a mean little cliffhanger at the end of the episode – he and Shinobu will have their work cut out for them next episode.
Away from the serious stuff, though, there are a few moments of top-grade cuteness and fluffiness, courtesy of the appearances of younger-versions Hanekawa and Araragi himself – he has a hard time holding himself back when Hanekawa appears, while Shinobu’s usual facade breaks for a moment when she sees younger-Araragi and lets her inner shotacon break through. Bad vampire. These moments are early in the episode, avoiding the danger of them breaking the hold of the more serious part of the episode – a wise move.
In Summary:
For all the good moments this episode has had, though, I’m still lukewarm about the arc so far. It’s meandered to where it is, avoiding focussing to hard on Mayoi – a strange decision, as it’s her arc, and one that has so far left the arc feeling like it’s actively been avoiding getting to the point. Come the episode’s cliffhanger, it’s a fairly safe bet that we’re finally just about there, but the journey to this point hasn’t been the best. Hopefully that’s something the next episode will correct.
Content Grade: B+
Streamed By: Daisuki
Review Equipment: 27” Apple iMac, 2.9GHz Core i5, 32GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.8.4
