Another Bad End ahoy?
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:
The verbal sparring between Kaika and Hitagi continues, as Kaika tries to mine her for more information on what happened to Nadeko. He’s thinking that the situation may have been made worse by Hitagi running her mouth off without thinking – as if that would ever happen – but he also thinks that she’s enough of an idiot that deceiving her should be a piece of cake. Gain her trust, tell her that Araagi and Hitagi have been killed in a car accident or something, and job done. Easy, right? Unless she sees through him.
But there are always complications. He’s fast running out of money, Gaen’s sent a message telling him to back off – and has sent Ononoki to make sure he does – and digging around in places he’s been told not to go is only going to draw the wrong sort of attention. So what’s a trickster to do..?
Four episodes, and the first two are primarily Kaiki and Hitagi talking about Kaiki’s little job and its ever-increasing complications. Kaiki’s droll personality and general disbelief that he’s gotten himself drawn into all this makes their conversations deadpan comedy gold, a lot of the time – there are little snippets of useful or relevant information buried in their conversations, but most of it’s just general banter – enjoyable to listen to, for sure, but seemingly largely irrelevant. His meetings with Ononoki and Nadeko are similar – different in tone, thanks to the differing personalities of the girls, but still mostly filler.
For the final two episodes, though, events finally click into place & and allow the story to kick up a gear. Hanekawa’s the trigger, filling in the blanks for Kaiki, telling him what he needed to know. Hanekawa knows what she knows, and it’s usually a lot more than she lets on. At the end of his planned hundred visits to Nadeko and her shrine, Kaiki puts his plan into action, convinced that in just a few short hours his work will be over. But no plan survives contact with the enemy, and as soon as Nadeko confirms that Kaiki’s been trying to deceive her, all hell breaks loose.
Now, if there were a poll for Monogatari‘s best girl, Nadeko would’ve been top of my list even before she went over the edge, and the heavy dose of madness she’s developed only increases her appeal. Add to that the trend in Second Season‘s story arcs to go for the Bad End™, and I feared the worst for this arc’s finale. But while there is a bad ending to it, at the last the show throws in a twist or two and went somewhere I didn’t quite expect – always a nice surprise in a series, and something that earns it a few extra points.
In Summary:
Monogatari Second Season has been very hit-or-miss for me – most of the arcs missed, and the way some of the characters has been dealt with was a little disappointing. But this arc more or less hit it out of the park, with an enjoyable setup leading to a satisfying ending that could yet be played with in future installments (I haven’t read the light novels, so remain unspoilt as to where they go). Monogatari at its best.
Content Grade: A
Streamed By: Daisuki
Review Equipment: 27” Apple iMac, 2.9GHz Core i5, 32GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.9.1
