Characters / Bakemonogatari

This page lists the characters of Bakemonogatari and their associated tropes.

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Araragi Siblings

Common tropes

• Annoying Younger Sibling: How Koyomi sees his sisters most of the time, especially when they try to wake him up. Sometimes this get serious, such as during the Mother's Day when Koyomi doesn't want to stay home due to perceiving himself as The Un Favourite.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Koyomi often plays the straight man, but sometimes the roles are reversed.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Koyomi and the Fire Sisters view each other side as foolish, but for different reasons. Koyomi dismisses the whole "Fire Sisters" ordeal as just naive kids playing superheroes, Karen thinks her brother is a Lazy Bum, and Tsukihi thinks her brother is both inexperienced to romance and hopelessly lecherous. Deep down they realize that the other side has a point.
• Expressive Hair: Each of the Araragi has an Idiot Hair that can wiggle around or stand straight up.
• Free-Range Children: Their parents rarely appear in the series.
• Iconic Item: Each Fire Sister dons a hair clip that looks like a fried egg. The difference is that Karen's points upwards while Tsukihi's points downwards.
• Incest Subtext: Played for Laughs. Karen and Tsukihi got boyfriends similar to Koyomi to try and make him jealous, and Koyomi doesn't have that much hesitation engaging in... awkward interactions with his sisters. When things get too hot, however, the left-out sibling appears to put the foot down really fast.
  • Also between with the sisters. Araragi even calls the two "yuri sisters" after catching them sleeping naked in each other's arms.
  • Episode 8 of Nisemonogatari has Koyomi pushing Karen onto his bed while brushing her teeth, which arouses both of them for some reason, while she lets him and tells him it's ok.
  • In Tsukimonogatari, when Koyomi wrenches Tsukihi's head towards him (to keep her from noticing his lack of reflection), she assumes he's going for a kiss and purses her lips, telling him, "Alright."
• Theme Naming:
  • The Araragi siblings' names are references to the calendar. Koyomi (暦) literally means "calendar"; Karen = calendar = ka-re-n-daa; and Tsukihi = "moon/month" and "fire", which can be alternately read as 日, "day".
  • "Fire Sisters" is a reference to how the two of them have the character for "fire" (火) in their names. Karen's name is written 火憐, and Tsukihi's is 月火.

Koyomi Araragi

"Let me correct myself. I feel a little bit dirty looking at your body."

Voiced by: Hiroshi Kamiya

Voiced by (English): Erik Kimerer (Audiobook)

The protagonist of the story. Koyomi (usually called by his surname, Araragi) is a high school senior and the class vice representative. Due to an incident during Spring Break in which he turned into a vampire and never quite returned to being a full human, he retains vampire-like abilities such as super-fast healing. Because he has these abilities and is still connected with the vampire who sired him, he continues to encounter other supernatural creatures.

Koyomi is generally good-natured and cannot restrain himself from trying to help people (and even vampires) in need, even if it means putting himself in danger or sacrificing his own life. This gets him into one sticky situation after another. During his middle school years, he apparently ran around helping others just as he does today, but after a certain incident in his first year of high school he closed himself off from all "unnecessary" human contact. Until he met Tsubasa, he was famous for having no friends. Many of the girls he helps during the series develop crushes on him, but Koyomi himself has no clue. In Nekomonogatari Black he considers whether or not he loves Tsubasa, but after talking to Tsukihi decides it isn't true. Early into Bakemonogatari, he is confessed to by and begins dating Hitagi, and he falls in love with her instead.

While initially cool and stoic, Koyomi gradually evolves into a more outgoing, energetic character over the course of the series. Unfortunately, he also winds up giving in to his perverted streak more and more often too, which results in a lot of over-the-top sexual harassment (though some of the girls give as good as they get).

Kizumonogatari (Koyomi Vamp) explains the Spring Break incident during which he met Oshino, Shinobu, and Tsubasa. The incident that sparked his asocial behavior in high school is recalled in the first book of Owarimonogatari (Ogi Formula, Sodachi Riddle, and Sodachi Lost).

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• Accidental Pervert: In his first meeting with Hanekawa, the wind flips up her skirt and exposes her panties to Araragi.
• All-Loving Hero: Rivals Ginko, Nanoha Takamachi, and Shirou Emiya on the all-loving scale. The number of living things he truly hates can be counted on one hand. He can't even bring himself to stay mad at Kaiki, who harmed both his little sister and his girlfriend. That may be because Kaiki saved his life in Koimonogatari, but he didn't exactly go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Nisemonogatari, when he clearly had the right to.
• Bad "Bad Acting": In Nekomonogatari Black he tries to convince Tsukihi and Karen to stay home and not go hunting the cat-monster. His attempts to pander to their hero complexes are transparent and he loses all tone and inflection in his delivery. Tsukihi doesn't seem to notice, however, since she's too excited by his pandering to her hero complex.
• Barrier Maiden: His death would lead to Shinobu returning to full power, except this time seriously pissed off. Borders on Apocalypse Maiden, since Shinobu is fully capable of killing everything else in the Bakemonogatari world without effort, and actually does so in the Bad Future.
• Berserk Button: Hurting people in front of him will send him berserk, especially if it's a family member.
• Big Brother Bully: Really likes to tease Karen and Tsukihi. He generally seems to mean it in good fun, but sometimes takes things a little bit far.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Did this several times in the novel.
  Koyomi: I've got a great idea. What about selling Clock Sisters? The minutes hand can be Karen, and the seconds hand can be Tsukihi. The Clock Sisters will wake you up every morning. With Kitamura-san and Iguchi-sans' voices.
  Karen: You can't actually say their names you know.
  Tsukihi: Onii-chan, the anime is already finished. The goods won't come out now.
  Koyomi: Is that so...
• Broken Pedestal: In middle school his teacher joined most of the class in voting to blame Sodachi Oikura for a cheating scandal, something Araragi and Oikura both knew was actually done by the teacher. The event apparently left an impact on Araragi, a person committed to justice.
• Butt-Monkey: Post-Kizumonogatari, he can never win a fight. Ever. In Nekomonogatari (Black), he gets sliced clean in half by a vengeful Sawari Neko. Only a timeful intervention by Shinobu saves him. Bakemonogatari, he has his intestines used like a lasso by a possessed Suruga in a scene so graphic it had to have the colors changed on TV. He is only saved when Oshino and Senjogahara force the Monkey into a paradox, causing its Cessation of Existence. Even after he gets his Berserk Button pressed in Nisemonogatari, prompting a This Is Unforgivable! and a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, he still gets beat down by Kagenui so much that his face isn't recognizable by the end of it. She would have definitely managed to kill him if not for him being able to convince her with words that they weren't so different. Good Thing He Can Heal, indeed.
• Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: While he would gladly fondle Tsubasa's breasts (or so the thought), catch Tsukihi's boobs, brush Karen's teeth, sleep with Nadeko on the same bed, lift Yotsugi's skirt, lick Mayoi's body, and see Izuko in gravure books for some reason, his lust toward Hitagi only manifests in Male Gaze at worst.
• Chained by Fashion: In Nisemonogatari, he breaks the chain holding together the handcuffs Hitagi put on him but leaves the cuffs on.
• Chekhov M.I.A.: He's notably absent during Nekomonogatari White (being busy with the events of Onimonogatari), leaving Tsubasa and Senjogahara to deal with the problem. He returns at the end looking a little ragged, but still saves the day.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He's blatantly leer at and attempt to grope most of the girls he knows, but appears to mostly enjoy the attempt rather than any actual success. One of the first hints that he and Tsubasa aren't really on the same wavelength is when he asks for her underwear hoping she'll be embarrassed and tell him of course not and she actually agrees, though still embarrassed. He doesn't really have any idea what to do.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: He places almost no value on his life and doesn't seem to realize how his death would affect the people around him. As a result, he's willing to die for complete strangers like a certain dying vampire princess at the beginning of Kizumonogatari. Senjogahara finds this behavior kind of hot, but eventually realizes what actually fuels his acts of heroism, especially in Nadeko Snake. Further, he's unable to become a priest and deal with aberrations properly because he refuses to abandon Shinobu.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: He doesn't realize it, but he's very popular with girls. Nadeko has loved him since she was in second grade, Tsubasa has been attracted to him since at least spring break and after Hitagi Crab Senjogahara asks him to go out with her. Further, Kizumonogatari stated that Shinobu considered him Worth Living For and Kanbaru, who claims to be a lesbian, says she would go for him if he was available. Even his sisters appear to be infatuated with him. Hanekawa once speculates that perhaps it's vampire charisma, but her aberration rejects the idea by saying vampire charisma turns people into slaves, not lovers.
  It's implied that due to his secretly low self esteem, he doesn't think anyone would be interested in him and thus ignores all the obvious signs. Senjogahara has to confess after failing to get through with teasing, his obliviousness towards Tsubasa caused at least one incident and he's the only one unaware of how Nadeko feels. However, it's noted at one point that even if it seems like he gets along with the other girls or perhaps has more chemistry with them than with his actual girlfriend, Senjougahara is the only one that is actually compatible with him.
• Combat Pragmatist: When he uses the head in battles, he can come with good solutions to avoid fights who can end up killing him:
  • In Kizumonogatari, once he learns Episode's ability, he rushes to an stadium and provokes a sandstorm who, effectively, counter attacks Episode's mist, giving him the chance to defeat him.
  • In Owarimonogatari, when he confronts Seishirou in their decisive battle for being Shinobu's servant, knowing Seishirou is a much better fighter than him and he has the odds against him, in the first attack of his enemy, he puts Meme's talisman in the body of his opponent instead of fighting directly. Being an aberration, Seishirou quickly dissolves into nothing, giving the victory to Koyomi. Even Gaen of all people didn't see that coming.
• Comedic Lolicon: Towards Hachikuji mostly, although Shinobu, Yotsugi, Nadeko and young Hanekawa are certainly not exempted. Despite this, he still vehemently denies being one, and almost any questionable action he takes with the girls will be followed up with a statement about how he's totally not a pedophile.
• Cruel to Be Kind: In Kizumonogatari, before his fight against Dramaturgy, he insults Hanekawa (who just found him in a library where he bought some books to gain knowledge about how to fight) and even deletes her phone number of his mobile phone in front of her (Hanekawa deliberately did that to make friends with him) to dissuade her of following him in his battles and put her in danger. This doesn't stops Hanekawa, who despite that, still follows him. After the fight, Koyomi apologizes to her for his rude behavior, and she ends forgiving him.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: When he has the chance to shine, he can be a complete badass. In Nekomonogatari White, he defeats Kako (whom Black Hanekawa was unable to beat) easily by himself, just after defeating Seishirou in a life-or-death battle at the end of Owarimonogatari. That without counting his victories against the vampire hunters in Kizumonogatari, when he was at his peak as a vampire.
• Cute Little Fangs: Take a good look at his teeth in the anime.
• Deadpan Snarker: To hide his good nature, so it wouldn't be exploited too much, about 70% time he talks in apathic monotone. Especially to strangers and people who bother him too much.
• Deliberate Injury Gambit: He hides the aberration-cutting sword inside himself. When Tsubasa cuts him in half, she also hits the sword and gives her aberration an essentially lethal injury. A clever strategy, but thanks to trying to die for Hanekawa rather than save her he almost gets them both killed before Shinobu steps in to actually resolve the situation.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: He can't seem to understand that it isn't Oddities causing problems but rather problems causing Oddities. As a result his solutions to problems tend to be overly literal and thus unhelpful. It's unclear whether he ever really comes to consciously understand this, but as time goes on he does slowly start to get better about this, though he still gets it wrong sometimes.
• Expressive Hair: He has a big, pointy idiot hair that likes to let everyone else know how he's feeling, such as straightening up when he's surprised/aroused, curving into a question mark when he's confused, et cetera. Gets really ridiculous in Nisemonogatari, where it twists into the kanji for "love" (愛).
• Failure Hero: He frequently makes things worse instead of actually helping, which is generally proportional to how much control of the situation he takes, how forgiving he is and what is motivating him at the time. For example, while he helps Senjogahara by taking her to an actual specialist and then standing back, but his help for Nadeko, Hanekawa and Suruga actually exacerbates the problem. For Nadeko, he reinforces her belief that she'll be forgiven for anything, for Hanekawa his 'solution' is to immediately leap to self-sacrifice rather than genuinely doing anything to help and for Kanbaru his solution is to simply die once again, which ends up convincing her that she's just a murderer deep down who only avoided a crime thanks to the intervention of others. As time goes on he slowly grows somewhat better about this, which can be tied to his character development as his own sense of self worth improves.
• Fell Down The Stairs: When Hitagi finds him lying on the train tracks bleeding after being beaten within an inch of his life by a possessed Suruga, he tells her that he ran into a telephone pole.
• Heroic BSoD: When he realizes that as a vampire Kiss-Shot eats humans without apparently caring he's utterly horrified and appalled at what he was doing just the last few days, realizing that the vampire hunters were actually the good guys. It takes Tsubasa for him to realize that the proper answer here is not committing suicide via sun but rather going to her and attempting to stop her himself.
• Gender-Blender Name: Koyomi is not a particularly common name, but when used it's more often used for girls, which is lampshaded by Mayoi.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: By allowing Shinobu to drink some of his blood, he draws closer to the vampire he once was and regains his healing ability, which is generally an indication that he is going to be brutally mauled soon.
  • In Suruga Monkey, Kanbaru beats him to a bloody pulp and actually swinging him around by his intestines, a scene so brutal that all the blood was replaced by completely different colors.
  • In Tsukihi Phoenix, Yodzuru beats him so badly that he doesn't even look human anymore, but rather like some sort of grotesque depiction of a zombie.
• Guile Hero: Four months after "Shinobu Time", he still hasn't told anyone about Mayoi passing on. He finally decides to tell Ogi and no one else to see what will happen.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Black Hanekawa cuts him in half. Unfortunately for her, this was what he had expected her to do, so he hid the aberration-cutting sword inside himself.
• Heal It with Blood: Koyomi's vampire blood can be used to heal other people by spilling his blood over their injuries. This is how he saves Hanekawa's life after she's mortally injured by Episode.
• Healing Factor: As a mostly ex-vampire, he can regenerate from damage he takes. If he lets Shinobu suck his blood, his regeneration increases. As a full vampire, a state he has not been in since the end of Kizumonogatari, he had no known limits to his regeneration even during the deathmatch with Kiss-Shot herself. The closest we've seen to his limits are in his fight with Yodzuru Kagenui.
• Healing Hands: As a vampire, his blood can heal the injuries of others.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: He is the only person allowed to give his sisters a hard time.
• I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me: He's quite shocked to find out that Tsubasa likes him, especially considering how much he exaggerates her already good traits. It's too late, though, and even if it wasn't he's already vowed not to go out with her.
• Ironic Hell: Spends a lot of time in Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari sexually harassing Mayoi, then eventually gets a taste of his own medicine via Suruga when her reputation as the series' biggest pervert is impugned. He is even depicted with Hachikuji's hair and face while it happens. This is enough to convince him to cool it for a while. Mayoi, on the other hand, gets offended when he stops, and proceeds to give him no small amount of sexual and physical harassment when her older self finally meets him in Shinobu Time, where he is not amused by the turnaround.
• Large Ham: You can ascribe a lot of qualities to Koyomi, but 'subtle' is not one of them. It strongly influences his perception as well, so when the perspective is his the entire setting is flashy and sensational.
• Loving a Shadow: He's initially attracted to Hanekawa because of how perfect she seems. However, nobody is that perfect and after having his lack of understanding hammered in he vows that he will find someone, anyone, and love them instead of her.
• Martyr Without a Cause: He's willing to sacrifice himself for anyone, which eventually starts worrying Senjogahara. In Kizumonogatari, it disappoints Kiss-Shot when she realizes that he wasn't saving her, he would have saved anyone in her situation. His tendency to instantly leap towards self sacrifice is not portrayed as heroic, however, but rather as a sign of him being borderline suicidal. It tends to cause far more problems than it solves.
• Meaningful Name: The 'gi' in his name means 'tree'. In Kizu he reveals just how serious his depression is by saying “I’d rather be a plant than a human. So I don’t have to talk or walk.” - in other words, to live. To which Hanekawa counters “Plants are still living things. You didn’t say you want to be an inanimate object.” Further down the story Araragi literally turns his body into a tree to save Hanekawa from Guillotine Cutter - a fight that happens inside the abandoned cram school, a place where an actual tree grows as a constant reminder of his “hellish spring break”. Later there is a tree at the Shirahebi shrine, where Araragi dies, and it’s still there when he wakes up in Hell.
  • 'Koyomi' means 'calendar' and ties in to the names of his sisters. The main story documents one year of his life, and every arc begins with a mention what date it is. It’s also a kanji with two trees (木) in it.
• Morality Chain: If Araragi were to die, Shinobu would cause a vampire Zombie Apocalypse out of grief.
• Mysterious Past: If we can trust Hanekawa's narration in Tsubasa Tiger, his life before the events in ''Kizumonogatari'' was a lot more interesting than he lets on. Although his first encounter with the supernatural was his meeting with Shinobu, his lifestyle has evidently been the same since before middle school. It's implied that he's actually mellowed.
• Neat Freak: Whenever he goes to Kanbaru's house, he insists on cleaning up the chaos that is her room.
• Nice Guy: Very kind, selfless, and supportive towards other ones.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His actions make things worse at least as often as they make things better due to having the wrong motivations for trying to help people. Namely, he wants to die for someone and occasionally just die period. He helps revive a man-eating monster by offering her his life, he reinforces Nadeko's narcissism and he tries to die for Suruga when this would only make her feel like a murderer, all within or even before the first season of the anime. He does grow somewhat better as he realizes the proper ways to actually help people, as shown in Nisemonogatari with his sisters, but he still screws up sometimes, like reinforcing Hanekawa's emotional repression issues.
• No One Could Survive That!: His fight with Kiss-Shot sees him suffer a multitude of injuries that would instantly kill somebody, but his vampiric abilities let him regenerate his body countless times. It does cause him to lose some of his clothes, though.
• Official Couple: He starts dating Senjogahara in the second arc. Despite all the bickering with her and the ship tease with the other girls, the relationship is entirely stable, which is actually the trigger for several incidents all by itself.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Koyomi is an ex-vampire (mostly) after ridding himself of his vampirism by sucking out most of Kiss-Shot's blood and depowering her. By allowing Shinobu to suck his blood, he regains some of his former powers, which are quite numerous: He has an amazing healing factor, superhuman senses, strength and speed, the ability to turn intangible, some shapeshifting and, unfortunately, the inability to swim.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: The anime deemphasizes it, but Koyomi is rather short. He's actually shorter than his girlfriend, even. However, thanks to being an ex vampire, his physique is at peak human condition.
• Platonic Life-Partners: While his connection to Shinobu is originally played as a horrible fate that makes everyone unhappy, they grow much closer over the series. Both times their bond is severed, they quickly work to restore it, and he seems to consider her as important to him as Senjougahara—possibly even more so.
  "If you were to die tomorrow, I'd be fine with tomorrow being the last day of my life. If you were to choose to live through today, I will also choose to live through today."
• Shirtless Scene: Gets several over the course of the series. In one of Shaft's bits of ridiculous attention to detail, he's much more muscular if the story takes place later in the chronology, which is due in part to his former vampirism.
• Small Steps Hero: Araragi is an impulsive Failure Hero combined with a Death Seeker. He considers dying for the sake of someone, anyone, the highest virtue he can aspire to regardless of consequences. The problem with this is that he rushes into fights that he can't win, or takes direct actions were more subtle or more gradual ones would be necessary. At one point, we even learn that his death could possibly cause The End of the World as We Know It, because his life is the only thing keeping a Humanoid Abomination with enough power to destroy the planet from regaining her full strength.
• Something Else Also Rises: Koyomi's Idiot Hair tends to stiffen and raise when "appropriate." It even does a Luminescent Blush once when he finds Senjogahara staring at him.
• Stock Light-Novel Everyman: Koyomi Araragi qualifies as both this trope and a Stock Light-Novel Hero depending on the arc. The vast majority of the time, the problem of the week needs to be solved by out-smarting or out-talking the threat, but sometimes Koyomi will need to make use of his vast array of vampiric abilities to fight it. Violence almost never works permanently, however, as it usually only makes the problem temporarily go away and return in an even stronger form later. His efforts still endear him to a number of beautiful young women, although this in itself leads to problems since the very second arc ends with him becoming an Official Couple with the original Girl of the Week, and thus all of the other girls are Hopeless Suitors and some don't take it very well.
• Stock Light-Novel Hero: Played with. He's your average guy possessed by the strongest vampire in existence and suffers from a desire to help any cute girl he meets even if he barely knows her. But in a world where problems are solved with words and not fighting, his powers are hardly useful. He's gotten his ass kicked to the point of death multiple times. In fact, his Chronic Hero Syndrome comes from a Friendless Background; his sense of self-worth is so low that the only way he feels useful is to sacrifice himself for someone. He does his best to help, but can't fix their problems for them—they have to do it themselves, and some of the arc resolutions make you wonder if his actions even made a difference at all. Furthermore, most of the girls he saves end up attracted to him. Sounds great, except that he enters a relationship with one of them very early in the story, and stays with her until the end. The way neither the other girls nor his girlfriend seem to care about the Unwanted Harem only shows that they're all really traumatized in some way or another, and it's not usually presented as something cute or healthy. In fact, Koyomi's inability to just reject his Hopeless Suitors ends up causing the main conflict of the Second Season of the novels, when Nadeko Sengoku ends up possessed by an evil god due to her insane love for him and threatens to kill him and Senjougahara if he doesn't go out with her instead...and everything above is mentioned in Kaiki's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Koyomi, because all of it could have been avoided if he'd just had the courage to reject Nadeko, and continuing to act in a way that would convince her she still had a chance with him was just causing her to suffer for no reason.
• Stupid Sexy Flanders: At one point, Suruga admits she'd totally date him if he didn't already have Hitagi.
• Super-Speed: In Kizumonogatari, during his first real fight, he relies on his lesser mass to outspeed the heavy Dramaturgie before realizing that while he can do that, it's not really necessary. He already dramatically outclasses Dramaturgie in strength, and can just heal away any damage instantly.
• Super-Strength: As a vampire, he gains massive strength without realizing it. It completely throws off his aim at first until he realizes he needs to use heavier weapons.
• Unreliable Narrator: Araragi has a big problem with this; his opinions heavily taint his narration, as the audience eventually realizes with the introduction of other narrators. For example, Senjogahara is very brusque and intimidating, but in Koyomi's eyes this is greatly exaggerated. Likewise, Araragi pointlessly lusts after Hanekawa despite vowing to never actually date her, leading to lots of Male Gaze. On top of that, Araragi has somehow forgotten several events that were extremely formative to his current personality.
• Vampire Hickey: He has two punctures on his neck, left there by the vampire Kiss-shot when she drank his blood.
• Voluntary Vampire Victim: He couldn't ignore a half-dead Kiss-Shot's pleads of help and let her drink his blood to save her life. After she gets de-powered, he lets her drink his blood at least once a month.
• Weirdness Magnet: Being an ex-vampire means that he's more likely to attract more aberrations in the future since once you've encountered one you'll probably keep finding more. He's grown so used to this fact that Suruga's revelation that she has a demon monkey arm grafted onto her arm doesn't faze him, but her admission that she's a lesbian still leaves his jaw on the floor.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Going strictly by Nisemonogatari, Koyomi's afraid of heights.

Karen Araragi

"Oh, it's just you, Bro. I mistook you for an enemy."

Voiced by: Eri Kitamura

Karen is the middle Araragi sibling, a sports maniac and self-proclaimed superhero. Together with Tsukihi, she performs what her brother calls "community service" and "playing heroes" as the combat specialist of the Fire Sisters. She is a black belt martial artist and is actually taller than Koyomi. She is excitable, rash, and tends to act before thinking, which leads to trouble in "Karen Bee", when the con artist she goes to confront counterattacks her with the sting of a supernatural bee. The venom gives her a terrible fever, and after a lot of... er, convincing (read: beating Koyomi into the pavement), Koyomi and Hitagi go to deal with the con artist in her place.

Stuff happens in "Tsukihi Phoenix" that leads Karen to be less hostile towards Koyomi in general, convincing her to act the part of the "good little sister who always does what her brother says". She has a hero-crush on Suruga, with whom she becomes friends in the same arc. In "Tsubasa Tiger", Hitagi convinces her to invite the temporarily homeless Tsubasa to stay in the Araragi household.

She has a boyfriend who apparently strongly resembles her brother, right down to being shorter than her.

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• Action Girl: A sports prodigy and very gifted in combat.
• Animal Motifs: Her yellow and black outfit resembles a bee.
• Badass Normal: If not for Koyomi's Healing Factor she could kill him in one attack. And she was poisoned by the bee during the fight, mind you.
• Bullied into Depression: She discusses having been suicidally depressed at one point due to Koyomi always picking on her; she also claims that recovering from this incident is why she can't tolerate injustice of any kind.
• Bully Hunter: Always ready to fight for justice.
• Cooldown Hug: On the receiving end from Koyomi in episode 7 of Nisemonogatari.
• Cute Bruiser: Physically strong, always ready to fight, and a very pretty young girl.
• For Great Justice: The professed motive of the Fire Sisters, taken more seriously by Karen than by Tsukihi.
• Genki Girl: Always lively and full of energy, ready to fight evil every single day. This annoys Koyomi greatly.
• Hot-Blooded: To the point it gets the better of her in some situations. That is the reason why Kaiki was able to poison her in the first place, since she rushed to his lair without thinking a plan to deal with him.
• Huge Schoolgirl: Is actually slightly taller than Koyomi, much to his chagrin, and it's the reason why he refers to her as the giant little sister. Although it's partially because Koyomi is short as well.
• Image Song: "marshmallow justice".
• Irony: Her Animal Motif has the smallest size amongst all the animals who the other heroines represents, yet she is the tallest out of them all.
• Kindhearted Simpleton: She's a bit simple-minded, but undoubtedly a good person and very kind.
• Nice Girl: A very friendly, kind and outgoing individual.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Koyomi admits that she looks stunning in a miniskirt.
• Shout-Out: Her yellow tracksuit is an obvious one to Bruce Lee.
• Statuesque Stunner: She is pretty and is the tallest heroine of the series. Even Koyomi finds her attractive.
• Super Gullible: She and her sister are very easy to trick, needing only to bring up words like 'justice' or musing about how someone needs to be defended within earshot. Even without that obvious glaring weak point, they tend to believe some pretty silly things. Karen, for example, seemingly believes Senjougahara when she says she doesn't know what a school is.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Tomboy to Tsukihi's Girly Girl.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: Until Episode 9 of Nisemonogatari. As of Tsukimonogatari, it's grown back a bit.
• Tsurime Eyes: Befitting her energetic personality.

Tsukihi Araragi

"We're not bringers of justice, we are justice, Brother."

Voiced by: Yuka Iguchi

Tsukihi is the youngest Araragi sibling and the second of the two Fire Sisters. Unlike her sister, she prefers indoor activities and really has no idea of what justice even means, so she trusts Karen to handle finding proper targets for them while Tsukihi just wants to run wild. She's very malleable, fickle, short tempered and lacks a sense of consistency, which is most easily seen with her hair being in a different style during every appearance.

She is the focus of Tsukihi Phoenix, during which she attracts the attention of an exorcist due to her nature.

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• The Ace: Koyomi describes her as a person who's capable of succeeding at anything she chooses to do. She's quite a people person as well, digging right into the heart of why Nadeko is the way she is.
• Animal Motifs: She always wear colourful yukatas, which are supposed to represent Phoenix feathers. She also tends change hairstyle very often, which is supposed to represent a Phoenix 'rebirth'. Additionally, in episode 11, her yukata actually has a phoenix-print pattern. Her bed is raised from the ground like a bird's nest.
  • Tsukihi is also referred to as a cuckoo or cuckoo's child, because the Dying Bird is a "supernatural variant of the lesser cuckoo", and follows the pattern of merging into human children and turning them into supernatural beings, which parallels and is compared to a cuckoo laying its egg in the nest of another bird. In real-life nature, this behavior involves killing the unborn other bird the cuckoo child is to replace; additionally, when the cuckoo is born, it will kill its foster siblings. Sometimes, even the foster parents end up being killed as well. This presumably did not help Yodzuru's belief that the Dying Bird is an evil being.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Her answer to seeing Shinobu in the bath with Koyomi? Slamming the door, than returning a second later with a knife and a pan cover.
  • Has a similar reaction when finding Koyomi and Karen in bed together; she goes to the store to buy a great many awls, which from the Koyomi-shaped outline in the bed, seem to have been fervently employed. And later, when Yodzuru and Yotsugi are incessantly ringing her doorbell, she storms out wielding what appears to be a screwdriver.
  • Her reaction to Koyomi oversleeping she tries to impale him with a crowbar.
• Blood Knight: Doesn't really care about the concept of justice, and just uses Karen's moral compass as an excuse to run wild.
• Brutal Honesty: When Nadeko admits that she's worried that people only like her because she's cute, Tsukihi responds that that's probably because there's nothing else to her with an attitude of 'Well, duh.'
• Changeling Tale: Of sorts. She was possessed in her mother's womb and has never been truly human.
• Cute and Psycho: Despite dressing like a tradition-minded girl most of the time, she is quick to throw tantrum or just casually slip in the Yandere territory.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Tsuhiki feels like she doesn't really have a goal for her future, so she's drawn to self-assured and passionate people, like her older siblings and post-Character Development Nadeko. In her conversation with Nadeko in Owarimonogatari, she talks about feeling inspired by Nadeko to start finding out who she wants to be.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Her hair grows immensely fast, so she changes her hairstyle constantly. In Nekomonogatari Black, she has a Hime Cut, but at the start of Nisemonogatari, her hair has the style of her profile page. At the start of Tsukihi Phoenix, her hair has grown into a long bob. And by the time of Nekomonogatari White, it has grown very long. This is played with in her opening, showing her various hairstyles.
• Foreshadowing: During the lyrics about Tsukihi's sadness, the backup dancer versions of her appear cutoff from the waist up; in episode 10, Tsukihi is killed by Yotsugi by way of having her entire upper body blown clean off.
• From a Single Cell: While she won't live forever, she cannot be killed by any means other than old age (at which point she will reincarnate in another woman's womb), and will recover from any illness or injury. This is powerful enough to restore her within a few minutes of having her entire body from the waist up obliterated by Yotsugi.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Her true nature is revealed when Yotsugi suddenly blows off the top half of her body. She has fully regenerated in ten seconds or so, being perfectly fine (though unconscious) the next time Koyomi looks at her.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: See Beware the Nice Ones above.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: The Dying Bird is in hiding due to constantly being hunted, and so it hides in plain sight by merging with a human fetus. Since it is immortal, if the host dies of old age, the bird just moves on, hides and merges with another fetus.
• Image Song: "Hakkin Disco" ("Platinum Disco"). Also a Dancing Theme.
• Kimono Fanservice: Though Tsukihi wears a yukata near-constantly, it doesn't restrict her movements in the least. Also Fanservice due to its tendency to fall open.
• Left Hanging: In Mayoi Jiangshi, an alternate timeline, Shinobu (or rather, Kiss-Shot) turned everyone in the town into Jiangshis, in despair over the death of that world's Araragi. Koyomi asked Shinobu what happened to Tsukihi (since she's already a supernatural bird), but never got any direct answer.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Her Image Song is very happy and upbeat. However, the later lyrics make it seem as though Tsukihi is having a breakdown: she says she still gets sad and cries, and then asks, "Why? Just why?", shortly before the song ends.
• Mood-Swinger: To the point her brother claims she has hysteria.
• Playful Cat Smile: At times. It's most notable when she's eating something she likes.
• Super Gullible: She and her sister are very easy to trick, needing only to bring up words like 'justice' or musing about how someone needs to be defended within earshot. Even without that obvious glaring weak point, they tend to believe some pretty silly things. Tsukihi, for example, completely falls for Koyomi's completely monotone ramble about how he is just. so. scared. of the cat monster around town that she and Karen will need to keep him company tonight and not go search for the monster.
  • However, unlike with Karen, it's implied that Tsukihi is generally aware of when she's being tricked and is simply playing along with her brother.
• Tareme Eyes: Befitting her feminine appearance.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: This is apparently the procedure for dealing with a Dying Bird. Once Tsukihi steps into view, Yotsugi abruptly blows her entire upper body clean off. It doesn't work..
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Girly Girl to Karen's Tomboy.
• What Measure Is A Nonhuman: Technically speaking, Tsukihi has never been a real "human" at all, merely a phoenix in the shape of one. But if she herself doesn't know that, and her own personality is all that anybody else has ever experienced of her, does that really make her anything but?

Naoetsu High School

Hitagi Senjougahara

"My harsh remarks are made by transmuting 40g of copper, 25g of zinc, 15g of nickel, and 5g of hiding my embarrassment along with 97kg of spite."

Voiced by: Chiwa Saitō

Voiced by (English): Erica Mendez (Audiobook)

Hitagi is a classmate of Koyomi's (and has been for three years), though they have never spoken before the story begins. She slips and falls down the stairs one day, and Koyomi, who is climbing them, catches her—only to realize that she barely weighs anything. Though Hitagi attacks him in an attempt to make him keep quiet about her secret, he offers to help cure her, leading to the events of "Hitagi Crab".

She is very beautiful, but also cold, spiteful, and wary. This snappish temperament results from having encountered five con men who claimed they would cure her only to make off with her family's money, which eventually resulted in her parents divorcing. But when Koyomi's offer turns out to be genuine, she falls in love with him, and asks him out during the events of the "Mayoi Snail" arc.

Though her weight is returned to her in her own "Hitagi Crab" arc, it takes Hitagi most of the series to recover from the years she spent without it. She comes to terms with her past in Nisemonogatari and becomes a lot less verbally abusive as a result. In "Hitagi End", she is forced to deal with the person she wants to rely on the least in order to rescue Koyomi.

As you might expect based on the quote above, Hitagi is a big fan of Fullmetal Alchemist.

---

• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the light novels and Vofan's corresponding illustrations, Hitagi had brown hair. In the anime it's purple.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Despite being quite an open jerkass and troll when not avoiding people, Senjogahara was very popular in middle school. It's implied she was less hostile back then, though.
• Ambiguously Bi: Hitagi basically can't have a conversation with or about Hanekawa without admitting that she'd like nothing more than to marry her herself. Then there's them "fooling around" in the shower for thirty minutes at the beginning of Tsubasa Tiger...
• Animal Motifs: Her trusty stapler is meant to invoke a crab's claw.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Most of her early interaction with Koyomi is sarcasm or belittling him.
• Broken Bird: Her family is heavily fractured and she lives with her father after her mother was taken in by destructive cults. Her mother's behavior as well as the cultists she met and the con men she had to deal with afterward have left her bitter, suspicious and unable to open up properly.
• Character Development: After confronting the conman Deishu Kaiki at the end of Nisemonogatari, her personality mellows out a considerable amount, though this happens offscreen between Nisemonogatari and the season that follows it. Araragi exaggerates how much nicer she's become, but she does grow more openly affectionate and sociable, including spending all night trying to find Hanekawa after her house burns down and slapping her while in tears when she finally finds her. Her newly social attitude is also kind of irritating with Hanekawa not really having any idea how to deal with a Senjougahara who suddenly acts like she's halfway to being Araragi.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: When Koyomi mentions Suruga by her name without honorifics, Hitagi's reaction is to put her pen to his eyeball and ask if there was anything between them despite knowing that such a thing is extremely unlikely.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: During the end of the first anime, Senjogahara and her father take Koyomi on a trip. Contrary to Koyomi's expectations, not only does her father thank him for helping her open up when the two are alone, but in a rare moment of vulnerability she admits how much she cares about him and how nervous the relationship makes her.
• First Love: According to Kaiki, she likes to think of every love as though it were her first. It's self deception, but a healthy kind that he can admire. After contacting him for help, she's awfully touchy regarding the issue the whole arc because with him around it's harder to pretend she only hates him.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: She quips about her voice actress having a wide vocal range, which would seem to be an easy fourth wall breaking gag... except this line also occurs in the novel, which was written before she had any voice actress at all!
• Girl with Psycho Weapon: She carries a veritable armory consisting entirely of office supplies with a special preference for staplers.
• Hammerspace: Just where does Hitagi keep all those office supplies?
• Hollywood Atheist: She doesn't believe in another life after death.
• Humanizing Tears: When she first meets Araragi, she comes across as intimidating, overly harsh and hostile because of the events that lead to her losing her weight. Araragi sees her vulnerable and sensitive side for the first time when she tearfully begs the Heavy Crab to give her back the burden of her painful memories of her mother.
• Image Song: "staple stable" in Bakemonogatari and "Futakotome" (Second Phrase) in Nisemonogatari.
• Improbable Weapon User: Hitagi and pounds of pointy office supplies.
• Intertwined Fingers: Hitagi lies on top of Suruga and gives her these while... telling her she sadly doesn't reciprocate Suruga's feelings.
• Insecure Love Interest: Hidden under her aggressive attitude and sometimes shown through it is a feeling that Koyomi could do better than her. She's very afraid of him cheating on her, feels she has little to offer and is intimidated by Hanekawa early on. This is possibly based on a feeling that he simply isn't that invested in her: He made it clear he had no intention of asking her out or had any ulterior motives in helping her, which shows that she doesn't actually mean anything special to him at that time. As time goes on, her attitude grows less aggressive and more confident, including an increased ability to get along with Hanekawa.
• I Owe You My Life: Offers Koyomi many spectacular methods of thanking him for freeing her from the heavy crab, though in truth she's just trying to get him interested in her before she gives up and confesses.
• Irrational Hatred: She says she hates Nadeko because she loathes her type, but when Kaiki asks her about that she admits that she'd never even spoken to her.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's aggressive, harsh tongued and violent early on. She says she's just being a Tsundere, but her relationship with Koyomi can be summed up by saying that she alternates being nice to him in a dickish way, and being a dick to him in a nice way.
• Meaningful Name: "Senjougahara" literally means "battlefield," alluding to the character's standoffish personality.
  • 'Hitagi' is a rather convoluted pun. 'Hitagi' is a normal family name (not a first name) and as such is written in hiragana. But if you want to spell it with kanji, the only way would be 肥田木 - “fertilizer”, “rice field”, “tree”. Hanekawa says her name is related to “public works” (土木) which literally reads “soil for a tree”. She is a field where a tree (Araragi) can flourish, reflecting how their relationship makes him grow as a person - going from a washout to successfully entering a university, among other things.
• Mommy Issues: Her personality is so fundamentally broken because her mother went quietly crazy and began joining dangerous cults. When she allowed a man to try raping her daughter, it was the final straw for causing the Heavy Crab incident.
• Mouthscreen
• Ms. Fanservice: She's beautiful, has a voluptuous figure, and even remains naked in front of Koyomi the first time he's at her home with her.
• No Sense of Personal Space: She spends a lot of her conversations with Koyomi invading his personal space bubble in spectacular ways. And feels him up while they're in the car with her father. Subverted since she does it deliberately.
• No Social Skills: She has absolutely no idea of how to go about romance. At least Koyomi finds it ridiculously cute.
• Official Couple: Despite the affections from and Ship Tease with about half a dozen other girls, Koyomi and Senjogahara is a very sturdy relationship with both having a good influence on the other. However, this does cause numerous issues later with Suruga, Tsubasa and Nadeko.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When they speak about the possibility of hiring him to deal with the Snake God Nadeko Kaiki is cool for the entire conversation until Senjougahara offers to prostitute herself to pay him. That gets his attention, especially since he knows the details of her past and what that suggestion means to her.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: She seems to find the idea of killing Koyomi romantic, and declares that she will kill anyone else who tries.
• Politeness Judo: Convinces snake god Nadeko to spare Koyomi and Shinobu until she and Koyomi graduate by calmly pointing out that if she kills Koyomi before Shinobu, Shinobu will revive as a full-powered vampire and easily kill her and if she kills Koyomi before Hitagi, Hitagi will stop at nothing to destroy Nadeko. Surprisingly, given Nadeko's both power and madness, it works.
• Precocious Crush: To her obvious distaste, she implies that despite Kaiki really being responsible for many of her problems, at least he understood her. During a time of desperation like that, she would have fallen for anyone.
• Rape as Backstory: One of the cult scammers attached to her mother attempted to rape her. Though she escaped by attacking her assailant, what really upset her is that her mother let it happen.
• Rescue Romance: She loves Koyomi for helping her end her problems with the Heavy Crab. She admits that she probably would have felt the same about anyone else in his situation, but is still glad it was him.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: She has threatened on more than one occasion to soak the ground with indiscriminate bloodshed should Koyomi end up hurt.
• Significant Birth Date: She's born on Tanabata, a Japanese festival that heavily involves stars. In katakana "hitagi" is written as ヒタギ, which looks like kanji 七夕 (Evening of the seventh) - Tanabata aka Star Festival, celebration of the meeting of the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi (represented by the stars Vega and Altair respectively). It's on July 7th, which is Senjougahara's birthday, and this is cited as a reason why she is interested in astronomy to begin with. Also, see Western Zodiac below.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Hitagi injuries the inside of Araragi's mouth with stapler as a warning for him to not get involved with her. Then it's revealed her antagonistic attitude is the result of her family falling apart because her mother joined a cult.
• Stepford Snarker: She hides some heavy emotional trauma beneath her cold and sarcastic personality.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She may call herself a tsundere, but others refer to her with terms more like 'tsundra' since she tends to be cold and abrasive rather than fiery. Nor does she deny her feelings.
• The Tease: She likes to sexually tease Koyomi, but during their date in "Tsubasa Cat", Senjogahara reveals that she's only willing to go that far because she trusts him. Due to her near-rape experience, full-blown intimacy is still uncomfortable for her.
  • As of the end of the Karen Bee arc, she seems to have recovered enough from the trauma mentally as such where the relationship's become more intimate.
• Tsundere
  • She explains away her abusive attitude by saying she's a tsundere so it's only natural to act like that. Oshino calls her 'tsundere-chan' while Koyomi thinks of her as a tundra instead.
  • Hitagi End hints that she doesn't hate Kaiki nearly as much as she says she does when she goes out of her way to tell him she'll never forgive him, possibly because according to Koyomi she's already put that all behind her.
  • It can qualify as a parody, honestly, considering that when she is 'tsun' she tends to go after Araragi with WEAPONS!
• Unscrupulous Hero: Downplayed Trope, but she says she's not a friend of justice but an enemy of evil. She thinks the middle schoolers fooled by Kaiki are largely responsible for being tricked in the first place.
• Used to Be More Social: Was very friendly and social during middle school until her weight and emotional attachments were taken away by a crab-deity.
• Verbal Tic: Has a tendency to repeat a line several times due to not being sure what the proper inflection should be.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Should Koyomi die by anyone's hand but hers, she will stop at nothing to kill them. Much of the cast is intimidated by her, so they take the threat seriously. When Oikura Sodachi stabs Koyomi's hand in front of her in Sodachi Riddle, she moves forward with some seriously hostile intention before deciding that Oikura isn't worth it. Even so, she ends up knocking her out with a single punch before the scene ends.
• Western Zodiac: July 7th, Cancer (the Crab).
• Yandere: States that nobody is allowed to kill Koyomi but her. In Suruga Monkey she gets jealous of Kanbaru, though it's questionable what she's really feeling then. Even asserts in Nadeko Medusa that she will murder everyone in the world if Koyomi is killed before she is.

Suruga Kanbaru

"The only things that can make me run anywhere are Araragi-senpai, Senjougahara-senpai, and a BL novel release."

Voiced by: Miyuki Sawashiro

Suruga is a second-year student at Koyomi and Hitagi's high school, and an old friend of Hitagi's from middle school. She first appears in "Suruga Monkey". Her late mother gave her a wish-granting, mummified hand that Suruga mistakes for a monkey's paw (as in the famous short story), but which is actually the hand of a supernatural monster called a Rainy Devil. Unlike the monkey's paw from the story, which grants the user's wish in a way the user would not want, the Rainy Devil grants the subconscious desires behind its user's wish. It also eats its user's soul after three uses. Suruga used the artifact once before in her past, but when she uses it for the second time, the paw grafts itself to her arm.

Suruga is cheerful, messy, very open about her numerous kinks, and loves to pick on Koyomi. While she used to be the ace of the Naoetsu basketball team, she is forced to quit because of the Rainy Devil in her arm. She has been in love with Hitagi since middle school, and has a pretty sizable fan following of younger girls.

After her own first arc, Suruga helps Koyomi and Nadeko out during the events of "Nadeko Snake", and continues to make minor appearances in the arcs following that. She is also the main character and narrator of "Suruga Devil", which takes place a year after Koyomi, Hitagi, and Tsubasa have graduated.

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• Ambiguously Bi: She definitely likes women, having nursed a crush on Senjougahara, and she has quite a few Ship Tease moments with Rouka Numachi in Hanamonogatari. But throughout the series her interactions with Araragi almost border on Ship Tease. In particular, at multiple points in the story she has expressed a strong desire to fornicate with Araragi in various public places. No one really knows if she is kidding or not.
  • In volume 19 of the manga Kanbaru admits to Shinobu that she has feelings for both Araragi and Hitagi and knows that neither of them will reciprocate.
• Animal Motifs: Her biking shorts are a weird pun on the word monkey ("undershorts" being sarumata, saru being "monkey").
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The rainy devil will grant her her wishes exactly as she wants them, but that doesn't mean she'll actually be happy about the results. For example, when she was little she consciously wanted to be faster than some boys, but subconsciously she actually wished for them to be injured and unable to run properly. When the devil granted her the wish she actually wanted, she felt so guilty that she began to practice running so much that she eventually genuinely became faster than the victims so they wouldn't be in danger from her wish anymore.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Downplayed - Kanbaru has distinctly bushy eyebrows that otherwise aren't that much bigger than the norm.
• Brought Down to Normal: Numachi took her Devil's Arm in Hanamonogatari.
• Brutal Honesty: Can be very blunt and often says things that stun even Koyomi speechless.
• Comedic Lolicon: Gets awfully excited upon seeing either Shinobu or Nadeko, and talks about how she wants to hold the former in her arms.
• Deal with the Devil: She entered into one without knowing the real terms. The rainy devil will grant her three wishes as she actually wants them granted, but after successfully granting the third it will then take her soul.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: As of Nisemonogatari, she's started to grow her hair out, perhaps in reaction to giving up on Senjogahara. Hanamonogatari offers the alternative explanation of her being too indecisive to make a change as big as cutting her hair.
• Fantastic Arousal: Her monkey arm.
• Hammerspace: Her left arm is huge and hairy, but simply wrap it up in some gauze and you'd never be able to tell.
• Image Song: "Ambivalent World" in Bakemonogatari and "the last day of my adolescence" in Hanamonogatari.
• Jungle Drums: The rainy devil's leitmotif.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: The first thing she does when she enters Koyomi's room is look for his porn stash. She answered the phone once with "This is Kanbaru, currently employed as Araragi's love slave" despite having no idea who was calling. In Nisemonogatari, she gets shocked and offended when Koyomi points out that she has more modesty than she likes to act, after which she immediately begins molesting him as payback.
• Male Gaze: Offers some rather explicit Fanservice whenever she's in all of her nude glory while at her home alone. The main centerpiece of it all is her butt, which even has a bit of flush to it. Yes, they went that far.
• Meaningful Name: The 'bara' part in her name is the opposite of Senjougahara. Not only there is a history between the two, Araragi speculates that Kanbaru has shaped her whole personality to mimic middle-school Senjougahara. Yes, there was a time when Senjougahara was a sporty, perverted ball of positivity. Of course, “baruhara” together gives you Valhalla written with katakana.
• Modesty Shorts: Her signature style in conjunction with her school uniform. Although they're possible technically not modest at all—see Sensual Spandex.
• Morality Pet: She's the daughter of the woman Kaiki loved, making her the only person he'll actually treat well.
• Mouthscreen
• Psycho Lesbian: Played with. Consciously, she's maybe jealous or irritated. Subconsciously, she's pissed and wishes Araragi would just disappear more than wishing she could have Senjogahara instead, which causes the same net result.
• Sensual Spandex: Wears biking shorts under her skirt. As she gleefully points out, there's no way of knowing if she's wearing any underwear under those, however, meaning she might be pulling a panty shot constantly.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: In Nisemonogatari, she does her best to tease Koyomi as much as possible.
  • A few of her alternate outfits leave very little to the imagination. The one that stands out the most is an orange-colored tube-top-like bra paired with daisy dukes. She might occasionally put her old basketball jersey over that, but even then she only wears the top part, probably to invoke the same panty shot effect as with her school uniform.
• Shipper on Deck: She thinks Hitagi and Koyomi make a good couple, but predicts that it's Tsubasa that he'll end up marrying.
• Superpowered Evil Side: When the rainy devil attempts to fulfill her wish, it takes control of her body and acts on her darkest desires, becoming so fast, strong and savage that she rips Koyomi apart in seconds.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: She didn't have the best relationship with her mother Tooe. The fact that Tooe was deeply involved in the oddity business may have had something to do with it.
• Visual Pun: The OP during her arc has her leaping from the tops of giant lilies.
• Yaoi Fangirl: She mentions liking BL, and the light novels her messy room is noted to have a few BL novels strewn about. The anime takes it considerably further, since she owns an enormous collection of issues of Barazoku, a Bara Genre magazine which has been out of print since 2008; either she started collecting them at a young age or she's been putting considerable effort into obtaining them.

Tsubasa Hanekawa

"I don't know everything. Just the things I know."

Voiced by: Yui Horie

Voiced by (English): Cristina Valenzuela (Audiobook)

Tsubasa Hanekawa is a genius student and class representative, and becomes Koyomi's first friend over the events of Spring Break. She always does her best to help and support people who are in need, and ever since she reaches out to Koyomi during his vampire days, he sees her as his savior and treats her like some sort of saint or holy mother. But Tsubasa's "goodness" comes from a lifetime of striving not to burden her legal guardians (neither of whom are her biological parents), and both her way of life and the way that the people around her put her on a pedestal causes her a great deal of stress. The characters who don't look up to her tend to remark on being unnerved by her perfection, finding it to be "unnatural".

In Nekomonogatari Black (Tsubasa Family), Koyomi discovers that Tsubasa's guardians are abusive, and she is possessed by a cat spirit that attacks and nearly kills random strangers every night as a way to deal with her stress. The cat is temporarily suppressed by Koyomi and Shinobu, but reemerges later in the "Tsubasa Cat" arc. The cause this time is Koyomi's relationship with Hitagi, as Tsubasa has been in love with Koyomi all along. The cat spells this out to Koyomi for her, but he rejects her, and subdues the cat with Shinobu's help again.

Tsubasa's character arc concludes with Nekomonogatari White (Tsubasa Tiger), in which she encounters a tiger aberration that burns her house down and proceeds to do the same to every other place she sleeps. Because Koyomi has his hands full with other supernatural incidents, Tsubasa must deal with the tiger—a physical manifestation of the negative emotions she has been dissociating from for so long—alone.

---

• Abusive Parents: In addition to the incident where her stepfather punches her in the face until she bleeds, Koyomi discovers when visiting her house that Tsubasa is not even allowed to have her own room, and has to sleep on the floor in the hallway. Her clothes and personal effects can be seen hanging up in the kitchen. Small wonder she wanders the town at all hours instead of going back home.
• Animal Motifs: Like Suruga's, hers is of the more punny variety; Meganekko ("glasses girl") = Mega neko ("big cat"). There's also her hair ribbons, which have little cat faces on them. In Tsubasa Tiger, she gets Clothing Damage that resembles tiger stripes, and upon her Split-Personality Merge her hair becomes black with silver bars.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: She is ready to go all the way when Koyomi demands to touch her breasts in Kizu, and gets quite upset when he chickens out.
• Ax-Crazy: When influenced by the Meddlesome Cat, she's violent, hedonistic and impulsive.
• Bad Bedroom, Bad Life: Tsubasa isn't even allowed to have her own room, instead sleeping in the upstairs hallway with her belongings hanging up in the kitchen. At the end of Tsubasa Tiger when she puts her foot down and demands her own room it shows major Character Development and how she won't just passively accept her guardians' abuse any more.
• Berserk Button: To put it in her own words, "I do think that there are times when corporal punishment is justifiable. But if you're going to strike a child, you need to be able to help them understand why you're doing it, and they must accept that it is appropriate for you to hit them." She calls Koyomi out twice in this manner—once for fighting with Mayoi and once when he's about to slap Karen—and both times she is (understandably) very cold and stern.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Despite her pleasant and helpful demeanor, she has a lot of repressed emotional issues just barely under the surface.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Evil Laugh aside, the meddlesome cat's morality is based on Tsubasa's emotional well-being, and he will mercilessly attack anyone who threatens it. He has little interest in any mainstream moral implications of his actions. As Tsubasa becomes more well-adjusted leading up to "Tsubasa Tiger", he becomes rather mellow.
• Broken Ace: She's beautiful, clever, popular and helpful, but she also has severe personal issues that have left her emotions extremely bottled up and just waiting for a chance to lash out.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Her huge boobs are a constant target of lust to Araragi (and possibly to Senjogahara too).
  Senjogahara: Hanekawa is a friend and a classmate of mine. A girl with big boobs.
• Cannot Spit It Out: She's had a crush on Koyomi for a long time, but won't make a move because if you don't take any risks you can't be hurt. Eventually, she waits so long that he begins dating Senjogahara despite being interested in her, which causes a second Meddlesome Cat incident. If she had spit it out earlier on, it probably would have turned out better for her considering how he views both her and Senjogahara. Probably just makes it that much more frustrating. At the end of Nekomonogatari White, she's finally willing to take the chance of being rejected, though it's obviously much too late. She's rejected and finally cries, putting an end to her emotional suppression.
• Catchphrase: "I don't know everything; just the things I know (Nandemo shiranai wa yo, shitteru koto dake)."
• Cat Girl: When possessed, her hair turns white and she grows cat ears. Of course, the cat itself is likely male judging by its pronoun use.
• Class Representative: She's considered the ultimate class rep: Intelligent, responsible and supportive.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: When Tsubasa and Koyomi meet for the first time, it's after a gust of wind has pushed up her skirt. The moment is so enthralling for Koyomi that he goes out at night to go buy some porn that reminds him of her and ends up running into Kiss-Shot on the verge of death, setting in motion the events of Kizumonogatari.
• Daughter of a Whore: Her mother doesn't seem to have been an actual prostitute, but she had Tsubasa when she was only 17 and had a reputation for promiscuity. She has no idea who her biological father is.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: The bob she sports in Nisemonogatari is eventually stated to be an example of Important Haircut in an attempt to move on from the hardship in her life.
• First Friend: She and Koyomi are each other's first friend. Hanekawa made it official when she included her phone number in his cellphone soon after they first met.
• Foil: She's one to Nadeko Sengoku. Both characters put on a mask in their day-to-day lives, both to protect themselves and as a way of projecting how they want to be perceived. Tsubasa maintains a perfect model citizen image, stripping herself of any negative feelings to appear absolutely infallible; Nadeko presents herself as cute and shy so she can indulge her avoidant tendencies. Both want to become more than their mask but are afraid of how their peers and loved ones would react. As a result of repressing their true selves, both girls become troubled by and involved with oddities. They eventually resolve their emotional issues by embracing what makes them imperfect: Tsubasa refuses to deny her flaws and negative emotions any longer, and Nadeko pursues her hobby without her fear of rejection and humiliation holding her back. In Nadeko Medusa, Tsubasa's one of the few people who's able to see that Nadeko's cutesy exterior is not the real Nadeko, likely due to how well Tsubasa was able to maintain her own mask.
• The Glasses Come Off: She stops wearing her Nerd Glasses between Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari, coinciding with a change to a more proactive attitude—for example, Senjogahara starts to see her as a threat romantically, and in Nekomonogatari White she also learns to acknowledge her own flaws while understanding that her parental abuse is not her fault, and even confesses her love for Koyomi.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Her eyes are Tareme Eyes by default. They switch to Tsurime Eyes when the aggressive personality of Black Hanekawa takes over.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Her final aberration before she really moves back her emotional repression is a massive tiger that burns down places connected to people she envies. The incident begins with her envy of her parents.
• If I Can't Have You…: The cat points out that apart from Koyomi choosing Tsubasa over Senjogahara is to just kill Koyomi though it actually wants to lose to be quieted down again.
• Image Song: "sugar sweet nightmare" (Bakemonogatari), "perfect slumbers" (Nekomonogatari Black), "chocolate insomnia" (Nekomonogatari White)
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness/Pure Is Not Good: Several characters comment on her "pure white" heart, though they also seem a little disturbed; for example, part of the reason her guardians abuse her is because it scares them how her angelic grace allows her to simply take it all in stride without faulting them for it. Senjougahara also takes Hanekawa's lack of ill will to its logical conclusion, arguing that not rejecting any aspect of the rest of the world simply means that she has no standards—as Hanekawa herself points out, she doesn't even have any condiments she actively dislikes. Over time, it becomes clear that she's only so "pure" because she represses her emotions, where they just build under the surface and split off into aberrations.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Played with. She looks like she's stepping aside for Senjogahara, but so deep inside she doesn't even recognize that she's fuming. She's not letting them be together because she wants them to be happy, but because she refuses to risk emotional hurt by doing anything about it.
  • The story in Tsubasa Tiger's epilogue showed that this was played straight: she really did mean for them both to be happy together, even if it broke her heart, and her advice back in Bakemonogatari had been genuine.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The cat is supposedly an agent of her negative emotions and acts quite aggressively but it actually wants to be suppressed again without hurting Koyomi. The Cat is also very friendly, nice, kind and very polite as well as it wipes its feet off after going outside with no shoes on.
• Lack of Empathy: Not in an intentionally malicious way. As a result of keeping her emotions carefully regulated and under control, Hanekawa distances any kind of feelings that might interfere with her composed image. Oshiro notes that Tsubasa helped the bothersome cat not because she was concerned for it, but because she wants to be seen as a good person. Kako the tiger abberation is created because of her denial of her own envy, which resulted in its rampaging across their town while Hanekawa herself remains blissfully disconnected. Kako believes that Hanekawa would "create a whole army of monsters" to keep herself pure. Part of her arc is Hanekawa coming in touch with her own emotions so that she could cry, laugh, hate, and love freely.
• Locked into Strangeness: After the events of Nekomonogatari White she has black and silver hair, like the stripes of a white tiger, although she dyes it all black to keep from standing out at school.
• Meaningful Name: 'Tsubasa' means 'wing' and 'Hanekawa' means 'feather river'. A girl with feathered wings is superficially an angel, but she struggles to keep her balance and can plunge down at any second. 'Tsubasa' itself also has 'feather' twice in it; she wouldn’t be unbalanced if not for her family name - if not for her adopted family. It also has connotations of a bird covering her eggs or chicks with wings.
• Ms. Fanservice: As the Meddlesome Cat, she runs around in either racy looking lingerie or clothes that are loose around the shoulders.
  • Later in Koyomimonogatari, Hanekawa herself appears in a Beach Episode featuring only herself wearing a very skimpy swimsuit.
• Not Brainwashed: Once she had drained her parents, the meddlesome cat tried to leave. She didn't let it and instead continued wandering around beating people up and draining them, making her far more dangerous than the aberration is normally supposed to be.
• Parental Neglect: She has no idea who her father is. Her mother married her stepfather and then killed herself, leaving her in the custody of her stepfather, who married another woman, and then when he died her stepmother in turn married another man. Both hate her for being so unnaturally perfect and ignore and neglect her to a rather harsh degree when not simply denying her things like her own room.
  • The irony is that her perfection only highlighted their own faults, which is why they hated her unnatural perfection, showing their flaws. They were only together for appearances sake, and had planned divorce when Tsubasa graduated and moved out, to avoid scandal for abandoning an orphan.
• Plain Palate: After noticing Hanekawa put no seasoning on her prepared breakfast, Senjougahara finds out that Hanekawa doesn’t like any kind of seasoning on her food. However, unlike most examples, this isn’t because Hanekawa’s a Picky Eater but rather a reflection of her personality as a person who refuses to fix something even if it is undesirable.
• Playful Cat Smile: While possessed, she tends to have a real cat smile: carefree and arrogant.
• Power Incontinence: The cat's energy drain can't be turned off. Its touch is always harmful.
• Punny Name: Her given name is spelled with the kanji for "wings", and her surname means "river of feathers".
• School Uniforms are the New Black: You can't blame a ghost like Mayoi for constantly wearing the same outfit, but Koyomi finds it pretty frustrating that he's yet to see Tsubasa in anything but her school uniform and pajamas.
• Ship Tease: There's a lot of ship tease with Koyomi since he's possibly more attracted to her than even his girlfriend, something that worries Senjogahara. Kizumonogatari in particular stands out. However, after her first aberration, Koyomi vowed that he would never date her.
• The Smart Girl: She has immense knowledge about the supernatural and tends to be a very good planner. Unfortunately, given her emotional issues, this makes her rather dangerous.
• Split-Personality Merge: At the end of Nekomonogatari White she finally comes to terms with her negative emotions and recombines with the meddlesome cat and fire tiger.
• Stepford Smiler: She always acts sweet and perfect in an attempt to be normal, ending up anything but as a result. She avoids any kind of confrontation or chance that she may be hurt. This mask of denying everything negative about herself and simply bottling up her emotions leads to the first Meddlesome Cat incident, which concludes with one of Araragi's more dickish moments where he simply tells her she's always going to suffer, she will never get what she wants, that she's too perfect to be human and that she should keep on being 'perfect' while bottling up her pain. This makes her one of the most mentally unhealthy members of the cast, a trait that persists until she goes against what Araragi tells her, confronts her family, gets her own room and finally becomes an actual human. She may not be happy like this, but she's healthier and less abnormal.
• Subverted Catchphrase: In "Tsubasa Cat", it turns into "I don't know everything. I don't know a single thing..."
• Superpowered Evil Side: Possession by the meddlesome cat turns her into a white-haired Cat Girl with feline agility which takes out her stress on people by draining their energy. On the other hand, the cat itself has no malice. All that's driving Tsubasa is her own grudges.
• Verbal Tic: Replaces all nas with nyas while possessed.
• Weak, but Skilled: Oshino makes it clear that meddlesome cats are very weak, but when armed with Tsubasa's incredibly deep book knowledge of the occult and offensive tactics and her pent-up malice, they may be able to rival a vampire (all but stated to be the strongest of the aberrations) in the danger they present.

Ogi Oshino

"You really don't get it. You're such a fool."

Voiced by: Kaori Mizuhashi

Ogi is a strange girl claiming to be Koyomi's underclassman as well as Meme Oshino's niece. She begins to appear in Mayoi Jiangshi, appears again later to help set Nadeko Medusa in motion and finally takes the spotlight in Ogi Formula, a story where she and Koyomi become trapped until Koyomi can solve a two year old mystery.

Her personality is quite mysterious, but she knows a great deal about many situations and appears to be rather malicious.

A character with the exact same name appears in Suruga Devil, but that Ogi claims to be a boy (and so does the prose narration in the novel). Curiouser and curiouser.

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• Ambiguous Gender: Appears in Suruga Devil wearing a boy's uniform and says she's always been a boy, but is also heard muttering that she'd forgotten she's no longer female. She's back to using a female uniform in Musubimonogatari, which takes place much later, under no comment or surprise from the other characters. Given Ogi's true nature it's possible gender is irrelevant.
• Ambiguously Human: Claims to be Oshino's niece, but Oshino has no family. Looks mostly human and doesn't appear to be an aberration, but knows things she probably shouldn't and doesn't act like a human. She also has some kind of nebulous job involving 'punishing liars', which is similar to what the aberration-devouring darkness is supposed to do. Later on, it is revealed that she is indeed an aberration, which Araragi created subconsciously because he felt he needed an "ultimate critic" for his behavior. Her "job" and the way she acts gives her the impression of being a "fake darkness", and once Araragi accepts her as himself, she'd stray from her path and the real darkness would consume her, causing her to cease to exist.
• Alliterative Name: Ogi Oshino.
• Arc Words: "Ogi Oshino is Ogi Oshino" appears throughout Ogi Formula, Sodachi Riddle and Sodachi Lost. Later arcs prove that these are words to not say if one wants to defeat Ogi, since those words would only cement the "lies" that makes her keep existing as something other than Araragi himself.
• Become a Real Boy: At the end of Owarimonogatari, Oshino Meme accepts her as his real niece. This is what saved her from being consumed by the aberration-devouring darkness, by making her previous "lie" a truth and giving a real identity for her to continue existing.
• Breaking Speech: Has a tendency to look down on people and give snarky or condescending speech when she sees someone makes a mistake, especially Araragi.
• Call-Back: Two in Koyomi Reverse; Araragi found her wearing the boy school uniform (as a nod to Suruga Devil) inside a hidden class, which she said she was unable to leave (the same one as in Ogi Formula).
• Catchphrase: "I don't know anything, Araragi-senpai; you do." After discovering who she really is, this makes much more sense.
• Cool Bike: A fixed-gear bicycle. They seem to have some affection toward bikes, and as seen in Suruga Devil, is able to do some tricks with them. This might parallel Araragi's affection toward bikes, a trait they seem to inherit when they're created.
• Creepily Long Arms: Her female uniform gives her this appearance.
• Creepy Child: Her appearance alone—paper-white skin and enormous, almost completely black eyes, along with other little quirks like her teeth never being shown—makes her spooky enough. She also has a strange hold on Araragi, knows much more than she should, and seems to be able to freely change gender without anyone noticing. To top it all off, her actions and dialogue give off the extremely unsettling impression that she's experiencing events in a meandering, nonsensical order that runs counter to both the series' publishing order and the actual order of events.
• Cryptic Conversation:
  • Her lines in "Nadeko Snake", which imply both foreknowledge of the events of the story and Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory regarding Mayoi's state of life/death during "Mayoi Jiangshi", or an even more interesting lack of knowledge of the events of "Shinobu Time". Later on, this is explained by the fact that she and Araragi shares the same knowledge. However, she doesn't know the events of "Shinobu Mail" because she hasn't been created during that time.
  • In "Shinobu Time", she implies that she has some connection to the aberration-eating darkness by stating that her line of work is the kind of thing that's been around since the beginning of time, and that it involves punishing liars.
• Custom Uniform: She wears the Naoetsu uniform, but it's darker in general—the blouse is two deep shades of red as opposed to pink/purple, and she wears a black tie and ribbons as opposed to the normal blue. She also has overly long sleeves.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Possibly the palest person in the entire show. She is also quite creepy.
• Enemy Without: Her true identity is that of a physical embodiment of Araragi's self criticism that he created subconsciously when he encountered the Darkness. She exists to force Araragi to confront his past mistakes and coerce him into solving problems by himself instead of relying on others. The reason that she's an Enemy Without and not a Spirit Advisor is because she's trying to turn him into an Ineffectual Loner rather than simply making him self-reliant.
• Final Boss: Ogi is the last antagonistic presence in the Monogatari saga.
• Graceful Loser: Admits their defeat to Araragi in Ogi Dark before being consumed by the aberration-devouring darkness. However, Meme arrived in time to invert the lies and save her and Araragi from being consumed.
• Humanoid Abomination: Ogi Dark reveals that she's an aberration born of Araragi's self-criticism and perceived dependence on others.
• Image Song:
  • "decent black", the first opening of Owarimonogatari. The lyrics are Foreshadowing.
  • "Dark cherry mystery" in Owarimonogatari II.
• Manipulative Bastard: She sets off the plot of "Nadeko Medusa" by offering Nadeko off-handed remarks regarding the Polar Snake God and the snake talismans.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: Subverted in Koyomi Reverse. At first, Araragi thought that Ogi is his mirror image. However, Ogi explained that there is no "mirror world". What Araragi see is the 20% of light that conventional mirrors absorb, which contains people's regret, desire and suppressed past. She later helped Araragi solve the case by handling him a black mirror, which absorbs all light.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: A unique and rather weird example. Ogi's purpose of creation was to become Araragi's self-criticism system against his over-reliance to people. This however, caused her to follow extremes to turn Araragi into an Ineffectual Loner, including but not limited to advising him to do things himself or with her; talk down or outright mock him; and exploiting aberrations and barriers to ensure that Oshino Meme would be unable to enter the city during the course of Owarimonogatari.
• Remember the New Guy?: It's technically due to Anachronic Order, but she suddenly appears without fanfare in "Mayoi Jiangshi", and Araragi is oddly open with her. This strange introduction only adds to her unnatural aura. Araragi formally makes her acquaintance in "Ogi Formula", but they immediately assume the dynamic they have in "Mayoi Jiangshi", which the normally guarded Araragi finds unsettling.
• The Reveal:
  • She's definitely not Meme's niece. As revealed by Kaiki in Koimonogatari, Meme has a total and mysterious lack of any kind of family.
  • She's an aberration, courtesy of Araragi. Although to be fair to him, he didn't consciously create her.
• Red Right Hand: Her pale face, pitch black eyes and tendency to never show her teeth. Even in summer, she always wears gloves, full pantyhose and a turtleneck; which gave most people the impression parts of her body were black but the cover of Owarimonogatari's first book pretty much confirmed that her body is normal.
• Shadow Archetype: She is literally this for Araragi in the most Jungian sense of the term.
• Spanner in the Works: Apparently Gaen's plan was to make Shinobu into the snake god, not Nadeko. Ogi ruined that plan, however.
• Weirdness Censor: Other characters seem to realize something about her isn't quite right, but they're always quick to write it off as nothing. For example, in "Suruga Devil", she appears to Suruga as a boy despite already having made several appearances as a girl. Suruga points this out immediately—"Weren't you a girl?" Ogi simply claims that Suruga is misremembering; (s)he's always been a boy. Suruga accepts this without hesitation. Later, Ogi asks Suruga about her period, apparently expecting her to be forthright with that with a boy, which Suruga, once again, points out, causing Ogi to mutter, "Oh, that's right, I'm a boy right now," which Suruga hears her say and still ignores.

Sodachi Oikura

"I despise them, despise them so much I feel like I'm going to die."

Voiced by: Marina Inoue

A girl that Koyomi has shared a class with since at least his first year. She hates him utterly for apparently being better than her at math. After an incident where she was scapegoated for a crime her teacher actually committed she stopped attending school.

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• Abusive Parents: Her father would beat her mother, who would beat her in return where the bruises wouldn't show. Eventually, her father divorced and she was left to take care of her mother, who would do nothing but mutter to herself about how it was her daughter's fault.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: A brunette in the light novels, grey/silver-haired in the anime.
• Broken Bird: Very much so broken.
• Class Representative: Formerly.
• Embarrassing Nickname: "How Much", a pun on her surname (お幾ら, o-ikura) and a reference to her personality.
• Everybody Hates Mathematics: Inverted. She loves mathematics, but has issues with everyone else.
• Failed a Spot Check: Deconstructed and Played for Drama. She began taking care of her mother after her divorce, even after she stopped eating or moving from the corner of the room. Which is where she eventually starved to death, but Sodachi failed to notice and accept this thanks to her own poor mental state.
• Foil: To Araragi. They are both hardworking, kind people and they love mathematics. But while Araragi had his family in order to keep him away from the darkest places, even when he was damaged by the incident with Sodachi and sought loneliness on purpose, Sodachi had to survive on her own, having to develop a hatred towards Araragi in order to deal with her problems. Even if she still cares about him deep down, at least in a sisterly fashion. Which is better explored in the Zoku story. "Mirror Sodachi" isn't the opposite of the Sodachi we know, but rather, the embodiment of her regrets of not being able to get closer to Araragi before leaving the town, showing that she still values the time the two of them spend together when they were children and wishes thing would have turned out different. As harsh as her criticism towards Araragi may be, she makes a lot of valid points about how he doesn't know what he is made out of and how negatively It's affecting him.
• Forgotten Childhood Friend: Sodachi is the embodiment of this archetype but with a huge twist, Koyomi forgetting about her caused her a lot of trouble (although it wasn't completely his fault) and her later obsession/hatred towards Araragi is the only thing that kept her from completely breaking down as a human being... Yeah, It's as bad as it sounds.
• Girlish Pigtails: Hinting that she was not able to move on from her traumatizing childhood.
• Image Song: "Mathemagics" and "Evening shower equation".
• Irrational Hatred: So far as Koyomi can tell, she utterly loathes him simply because he was able to score slightly higher than her in math and people don't call her by the nickname she wants. The truth is obviously more complicated, but the actual reasons for hating him still aren't fair, which she admits.
• Large Ham: Sodachi is probably the only character in the series that can actually match Araragi in terms of hamminess.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Believe it or not, Araragi is this to her, in an insane, twisted way. Blaming Koyomi for her problems was the only thing keeping her sanity together for a long time. Even after making it clear that she was being unfair to him and the two of them somewhat parting in friendly terms, she still depends on her slight grudge on Araragi as a way of dealing with things.
• Madness Mantra: She has several throughout her arc.
• Mirror Character: She and Araragi have a lot more in common than what she would like to admit. Being Large Hams, with strong ethics and a love for mathematics. This somewhat gets played for laughs when the two of them end up living together for real, mostly because of the actions of Araragi's parents. Araragi himself doesn't mind because he can't even think of Sodachi as a member of the opposite sex, but when Gahara herself finds out she completely snaps and with good reason. They basically have a tendency to play the hero role, have known each other since childhood and share common interests like mathematics. Sodachi has to take drastic actions to get the two of them back together...
• Mouthscreen
• Muggle: She is not aware of the supernatural, and is neither an aberration nor afflicted by one.
• Parental Abandonment: Part of her arc is finding the reason for that and coming to terms with it. And then her absent father reappears at the end of Sodachi Fiasco.
• The Scapegoat: In Koyomi's first year she was blamed for leaking test answers in a study group even though she was the one who brought forth an investigation committee to find out who actually did it. In truth, both she and Koyomi knew the actual culprit: The teacher investigated the notes and papers the study group used and changed the test questions so her students would score higher and give her a better evaluation.
• Selective Obliviousness: In the two years she spent after her mother starved herself to death she was too mentally unhealthy to consciously notice the obvious but ever since then there's been a nagging feeling that she's been avoiding thinking about something very obvious. After Araragi finally tells her the obvious truth she thanks him and starts moving on with her life.
• Shadow Archetype: She is one to Araragi, having quite a lot of similarities with him. But still isn't a villainess, rather her story serves to expose a lot of Koyomi's Fatal Flaws, she is the one girl Araragi truly couldn't help.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: When Sodachi starts living in the Araragi household, her interactions with Koyomi get reduced to this. Koyomi says he can't even see her as a woman, while Sodachi keeps a lot of her sarcastic criticism towards him. The two of them obviously do care about each other regardless.

Seiu Higasa

Voiced by: Yōko Hikasa

A member of the basketball team with Suruga Kanbaru.

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• You Are in Command Now: During her second year, she was the vice-captain of the basketball team, but since Suruga retired from the club because of the effects of the Rainy Devil, she became the new captain.

Aberrations

Shinobu Oshino (Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade)

^{Click here to see her true form}

"Since you've seen me naked now, I guess that means I'll have to marry you, my master."

Voiced by: Aya Hirano (Hyakumonogatari), Maaya Sakamoto (anime)

Voiced by (English): Cristina Valenzuela (Audiobook)

Formerly Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade, the Iron-blooded, Hot-blooded, Cold-blooded Vampire. When Koyomi finds her dying and begging for life in Kizumonogatari, he offers her his blood, expecting to die—but she turns him into her vampire servant instead, and has him reclaim the various body parts stolen by vampire hunters. After this is done, she tries to provoke Koyomi to kill her to get his humanity back, but he realizes her true intentions and can't go through with it. Instead, Koyomi takes nearly all of her power away in order to become mostly-human, leaving her in a near-powerless eight-year-old body and rendering her unable to survive without his own blood. Oshino then renames her, giving her his own surname and the given name "Shinobu".

Throughout all of Bakemonogatari, Shinobu never speaks; when she finally starts talking again in Nisemonogatari, she reveals that she was sulking. Nowadays she lives in Koyomi's shadow, taking Oshino's place as a source of knowledge about supernatural creatures. By sucking Koyomi's blood, she can give him his vampire abilities back, and she herself can assume older, more combat-capable forms.

In "Mayoi Jiangshi", she and Koyomi travel back in time to save Mayoi from becoming a ghost, and the consequences of this incident shed some light on what Shinobu was thinking and doing towards the end of Bakemonogatari.'' In "Shinobu Time", we learn a little about her past and the only other vampire servant she ever made besides Koyomi.

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• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Right in her name. However, she says that because it is so sharp, as soon as the body part cut touches the wound inflicted everything connects back together immediately, which means it can only cut aberrations. It's about twice as long as Araragi is tall and is something of a memento from her first companion.
• Action Girl: At full power, she'd basically be the strongest known being in the entire series. Whenever Araragi is forced to rely on her she can generally muscle her way through any of his problems even at partial power.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Her speech is quite old-fashioned, and she uses the pronoun “washi” generally associated with the elderly. She is nearly 600, after all.
• Bait the Dog: In Kizumonogatari, she's a bit arrogant but otherwise friendly and charming enough. Then when she has her body restored, she and Koyomi get hungry. Koyomi heads to the convenience store, while Kiss-Shot reminds him about the whole 'man eating monster' thing by casually devouring Guillotinecutter in front of him after he tries attacking her again. Hunger for a vampire means eating people, not food. On the other hand, she's also trying to make herself look villainous so he'll kill her.
• Big Damn Heroes: She's more attached to Koyomi than she would like to admit, so during the first and second meddlesome cat incidents she leaps out to save him after he stupidly puts himself into mortal danger.
• Blush Sticker: Contrasting her sarcastic and occasionally vicious personality, she has permanent blush marks on her face.
• Bungled Suicide: During Mayoi Jiangshi, Shinobu assumes that her alternate self must have committed suicide after wiping out the human race. She did try to burn herself in the sunlight, but it turns out that her immortality and regeneration are so powerful that she eventually gave up. In that scenario, the only way to die is for another vampire to suck out all her blood, which Araragi and her other self do for her.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: As Kiss-Shot, she's very well-endowed. So much that Araragi is worried he'll get distracted by them and thinks about "building up endurance" to large chests.
• Casting a Shadow: She can apparently manipulate Koyomi's shadow and eventually begins living inside it.
• Characterization Marches On: When first introduced, she's completely silent and listless, apparently due to the shock of losing her full vampire form. As the series progresses, she is shown to be haughty and extremely talkative. The explanation for the transition? She's been sulking. For months.
• Curtains Match the Window: Blond hair is fairly normal, but she also has bright golden eyes to match.
• Dance Battler: She seems to like dancelike spinning kicks
• Death Seeker: In Kizumonogatari, she was looking for a place to die. This is apparently quite common for vampires.
• Decoy Protagonist: Kabukimonogatari/Mayoi Jiangshi is a Mayoi arc in name only and focuses more heavily on Shinobu. Mayoi returns the favor for Onimonogatari/Shinobu Time.
• Despair Event Horizon: After Koyomi died in the world of Mayoi Jiangshi, she vampirized the human race and then tried to die. She failed, leaving her badly burnt but healthy and without even death to look forward to while having to sit around thinking endlessly about how she was partially responsible for his death and ended the world over something so stupid.
• Disproportionate Retribution: During the Black Hanekawa incident, if Araragi hadn't found her, she had planned to destroy the human race, though she didn't tell him that until much later. However, this was really beyond her capabilities: She can't properly feed off of anyone but Araragi himself. Of course, failing to find her also meant she couldn't save him from Black Hanekawa, resulting in his death and her regaining her powers. Bad timing there, huh?
• Dynamic Entry: In episode 15, when she appears to save Koyomi from Tsubasa by performing a string of lightning fast flips and handsprings before kicking Hanekawa across the area and into a large light post.
• Elective Mute: After losing most of her vampiric abilities at the end of Kizumonogatari, she doesn't say a single word for many weeks. Turns out she was just sulking, and after her reconcilation with Koyomi, she becomes quite chatty.
• Empty Shell: Subverted. During the first season and about half of Nisemonogatari, she's silent and stays huddled up in the corner staring at nothing. She's called the shell of a vampire. However, it turns out she was just sulking the entire time and begins berating Araragi afterward.
• First-Name Basis: To her amusement and the amazement of everyone he mentioned her to, Araragi called her adult form Kiss-Shot rather than Heartunderblade. Kiss-Shot is referred to as her true name, though what exactly that means isn't clear. For her part, it seems to remind her of her first companion, a samurai.
• God Guise: Centuries ago while traveling, she saved a number of communities by accidentally making it rain via destruction of a lake and they decided she was a god. She figured that was okay too, but since she was being seen as a god and not a vampire it caused problems in the form of a corrective law that came to eliminate her for not acting according to her true nature as an aberration while also refusing to change into a god for real.
• Going Commando: Freeze-Frame Bonus of her assault on Black Hanekawa in Episode 15 shows that the only thing she has on under that dress is a bandaid to cover her naughty bits.
• Heal It with Blood: Due to being a vampire, Shinobu's blood can heal other people's wounds it makes contact with.
• Immortals Fear Death: Zig-Zagged. She has lived for 500 years and came to Japan thinking she was ready to die, but after she's nearly killed by vampire hunters, she realizes she's too afraid of death and desperately begs Koyomi to give her his blood to save her. However, knowing that her death would make Koyomi into a human again, she gains the will to die and tries to make Koyomi kill her, only for him to force her to live on.
• In a Single Bound: A full-blooded vampire is strong enough to jump all the way from Antarctica to Japan.
• Inconsistent Spelling: The translated anime prefers to hyphenate her names: Kiss-Shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade.
• It Amused Me: Claims she's just helping out Koyomi because it amuses her in Nisemonogatari, though eventually she prods Koyomi into 'demanding' her help.
• Laughing Mad: At the end of Mayoi Jiangshi her alternate self laughs while crying blood, apparently bitterly amused at how much she screwed up.
• Leitmotif: "King of Aberrations", a combination of haughty violin and harpsichord.
• Little Miss Badass: Tiny and lacking most of her powers, but still powerful enough to drain most aberrations and knock out adult humans.
• Lonely Together: She hoped for one of two endings in Kizumonogatari. First, Araragi kills her to become a human. Second, Araragi stays a vampire with her and they stay together.
• Magic Skirt: Thoroughly averted, see the Vapor Wear entry below
• Named Weapons: Her sword is named Kokoro Watari ("heart crossing").
• Our Vampires Are Different: After having most of her blood drained by Koyomi, she lost the ability to shapeshift, use superstrength and a huge number of other powers. At the beginning of the series she's referred to as a remnant of a vampire and apparently isn't recognized as Kiss-Shot anymore.
• Overly Long Name: Her former name was Kiss-Shot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade. Not wanting to bother with such a long name, Koyomi shortens it to Kiss-Shot, much to her amusement.
• Person of Holding: She keeps the Kokoro Watari sword inside her own body. She "sheathes" it by stabbing herself with it.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Both times her pair bond with Araragi is severed, she immediately seeks to restore it, even when that means going from her full power back to her barely-a-vampire Shinobu form, and she returns his Together in Death promise with her own.
• Pointy Ears: She has pointed ears to show her nature as a vampire.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: She seems to prefer being shoeless, as she tends to be barefoot a lot, especially in her youngest-looking form. She's a vampire and very childish, and it makes sense she would find it hard to wear shoes in her compressed size when she grows bigger from drinking blood and was accustomed to wearing shoes in her normal mature size.
• Punny Name: The kanji for "Shinobu" (忍, meaning 'to suffer/endure') is a heart (心) under a blade (刃). In a more subtle example, an acerola is a type of cherry and Orion is The Hunter...
• Reality Warper: In full power, Kiss Shot is just short of omnipotent, being capable of such feats as bringing about the ending of the human race in a feat of petulant rage. Gods are (rightfully) horrified of her. Even as a child, she has enough power to time-travel on a whim, despite never having even tried such a feat before (though it did require she completely drain the power of a temple).
• Really 700 Years Old: She's 598 years old, although says she's 500 to make herself sound younger.
• Repetitive Name: "Shinobu Oshino" is written using the 忍 kanji in the first and last name.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Modesty is not a trait she possesses. She's more than willing to take a bath with Koyomi.
• Signature Laugh: "Ka ka ka!"
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Mayoi Jiangshi is supposedly an arc about attempting to prevent Mayoi from becoming an aberration, but it's actually an exploration of the relationship between Shinobu and Koyomi. Mayoi barely appears.
• Statuesque Stunner: At full height, she's easily the tallest of any character shown. So tall, in fact, Koyomi fits quite well sitting in her lap.
• Stylish Sunhats: She occasionally wears a wide-brimmed sunhat with a white ribbon.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: The supernatural part being her vampiric nature.
• Tears of Blood: Her tears look like blood. This is apparently just how vampires cry.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Donuts, specifically Mister Donuts as the side stories reflect how she didn't react to other kind of donuts.
• Tsundere: She doesn't want to admit that she likes Koyomi and helps him out because she actually wants to. Her attitude gets her the tsundere label from him.
• Vampire Lolita Archetype: Shinobu was originally a powerful vampire named Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade who has lived for more than 500 years. After she lost most of her powers, she appears as an eight-year-old blonde girl. By sucking enough blood, she can regain her original form which is an attractive adult woman. Though Shinobu is more on the Growing Up Sucks side instead - her childish appearance is a Clipped-Wing Angel form that she's initially forced into but eventually comes to like her current state, because her normal state is a Statuesque Stunner so powerful and regal that it isolates her from others and prevents her from being herself.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Vampires generally tire of life and can't bring themselves to keep feeding off people over time. Kiss-Shot was sick of it and intended to die until Koyomi saved her. She almost resolved to keep on living until she realized she wasn't actually important to him, so she tried to get him to kill her.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Alternate Universe Kiss-Shot becomes the engineer of the human race's demise out of grief over losing Koyomi and immensely regretted it afterward, but couldn't do anything about it anymore.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: At the end of Kizumonogatari she eats Guillotinecutter after he attacks her in order to get Koyomi to hate her and therefore kill her. It works at first, but then he realizes she's not as heartless as she trying to act: She refuses to harm Hanekawa when she attempts to interfere.

Seishirou Shishirui

Voiced by: Hiroshi Kamiya (young), Rikiya Koyama (adult)

Seishirou Shishirui is the first minion of Shinobu (then Kiss-Shot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade). Prior to his vampirization, he was a warrior renowned for his skill in slaying aberrations.

400 years ago, he met Kiss-Shot who was faking herself as a god in a certain village, and visited her occasionally. However, an incident with the Kurayami killed him and injured Kiss-Shot, prompting her to resurrect him as a vampire. This does not please him however, and he committed suicide by sunlight.

15 years prior to the series, he finally regained form and is about to be fully revived in Shinobu Mail, where he served as the main antagonist throughout the arc.

---

• Alas, Poor Villain: He was never reunited with Kiss-Shot and calls for her in agony during his final moments.
• Alliterative Name: Seishirou Shishirui.
• And I Must Scream: After his failed attempt at suicide his body had supposedly been trapped in a state of regeneration followed by immediate deterioration for over a thousand years. However, he may not have been conscious enough to fully experience the agony.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Before Kisshot turned him into a vampire, he was an aberration hunter.
• Arc Villain: Of the second volume of Owarimonogatari.
• BFS: The original wielder of the original Kokorowatari.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: His partially restored human-like form can easily be mistaken for a girl if not for his voice. After he is fully restored, he gains a bit more male and mature looks.
• Dying Wish: One word, said repeatedly: Kiss-Shot.
• From a Single Cell: He managed to regenerate from the cloud of ash that formed after he committed suicide by sunlight.
• Older Than They Look: He's over 400 years old.
• Pointy Ears: Like all the vampires.
• Signature Laugh: A very corny-sounding laugh, which is actually unique enough that Shinobu only needed that clue to recognize him.
• Suicide by Sunlight: According to Shinobu, he committed suicide by exposing himself to sunlight.
• Super-Speed: Come built-in with being a vampire. He actually exploited this by immediately changing to his vampire form to ensure he gets the first attack in his duel against Araragi. This fails, as Araragi took a third option.
• Super-Strength: Again, being a vampire and stuff...
• Verbal Tic: "-de gozaru", which is usually portrayed being used by samurai.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Loathes the fact that he is now a vampire.

Rainy Devil

An immortal aberration who grants people's wishes— or at least, the subconscious desire behind it. Its modus operandi involves taking over its victim and using their body to grant their respective wishes.

The Rainy Devil appears as a shady figure wearing a raincoat and a pair of boots.

Its known hosts as of Zoku Owarimonogatari are Suruga, Rouka Numachi, a girl known as Rouka Hanadori, and Tooe Gaen.

---

• Enemy Without: Began as this to Tooe Gaen, but has since took on a life of its own.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: It sports a pair of glowing eyes, and can be really, really violent.
• In the Hood: Its head is concealed by its raincoat's hood.
• Shadowed Face, Glowing Eyes: It wears a hooded raincoat, covering its face in darkness, and its eyes are represented as white dots.
• Super-Speed: Can move very quickly, alongside having Super-Strength.
• Super-Strength: Hits hard, as Araragi found out the hard way.
• The Worf Effect: One-slashed by Araragi in "Shinobu Mail", although Shinobu acknowledged it as "quite a nuisance" since she had been fighting him before Araragi arrives.

Occult Research Club

Meme Oshino

"Those gods are just a sketchy bunch."

Voiced by: Takahiro Sakurai

Voiced by (English): Keith Silverstein (Audiobook)

Meme Oshino is a thirty something year old man who arrived in town following the vampire Kiss-Shot, the one who turned Koyomi into a vampire. As Oshino values balance above all, he does not pick sides between humans or aberrations and instead will try to make sure neither has an advantage over the other. Despite this, he will sell his services to others, though he will also generally hide what he knows.

When asked which he values more between the real thing or a fake that impersonates it so well so as to be indistinguishable from the real thing, he believes there is no meaningful distinction between the two and views them both as equally valuable.

---

• Badass Normal: He's just a normal human being with a knowledge of the occult, but he managed to literally steal Kiss-Shot's heart without her noticing and can perform stunts like judo throwing crab gods. Is also worth mentioning that in Kizumonogatari, he managed to stop the attacks of the three vampire hunters at the same time, with his bare hands. And those three vampire hunters were able to defeat (a severely weakened) Kiss-Shot while teaming up, mind you.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: He doesn't like to assign values like good or evil, preferring to keep a neutral balance. If he helps one side, he'll generally help the other afterward.
• Big Brother Mentor: He's a valuable source of knowledge and assistance, but he'll also rebuke Koyomi for his numerous failings.
• But Now I Must Go: After a few arcs, he eventually disappears from the town without saying a thing. He doesn't like goodbyes or staying in one place too long. Which is probably a great way to avert Too Cool to Live.
• Catchphrase: "Did something good happen?"
• Cool Old Guy: Contrary to most of the cast of the first season, he's around thirty or so and vastly more experienced.
• Dead Man Writing: In the alternate world of Mayoi Jiangshi, adult Alternate!Mayoi gives Koyomi a letter detailing what happened when he and Shinobu time travelled and how to stop Kiss-Shot, heavily implying that he, along with Kaiki and Kagenui, died trying to take her out.
• Distracted by the Sexy: He gives this as the reason he lost to the meddlesome cat 20 times in three days in Nekomonogatari Black, but he's clearly not being serious. While a low-level aberration, Tsubasa's knowledge, ability and emotional issues make it extremely dangerous.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: He dresses like a deadbeat normally, but to help Senjogahara he puts on some proper priest's robes and suddenly looks presentable.
• Inconsistent Spelling: The translated light novels render his given name as Mèmè, presumably just to make the pronunciation clear.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He'll always ask for a large payment before offering his assistance, but if he screws up, he'll make up for it as well as he can. He's also both nicer than he likes to act and pretty fond of Koyomi.
• Leitmotif: "Ruins", a harmonica ditty named after the abandoned building he inhabits.
• Mr. Exposition: For the first part of the story, he's generally the one to explain what's going on, though after leaving town Koyomi and the others generally have to figure it out on their own.
• Put on a Bus: In Tsubasa Cat, he leaves the town and parts to an unknown place after he feels he stayed too much in it. Even though he hasn't reappeared for the moment, his presence is still present throughout the series.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Compared to the con man Kaiki and the Knight Templar Kagenui, Oshino is much more mellow and willing to listen or mediate.

Deishuu Kaiki

"I'm doing it for the money, naturally."

Voiced by: Shin-ichiro Miki

Kaiki is an old classmate and acquaintance of Oshino and an admitted and proud con man. He claims not to believe in aberrations and has an obsession with making money through any means possible. He is introduced during Karen Bee after he is interrupted while scamming middle school students. His personality is very dark and gloomy, leading to an easy association with crows. Despite his inherent selfishness, it is difficult to classify him as truly ill natured: He has no malice and appears to follow his own moral compass.

When asked which he values more between the real thing or a fake that impersonates it so well so as to be indistinguishable from the real thing, he believes that the fake is more valuable because it is trying so hard that it becomes more real than the real thing.

---

• And Then What?: After his attempt to trick Nadeko fails he tries a different approach and confronts her directly, pointing out that she's so bored of being a god that something as stupid as Cat's Cradle can occupy her time until she kills Koyomi. What's she going to do after that?
• Animal Motifs: Black crows tend to gather to him outdoors. Sometimes it looks like he's talking with their mouths instead of his own.
• Anti-Villain: Even in Nisemonogatari, when he looks like a stereotypical villain, he much prefers chatting with the heroes than trying to fight them. In Koimonogatari we find out he's not that bad of a guy after all.
• Arc Villain: He's the first of the conmen that deceived Senjogahara's family when she lost her weight and shows up again in the present during Karen Bee after setting a Wreath Fire Bee on her.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Towards Nadeko. It makes more sense in context, but it proves devestatingly effective.
  Kaiki: "Sengoku, you said you didn't want to become a god, right? That you became one against your wishes? Then... did you want to become a manga artist?"
• Big Bad: The closest thing that the series has for one in the first season, as he is the cause of the problems of Senjougahara, Nadeko, Karen and Tsukihi (in an indirect way in the cases of Nadeko and Tsukihi) and takes an antagonistic (although passive) role in Karen Bee.
• Blatant Lies: In Hitagi End, Ep3. Considers offer for giving up the job. Accepts payments for such offers. Ignores and continue said job.
• Break Them by Talking: Nadeko absolutely loses it when he tells her he read the manga she's been leaving in her closet. He's actually pretty complimentary about it too, which just makes it worse for her.
• Catchphrase: "The lesson for you/me here is...". Oddly enough, he doesn't say it at all during Hitagi End, despite the fact that he's had it for long enough that Kagenui mentions it in reference to him during Tsukihi Phoenix.
• Con Man: And very proud of his job.
• Covers Always Lie: Invoked in Koimonogatari. Right at the start of the novel, he explains that the reader has been conned for it is he and not the cover-featured Senjogahara that will be the narrator.
• Cruel to Be Kind: He drove Senjogahara's parents to a divorce because their family was incurably sick. Needed an amputation.
• Dark Is Evil: Played straight in his first appearences. He wears black clothes, has a devilesque design, is amoral and only cares in obtaining money without taking in consideration how his actions could affect others. However...
  • Dark Is Not Evil: In Koimonogatari, when his thoughts are explored, is revealed that some of his most cruel actions (like making Sejougahara's parents divorce) were actually his way of helping people, showing that he is not that amoral after all. Also, he helped Senjougahara for pure altruism, using the excuse that she can pay him later as a way to make her believe he is in his con man persona.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Which he is about to in Hitagi End. And eventually does.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: His skin is grey for some odd reason.
• Establishing Character Moment: After poisoning Karen with the Bee, he delivers a winding Breaking Speech about just how much he loves money as she writhes on the floor and can hardly understand him. Then he really drives it home by taking the time to pull out her wallet and pocket what little cash she had been carrying.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In "Hitagi End", Hitagi says that she'll turn to prostitution if necessary to come up with the money to hire him to deceive Nadeko. He immediately throws his drink in her face, though he still doesn't accept the deal that quickly.
• Fangs Are Evil: Not proper fangs, but his teeth are clearly sharper and more pronounced than most characters. Including the ones who are actually vampires!
• Fatal Flaw: Whenever he tries to do something good, it always fails. He doesn't understand people well enough.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Kaiki claims not to believe in the supernatural despite interacting with it frequently and apparently using supernatural abilities himself. He considers it all delusions and lies. Strangely enough, he might actually be right: He can replicate the effects of things with hypnosis and has actually researched supposedly mysterious plagues and discovered they never occurred in the first place, let alone going unexplained.
• Hellish Pupils: Small and oval-shaped, giving him a demonic look.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: He'll infect middle schoolers with dangerous fevers and steal their pocket money while they're unconscious, but he actually does have his own set of values and will even act almost altruistically to preserve them.
• Jerkass Has a Point: The end of Koimonogatari. Koyomi finds him taking the snake god out of Nadeko. After getting questioned about what he's doing there, he turns it back on Koyomi, slamming his Chronic Hero Syndrome in a spectacular way.
  Koyomi: Kaiki?! What are you doing here?
  Kaiki: I could ask you the same thing. You're the reason for this, after all.
  Koyomi: Huh? What do you mean?
  Kaiki: You know what I mean. You want to help everyone, but sometimes you can't do anything. Senjougahara became stronger because you were at her side, but Sengoku became this way because of you. Cut ties with her. Don't let her remember. Let her move on. If you stay at her side, all you're going to do is hurt her.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: He got away with tricking the middle schoolers and infecting Karen with nothing more than a warning to get out of town. When he comes back to town, he seems to feel a little bad about the whole thing, not that he would admit it. After curing Nadeko, on his way out of town he's ambushed by the middle school boy that put a snake curse on Nadeko long ago, who blames him for everything and attacks him, possibly fatally.
  • Due to his very alive presence in Hanamonogatari, which is chronologically some months after he tricked Nadeko, the last blow he took from the kid likely only knocked him out in the process.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: As soon as Koyomi warns him to leave in Nisemonogatari, he agrees, knowing full well he'd run out his Karma Houdini Warranty and probably get his ass kicked if he didn't. He manages to sell some info about Tsukihi to Yozuru Kagenui on the way out, making this trip an overall success for him.
• Lack of Empathy: Money is the only thing that matters to him. He does not give a damn about how many schoolkids fall victim to the curses he sells, as long as he gets some dough out of them. Well, money and his fake daughter Kanbaru Suruga, that is, which leads to him lending his assistance in Hitagi End.
• Leitmotif: "Ominous", a sinister, creepy cello track. It gets a strangely upbeat remix for in "Hitagi End."
• Looks Like Cesare: He's deathly pale and angular with hair that is actually shaped up into horns, though when the story follows his own perspective his features are less exaggerated and his hair is normal.
• Morality Pet: He's motivated entirely by money in everything he does... except when Kanbaru Surugu is involved. For her, he'll waive all fees, even if she's not even that closely involved in what's going on.
• Noble Demon: States that everything he does is for the sole purpose of making money and while this is in part true, in Hitagi End he goes through various different possible reasons he could act upon to help Senjogahara and Koyomi defeat Nadeko while systematically rejecting them for being a bit too out of character, despite apparently wanting to help. A proper motive is finally settled on when he decides that both of them probably know Kanbaru, which is reason enough for him to help.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: He comes back to town on the pretext of keeping Kanbaru safe, but probably really to help Senjogahara. In the end, he got clubbed severely by some crazy kid after successfully saving Nadeko.
• Not Quite Dead: Even though Koimonogatari's ending implies the kid he tricked in the past killed him, he appears in Hanamonogatari (which is chronologically the last entry of the franchise) alive and recovered. Probably he just fainted when the kid knocked him.
• Obviously Evil: Along with his hairdo and manner of dress, he speaks in a sinister drawl and makes his first appearance surrounded by dead trees against a blood-red sky.
• Only Sane Man
  • Contrasting all the other narrators so far, in Hitagi End he's mellow, reserved, down to Earth and his perspective even shows the world as it surely must be rather than the twisted version the other characters see. We even see actual background characters, his internal monologue is baffled at the way people speak, especially about Hanekawa. Somehow, the villainous conman is the one with the most normal view of the world out of every character seen so far.
  • In particular, he seems to find Koyomi's paedophile tendencies kinda creepy. At the end of the arc, they finally run across each other and to Kaiki he's a stupid meddlesome kid who doesn't understand anything and just makes things worse, which is a view the story seems to largely support.
• Pet the Dog: Every once in a while he does things that are uncharacteristic and yet completely in character for him. At the beginning of Hitagi End he agrees to help Senjogahara and Araragi for next to nothing and two years ago he crushed the cult that tricked Senjogahara's mother in the first place.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: After deceiving Nadeko fails he instead just tells her how completely terrible she is and what a waste it is that she abandoned everything in her life to try being a god, something that bores her.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Lacking other options, Senjogahara goes to him and hires him to deceive Nadeko.
• Unreliable Narrator: The entire beginning of Hitagi End is him letting us know that he's going to tell a story and whether or not it's true doesn't really matter, nor what parts are false. He quickly goes through about three different versions of why he'd be making a New Year's shrine visit, none of which is the answer you'd expect for why he'd be there: To steal the money people offer to the shrines. Oddly enough, his narration is by far both the most normal in attitude and the least exaggerated in visual presentation.
• Villains Never Lie: Has a lot of fun zigzagging this.
• Villains Out Shopping: During "Tsukihi Phoenix".
• Will Not Tell a Lie: In Hitagi End he claims never to break promises and, surprisingly, Senjogahara agrees and says that he never once lied to her at any point.
• Would Hurt a Child: Sells life-threatening curses to middle-schoolers, near fatally poisons another and threatens to punch a girl if she keeps spouting silly catchphrases.

Yodzuru Kagenui

"Don't force your ideals onto others."

Voiced by: Ryōko Shiraishi

Yodzuru is the second of Oshino's college associates and unlike the previous two does not work for money but merely because she views herself as a hero of justice. She is an exorcist of immortal beings, believing they hurt and prey on human beings. She is rather, aggressive, judgmental and possesses a distaste or even hatred for things she views as fakes.

When asked which she values more between the real thing or a fake that impersonates it so well so as to be indistinguishable from the real thing, she instantly replies that the real thing is more valuable.

---

• Combat Stilettos: Platform combat stilettos.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Poor Koyomi.
• Hypocrite: Delivers an angry Breaking Speech to Koyomi about his arrogance in presuming to decide for his family about letting Tsukihi continue to live with them even though she's a phoenix. Note her arrogance in presuming to decide for someone else's family, except her version involves killing Koyomi's sister.
• Dramatic High Perching: Wears very steep platform high heels and perches in high places. She even perches atop Koyomi's head and Yotsugi's finger. She is actually under a curse that prevents her from being able to stand directly on the earth.
• Knight Templar: When asked by Koyomi the reason why she targets Tsukihi, she responds by replying that she does it just because she can't let aberrations "pretend" to be human, as she is an ally of justice, and aberrations that are "pretending" to be human are evil.
• Leitmotif: "Onmyoji", a rather uneasy track that draws on Japanese koto, drums, and wood flute.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Gives perhaps the most vicious beating in the story up to that point to a near fully vampirized Koyomi. It's so bad that even with his full regenerative powers he's so completely trashed that he's drawn completely differently to represent the damage done.
• Talking the Monster to Death: She leaves because Koyomi couldn't bring himself to view her as evil and therefore fight all out against her.
• Theme Naming: After the trigonometric functions along with Yotsugi and Tadatsuru. Her name means cosine.
• Use Your Head: Pummels Koyomi with a series of headbutts which easily busts him wide open.
• Would Hurt a Child: As long as she deems that child's mere existence to be "evil".

Yotsugi Ononoki

"I'm off to do community service caring for the elderly, Onee-chan."

Voiced by: Saori Hayami

Yotsugi is Yodzuru's assistant of sorts and acts as her shikigami. She is very unemotional and during her first appearance she tacks her catchphrase "so I said photogenically" onto things, though she later decides this is lame and abandons it in favor of making peace signs.

She makes her first appearance in Tsukihi Phoenix and has a later appearance in Mayoi Jiangshi. She is also the main character of Yotsugi Doll.

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• Berserk Button: Bringing up her old Catchphrase. For a certain value of "berserk".
• Character Tics: She's very easily influenced, meaning that while her normal deadpan attitude remains constant she's fond of adding catch phrases to her speech and then abandoning them on a whim.
  • In "Tsukihi Phoenix", she would append "...I said, photogenically" to her lines. This has apparently become an Old Shame as of "Mayoi Jiangshi".
  • In ""Hitagi End" she starts doing horizontal peace signs over her eyes and shouting "Peace, peace!" or "Yeah!"
    Kaiki: Did Gaen say that last bit, or is it just part of your latest persona?
    Yotsugi: It's just part of my latest persona.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Turquoise eyes and hair.
• Emotionless Girl
• Familiar: She is Yodzuru's shikigami.
• Flesh-Eating Zombie: A gag in Onimonogatari has her commenting on Araragi's well-defined muscles...because, as it turns out, this makes them very appetizing.
• Foil: To Araragi in Tsukimonogatari, which highlights the fact that while she appears to be a cute young girl, she is actually a corpse that has been transformed into a monster. Yodzuru sends her to warn Araragi away from embracing vampirism and suffering the same fate.
• Image Song: "Orange Mint".
• Leitmotif: She shares Yodzuru's, but specifically has her own version in "Shikigami", a more mysterious arrangement that uses xylophone and strings.
• Gratuitous English: Her 'Unlimited Rulebook' spell.
• The Rival: Towards Shinobu.
• Signature Headgear: The orange hat with googly eyes, assuming that thing on is a hat.
• Super-Strength: Can carry Yodzuru around on her pointer finger.
• Theme Naming: After the trigonometric functions along with Yodzuru and Tadatsuru. Her name means cotangent.
• Undead Child: In an interesting case, she is a human tsukumogami: after dying, her corpse was preserved for a hundred years, and regained sentience.

Izuko Gaen

"There is nothing I don't know, I know everything."

Voiced by: Satsuki Yukino

While Oshino, Kaiki and Yodzuru are all former colleagues and acquaintances of sorts, they were also all occult club members beneath club president Izuko Gaen, their senpai. In contrast to Tsubasa who claims not to know everything, only what she does know, Gaen claims to know everything, and she's not exaggerating. While Oshino works to preserve balance, Kaiki does it for money and Yodzuru for self satisfaction, Gaen can only be hired by trading her favors, the details of which will be decided upon at a later date.

Despite being older than the other three occult club members, she looks much younger and likes wearing baggy clothes. She also has a fondness for electronics, possessing at least five smartphones.

---

• Bright Is Not Good: She wears colorful clothes and rainbows often appear behind her, but while she's arguably a good guy, she's not very...good.
• Brutal Honesty: A trait she shares with her niece.
• Catchphrase: "There is nothing I don't know. I know everything." Used in Nekomonogatari White to illustrate the difference between her and Tsubasa.
• Jerkass: Always snarky and detached. Even at the most inappropriate of times. Like when Mayoi has to make a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Omniscient Morality License: Like Oshino, she's in a position of superior knowledge and power with ambiguous reasons for acting, but since nobody really knows what she wants and because she knows so much she's allowed to do largely as she pleases.
• Older Than They Look: She doesn't really look like she's in her 30s—in fact, she looks as if she's only a few years older than Hanekawa. Her trendy urban street fashion doesn't help.

Tadatsuru Teori

Another member of Meme's old college occultism club. He appears in Tsukimonogatari, hunting Koyomi when his vampire powers suddenly return.

• Theme Naming: After the trigonometric functions along with Yodzuru and Yotsugi. His name means sine.

Vampire hunters

Dramaturgy

Voiced by: Masashi Ebara

Voiced by (English): Erik Kimerer (Audiobook)

Dramaturgy was the first of the vampire hunters faced during Kizumonogatari. Despite being a vampire hunter, he is, in fact a vampire himself.

Dramaturgy has a huge body, standing tall with over 2 meters in height. He has red messy hair, which he keeps in place with a headband.

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• Arc Villain: Of Kizumonogatari, along with Episode and Guillotinecutter.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Remember the wavy swords he wields that Araragi describes the first time he appears? Those are in truth his hands, which he shape shifts into swords to fight.
• BFS: His gigantic wavy swords.
• Gentle Giant: Despite his humongous size and almost oni-like appearance, he is relatively calm. He even invited Araragi to become like him.
• Graceful Loser: Once he is defeated by Araragi, he accepts his defeat and returns Kiss-Shot's right leg to Oshino like he promised.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: A vampire that hunts vampires.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: He quickly surrenders to Koyomi right before Koyomi attacks him with a concrete roller after seeing he wouldn't be able to take much more damage from the baseballs he was throwing at him (with his vampire Super-Strength).
• Meaningful Name: His name is pronounced Dorama-tsurugi, the latter half meaning "sword" in Japanese.
• Nonstandard Character Design: In Bakemonogatari, he was represented as a blue, angry giant who looked much, much more monstrous than what he truly is, to the point of looking like some sort of expy of Berserker. Any aberration so far has been represented like that in the series. For the Kizumonogatari movies, he was given a much more human design, who fits his serious personality better.
• Pointy Ears: Like all the vampires, Dramaturgy has pointed ears.
• Super Smoke: After his defeat, he turns into smoke and leaves the battlefield.
• Was Once a Man: He mentions to Araragi that he was a human previously before becoming a vampire.
• We Can Rule Together: Prior to their battle, he offers to Araragi join his side and become a vampire hunter, since he believes killing the subordinate of such an strong vampire like Kiss-Shot would be a waste. Araragi rejects the offer (since he wants to become a human again), starting their fight.

Episode

Voiced by: Miyu Irino

Episode was the second of the vampire hunters faced during Kizumonogatari and is a half vampire himself. In exchange for many of the vampire strengths, he also lacks the majority of their weaknesses and thus carries around a massive cross and fights against vampires using attrition based tactics.

He is harsh and violent, but also much younger than he looks. He despises both humans and vampires due to being accepted in neither world.

In Tsubasa Tiger and Shinobu Mail (both takes place at the same time) he makes his first appearance after the Spring incident, as a help called by Gaen Izuko.

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• Arc Villain: Of Kizumonogatari, along with Guillotinecutter and Dramaturgy.
• Boomerang Bigot: A half-vampire who hates vampires.
• The Bus Came Back: After leaving the town at the end of Kizumonogatari and being absent during Nisemonogatari and Nekomonogatari Black, he returns to the series in Nekomonogatari White at Gaen's request. The same can be applied during his "reappearence" in Owarimonogatari after being absent for the rest of Second Season, Hanamonogatari and Tsukimonogatari.
  • If we take in mind the chronological order of the series, he is only absent since Nekomonogatari Black until Nisemonogatari, considering that both Nekomonogatari White and the Shinobu Mail arc of Owarimonogatari happens roughly at the same time.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: He's mostly uncaring about the fact that the last time he saw Tsubasa, he tried to kill her when later talking to her during Tsubasa Tiger. At the only point he acknowledges it, he figures he probably kinda owes her a little and answers some questions as a result.
• Catchphrase: "That's hilarious."
• Creepy Crosses: He's a half-vampire and a vampire hunter who carries around a giant cross that he uses as a weapon and wears a jacket with crosses emblems on both sides of the collar and side seam.
• Cross Attack: His weapon is a giant cross that he throws at vampires like a boomerang. It's effective since vampires are weak against crosses. He's half-vampire himself, but touching the cross doesn't hurt him.
• Cursed with Awesome: Since he is a half vampire, he has all of the abilities of the normal vampires (super strength, shape shifting, regeneration...), but doesn't suffer from their weaknesses (he doesn't burn when he walks in the sun, crosses don't affect him...). However, due to his condition, both vampires and humans despise him.
• Curtains Match the Window: He's blonde and has yellow eyes.
• Dhampyr: He's a half-vampire.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: He's not accepted by humans or vampires.
• Hates Everyone Equally: He hates both humans and vampires.
• Improbable Weapon User: His weapon is a gigantic cross, which he throws.
• It's Personal: He hunts vampires not just for work or profit, but because of his feelings of deep hatred toward them.
• Oh, Crap!: His reaction when Araragi manages to nullify his mist attack and overpowers him.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He looks like a young man, but he's really an overgrown Enfante Terrible who treats hunting vampires like a game.
• Slasher Smile: Sports one during his fight against Araragi.
• Super Smoke: One of his powers consists in being able to turning into mist and being able to teleport himself while adopting this form.
• Younger Than They Look: He looks like he's in his twenties, but he's only six years old.

Guillotinecutter

Voiced by: Hōchū Ōtsuka

Guillotinecutter was the third of the three vampire hunters faced during Kizumonogatari. Unlike the other two, he is completely human. He is the archbishop of a new religion that denies the existence of aberrations.

Unlike Episode and Dramaturgy, he doesn't have a weapon.

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• A God Am I: He considers himself to be God, so he will exterminate everyone who dares to oppose him.
• Arc Villain: Of Kizumonogatari, along with Dramaturgy and Episode.
• Asshole Victim: Subverted. While he's shown to be particularly despicable with being willing to murder an innocent to take down Koyomi, his gruesome death at the hands of Kiss-Shot is what causes Koyomi to realize he may have made a mistake in saving the vampire's life. Koyomi also later recognizes that the vampire hunters were ultimately out to do good in stopping a mass-murdering monster, regardless of their ruthlessness.
• Badass Normal: Unlike Episode and Dramaturgy, he doesn't possess any weapon or special ability. Doesn't stop him from taking Kiss-Shot's arms.
• Badass Preacher: Is the priest of a new religion and capable of kicking ass.
• Combat Pragmatist: Unlike his partners, knowing that he is not a rival to Araragi, and having observed his previous battles against Dramaturgy and Episode, he takes Hanekawa as a hostage and threatens to kill her if Araragi doesn't surrender to him.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Receives one at the hands of Koyomi when he resorts to use the full of his powers seeing that Hanekawa was in danger again.
• Disc-One Final Boss: He is the last vampire hunter faced in Kizumonogatari, and it looks that with his defeat, the incident with Kiss-Shot has been finally solved. Then Kiss-Shot herself reveals to be the actual Final Boss.
• Killed Off for Real: After his altercation with Araragi, Kiss-Shot kills and eats him offscreen, making him one of the few characters who stays dead in the series.
• Knight Templar: Unlike Dramaturgy (who hunts vampires because it's his job) and Episode (who hunts vampires due to personal hatred), he kills vampires because of his beliefs. His religion doesn't accept the existence of aberrations, so he kills them for this goal.
• Pointy Ears: Strangely, despite being the only human in the vampire hunters team, he has pointy ears, a trait present in vampires and aberrations like Ononoki.

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Other Characters

Mayoi Hachikuji

"A-Aryaryagi-san—sorry. I stuttered."

Voiced by: Emiri Katou

An elementary school girl with a sharp tongue and no sense of direction. Koyomi first meets her on Mother's Day while avoiding going home. Although Mayoi tries to drive Koyomi away, he eventually discovers that she is trying to visit her mother and is lost. He tries to help her, and when he too becomes lost, he suspects that she may be the victim of some kind of supernatural creature. But in the end, she is revealed to be a supernatural creature herself—a ghost who died eleven years ago in a traffic accident. She is only visible to people who do not want to go home, and anyone involved with her becomes unable to reach their destination.

With Koyomi's help, Mayoi manages to get to her mother's house, but rather than moving on, she "graduates" to being a free-roaming spirit. In arcs following her own "Mayoi Snail", she acts as an adviser to Koyomi, and is one of the few characters he is willing to open up about his own troubles to. He also seems to have the most fun talking to her, and his sexual harassment towards her becomes so routine that Mayoi eventually winds up sexually harassing him instead.

The events of "Mayoi Jiangshi" are kicked off by Koyomi's attempt to travel back in time and save her from dying, but that arc centers around Shinobu instead of her. In return, Mayoi is a main character in "Shinobu Time", which directly follows the events of "Mayoi Jiangshi".

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• Action Survivor: In Mayoi Jiangshi, she's one of the few survivors of Shinobu's vampire apocalypse thanks to a few tips from Oshino.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: She vanishes when she finds the vacant lot where her mother used to live, leading one to make the conclusion that she passed on... then ultimately subverted when she appears to Koyomi the next day and tells him that she simply changed from one type of ghost to another. She eventually accepted her fate and disappears at the end of Shinobu Time.
• Animal Motifs: She wears a giant backpack resembling a snail's shell and her headband also has the spirals seen in a snail's shell.
• Barrier Maiden: Saving her causes the alternate timeline in which Kiss-shot wipes out humanity.
• Big Damn Heroes: In Mayoi Jiangshi, after Koyomi and Shinobu let off some fireworks to see if anyone is around, they're swarmed by failed, mindless vampires. It's looking bad until Mayoi steps in to banish them with rice.
• Blatant Lies: Sorry, I stuttered.
• But Now I Must Go: She seems to vanish at the end of Mayoi Snail, but reappears the next day. After Shinobu Time, she moves on for real.
• Cute Ghost Girl: She has actually been dead for about a decade. Whenever anyone tries to help her, though, she drives them away since they're just wasting their time in more ways than one.
• Cute Little Fang: She has some sharp teeth, which she puts to good use on occasion by biting Koyomi.
• Dead All Along: She's a type of ghost that is doomed to wander around unable to find its destination.
• Escaped from Hell: In Mayoi Hell, when Araragi is resurrected, he uses his legs to grab Mayoi and drag her out of hell with him.
• Girlish Pigtails: Fitting with her (seemingly) young age.
• Image Song: "Kaerimichi" ("The Way Home") for "Mayoi Snail", "happy bite" for "Mayoi Jiangshi", "terminal terminal" for "Mayoi Hell".
• Invisible to Normals: She can't be seen by normal people unless they don't want to go home. Aberrations can see her at all times, however, meaning that even after Mayoi Snail ends Araragi can still see her. However, the rest of the cast apart from Hanekawa generally can't, so Senjougahara is uncomfortable when she knows that Hachikuji is there.
• Meaningful Name:
  • "Mayoi" can be written as "迷い", which means "lost".
  • "Hachikuji" is similar to "mamekuji" (slug).
  • "Hachiku"(八九) can also be read as "yaku", which sounds similar to "misfortune" (厄).
  • The character "ji"(寺) in her name translates to "temple", linking to her eventual godhood".
  • "Tsunade", her mother's name, is a reference to the character in Jiraiya Goketsu Monogatari, who is strongly related to slugs.
• Not So Above It All: Seems to be utterly angered about her sexual harassment at the hands of Koyomi, though she then acts offended when he stops doing it later on. Then he meets her older self, who proceeds to flip the tables and sexually harass him.
• Older Than She Looks: She's rather childish and looks about eleven. On the other hand, she's actually older than Koyomi (despite being dead) and he has gone to her for advice before.
• She Is All Grown Up: In Mayoi Jiangshi we see her as she would look had she actually grown up. Koyomi is quite pleased to see her like this, though not in the way he normally would be.
• Shipper on Deck: Thinks Tsubasa would be a better match for Koyomi.
• Spirit Advisor: Only people who don't want to go home can see her until the end of Mayoi Snail. Afterward, it's unknown how many people can see her. Still, Koyomi will go to her for advice when necessary. Or more frequently to grope her.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Perhaps in response to having Mayoi Jiangshi mostly revolving around Shinobu and Koyomi's relationship, Shinobu time is actually mostly about Mayoi.
• Tomato Surprise:
  • In Mayoi Snail, nobody else thinks that Mayoi is an aberration. Most people can't even see her, making the afflicted party Koyomi.
  • In Shinobu Time, Hachikuji brought on the darkness by not acting like an aberration. She and Yotsugi suspected as much while Shinobu and Koyomi figured it was a repeat of the event from centuries before.
• Tsundere: She always claims that she hates Koyomi, but it's pretty clear that she likes him. Likes him enough to stick around for months after she was supposed to pass on, which nearly gets her devoured by the supernatural law requiring aberrations to act according to their nature.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Though he's said he enjoys talking to Mayoi the most, Koyomi and Mayoi generally grope, bite or pummel each other during half their interactions.

Nadeko Sengoku

"Not to mention, I'm an only child. I really...wanted an older brother."

Voiced by: Kana Hanazawa

Nadeko is childhood friends with Koyomi's little sister, Tsukihi, and has had a crush on Koyomi since her elementary school years. She attends the same middle school Koyomi went to, and is in her second year. She is introverted, meek, passive, and very cute. During the events of "Nadeko Snake", she is cursed by a classmate after turning down a love confession from the boy that classmate liked, which causes a huge, invisible snake to constrict her body.

After being saved by Koyomi, Nadeko helps him look for Shinobu during "Tsubasa Cat" and invites him over to her house in "Karen Bee" to put the moves on him, leading to Suruga calling her the "real last boss".

The story next focuses on Nadeko in "Nadeko Medusa", in which she is roped into searching for a snake god's object of worship as penance for the harm she did to snakes while trying to break her curse in "Nadeko Snake". Her narration reveals that her personality has become somewhat twisted after a lifetime of being coddled for her "cuteness". Nadeko hates hard work and emotional stress, protects herself with non-confrontational behavior, and is very used to getting her way.

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• Animal Motifs: The big hat is supposed to be evocative of a cobra's hood, and the loose jacket of shed snakeskin. At certain points of "Nadeko Medusa", her hair also begins to lift around her head like Medusa's snakes at times of strong emotion until her hair later turns to actual snakes.
• Ax-Crazy: She's so insane that even the revived snake god gets creeped out after her If I Can't Have You… speech.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: The teacher who dumped his responsibilities on Nadeko comes to pester her at kind of a bad time. Nadeko finally loses her temper and rips him (and her entire class) a new one.
• Be Yourself: What her arc amounts to. Kaiki finally gets through to Nadeko by revealing that something as small as a manga drawing hobby is what makes her happy and honest to herself, rather than materialistic wants like sake or money or Araragi's affection.
• Big Brother Attraction: While she's not actually Koyomi's younger sister, she's liked Koyomi since she was six and asked for permission to call him "onii-chan". Tsukihi asks her whether she really likes him or whether she just uses him as an excuse to avoid confessions from other people.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She's introduced in Nadeko Snake as a meek, seemingly sweet girl, but Nadeko Medusa is the first arc to really give attention to who Nadeko actually is, and it turns out to be someone quite unpleasant. She's manipulative, irresponsible and selfish, but hides it beneath her cute good girl image and deflects attention by acting like the victim. She's actually kind of amazed that people simply accept that she must be some innocent, hard working and sensitive girl just because she won't maintain eye contact or speak up.
• Brought Down to Normal: Loses her snake god powers at the end of Hitagi End in the Anime.
• Cerebus Callback: Her second image song reuses the imagery from the cute, happy first song and puts a strong yandere twist on it.
• Character Development: Of the malevolent variety: she appears to be an innocent cute girl in Bakemonogatari, tries her hand at being a seductress in Nisemonogatari and finally begins to show her true colors in Otorimonogatari, which ends with her becoming a mad snake god. After being a human again, Owarimonogatari shows her to be much more mature, discussing with Tsuhiki her desire to do things and seek a future without fear of failure or embarrassment.
• Character Tics: Tugging the bills of her caps to hide under them in shyness, shedding her socks and folding them neatly beside her, and stuttering.
• Coat Cape: Which is meant to represent shed snakeskin, tying in to her Animal Motif.
• Cute and Psycho: As Nadeko Medusa continues, it becomes increasingly obvious that Nadeko has some severe issues which are actually related to how she was always expected to be cute and harmless, a role she took up by appearing as a Shrinking Violet. During the next arc, her style has changed into a ditzy genki girl now that she no longer has expectations to live up to, though still every bit as Yandere.
• The Cutie:
  • Her first Image Song is basically 90 seconds of pastel pinks and purples and her rapping about trying to be as cute as possible for her beloved "onii-chan". The second one takes a similar theme and plays it much more darkly.
  • In Nadeko Medusa and Hitagi End, it's revealed that her cuteness is a deliberate act, being a partially conscious defense mechanism she uses to deflect criticism and responsibility. It's the developed habit of much of her earlier life and the manipulative attitude it encompasses makes Shinobu tell her that people who act like her are temptresses and more devilish than aberrations.
• Deal with the Devil: The plot of Nadeko Medusa begins when she is blackmailed into doing a favor to revive an incredibly suspicious snake god. This is actually a Subverted Trope; the snake is nothing more than a figment of her imagination, and her Face–Heel Turn occurs entirely out of her own free will. When the snake god is revived for real, as a part of her, it acts as her ignored conscience more than anything else.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: The Moe Shrinking Violet. Though she only becomes aware of it later on, Nadeko actively projects a shy, cutesy demeanor due to being pigeonholed as such ever since she was young, and subconsciously uses the advantages that come with it to manipulate others. She doesn't actually enjoy this — a lifetime of surface-level relationships that she formed with this mask has caused Nadeko to be untrusting and reserved, keeping to herself and hiding her true passions.
• Deliberately Cute Child: She is pressured to be cute and demure, which mostly serves to hide her true nature and keep most people bent around her fingers.
• Dirty Kid: In Nisemonogatari, she does her best to tempt Koyomi, though it doesn't go anywhere. When she stumbles across Koyomi's porn stash while look for something, she becomes so engrossed that she forgets what she came for entirely.
• The Ditz: When Kaiki comes across her at the shrine, he realizes that she's actually kind of dumb, but no one has ever really realized this about her before.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Played with in an interesting way: Nadeko, deep down, resents being pigeonholed as shy and cute, but at the same time is not above using that perception of her to suit her needs.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Goes through several; she spends Bakemonogatari with her hair in her face and is painfully shy around Koyomi, but the first time we see her in Nisemonogatari she's got her hair out of her eyes thanks to a hairband and actually attempts veiled sexual passes at Koyomi. When Tsukihi trims her bangs in Nadeko Medusa, she stops using her passive weak attitude and flips out. A more extreme example of this happens to her when her hair turns into white snakes. In Owarimonogatari, after her Character Development, she received the usual haircut attributed to Monogatari heroines after their arcs, which also retains the cut bangs, showing her newfound willingness to open up and express her genuine self.
• Empty Shell: She tries to hide it, but shrewd people like Tsuhiki and Hanekawa can tell there's not much there after breaking through the veneer of cuteness she always displays.
• The Fake Cutie: Shinobu and Ogi imply that she acts soft, weak, quiet and victimized to get people on her side. At the end of the former's conversation, she says that if she isn't doing it on purpose than that makes her even scarier and more naturally manipulative. As her character is further explored, it's confirmed that she does act cute on purpose for selfish reasons, but not necessarily because she wants to — she just doesn't know what else she's good for besides being cute.
• Fille Fatale: Knows how to manipulate people (particularly men) by feigning cuteness, and especially goes out of her way to try and seduce Koyomi.
• Final Boss: Kanbaru refers to her as this in Nisemonogatari. And, oh, boy, how right she was...
• Foreshadowing:
  • Think about it: What's the first thing she did under her own volition during her first arc? Massacre a bunch of completely harmless snakes and stake them outside a shrine to a snake god. Is that something an innocent, normal girl would do?
  • In Nisemonogatari Koyomi notices that, with her bangs no longer hiding her eyes, she has "a glare like a serpent". This hints at her true nature, as well as how her snake motif is much more appropriate than it seems.
  • In her character song/the opening of Nadeko Snake, it shows her determinedly working on apparently writing in multiple piles of books. Considering what Kaiki finds in her closet, a bunch of manga she wrote and drew herself, suddenly that part of the opening makes a lot of sense.
  • Tying with the above spoiler, as noted in Lampshaded the Obscure Reference Nadeko has a lot of knowledge of various manga.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: She goes from a minor character with no depth beyond simply being cute to a snake god with enough power to easily bring Koyomi and depowered Shinobu within inches of their lives.
• Genki Girl: In Hitagi End, Kaiki's impression of her is that now that she's out from under the burden of expectations and the imposed role of being cute and harmless, she's extremely excitable, cheerful and even airheaded.
• Green-Eyed Monster: As she has a crush on Koyomi, it's no huge surprise she would be jealous of Hitagi. "Nadeko Medusa" reveals she's also incredibly jealous of Shinobu's relationship to Koyomi.
• Hates Being Touched: And looked at, and meeting people's eyes. On the other hand, she doesn't care at all when Koyomi flips her skirt up (he proclaims her lack of a reaction to be "boring"), and doesn't mind getting yelled at.
• Hidden Depths: Even beyond the whole thing with the shrine, Nadeko's truest desire and embarrassing secret is... she wants to be a manga artist. Kaiki honestly thinks she's pretty good at it too!
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: She's well known for hiding behind her bangs, which actually turns out to be a conscious, habitual defense mechanism designed to make people sympathize with her or go away if they're bothering her.
• If I Can't Have You…
  • At the temple near the end of Nadeko Medusa she decides that since Koyomi will probably keep getting girlfriends, she might as well stab him to death now rather than experience the grief of having him taken away from her over and over.
  • In Hitagi End, she cheerfully informs Kaiki that she actually prefers it this way. According to her, isn't a onesided love that lasts forever much purer than reciprocated feelings? Oddly enough, he seems to agree with her, having had an experience similar enough to empathize.
• Ignored Epiphany: In Nadeko Medusa she contemplates Tsukihi's opinion that Nadeko has only been pretending to love Koyomi because it's convenient for her. She comes to agree with the idea somewhat, though it's not clear if it's really true. She still asks the Serpent to make Koyomi love her, though, meaning that Tsukihi was either wrong or that Nadeko wants him anyway, the latter of which Hanekawa would probably support.
• Image Song:
  • "Ren'ai Circulation" ("Romance Circulation"), from Nadeko Snake is very cute and bubbly, but is as lacking in content about Nadeko as the arc that it prefaces, telling us only that she loves Koyomi and wants to be a Yamato Nadeshiko so he'll love her back.
  • "Mousou Express" (Delusion Express) from Nadeko Medusa is set after Nadeko realizes Koyomi already has a girlfriend and precedes the arc that finally tells us who Nadeko is. The visuals draw heavily from "Ren'ai Circulation", but reversed and with darker colors and lyrics. Here, Nadeko is going full on yandere. There is a Visual Pun in the song when she breaks her pencil writing the kanji for "calendar", symobolizing her break with Koyomi's sisters.
• Important Haircut: She confides to Tsukihi that she's worried that nobody cares about her as a person and just see her as a kind of cute mascot. Tsukihi rather bluntly responds that if she has a problem with that she should actually do something to make others like her. She clips Nadeko's bangs so she can't hide behind them, which forces her to have to deal with people directly. The results aren't pretty.
• Insult Backfire: When Kaiki tells snake god Nadeko that her creepy appearance probably scared off her earlier visitors, she's absolutely thrilled to be called terrifying instead of cute for once; Kaiki speculates that this is because "cute" is a very restricting niche.
• It's All About Me: Hidden beneath her cute attitude is an incredible level of selfishness and irresponsibility. Nothing is ever her fault and she is always the victim. If she can't have what she wants then to hell with everyone else. If people don't do what she wants then she doesn't need them anymore.
• Kiddie Kid: Thanks to the way she's been raised she's significantly less mature than she should be for her age. People simply didn't notice because they didn't really look at her as a person. She's completely lacking in perspective as a result. It doesn't really make her that sympathetic, but it helps explain why she's so crazy.
• Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: Whenever Nadeko makes fandom jokes and references, they're so obscure that Koyomi has to attach an explanation to his comebacks (he even calls them maniac-level jokes).
• Love Makes You Crazy: With a little prodding, Nadeko's suppressed instabilities all unleash and she ends up in a fight to the death with Koyomi following several smaller breakdowns. Like Tsubasa's second incident, Nadeko's began way back when she first learned that Koyomi had a girlfriend. Her mind fractured and she invented a second personality for herself, sealing away memories of the research she did.
• Love Makes You Evil: As a snake god, she even considers killing Koyomin's acquaintances and his sisters ostensibly because Kaiki made her mad but more likely because she's just bored.
• Love Triangle: Nadeko has a crush on Koyomi, causing her to reject the confession of a boy her age. Another girl liked that boy gets upset and both she and the boy give Nadeko death curses over it.
• Manipulative Bitch: She acts weak to get people on her side and avoid both responsibility for her actions and responsibilities placed on her.
• Meaningful Name: Her name is written with the same characters as the "nadeshiko" in Yamato Nadeshiko, something punned on multiple times in her Image Song/opening theme for her arc, "Ren'ai Circulation".
• Meaningful Rename: Not her own name, but what she calls someone else. Her referring to Araragi as "Koyomoi-onii-chan" is a sign of her idolization of him as a big brother figure and her way of romanticizing the idea of an unattainable childhood crush. She refers to him with a much more distant and formal "Koyomi-san" in Owarimonogatari, after she grew out of her old mentality.
• Moe: Nadeko invokes and exploits this trope. She feigns cuteness and vulnerability to avoid responsibility and get people to sympathize with her.
• Narcissist: She views herself as completely faultless while everyone else abuses her by not giving her what she wants regardless of how she hurts them or others in return. Only after having her self centered point of view shoved in front of her face repeatedly does she even admit it's there and she still doesn't admit it's a problem and decides to simply be more open about it instead. This time, she evades responsibility by saying she's an aberration now, or even a god. Normal rules don't apply to her. During Hitagi End, Hanekawa expresses the opinion that Nadeko does not really love Koyomi with the implication in context being that she's too busy loving herself.
• Never My Fault: She insists on seeing herself as the victim at all times and doesn't accept responsibility for her actions, which manifests itself all throughout Nadeko Medusa.
  • During her second arc, it's pointed out that an aberration rarely troubles someone who is completely without fault and indeed, Nadeko was the one who truly got the ball rolling in her first arc by massacring the snakes and actually activating the curse. Apart from the snakes she killed, this also caused one of the constricting snakes to return and attack her classmate.
  • When confronted by the god of the shrine, a giant snake, about her actions in her prior arc, she asks what it wants her to do. It pauses and says that's an odd way of putting it since most people in her situation would ask how they can atone for a crime, not simply ask what someone wants. She agrees to help the Serpent, but only when she feels like it, indicating that she's only helping because it's something she feels like doing and stopping as soon as she doesn't want to do it anymore.
  • After Tsukihi cuts her hair and makes her feel like she can't hide from people anymore, she eventually ends up at school and ends up exploding at her teacher and classmates, coarsely bitching them all out for their own failings. Afterward, she admits that everything she said was her speaking and not the Serpent and that she expressed only what she was really feeling, but says she's still going to blame it and not herself.
• Not Brainwashed: You might think that the Serpent is guiding Nadeko's actions in Nadeko Medusa but the Serpent doesn't even exist until near the end of the story. While she is close to insane, she has been acting on her own wishes the entire time.
• Not Himself: During Nadeko Medusa, she finally gets sick of acting weak and begins ranting at her teacher and classmates. Not only is she yelling at them, but she switches speech style and pronouns to something much more masculine and aggressive. Something just like the Serpent, in fact.
• Physical God: After she swallows the snake talisman.
• Playing the Victim Card: This is normal behavior for her: She looks weak and hurt to inspire sympathy and get people on her side, but in truth is largely just unconcerned and lazy. It's a learned habit with her because no one ever blames her for anything, which 'taught' her that nothing is her fault and she doesn't have to take responsibility for her words or actions. We see in Nadeko Medusa that while she's intellectually capable of accepting blame for things, emotionally she simply refuses to do it. If people had scolded her for things like cutting up all those snakes at the shrine, she might not have ended up the way she did. If people won't blame her for things even she knows are wrong, why not do whatever she wants?
• Politeness Judo: When asked to do something, she won't refuse. She'll politely accept the request and then, if she doesn't feel like doing it, she simply won't do it. Ever. When asked to be the class rep, she agrees, but doesn't actually fulfill any of the duties. A teacher asks her to ease the atmosphere in the class following the trouble with all the charms Kaiki sold, but she simply continues to do nothing about it after assenting. Even after she agrees to help the Serpent find its body she only does it when she feels like it.
• Prefers Going Barefoot: In the light novels, one of the things Sengoku tells us is, "I like being barefoot." she mentions she basically hates socks, noting, "Wearing them feels weird." She likes wearing just sandals and going barefoot, and is (generally) always barefoot in her room, even in the winter. In the "Wind" chapter of Koyomimonogatari, her sudden urge to shed her socks in Koyomi's room is so peculiar to him that he wonders if it's some unspoken rule about courtesy, when in reality, she just wanted to have bare feet. Unsurprisingly, when she's possessed by a snake spirit, she goes around totally barefoot.
• Puppy Love: She's had a crush on Koyomi since she was six, but they apparently haven't actually interacted much since then. Tsukihi asks her if she was just using her love for Koyomi as an excuse to reject unwanted suitors and the answer isn't exactly clear.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Seemingly averted at first, since despite having a snake as her Animal Motif she comes across as cute and sweet. As she reveals her true personality, though, it's played straight, especially after she swallows the snake talisman and becomes a snake god.
• School Swimsuit: Yet another thing adding to her Moe charm...
• Selective Obliviousness: She pretends not to know that Koyomi has a girlfriend so that she can make passes at him. What makes it stranger is that she's actually not trying to seduce him for real, only doing it for the sake of appearances even though she's the only one that would know. That way she has a convenient excuse to reject advances.
• Sequential Artist: She draws manga as a hobby. It's the only thing she's really serious about, and eventually it's her heart's desire to become a mangaka that lets Kaiki persuade her that she can do more with her life than pine after Koyomi.
• Shrinking Violet: She's initially presented as a shy, meek girl who stutters a lot, but this is later subverted as it turns out that she only acts like one to make people feel sorry for her. Once she becomes a snake god and no longer has to hide behind her "cute and introverted" persona, she's more cheerful and outspoken.
• Spoiled Brat: Being coddled all her life has led to Nadeko becoming lazy, avoidant, self-centered, and a little unstable. This is first revealed in Nadeko Medusa, and further explored by Kaiki's investigation into her background in Hitagi End.
• Stepford Smiler: When Kaiki's rummaging through Nadeko's family album, he notes that there's just something... off about her smile, like she's being posed. She finally begins to smile more genuinely in Owarimonogatari.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Implied by Hitagi while talking her down from killing Koyomi, but not actually followed upon. As the former points out, godly as Nadeko might be, if she were to kill Koyomi before Shinobu and unleash Heart-Under-Blade's true power she would be destroyed in an instant.
• Talkative Loon: After merging with her delusion and reviving the Serpent for real, she sits around babbling to herself even though she knows that she and the Serpent are the same being now. The only times she bothers to pause is to continue stabbing the prone Shinobu.
• Third-Person Person: She always refers to herself in the cutesy third person. When she snaps in front of her teacher and classmates, she refers to herself as "ore-sama".
• Through the Eyes of Madness: While Koyomi's perspective is exaggerated and flashy and Tsubasa's is worryingly cute and mellow even during times like chatting with someone who disemboweled her once, Nadeko's hints of being delusional. She sees illusory snakes and when she sees people, they're frequently unnatural looking. It helps that Nadeko is actually really really mentally ill.
• Traumatic Haircut: Tsukihi gets annoyed with Nadeko's avoidant behavior and cuts her bangs so that she can't hide behind them anymore. Nadeko instantly screams and claims not to remember what happened during the next few minutes. When her teacher starts asking her to fix the class like normal and hiding like usual isn't working she absolutely explodes and begins talking like the Serpent, first bitching him out and then screaming at the class.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: During Hitagi End, Kaiki brings her sake. His reasoning is that the gods are pretty much required to accept tributes of alcohol, so if she had refused it might have led to a contradiction of her nature. There's a brief shot of her sitting happily atop the donations box with dozens of bottles strewn around her, so that was a failure. He also tells himself that it doesn't count as giving alcohol to a minor because she's a god now despite denying the existence of gods.
• Unreliable Narrator: The parts of the story where Nadeko starts missing time (e.g. her conversation with Ogi and when Tsukihi cuts her hair) ought to be a warning flag the audience can't miss, after all the brouhaha of a similar nature in Hanekawa's arcs. On top of this, big chunks of Nadeko Medusa are actually Nadeko hallucinating, and not an accurate representation of what went down. Once she merges with Kuchinawa to become the snake god, he fills her in on everything she was blocking out or unable to distinguish the truth of.
• Villainous Breakdown: Gets an epic one at the end of Hitagi End. She goes from using her superpowers to kill Kaiki, to just walking over, tripping, and slapping him in pure PANIC when he reveals he knows her secret.
• Villain Protagonist: Nadeko Medusa slowly details how Nadeko becomes a monster terrible enough that Koyomi states outright he will kill her. Of course, near the end, we find out she knew what she was doing the whole time and simply lying to herself.
• Worthy Opponent: Subverted: she tells Senjogahara that if they had met differently they might have been friends, but Senjogahara's response is a blunt "No, not a chance. I hate selfish kids".
• Yamato Nadeshiko: In her first Image Song, she says outright that she wants to become this so Koyomi will like her.
• Yandere: For her arc in Nadeko Medusa, her opening is her singing cheerfully about how she doesn't need the world if it won't give her what she wants...and what she wants is everything. During the arc proper, she stabs Koyomi in the heart out of jealousy over Shinobu.
  "There is no escape from my love! You're all that matters!"

Rouka Numachi

"Running away doesn't mean you lose, and it won't always make you unhappy either. Failing to escape merely helps you resign yourself to your fate."

Voiced by: Kana Asumi

A (former) fellow athlete and rival-bordering-nemesis to Kanbaru Suruga, who lost her career after an incurable leg injury. Once thinking about how fortunate she is in comparison to other people, she now thinks about how unfortunate her condition is.

A request from her friend to listen to her unfortunate story lights up her interest in misfortune, and an encounter with a girl named Rouka Hanadori gave her another reason to live— Now, she acts as a "misfortune collector" while also trying to collect and assemble the body parts of the Rainy Devil while assuming the identity of "Sir Devil".

Rouka has a laid-back, yet calm personality. However, she becomes more serious and snarky after having taken a liking others' misfortune.

She finally shows her open and cheerful personality after her final match against Suruga in Suruga Devil.

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• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: After discovering what she actually lost and receiving the emotional push she needs from Kanbaru Suruga, she finally got the peaceful rest and moved on, leaving the Devil Parts behind for Suruga.
• Badass Longcoat: Wears a red long-sleeved training jacket.
• Dead All Along: The Rouka that exist now is no longer a human; she's turned into an aberration that collects misfortune and Devil Parts after forgetting her own suicide years ago.
• Final Boss: Chronologically, she is the last antagonistic character confronted in the franchise.
• Foil:
  • To Kanbaru Suruga; both have seemingly unsolvable problem that ruined their life. However, while Suruga always decide to face and try to solve it, Rouka always decide to run away and let time heals the wound.
  • To Deishuu Kaiki; both are shady persona who lies at people. However, while Kaiki does it for the money, Rouka does it for her emotional benefit. Rouka even lampshade it herself, saying that she and Kaiki are colleagues, but not allies.
• Red Baron: Her nickname during her sportsmanship days include "Inescapable Numachi" and "Numachi the Swamp" due to her solid defense plays.
• Red Right Hand: She has been collecting the Rainy Devil's parts, and seems to have the uncanny ability to casually take others' Devil Part overnight.

Tooe Gaen

"Knowing or not knowing doesn't matter. After all, even if you don't know about something, you can guess just about everything by looking at it."

Voiced by: Michiko Neya

Kanbaru's deceased mother.

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• Awesome by Analysis: While Izuko's genius comes from omniscience, Tooe's comes from observation.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Like her daughter.
• The Dreaded: In Zoku Owarimonogatari, Ougi tells Araragi that if they remain in the mirrored world and leave things as they are, Izuko Gaen will eventually overcome her fear of her older sister and come to eliminate them.
• Furo Scene: The only time she appears on screen.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Shared traits with her daughter include rather thick eyebrows, huge bust, and having no restrain in regards to modesty and enjoying teasing Koyomi.

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