Bakemonogatari

These two things are why I'm uncertain. She was implied to be related to the darkness early on, but her behaviour here is much more in line with the way we see oddities behave throughout the series

Ahh. Okay, that's a fair point- I wasn't really thinking of the darkness as a distinct type of thing.

She doesn't actually behave like an oddity, though. She's visible to everyone and seems more motivated by malice than any kind of psychological whatever like most of them are. I mean, if she didn't randomly change sex in Hanamonogatari she'd seem more like some kind of crazy specialist. She could almost be some kind of personification of Araragi's self loathing and failure, but he's started to get better about that and she actively makes things worse regarding things he isn't even involved with at the time.

There's definitely a few things that'd make her unusual if she was one, but I don't think it's too far out, considering some of the others. I mean, she's been acting more like the typical psychological metaphor than the vampires do

Well she could be an oddity that represents some other aspect of Araragi. Not sure what though.

^^ She acts like a psychological metaphor as a kind of inversion of either Araragi or Oshino in some ways, but not one that is really that directly linked to them. If Ougi's an oddity based around Araragi, why did he appear in front Kanbaru after Araragi had already graduated? Araragi's involvement in that arc was pretty minimal and rather coincidental.

edited 24th Oct '15 11:01:15 PM by Arha

x4

But there are oddities that are visible to everyone? Kanbaru was an oddity at one point after all.

Kanbaru has an oddity in her arm, she isn't really one herself. Seeing an oddity has been repeatedly stated to be something quite meaningful, but Ougi appears in front of everyone.

That said, her arm is still huge and hairy as a result of it, so I don't know why that's different.

Edit: Well, it doesn't matter. We don't know what she is and I don't think the novels have revealed it either. Not much point in speculating since I'm sure she's some kind of special snowflake.

edited 24th Oct '15 11:41:11 PM by Arha

And thus the local Manipulative Bitch was defeated by boobs.

edited 25th Oct '15 12:33:05 AM by HanabiraKage

x2

I guess that makes sense.

Though now I'm confused. I had heard the novels finished last year but I just checked and apparently it's still ongoing.

Araragi: SOLD!

(Protest all you like, Araragi, no one's ever going to buy your excuses.)

Ougi speaking as Araragi's shadow and talking about haunting his footsteps this episode was...not exactly subtle, though. She's deliciously creepy at least. (I'm wondering if the fact that she never reveals her bare hands might mean something's odd about them...her male form wears black gloves, and her female form has long sleeves AND gloves. I had a weird theory that since Ougi always seems to wear high collars as well, those might not in fact be gloves...his/her entire body below the neck might be some kind of shadow-stuff or something. Though that doesn't seem to be the case in the outfit she wears in the LN covers.)

(I enjoyed the fact that a heat haze started forming between Ougi and Hanekawa during their showdown. That was pretty intense...both sides got some nasty jabs in.)

It wasn't supposed to be subtle, it is another example of Araragi not grasping the truth and being wholly centered in his version of reality, like with Nadeko. He couldn't help Nadeko because he refused to acknowledge her actual feelings, even when he had an idea of them. Just like he is doing with Sodachi. As Hanekawa said, both she and Nadeko were not people who had a strong impression on him from his perspective, so he forgot the people themselves.

Hanekawa even pokes at him about how it is like he is purposefully avoiding scrutinizing Ougi. This takes place right after Neko White, so it's really cool how she is both dealing with the maelstrom of emotions and the two oddities boiling inside her, and still just as sharp as ever.

Pay attention to how Ougi repeatedly calls him a fool for not noticing things and how he rolls with it almost like a self-deprecating monologue.

edited 29th Oct '15 2:16:06 AM by AOG

I get more of an impression that Ougi specifically occupies a blind spot in Araragi's mind. The thing you mentioned about his conversation with Hanekawa, about how his mind just seems to slide right off the idea that Ougi might be up to something, is something that seems specific to Ougi's situation, and rather suspicious.

Anyway though, I'm just saying that the way it's being presented to us viewers is rather unsubtle. Ougi could afford to be a bit less in-your-face "mwahaha I'm up to something sneaky".

(Incidentally, was Ougi considering her own lack of..."assets" at that bit when Araragi was monologuing about how he most certainly did not go along with Hanekawa because of her "offer"? That's hilarious.)

Hanekawa's frazzled hair after dealing with Sodachi was amusing, too. Sodachi certainly seems like the kind of person who's stubborn/fiery enough to go up against her.

edited 29th Oct '15 8:13:48 AM by ashnazg

Wow, he really does have a terrible memory. How many times can you forget about a person anyway?

My god, she's reverse Hachikuji!

Oikura is weirdly unsympathetic. It's kind of interesting.

I mean, at the end of the day, she's kind of an unpleasant person who keeps lashing out at people who don't deserve it. I'm not without empathy for her, but yeah.

Eh, forgetting the house-stay I'm willing to accept. She wasn't there long and didn't interact with them. Not recognizing his math tutor when she became his classmate is the much odder part

It's not forgetting her after five years, it's that he didn't recognize her a year later.

Oikura's seiyuu went through a real range this episode...that was impressive work. That final monologue was chilling.

It seems pretty clear at this point that Oikura is quite unhinged. I feel she snapped out of it a little too easily at the end though.

(Yeah, Oikura's behaviour is becoming rather unwarrantedly nasty, though I guess her grudge against Araragi runs deep enough and has stayed with her long enough that it's hard to expect anything else from her.)

Since when did Hanekawa pick up awesome ninja teacup-catching techniques? (I love that the second time around, she pre-empted it before it even happened.)

Of all involved, Hanekawa certainly has the right to have an input on this, given her own experience with family problems. In this case, her "I only know what I know" does cover the pertinent issues...

Cat-like reflexes, I guess. I doubt the cat and tiger are completely gone, since they did have an effect on her hair (which she now has to dye black). There's no way it's humanly possible to catch a cup someone just flung, in addition to preventing 99.9% of the tea in it from spilling.

I was wondering if she still had traces of the cat left in her, yes. Somehow I had the impression that the only lingering effects left on her after dealing with those issues were cosmetic though.

Oh, Araragi made a nice play there with healing Sodachi's injury. Given that he seemed to move at just the moment Hanekawa touched her cup, was this something prearranged between them? What purpose would Hanekawa's movement serve though? Just a distraction?

(Oikura's voice becomes almost unrecognisable to me when she goes into the higher-pitched, more "childish" tone.)

Yeah, seems like they planned that. And if so, Hanekawa's actions serving to draw Oikura's attention makes the most sense.

I'm not sure they had to plan it out. Araragi would do that on impulse even though it could get him in trouble while Hanekawa could definitely predict he'd do it and make a distraction for him.

She doesn't seem that unhinged to me. She was pretty rational throughout the entire episode, recognizing that she was just taking out her frustration on Araragi without much reason, and continuously trying to compare her situation to the worst case scenario to reassure herself ("hey, at least I'm not dead"). She just also happens to be depressed, possibly in the medical sense, and everything she sees is filtered through that. She never snapped out of anything either.

edited 1st Nov '15 3:40:02 PM by Clarste

Well, I feel she's depressed enough to be considered as unhinged. Especially the way she swung from cold hatred for Araragi (which was strong enough that I wouldn't have been at all surprised if she attacked him again) to her despairing monologue...the latter was an outpouring of all the things she's been dealing with, but it was still a worrying transition.

And then suddenly she seems roughly normal again after Hanekawa and Araragi fed her the "you're not happy because you don't want to be happy" spiel.

(Was Sodachi stuttering at the start of the episode because her cheek was still hurting, or is Lalalagi's name just that hard to pronounce?)

edited 2nd Nov '15 9:49:38 AM by ashnazg

She isn't well at all, they just happened to have calmed her down and given her options by offering to come back. She had been pretending she was okay, and we can't be sure if there even is a social worker coming by. Hanekawa offering to come back after laying the truth on her is probably the best way to handle the situation, too much direct confrontation is bad, but in this situation, they needed to dig a little to get her out of the is loop of self-loathing and depression.

And iirc, Tsubasa still deals with the two oddities inside her, they talk about it in the epilogue for Tiger that the month after was working it out while living with Hitagi. It is odd people seem to think she made up with her parents because the anime left out a few key points.

The next ep should be fantastic if they do that one scene right. You will really see why Hanekawa was the ideal choice for mediating this eps situation.