#Otorimonogatari

[ciltilladeltilla]

[justintaco]

Spooky Idiot Eats Shit

Monogatari Series: Second Season episode 12 (2013)

Monogatari Series: Off & Monster Season episode 2 (2024)

[typellblog]

Nadeko Medusa - An Analysis

Otorimonogatari begins in media res, with the emphasis on the inevitability of this ending solidifying it as a kind of tragedy. Why am I here, Nadeko asks. Why me? Why was this so inevitable?

What did the rest of the cast do that allowed for their problems to be solved, that allowed for Koyomi to help them instead of becoming enemies?

In truth we’re well off the rails - Nadeko doesn’t even have the typical specialist appearance that so consistently helps in every other arc. The one that unravels the mysteries is the serpent, Kuchinawa, who turns out to be none other than Nadeko herself. 

In other words the specialist role is filled by Nadeko, the protagonist role is filled by Nadeko, the victim role is filled by Nadeko, even the oddity afflicting her - all Nadeko. It’s an entirely solipsistic, fabricated story.

As a result, Koyomi’s involvement becomes singularly unhelpful. I don’t know if people really do just go ahead and save themselves, but at the very least they have to try to let others save them. There’s a particular poison about Nadeko that makes Koyomi’s usual modus operandi, seen from the outside, particularly useless. We see in his interactions with her throughout the arc that he suspects she is the victim of an oddity despite her denials - Nadeko thinks she is lying to him, but Koyomi’s guesses are already completely off from the perspective of Nadeko herself being the snake. He doesn’t think of her as someone capable of manipulating and deceiving, as someone capable of being the instigator of her own incident. 

Koyomi’s partial immortality is a representation of his self-sacrificing nature, him lowering his ‘intensity as a human’ in order to better approach others. But the more he lowers his guard around Nadeko the worse it gets, her poison stopping him from healing. 

Poison is a topic that comes up in the previous arc, the motto of Gaen Tooe, Kanbaru Suruga’s mother. “If you can’t be medicine, then be poison, otherwise you’re just plain old water.” What she means by poison is also ambiguous. It does bring to mind the antagonist of that arc (if you can even call her that) Numachi Rouka. Rouka, a girl that Koyomi couldn’t save, couldn’t even meet. Nadeko and Rouka have one main similarity - a tendency to run away from their problems & avoid getting to know other people. 

When something is asked of her Nadeko’s typical response is to do nothing, neither refuse or accept but simply wait until they give up, papering the interaction over with various ‘sorry’s or ‘anyway’s to avoid addressing the main topic. Nadeko is barely aware of what she herself is doing throughout much of the arc, avoiding thinking about the problems instead of doing anything to address them - like asking for help. After she snaps in the classroom, she leaves - after eating the talisman in Koyomi’s house, she runs away - no destination in mind besides getting away from the questions and expectations placed on her by society. 

Nadeko’s depression and anxiety, just like Rouka before her, alienate her from life itself - embracing inhuman death in the form of becoming an oddity. 

One of the things about oddities is that they don’t appear to ordinary people. Hachikuji calls it the ‘backstage’ in Nisemonogatari. They’re cut off from the ordinary operations of the world itself, only visible to those with supernatural connections or their own chosen victims. 

And Nadeko, by the end of Otorimonogatari, is quite firmly an oddity, a creature that can’t be approached for no reason. 

Koyomi saw the Lost Cow because he was lost. In encountering the Curse Cat he was, in fact, cursed. He has no business with the god of a dead shrine. No doors to unlock, no prayers to grant, no story to tell.

The narrative no longer sees him as trying to help a friend, but rather trying to forcibly involve himself with an oddity, in the same way as he wrestled the jagirinawa in Nadeko Snake. Don’t mistake the person you’re trying to save, Suruga tells him then. Nadeko is no longer the person he’s trying to save, now. 

This leads me to believe the point where it’s officially Nadekover is when she takes the talisman, fuses with Kuchinawa, loses her last reason to be attached to the narrative of herself as a human. The framing of the novel presents it as an inevitable ending because it’s narrated from the perspective of a Nadeko who’s already reached that ending. For her, looking back, there’s no changing the sequence of events that led her there. The idea that everything happening to her is inevitable and beyond her control is a neat excuse for her, but it’s not true. 

Okay, but seriously, how did we get here?

Nadeko constantly interprets events in a way that makes her feel guilty, like she did something wrong. Her fundamental view of the world revolves around “victimisers and victims” (i.e. people who hurt others and people who are hurt).

She would rather see herself as a bystander, as someone who doesn’t interact with others in either way. She finds the idea of human interaction, human touch, to be uncomfortable. However, people tend to see her as a victim, leading to an increasing worry about having a victim complex, thinking of it as ‘tricking’ others into seeing her as a victim, which becomes, in the extreme, victimising them in itself. 

She dissociates as a coping mechanism, seeing what she does and what is done to her as if it was happening to someone else. “Nadeko” did it, not her. “Nadeko” is how other people see her. An important part of Nadeko’s image is her bangs, which help craft an image of her in others’ minds, by obscuring her eyes and how she truly feels. This serves a kind of contradictory purpose, as while it’s implied Nadeko chose the bangs to deflect from her cuteness (even wearing baggy and unfeminine clothing as much as possible to avoid emphasising her cuteness) the bangs still result in people seeing her as cute. They can’t see the real her, and substitute their own assumptions onto her.

While this has some upsides for Nadeko, as it allows her to retain a blameless image, it also results in a lack of an identity. Nadeko knows who “Nadeko” is, but not who she is. She doesn’t truly identify with any of the things she does, so they’re attributed to “Nadeko”, not her. When others compliment her for being cute, she doesn’t feel as though she is being complimented. She doesn’t feel cute. She feels like she’s tricking people into thinking she’s cute. This constructed Nadeko allows her to feel like a bystander, the very thing she desires to soothe her guilt, but the more she feels as though she’s deliberately constructing it the more guilt she feels over the ‘deception’. 

Tsukihi is a kind of anti-Nadeko. Someone motivated with a strong sense of identity. Someone who’s direct to a fault and uncomplicatedly happy when people find her cute. Someone who doesn’t ascribe to Nadeko’s victimiser/victim dichotomy, because she believes in a third role, the hero. Someone who can touch others without making them uncomfortable, put in effort that doesn’t just help themself. 

Nadeko fears and loves her in equal measure. Fears her, because her attention is one of the few things capable of breaking through Nadeko’s shield of indifference. Loves her, because she’s exactly the kind of person Nadeko wants to be but thinks she never could. 

Trying to deal with Tsukihi reveals some of the contradictions inherent to Nadeko’s attitude. She acts passively, in a way that encourages people to be sympathetic, but then professes to be upset by getting that sympathy. Tsukihi, on the other hand, gives Nadeko just as much sympathy as she thinks Nadeko deserves, and Nadeko craves more nonetheless. In some ways she does still want to ‘look cute’ to others and relies on the acceptance that comes along with it. She’s stuck in a weird Catch-22 where she cant get closer to or further away from other people without resenting herself even more. 

It’s suggested that Nadeko’s crush on Koyomi is originally sourced from Tsukihi. It makes sense that Nadeko would pick Koyomi as a more conventional target for her affections, thinking the closest she could get to Tsukihi was a kind of sister-in-law relationship. 

Koyomi is someone that she supposedly feels love for, but is that coming from “Nadeko” or herself? The problem is that it’s not love exactly, it’s just another kind of shield that performs a similar role to her bangs. It gives her an excuse for why she isn’t interested in romance. It allows her to present as ‘normal’ to others, but of course that perception of normality belongs to “Nadeko”, not to her. Even Koyomi himself can’t get through to her. She doesn’t want him to understand her, to break down the barriers between them, she wants to keep him away with the bangs, to look cute to him just as she does to everyone else. She doesn’t actually want Koyomi, she just wants to remain in a constant state of wanting him, an unobtainable dream.

Cracks start emerging because of Hitagi’s presence, and that’s what has Nadeko praying for divine intervention. Hitagi makes the story of her loving Koyomi more trouble than it’s worth. It introduces jealousy, the business of dealing with his lovers. The real way to keep it stable isn’t even to kill Hitagi, it’s to kill him, affix him in the heavens as an unchanging star that will never grow any further or any closer. 

It’s tempting to see this particular purpose as the reason why Kuchinawa, as an oddity, descends upon Nadeko. But Nadeko herself doesn’t want to think about it. It’s not like Tsubasa, who after casting away her memories & emotions is genuinely unaware of them. Nadeko feels guilty about her curses towards Hitagi, wants to look cute by not mentioning them. The role that Kuchinawa fills isn’t to get Nadeko on a beeline to the talisman - he works much more indirectly.

First, and most obviously, Kuchinawa is a bully. He speaks rudely and directly where Nadeko is quiet and demure. This isn’t a shift in alignment, Kuchinawa isn’t ‘bad girl’ Nadeko - he just says what she’s been thinking this whole time and doesn’t want to admit to. His comments when he goes into school with her all question the ‘point’ of what she’s doing. From one view it’s an ancient god questioning new concepts, from another it’s Nadeko finally allowing herself to question things that she’s had to quietly accept this whole time. The intrusive thoughts stop her from concentrating and eventually lead to her snapping and fully channeling Kuchinawa to talk to the rest of the class. Again, while we could see this as Kuchinawa’s “influence”, it makes much more sense that Nadeko herself can no longer hold her feelings back. 

After all, another role that Kuchinawa’s directness performs is allowing Nadeko to poke at her own insecurities and contradictions. Kuchinawa is the voice in her head pointing out all the things that Nadeko has done wrong, ensuring the sources of her guilt are never far from her mind. There’s an odd kind of comfort to it, though - unlike the criticisms of other people, Kuchinawa never expects anything from her in response. He is amused by Nadeko’s deceptions, not resentful. He sees everyone in the world as a victimiser, as a liar. Everyone lives while deceiving themselves and others. It’s only natural. Therefore there’s nothing Nadeko can do about it. No way of her remaining a bystander.

Ultimately what I think Kuchinawa represents is Nadeko’s creative impulse turned towards escapism. He allows her to construct a story, present her life in a way she can accept, participate in a narrative she chooses. Her love for Koyomi is a story she’s been telling for a while, one that allows her to paper over the cracks in her life and give her the strength to continue. Now cracks start emerging in that story, and to paper them over she reaches for a paper-thin talisman. 

The question arises of why Kuchinawa (why Nadeko) even needed it in the first place. Clearly it plays a role in feeding Nadeko’s fantasies, granting Kuchinawa the supernatural power he needs to become real. But despite being billed as capable of granting any wish, it can’t actually make the story of her love for Koyomi real. It can’t make him love her. Because she doesn’t want him to in the first place. 

No, the talisman’s powers are limited. It can’t truly turn back time, or erase her mistakes at school, because she doesn’t believe her actions could ever be changed. It’s been over from the start, Nadeko says. There’s only one way it could ever end for her, only one type of person she could ever be, only one choice she could ever make. 

Every other Monogatari character has had multiple choices. Take Koyomi, who was prompted to kill the monster entirely, and instead made it one with him. Suruga, who was encouraged by Rouka to leave her alone and just live a normal life, and instead came back to play a final game. Tsubasa could have just let the oddities in her mind go burn off her stress and pretend it had nothing to do with her, but instead decided to let them back inside.

Let alone two options, though, Nadeko fails to see even one. What she ends up pursuing is neither of the two options, but instead the bad end, as if Koyomi had remained a vampire with Kiss-Shot.

She refuses to face reality. That’s what Tsukihi says - “telling someone to dream is like telling them to face reality.” It feels a bit contradictory but it fits into a theme that’s been consistent over the last few arcs. Seeing a dream is like having an end goal to work towards. Ougi says in Mayoi Jiangshi that it’s better to not achieve your dreams, because they’ll be inevitably disappointing. Koyomi says in Suruga Devil that wishing for something in itself is fine, it’s a destructive focus on the end result that’s the issue with the Monkey’s Paw. Tsukihi says she would support Nadeko if she was really trying to date Koyomi, but she’s not. She can’t face the reality of Koyomi having a girlfriend, of Koyomi being out of reach for her. What she’s doing is acting as though she’s in a different reality where that’s not true. 

It’s a fitting followup that when Nadeko snaps, acting her most Tsukihi-like, it’s to tell the rest of her class to face reality. As a result of Kaiki’s charms the class has started acting, in her words, “just like Nadeko”. Because lots of people’s secret feelings about each other were revealed, they no longer trust each other, assuming everyone around them are trying to trick each other, trying to act cute, to the point where they’ve given up on trying to make close relationships. Given up on the year, the class, entirely. Because they think they have no choice. 

Nadeko tells them to face reality, to accept that the world and the people around you aren’t as pretty as the stories we tell about them. To pursue a dream where everyone makes up in the end. To ‘rewrite’ the memory of that class with their own effort. It’s a vision of a Nadeko who does try to address her issues, as embodied by the class and the effects of Kaiki’s talismans. It’s what Otorimonogatari really should have been about, if Nadeko didn’t go ahead and make up another story on her own. A fantastical decoy of a story that has her running out of the classroom and never seeing the result of her efforts. 

Kaiki’s talismans, if we remember, were fake, their effects not genuinely manifested for anyone but Nadeko, who bought into the story, went as far as to research her own methods of breaking the curse, and ended up making it worse. It’s not as if she was at fault for what happened, it’s not as if she did it on purpose, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that it happened according to her desires. It let her reconnect with Koyomi, didn’t it? 

Nadeko is the type of person who can take something false and through her creative impulse, chuunibyou, escapist fantasies, whatever you want to call it, make it into reality. It’s just that she’s unconsciously biased in a destructive direction, one that results in either her being hurt or her hurting others. 

This culminates in her consuming the talisman and becoming a god. The story she’s actually trying to make real isn’t the world where she’s an eternal victim, Koyomi constantly looking out for her. It’s the story where she’s an eternal victimizer, a serpent god with sharp fangs. 

Due to her new heat vision, her hair isn’t an inconvenience to her any longer, just to others. It pushes them away actively instead of just concealing her. You could say the hundreds of snakes move independently of her will, but in another view they are her will itself, animal instinct embodied. They’re only uncontrollable in the sense that she can’t control her own violent impulses. It’s easier for her to get rid of people than deal with them directly, and this confirms her view of herself as fundamentally selfish. She can’t be like Tsukihi.

In a complete inversion from the ethos she espouses to her class, Nadeko says she’s someone who likes people only if they’re kind to her, and can’t like anyone who dislikes her.  It’s a story where in becoming an oddity she no longer has to deal directly with the human world, no longer has to be concerned with what’s going on with her classroom or her parents. 

But that, she says, is “Nadeko”, not me. At the end of it all what she’s doing is still a performance for the benefit of others. She still can’t tell what she really wants, really is. She still gets by with the excuse that she’s a bystander and there’s someone else doing all that stuff. The phone call at the end makes her dissociation clear, I think. If she really wanted to kill Hitagi and Koyomi and Shinobu, would something so simple really stop her? If she actually hated and was jealous of Hitagi, would she calmly listen to her? Does she really have to thank her for her advice? The way she reminds herself that people who are kind to Nadeko are good people sounds like she’s trying to convince herself. 

Becoming the serpent god is in line with how Nadeko sees herself, but it’s not what she actually wants. She doesn’t really want an “I”, she tells Kuchinawa as they discuss her lack of self. She just can’t bear existing without one. She says it from the start of the book. She doesn't actually want to defeat Koyomi and reign victorious over the shrine. Nadeko’s way out of this whole mess was for him to kill her. 

I get it, Nadeko, I really do. Living is just so tiring, after all.

[icecoldslugs]

Rewatched otorimono with a friend.

[valhallakonbi]

dianthus

[nadekofannumber1]

Otorimonogatari amv - goodbye (shortened)

[animebackgroundmusic]

"Murina Soudan" (Impossible Ask) by: Satoru Kosaki from: Otorimonogatari

[doyouknowthisanime]

Do You Know This Anime?

[sinkableruby]

What are your top 5 Ougi scenes/appearances?

good ask to send me than,k you

starting from 5 well i guess i dont really have like a strict order except for maybe the top one i dont know i dont know i love all of them actually im just gonna do it in chrono order

um spoilers of course dont read this if u havent finished the whole anime (the whole anime!) there will be screencaps...

okay if im going chronoogically i must give my hat to owarimonogtari part 1. wait FUCK theres so many scenes in that shit.......... im gonna be running out of space damnit.... well to summarize it BRIEFLY... (how the fuck do you even summarize it briefly my feelings are large and want to burst out of my chest)... ougis sinister leading araragi down dark paths and poking at his past and knowing the deal but playing-dumbery and antics are just amazing. and shes so cool as she does it how did she get to be that cool! evil and cool.... thats the summary but the scene i would want to talk about is of course the showdown with hanekawa (the first one i guess). uh bc its like really funny? the showdown is great its such a fun buildup of tension and they're like passive-aggressive/plain-aggressive-but-still-loosely-following-social-boundaries trying fighting each other... its great. i think in the light novels when hanekawa says 'but i would have done a better job' ougis smile freezes. you can hear the glass break. you can just hear her in her head shes going like ".......................bitch,? so that's how you wanna play it?" i wish that got animated sometimes. and also of course. it ends how it ends.

its an incredible moment because literally the moment she says this you're like ah. i see. so ougi loses. LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

LIKE GG NO RE 😭😭😭😭😭😭 SORRY OUGI YOU LOST.... DONMAI ITS OK DONT WORRY ABOUT IT. YOU DONT EVEN HAVE TO SEE ANYTHING AFTER ITS LIKE AH. GOTCHA. i was rooting for her to win when i was watching but... this was just so funny. the best way for things to have gone i think.

its also so good how she stands there after like. fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.......... usually ougi is the one doing things to people and its funny but this is also just so hilarious its done so well.

i also want to talk about otori, because ougi in otori is very cool. my first time watching otori i was very in tune with nadeko so hearing ougi do a kinda takedown of her was a very interesting experience for me. she was very sinister and severe and foreboding...... very fun. and of course when it turns out she's been tugging at the strings..... heeheehee THATS SO COOL. i mean looking at these scenes like some of these shots are so cool.

^ the face of someone so evil......

ok going later

i never see people talking about this one but the scene in hitagi rendevous in owari ge that happens on the second episode after the ending is like. oogh. its like the big instance before the finale proper in ougi dark where the show starts fucking slapping you in the face screaming "PAY ATTENTION THERE'S SOMETHING IMPORTANT HAPPENING HERE"

like this shot this FUCKING SHOT. is it just me? is it just me am i the only one who feels acute pain at this? there's something about it thats just so............... like somethings wrong. like thats what i feel like something is wrong and im concerned for this person you feel me?

shes so tired trying to get his attention and do her job and all that shes pressing the doorbell laying down... and then she sees him and goes like 'im exhausted' and just keeps girlbossing like. and like asks araragi (from her perspective) not to kill her and hes just like no and shes just like damn that sucks oh well lol. like imagine being alive for 6 months having no home (shes laying on the god damn nameplate of his house augh...) and knowing full well you're about to die, the things youre seeing now will be some of the last things you ever experience before your consciousness is gone forever (bc she isnt going to hell shes being erased). that's so cool and awesome (horrifying). anyway ougi doesnt care shes got a job to do X) (shes so insane i love her)

also that home thing and the tiredness thing is one of the big things i wrote ougi stay about so ill just take the chance to plug it if ur still reading this go read my fic! i like it a lot i think its nice. its mostly funny but it also talks about this stuff too a bit. go read it

ok next.

dont know whether to count the different parts of this scene as separate or not but i think it shouldnt be separated bc its all important to the scene and that is OF COURSE: ougi dark starting with ougi's convo with tsukihi (the build up… it's oddly calm so you feel somewhat reassured but you KNOW something's going to happen… the buildup of tension starts here and keeps rising). the contents of that conversation, near the end are like, really cool things to be included because up until that point we still dont have SO much insight as to who ougi is but she opens up a bit to tsukihi here and its kind of a paradigm shift to see.

there's something so poignant about this fraught mood...

such an ougi way of talking about one's feelings about oneself...

at least for me when i was watching i was already like, kinda rooting for ougi bc i wanted bad things to happen to araragi (lol) but also like. ougis just so insanely entertaining and fun that like, uh obviously i would root for her here. so when this fun silly funny little fun character starts bustin out the:

its like woah wait huh back up hold on a second there. i care you>???????

like literally the whole confrontation with ougi and araragi it is just like oh no since when did i care about this character so much oh no oh god oh fuck...

like how come they gotta hit me with all these gut punches what did i do to deserve this

like whats so cool about it is with how its directed and the score (and the voice acting!! the seiyuu did an INCREDIBLE job) and everything you can tell shes scared but like again shes actually insane so she's just gonna be like yeah this is the right way for things to happen

(it seems a lot like she did all this wanting the outcome of her losing to araragi, at least to me. hanekawa also says so in the commentary tracks of ougi dark. so thats another layer. theres so many layers... i dont know how many of these layers people pick up on but by golly do i pick up on them)

and of course he saves her (imagine if he didnt? id kill him. WAIT ACTUALLY THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE LIKE "ARARAGI SHOULDNT HAVE SAVED HER" NEVER GO ON THE REDDIT DISCORD SERVER FOR MONOGATARI PEOPLE ACTUALLY THINK THIS WAY IM LITERALLY GOING TO KILL THEM ITS SO. ok i wont talk about it), and she gets mad and its like i KNEW you were putting up a bold front you had emotions this whole time and then its like. oh you had emotions this whole time and you were totally aware of everything and just kinda had to deal with it thats kinda fucked up (i think a lot about how being an oddity born of self-criticism necessarily means you have to be self-aware and how that leads to ougi being a kind of exceptional type of oddity and like how it ties into identity and like... all that stuff). but the emotional breakdown/outburst is so good... augggghhghhh its so good 😭😭😭

(like i think sometimes about how if they had done this wrong, it would feel out of place for ougis generally not-emotion-showing character/not emotional in general character, but they did it so well... its so good)

and of COURSE to cap off this perfect beautiful wonderful scene we get THE GWEH AKA THE PEAK OF FICTION. IT DOESNT GET BETTER THAN THIS. NO IM NOT JOKING. LITERALLY WHEN I SAW THIS I HAD AN EPIPHANY. NOT JUST BECAUSE ITS ADORABLE BUT BECAUSE ITS LIKE HOLY SHIT INTUITIVELY A PART OF ME UNDERSTANDS. THIS *IS* **THE** BEST CHARACTER. and i went to go pace around my room being hype about it. im not joking really bc the novel talks about it being like "an utterly unattractive true-to-life" groan or something that proves she has "substance" which is like... yeah! she's her own person! not just made of lies or w/e!! the gweh actually ties everything together in such a perfect way and i am physically incapable of remaining in bad mood after i see it. i saw it the first time and i was like :O -> :) -> :DDDDDDDDDD and that hasn't changed since it will always put a smile on my face 😌

also also ougi in zoku owari is incredible too so good. the TEEHEE THE TEEHEE IS SO AMAZING. like YEAH!!!! YOURE A LITTLE ROTTEN PRANKSTER TEEHEE!!!!!! YEAH!!!! TRICKSTER TIME TIME TO BE TRICKY A TRICKY LITTLE TRICKSTER YEAH!!!!!!!!!!! and we get more classic ougi exposition/explanation..... havent talked about this as much but their ideas are so interesting.... theyre so interesting and cool i would pay to hear them share ideas about things.............. anyway one other thing i really appreciate about this scene is the shared intimacy between ougi and araragi. it feels more personal yk. this sorta comfortable, natural, thoughtless intimacy is something i absolutely adore about their dynamic but it basically only happens right here in zoku owari, and not even so much in the light novel version. its interesting... i want to write about it. im GOING to write about it mark my words

also honorable mention to ougi in hanamonogatari. theres nothing like big enough about these scenes to mention in comparison with the rest of them bc theyre so short but. BOY OUGI YEAHHHHHHHHHHH HES TRANS WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO i saw that and i was like >:) yeah kanbaru wym hes been a boy this whole time >:)))) don't misgender him god...... >:))))))))))))) (AND HE LOOKS SO COOL THEY ANIMATED HIM SO COOL BC HES IN BOYMODE HES SUCH A BOY FUCK YEAH)

also fuck i didnt talk about the whole planetarium dream scene. that was also good.

ummm yeah i could just talk about this forever and keep talking about scenes and stuff but ill leave it here bc u said 5 and ive already technically named like 7 at least so. yeah. but i dont really have like a ranking order necessarily, except for ougi dark bc its just so so so SO good.

thank you for enabling my derangement ive been writing this since u sent it to me im so ougipilled right now you wouldnt even believe. im ougi wired.

[lunarlagomorph]

Realizing otorimonogatari and kubishime are both about the narrator hiding their involvement in the 'crime' from the audience, but they go in different directions.

Kubishime is about the detective who knows what's going on but hides it from the audience, and while he originally seems like little more than an unfortunate bystander it turns out he was much more of a catalyst for what happened than he originally let on.

Otorimonogatari is about a victim who knows what's going on, but hides it from herself (and consequently the audience), and while it originally seems like she's being unwillingly coerced, it turns out that everything was the will of some part of her after all.

So both of them are lying to the audience, but from different angles. Ii is intentionally being an unreliable narrator. Nadeko, or rather the part of nadeko speaking to the audience, is being completely honest with the audience, as far as she knows. And while they both originally seem to be occupying separate parts of the victim-perpetrator-investigator trifecta, both of them are the perpetrators in the end.

There's not really a point to all this, but it's just a bit of a connection between Nisioisn's works i found interesting.

[studentofetherium]

Shaft were cowards for not adapting Nadeko admitting the one she was in love with being Tsukihi and not Koyomi. Even putting it into the flashing text

And the worst part was that they probably did it so that male fans wouldn't lose interest in Nadeko and would still buy her Merchandise

see, i don't actually take too much issue with it. Nadeko Medusa in the anime cut out a lot, in the way that Kizu did, without the final product being compromised because of it. cutting that line is tragic, but with the way the anime was adapted, it would have felt jarring to just throw that in anywhere

[fzzr]

This really fucked me up the first time I encountered it, I actually had to stop and process before getting to the episode. Plenty of second OPs for characters reference the first one, but when Mousou Express references Renai Circulation it does it in a corrupting, creepy way. In the visuals, it's running a lot of the bits from the first one in reverse, starting from the beginning walk being backward and facing the opposite direction. In the music, there are things like the reversed strings that likewise feel like you're being pushed back. Excellent composition across both the music and visuals here.

Monogatari Series: Second Season; Otorimonogatari OP

[nadekofannumber1]

You can write your own words to create writing on the wall

[sinkableruby]

So, how did you end up stumbling into Monogatari as a series? And who would you say was your Favorite character before Ougi filled that spot? I'd love to ask more about Ougi but, y'know, personal spoilers and all.

oh oh oh yes i have an answer for this one

actually the answer to both is nadeko!! you are right that ougi is my all time fave but nadeko was acc my fave before them and still holds my second place slot!! talking about it below with spoiler talks of otorimonogatari

similarly to you i stumbled upon it in my teens like a while back. my first impression was like the memes and stuff of course with renai circulation and what not. which led to me seeing a comparison video of renai circulation and mousou express, which is super interesting and cool even without context. and scary for that matter mousou express is kind of terrifying. it leaves an incredibly lasting impression, and it certainly did on me back then. of course it helped that i like the songs too. i also saw a clip of her in medusa form which was intriguing (and also i love the design of it). this on its own though was not enough to get me to watch. actually no wait i think i tried to watch it but the order was so confusing that i started with like nise by accident somehow and i had no idea what was going on so i quit lmao. but i was still curious about the series partly due to nadeko and partly bc it was like one of those big shows that you hear about yk

then fast forward a while, i hear the kizumonogatari movies r comin out so im like fuck it lets watch even tho i have no context. luckily they turned out to be prequel stories and my experience was not totally ruined by this move lol. of course, they were really good, those movies are amazing. so now i was like more invested in the story, but only by a little bit more. the final push i needed to actually try to watch (again) was ultimately because i was so curious about nadeko. tbh she was also the reason why i finished the series in the first place. monogatari on first watch for me was overwhelming and very dense (i mean, its a dense show), and before otori i actually wasn't enjoying it like a LOT, especially not with all the weird bits the series likes to throw at you. not to say that i disliked it, it just wasn't like amazing to me. of course now i feel differently and love the early parts of the series very much too, but first watch was slightly rough at times and took me a while to complete. learning what was gonna happen with nadeko was a big motivating factor for me.

but then when i acc got to otori i was like HOLY SHIT ITS ME lmao. i mean id already liked nadeko the best from the very little id seen of her and the fuzzy spoiler memory of vaguely what was going to happen in her arc. but man otori was so good and resonated with me so much, every single moment of it was so gripping to me. i loved the stark contrast in nadeko's perspective from araragi's (esp noticeable in how she sees her classmates), how it's already set up at the very beginning as a story where she Gets Worse so there's a feeling of profound dread surrounding it, her outburst at school (my jaw actually dropped at the "shut up!" i was so shocked and then hyped lol), just like everything about kuchinawa, the incredible ost (not to mention that op of course). ougi actually did contribute to the enjoyment bc she brought up such interesting ideas at the beginning and is generally such an enigma, but shes not the focus here right now i just cant help but bring up ougi in any situation. but yeah otori hands down one of my favorite arcs, one of the ones i still go back to rewatch frequently for the profound effect it had on me and the comfort it brings

its like what you were talking about with hanekawa. nisioisin truly did an incredible job with his characterization to make so many very true-to-life and nadeko is absolutely no exception, she is very relatable to me. i've got a lot of experience in life being shy, quiet, socially anxious, generally anxious lol (although not anymore!), and as 'the sweetheart who can do no wrong', so it's very much nadeko's specific brand of avoidance and like... 'outward-facing personality management' that resonates with me, if that makes sense. i was completely aligned with her during that whole watchthrough of otori in terms of feeling how she felt. i was seeing myself reflected back at me from the screen lol. of course we have lots of differences too but the similarities were really capturing to me on my first watch through and kinda catapulted me to finish the rest. her later appearances only added onto my appreciation of her too. i'll leave it there though since you don't know so much about that yet. when u get there ill probably have more to talk about. but shes a wonderful character love her very much.

also. ghh. i wish i could say more about ougi. you have no idea. im so curious to see what you will think of them. im practically vibrating with how much i want to talk about them (a constant state of being for me). but i wont say anything yet. i will be Hush...