#hitagi crab

[moonnight-flowers]

Hitagi Senjougahara Moodboard 

I starting watching monogatari series for a test and I know is problematic anime because I want review it, so far my favourite character is Hitagi  Program Picsart Hitagi Senjougahara © Nisio Isin

I made this back in March, 6, 2023

[alewave17]

Hitagi Senjougahara

Monogatari - Wallpaper

[mamangasick]

Bakemonogatari

Nisio Isin Oh! Great

[amiya-shirou]

Started reading the Monogatari novels. It's been enough time since I watched the anime that not only this is making for a nice nostalgia trip (used to be my 2nd favorite anime after Kara no Kyoukai back when I was a teen), I also forgot enough of the details that Nisioisin's little twists can still take me off guard.

Hitagi Crab is definitely a great start - not only because of Araragi and Senjougahara's banter, which I missed dearly, but because of how much it's not "just" a fun banter. The more you read, the more you understand Senjougahara, the more her "jokes" and "venomous tongue" are re-contextualized and you see the person underneath, how despite beeing seen as "scary" for her words and action much of it was a defense mechanism. And this whole idea is also a joke in the text: she starts by defining herself as a tsundere and it's clearly played for laughs, until you reach the end of the arc and are hit just as hard as Araragi by her sincere thanks.

Or even earlier, with her "generosity will be seen as hostile behaviour", that starts making so much more sense upon learning her backstory and leads to this shift in Araragi - and the reader's - perspective:

Monogatari really wants you to ask questions, rather than stopping at the surface of the character's actions. Which is not something unique, many series do or should to that, but the specific way Monogatari does it just works so well, you know? As I said at the start, Nisio really knows how to take me off guard. And Senjougahara's story does a very good job at setting the foundations for what's to come.

[marioparty15spoilers]

Monster God Hitagi Senjougahara

I need to find a cleaner way to paint

[cyber-newtype]

obviously love tsubasa cat for the tsubasa cat reasons but i think im more of a hitagi crab/nadeko snake person

[typellblog]

Tsubasa Cat - An Analysis

In an interesting move for a post theoretically about Hanekawa I am prompted rather unsubtly by the text to begin with Hitagi. Specifically, her first date with Araragi.

In the anime, this is the last TV episode, and all things considered it’s not an unreasonable place to finish. This story, to some extent, is not about Araragi, but about Araragi’s relationship with Hitagi. She is important to every other arc (besides, perhaps, Nadeko Snake, which is interesting in its own right, but I digress). 

What I like about this scene is how it’s mirrored – it starts with Hitagi’s stumbling attempts at asking Araragi on a date, and ends with her stumbling attempts at asking him for a kiss. During the torturous (to Araragi) car ride with Hitagi’s father, she talks about – as if at random – Araragi’s studies, Kanbaru, and her father. During the second half, when they’re alone, she makes it clear that this was a deliberate showcase of all of the things that she has – everything she can offer to Araragi as his girlfriend.

This transition is accomplished through the midpoint of Araragi’s conversation with her father, which begins awkwardly and then veers into the heartfelt – ‘take care of my daughter’ is at first uttered as a joke and then once again more seriously when the conversation ends.

It gives us another perspective on Hitagi, telling us that the only people she felt comfortable speaking her mind to were people she didn’t mind being hated by, and people who would never hate her. We see that Araragi started as the first and became the second. But just as Hitagi’s father underrates his importance to her, seeing himself as in the first rather than the second category, so does Araragi. He feels uncomfortable being given the credit for helping Hitagi open up to others. He wasn’t the one who did it, after all. She just went ahead and saved herself. It didn’t need to be him, specifically. Anyone could have been there for her.

As Hitagi’s father points out, however, that alone is enough. The simple fact that he was there for her is enough to earn her gratitude. There’s nothing wrong with that.

And it’s with that in mind that we move outside, to see the stars.

This is also one of the few things that Hitagi can give to Araragi. Not the stars themselves of course, not even the specific location outside the observatory, but rather the memory. It’s a memory of a time that her family was still together. A memory that was reclaimed from the Weight Crab in no small part thanks to Araragi himself.

When Araragi is asked in the car what he loves about her, he’s too nervous to answer. When he flips the question back on her, she answers smoothly, ironically. It’s a total defeat.

When Araragi is asked now, he answers easily. Everything. Everything that she’s shown him tonight, he accepts. When he asks her again in response, she gives the same answer, but in this context, we realise she was being dead serious earlier.

It’s the kind of response that fits Hitagi’s specific brand of brashness paired with vulnerability. It’s the kind of recontextualization that fits this series. And as an affirmation of their love for one another it’s an appropriate jumping-off point for what Araragi is about to go through in this arc.

But before we get to that, I want to note that the way this arc is reliant on previously established events that we haven’t actually read about yet is quite aberrant.

The difference positions Hanekawa differently from the other characters. She’s not someone that Araragi meets because of oddity problems, she’s someone he’s known for a while already. Unlike the other characters, she’s stable - doesn’t need fixing. Her oddity problem has already been resolved, and she slips comfortably into the role of supporting character from before she’s even introduced.

If Araragi’s developing relationship with Senjougahara is the throughline of Bakemonogatari, then his relationship with Hanekawa is its dark reflection. She appears in every arc, but never gets involved directly, never changes as a result. She tells him this. I never change. It’s a lie.

On a narrative level as well as a personal one Hanekawa is sidelined, ignored, taken for granted, and it is essentially this failure to address her that feeds the Sawari Neko.

It’s an interestingly contradictory oddity. As its name suggests, it ‘meddles’, doing things for the host that they in some way needed but didn’t have the desire to act on. It was triggered by the act of picking it up from the side of the road and giving it a proper burial. It could easily be ignored, but ignoring things like that is not in the nature of Hanekawa Tsubasa. She sweats the small stuff, she does things that are expected of anyone but nobody actually does, she projects the image of an ‘ordinary’ person, and in doing so comes off as more extraordinary than anyone else.

She goes out of her way to help the cat, and the cat goes out of its way to help her, because for all her kindness and compassion she doesn’t reserve any for herself.

The ability of the Sawari Neko is energy drain. It’s the inverse of her usually supportive nature, the selfish ability to take from others in order to make herself feel better.

Since we’ve mentioned how the oddity’s quirks informs Hanekawa’s own issues, let’s continue with the classics and talk about the characteristic Monogatari twist. You see, Araragi tells us, the typical twist with these cat monsters is the reveal that there was no cat monster. A virtuous woman acts strangely at night, becoming a harlot and wandering the streets. She must be possessed! Entrapped by a monster! No, she’s just doing that on her own. The idea that she couldn’t possibly want to do that is your own assumption – how well do you really know her?

This is a theme that has been explored in Bakemonogatari already, with the case of Kanbaru Suruga. She was afflicted by a devil, yes, but the devil only gave her the ability to achieve desires that she actually held. Hanekawa’s case is an expansion of this – the monster is in a very real sense part of Hanekawa herself. But we understand this already. There is no need to belabor the point that Tsubasa Hanekawa is, herself, gaining some benefit by the cat’s actions. This is how oddities work. They arise for a reason.

And thus, the twist of the previous cat incident, the one that we haven’t actually seen yet, is skipped over. Or rather, it is told to us directly. Hanekawa faces a terrible family situation. Her parents aren’t really her parents. Her overwhelming stress from this causes the cat to assault others, including those same parents. 

Instead of this, we get a new, more dramatic twist. The cause of the stress this time was not her parents, as Araragi assumes. It was her feelings towards him.

Stress is a curious thing. The word must come up a dozen times in these few episodes – I can still hear the drawl of Oshino’s voice as he pronounces the English loanword.

For my money, the most interesting portrayal of Hanekawa’s stress here is seen in the opening for this arc. Or should I say both openings? There’s a photo version as well as the more usual animated one this time.

I would say the theme here in the first one is ‘wandering’ – we’re given names of different countries for each shot of Hanekawa walking around. A reference to her plans to travel after graduation, I suppose. But the pictured locations aren’t actually different – all washed through the same grey filter, all seemingly Naoetsu rather than overseas. Hanekawa’s post-graduation plans are paralleled with her habit of walking around town on holidays to avoid her parents.

It’s another view of something that seems to Araragi quite impressive and unconventional. Perhaps she simply does not know where to go, would rather be anywhere but here. If her walks are a way of avoiding one source of stress, her parents, then her travel might be pegged as a way of avoiding the other – Araragi himself.

The fear of being trapped is heightened in the second rendition. Now we see her actually running from something, hands grasping to pull her back, strapped motionlessly to a set of train tracks.

The thing I’m most curious about, though, are the opening and ending shots of her standing on the bridge, long hair trailing to either side. Different versions of Hanekawa – the second is the cat – but the same solemn expression. It’s enough to make us doubt that they’re separate characters at all, and indeed that’s the point. We’re shown not just Kuro Hanekawa, but Kuro as Hanekawa.

Kuro Hanekawa is an interesting character.

She can’t lie because she’s too direct and unthinking to bother. Contrast regular Hanekawa’s assertion that she doesn’t lie – one that’s patently untrue. To her, keeping up appearances and responding in a way consistent with her ‘normal’ persona is more honest and upstanding than revealing her true feelings. To be reductive, if Kuro tells the truth because she’s to dumb to lie, the Hanekawa lies because she’s too smart, too socially conscious to be honest.

Kuro in her lack of regard for societal norms can be considered a manifestation of Hanekawa’s stress, but she doesn’t embody it. She, herself, is easily able to fess up to her master’s (note the reference to her as a different person) feelings. She is indifferent towards humans, not actively hostile. Her random energy drain attacks were done to relieve stress, but Araragi’s alternative method of Shinobu is also perfectly acceptable to her. Not only do their vibes and behaviour differ, but so are their personalities and priorities – the cat is functionally a different person.

In this light, the anime’s portrayal of their dialogue is interesting. During this scene he initially refuses to believe what the cat is saying, his idealized perception of Hanekawa preventing him from recognizing her hidden emotions. He mistakes her refusal to show any sort of outward jealousy for her incapability of doing so.

But look at how the ghostly presence of regular Hanekawa reaches out to Araragi along with Kuro’s words. See how Araragi gently addresses her rather than Kuro – Kuro as Hanekawa instead of either Kuro or Hanekawa. Later his perceptions shift, Kuro’s dialogue delivered through reused frames of Hanekawa talking to him in the classroom, Hanekawa’s mannerisms like the mysterious opaque glasses recontextualized in Kuro’s paws – Hanekawa as Kuro. It becomes clear that Kuro is merely giving voice to things that Hanekawa really does feel.

As such, he’s able to give a genuine answer, saying that he loves Hitagi. Kuro Hanekawa, for her part, is not particularly surprised or bothered, simply moving to her next step in the plan to relieve her master’s stress.

She tries to kill him.

Once again building on Kanbaru’s arc, Araragi is forced to seriously consider dying in order to solve the problem. Hanekawa is someone he owes a great debt to. Would it really be that bad? Yes!

Hitagi would kill Hanekawa. Here we have the same excuse as Kanbaru’s case. I don’t want to say it’s wrong, she absolutely would, but the point lies more in what it represents. Her feelings for him. Everything that he promised to give to her. It’s not actually an ideal resolution of the situation, even if we accept that his life is as cheap as he makes it out to be. Because something that cheap can only be traded for one person’s happiness. Everyone else who cares about him (including Hanekawa) would be worse off for it.

The real solution is to ask for help. This has been partially demonstrated already, on the hunt for Shinobu. Hanekawa rubs it in, with her little lie about vampire fascination. None of the girls he met him him because they were brainwashed, they agreed because they care about him. They are each people that Araragi has to one extent or another participated in saving. Oshino Meme says that people can only save themselves, but Araragi doesn’t share that opinion when it comes down to it.

He believes firmly that Hanekawa saved him. Just by being there, a person can drag you out of the deepest and darkest of depths. Araragi has done the same for several others. So, isn’t it alright to ask for help oneself? To not feel as though you’re being a burden on others, but can instead rely on them equally?

This is the realization he came to, the root behind Shinobu’s disappearance. Kuro Hanekawa says he was getting too used to oddities, too friendly with them, not respecting their power and legend enough. He was treating Shinobu as a child, hardly feeling as if he had the right to even speak to her. Thus, she disappeared, until he called her back. Until he relied on her.

She, the ur-example of the people he has been risking his life to help, as well as the source of his vampiric abilities that enable him to do so.

As of our current position in the story, we don’t know what caused their current relationship. But we do know that as an oddity capable of draining the life from others, even the selfish Meddlecat is handily outclassed by a vampire. And yet Shinobu willingly stops draining when requested. Araragi willingly gives her his own blood. If the cat is Hanekawa cut loose, free from social standards and bothersome human emotions, then what does being afflicted by a vampire mean to Araragi exactly?

Hanekawa ends this arc by falling asleep, returned once again to her regular state. But as she crosses the thin line between dreams and reality, she lets some unfiltered thoughts slip out.

You have to shape up. The impersonal framing of debts doesn’t represent Araragi’s true feelings. Just as ‘not wanting Hanekawa to exploit his debt to her’ wasn’t the real reason why he rejects her, ‘I care more about my debt to you than remaining friends’ is a really awkward way of him saying he just wants to help her. He struggles to admit this because, I think, of his belief he can’t really save anyone. He’s almost embarrassed to admit he’s trying.

In the end, though, he can’t take the same lackadaisical attitude as Oshino Meme. He can’t help but get involved in others’ personal issues, to put people’s wellbeing over the most effective way of resolving a situation, even if that person happens to be an oddity themselves.

However – is this really such a bad way of handling things? Araragi blurs the line between oddity and human, but he’s been getting half-decent at walking that tightrope lately. Knowing this, Oshino leaves town, trusting Araragi to handle both Shinobu’s disappearance and Hanekawa’s transformation.

Oshino himself – his lackadaisical attitude is ultimately just an attitude. His actions reveal a certain level of sympathy for Araragi’s priorities. His fees, his manipulations, his harsh words, all show a certain awkwardness on his part. He has an inability to be honest and act directly, one that balances out his true deep propensity for helping others.

Thus ends Bakemonogatari, a story about coming to terms with the monsters hidden in the darkness of the world. “For example, in my own shadow.” Araragi adds. Whatever being afflicted by a vampire means to him, it’s something he has to learn to live alongside with, not ignore.

Thus ends Bakemonogatari, but I’m looking forward to writing about the rest of the series very much as well. Took a stupid amount of time to muster up the mental energy for this one, but hopefully I can work a bit faster next time (I always say this and its never true lmao)

[nadekofannumber1]

Looking through the lists of existing mono characters you can find many progressively more mysterious and hard to track till they disolve into nothingness, like owari1’s classmates feel obscure but they have full names and blurbs so you realistically can track their existence

Like they’ve been catalogued

And I think the same thing will happen in sodachi fiasco. None of those ppl are getting faces.

On the other hand there’s characters that have less than that, like the faculty they mention only at the beginning of hitagi crab, like the principle, yoshiki.

But lack of media presence itself doesn’t make a character less known, for example you can see Nadeko’s Y/N posting in kimi to Nadeko and I would say those characters are more obscure than the principle. I’d even say they’re more knowable because they have designs and funny circumstance.

I haven’t seen a single person ever talk about Nadeko’s teacher or the fact there’s a design for him in art book. And there isn’t a reason to.

He’s just some guy.

Meanwhile when nadeko crafts her own yn teacher with tertiary ML disease her shojo same face tendencies just make him look like any of the other boys (who are middle schoolers)

You also won’t remember him but you’ll think it’s funny he existed at all

[toyota-supra]

curious for your thoughts on Monogatari so far! if you have them

I watched four episodes so far and I'm enjoying it! Winter asked me if it's similar or different to what I expected so I'm repeating it here: it is exactly what I expected so far.

I don't have a lot of thoughts I can put into words (and some of the ones I can't are too embarrassing! for now) but I really like Hitagi. the Hitagi Crab episodes are so incredible to watch I can tell that anyone who's watched this when younger would never ever forget it.

The visuals and the soundtrack are very nice and I adore the framing of some scenes, though this is more a general compliment without examples

[studentofetherium]

What do you think would happen if different Bakemonogatari characters transitioned?

i'm gonna take this as "what would happen if each Monogatari character transitioned" because that's easier to answer. also i'm ignoring Koyomi and Nadeko because those two have been talked to death

i think Hitagi is a pretty interesting one because i think you could tie a transgender attitude to the issues with the crab, like overcoming trauma lets him move onto the next thing and gives him the strength to keep pushing himself. that said the transition itself would probably be pretty straightforward. naturally, there would be fun interactions to be had with Koyomi and Suruga, but beyond that, i think he would go about his transition in a fairly normal way

Tsubasa transitioning also fits in pretty nicely with the narrative presented, particularly that she learns to guide her own path and choose the future she wants. there's also stuff in Musubi but that's spoilers so i won't get into it. as for the way people react i think again there's some neat conversations to be had with other characters (this time Koyomi and Hitagi). ultimately tho i don't think much would change from where Tsubasa ends up in Musubi whether he transitioned or not (although i don't think he could get top surgery by that point or a certain plot point doesn't work)

of the cast Suruga would definitely be the most divergent from her existing characterization, since a queer identity is already a core part of it. lesbian > trans man isn't an unprecedented leap tho and i think there's a lot of storytelling potential with this

i've talked about transmasc Sodachi before and i still think him being mad at Koyomi for being cis and not appreciating the natural masculinity that he's having to work for is really funny. i still need to write this someday

Yotsugi: this already happened in the vertical Nise translation

[valhallakonbi]

i actually have covid this time which means it's time for me to post on here.

i ummm am bad at keeping up with writing fics, but (hanamonogatari spoilers)

thought of an AU where rouka didn't kill herself, but still saved hanadori and got a hold of her devil's leg. she enrolls at naoetsu. instead of koyomi, she's the one to catch hitagi when she falls down those stairs and convinces her to listen to her by showing her the devil's left leg under her leg brace. both of their personalities clash: rouka resents hitagi as the track field athlete she heard about, who wasn't afraid to go all out on the field (the opposite of rouka) and for whom her rival only had eyes for. but she notices the emptiness inside hitagi, and the thing about her pushing all of her sorrow and worries onto something else and apologizing to the crab really resonates with rouka, since it's what she does as the devil parts collector. she tells the devil victims she'll take all their troubles away.

rouka probably has connections with kaiki in this still, unbeknownst to hitagi. it's how she finds a way to help hitagi.

in mayoi maimai, hitagi says she would've fallen for anyone who would've saved her and honestly out of the entire cast, rouka to me is on par with koyomi in terms of self-flagellation and selflessness (literally gives away her soul to the devil to help people). i don't know that they would get together, but suruga would notice either way. lesbian love triangle with devil parts ensues...

[xbuster]

I love when Araragi says “This is my Bakemonogatari: Hitagi Crab”

[corecamilo]

Senjougahara Hitagi crab - Bakemonogatari

[amiya-shirou]

Back when I had just finished reading Hitagi Crab I complimented the way NisiOisin used apparently meaningless jokes and retorts as setup for the key scene when you get what the character's deal actually is and they get completely re-contextualized in a way that makes you see the person behind the quirks and the gags, and it's something that's stayed true for the entirety of Bakemonogatari; but in Hanekawa's case, it's the entire novel that was working towards this.

Araragi is still immature, and socially inept - with every encounter he makes during the story he doesn't just grow by virtue of making new experiences, but because all of his illusions, especially those towards women, keep getting shattered. Every girl is introduced through the lens of the superficial knowledge he had gathered of them from afar, and everyone of them is cast in a very specific role: Senjougahara, the frail beauty; Hachikuji, the little kid; Kanbaru, the celebrity; Sengoku, his sister's old friend. Ignoring Hachikuji and Sengoku for a moment, with whom he had a different dynamic due to being a bit older than them (but who still acted outside the box of the "little kid" he had to help, especially Hachikuji, who left him dumbfounded with her aggressive attitude), as idols of the school he initially thought of Senjougahara and Kanbaru as being quite beyond his reach, and the novel focuses a fair bit on how out of guard he was taken by their real personalities, even going as far as saying they're destroying his fantasies. The good part is that he grows out of it, that he falls in love with everything about Senjougahara, not despite her rudeness and strong personality but because of them; he gets along so well and has such long chats with Kanbaru because of her weird sense of humor that mashes so well with his. And yet, even as he learned to see the person behind the facade, there's never a moment when he applied this perspective to Hanekawa. No, it's the opposite: he spends the whole novel hyping her up. A goddess. a saintess. A class president among class presidents. His savior. Someone who knows everything, with no faults, who sees everyone equally, one seen as a monster even by Senjougahara, someone so utterly above him as a human being that clearly the only reason she's helping him is because she must be pitying him as the lowest ranked in their class. The mere idea she might actually like him specifically is alien to him, a fun contrast to the way his love towards Senjougahara is doubted by Kuro due the fact that he's nice towards everyone.

Hanekawa was presented to us, through Araragi's narration, as someone who seemed to be born to be the perfect class president - but NisiOisin doesn't want us to take things as a "matter of fact" kinda deal. We need to see the flip side. Like with Senjougahara, we need to consider what kind of life or circumstances might bring someone to such extreme behaviors. For all her intelligence, seriousness and talents, Hanekawa wasn't born to be the perfect class president - she had to be one. She had to be the perfect daughter.

It's interesting that even the first time Kuro awakened it wasn't just due to the stress she built up for her family situation, but because she exposed that imperfect part of herself to Araragi. And even more interesting is that, in large part due to always downplaying himself, especially in comparison to her, he keeps up his image of her even after learning all this - even after dealing with the first manifestation of Kuro. He talks about how much she saved him during spring break, how he will never forget her presence and support, how he changed thanks to her; yet never stopped to think about things from her perspective, about how much he might have saved her. In retrospect, as stated in the novel itself, it's pretty simple. A girl from a cold, loveless home, living through the events of Kizumonogatari with him, a vampire who happened to be her classmate, like some story from a romance novel or a shoujo manga? How could she see that as just a normal occurrence? If she was so important for him, why is it so unthinkable for the reverse to also be true? And yet he never notices, rationalizing all the bias she shows towards him, because surely the perfect Hanekawa could never love the imperfect Araragi. He's a mockery of a human, how could the paragon of humanity fall for him?

For how complex the series is, for how complex she is, the reason for her Oddity emerging again was surprisingly mundane: the boy she liked was dating someone else, and he was flaunting it.

Despite all her qualities, despite her role, she is still a teenage girl. She's human. She's not perfect. She doesn't know everything: she only knows what she knows.

[aokozaki]

Reading Suruga Monkey, getting a deeper look at the situation, I think you could absolutely contrive a Hitagi-Crab-but-with-Kanbaru-instead-of-Koyomi...

Kanbaru, thinking it was best, held herself away from Hitagi in a very chivalrous way. She held herself away for a whole year, in a period she describes as sapphic blackness... only breaking her promise to stay away when she hears about Koyomi.

But, y'know... maybe "only holding for a year" would make sense too. Seeing things not changing. Seeing her beloved Senjougahara as cold as distant as ever thinking, or maybe just hoping, that it's as miserable for Hitagi as it is for her...

Kanbaru making one last push, one last plea to "please let me save you"... it's easier to motivate than I thought, honestly. I think it's a possibility that could've happened quite easily.

[follyhodger]

Hitagi folded an origami crab for herself and a snail for Hachikuji, but when she reached Kanbaru she made a velociraptor?? I'm guessing it's a pun on the "saur" in dinosaur that can be rearranged into "saru" (monkey), but it kind of annoys me that I don't know what to with "dino"... I guess its etymological sense of "terrible" is appropriate (dinosaur and dire wolf use the same modifier) but that feels like a cop out