#nadeko sengoku snake | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fzzr · 2 years ago

Text

Monogatari Read-Along Re-Watch — Nadeko Snake

Previously.

Novel

The bulk of this story is actually spent with Suruga, continuing the pattern of each story starting by checking in with the focus of the previous one. The main thing that we learn from how Koyomi and Suruga interact is that he now fundamentally trusts her. Koyomi doesn't just trust her with his life (which is not much, to him) but with someone else's. We also get to see that Suruga's moments of seriousness in Suruga Monkey were not aberrations. She will banter and troll at the slightest opportunity, but when something serious is going on she is ready.

This isn't wasted time with respect to the story, as the banter is part of what lets Nadeko open up and ask for help. As for her, Nadeko doesn't even have her first line until more than halfway through. Once we do meet her, we find there's another reason Suruga has to carry the conversation. Nadeko is too... let's call her "quiet"... to participate in the quick exchanges of the series. Koyomi assumes that she's like that due to the pain and shame of her possession by the Jagirinawa. We can infer that there's a bit more to it than that, when she talks about how special Koyomi and her time with the Araragi family were to her. In the end though, it's left ambiguous.

Something I've never understood (and still don't) is why Koyomi thinks that recognizing Nadeko on the stairs would have changed the results. At that time she would have had no reason to share what was happening to her or what she was doing, and he would have had trouble re-contacting her afterward regardless. They didn't lose a huge amount of time between seeing her on the stairs and catching her at the shrine again later. The critical mistake happened when she showed them the binding marks, and that would have happened the same either way.

Little detail: Koyomi gives the date, but his reflection that not having spoken with Mayoi recently upsets him a bit is what gives us a sense of what that amount of time passing feels like emotionally and lets us check in on his relationship with her without distracting from the threads relevant to this story.

Anime

This arc features the first really large cut in the anime. Much of the opening conversation with Suruga is skipped in favor of getting to the shrine and main plot of the arc sooner. Some of it gets moved to the walk up the mountain, but it's still a big cut in the amount of banter. This was probably necessary to fit the arc into just two episodes. It's just a bit shorter than Suruga Monkey in print, but that was three episodes. Filling out the same amount of screen time might have caused it to drag.

Once again the audio does a lot of work here. For Suruga, her voice makes it quite clear where she stands on the silly-to-serious spectrum at any moment. Nadeko gets to express subtleties in her thoughts in a way that we can pick up on even if Koyomi cannot. Music is great as always. There are a few scenes where it really caries the tone by putting on one of the spookier or more tense tracks.

As for what's on screen... hooboy. Mayoi Snail is the first part that raises the power level on Monogatari (extended panty shot and non-con contact on an 11-year-old) but Nadeko Snake is what makes this a don't-watch-with-an-open-door-behind-you show. The novel doesn't spend much time describing the situation with Nadeko in just bloomers on the bed, but the anime follows a very unfortunate gaze, including adding some action details that are original to the anime. It is defanged somewhat by the humor surrounding it, but that's still something that's entirely reasonable to bounce off. The snake going down Nadeko's throat is depicted in the anime very much how the novel described it, but it's still a moment you don't want to screenshot and share. That part was actually not animated when originally aired, which I always assumed was because it was going to be a problem to put on television, so that's what they chose not to finish when they fell behind schedule.

Conclusion

Of all the arcs in Bakemonogatari, this is arguably the one that casts the longest shadow. The shrine is one of the most important locations in the series, and events from this arc will have direct consequences through to the very end of the series. Nadeko herself has a lot more going on than we see in this arc, but I'll hold off on a Nadeko post until the Second Season wrap-up.

This is the first arc where the necessities of their respective media made significant differences between the novel and the anime. Split decision on whether it's an improvement or not. The pacing of the anime is genuinely better, but I missed a lot of the humor and relationship development that was embedded in the banter of the novel. The blocking of the scene in the bookstore with Hanekawa was more clear in the anime, and the environment of the shrine provided great visual storytelling. The real oof is the power level check inherent in how the events are depicted, but there's no way around it. That's just Monogatari.

#monogatari #anime #original post #monogatari read-along re-watch #bakemonogatari #sengoku nadeko #nadeko snake

2 notes · View notes

typellblog · 2 years ago

Text

Nadeko Snake - An Analysis

This arc in the novel opens with Araragi meditating on how people change over time. This is not a surprising topic for Nisio to address here. What is surprising is that this opening sequence focuses on Sengoku Nadeko.

Sengoku Nadeko. A character who, in this arc, doesn’t seem to have changed in the six years since Araragi last saw her.

I mentioned last time that one of the cool things about Monogatari is how all of the characters have two sides (more, occasionally). Nadeko, in this arc, barely shows us her first side, let alone a second. It is tempting to skip over this and focus on the incredible character development she gets later.

We could instead read this arc as largely about Araragi, and the choices that he is confronted with. His new friendship with Kanbaru raises questions about his commitment to Senjougahara. He’s a weak-willed person, Hanekawa says - not just in the sense that he’s easily seduced by a pretty girl, though. We are to understand this as commenting on his willingness to care about a person, to help them out even when it hurts him. Even with strangers. Even with people he’s never met before.

Oshino questions him on much the same grounds. How are you going to deal with things when I’m gone? Araragi doesn’t just get involved in oddity incidents because he knows a specialist that can help out, he does so regardless. He doesn’t just put himself in danger because his vampire blood allows him to recover from injuries more easily, he would do that anyway.

Even his nature as part-oddity that keeps him within the world of the supernatural and continues to expose him to dangerous events - that too is optional. He could simply stop caring for Shinobu.

But he can’t. He can’t ignore someone right in front of him that needs help. He’s not that type of person.

This arc, then, is about asking him what person he would save, if he had to make a choice. In the climax, left with no other option, he physically rips the jagirinawa from Nadeko’s body. The snake spirit attacks him instead - and he can’t beat it. He continues to confront it despite taking heavy injuries, and Kanbaru has to intervene, saving his life by pushing him away and keeping him still.

The reason why Araragi was so desperate to intervene was because if the snake left, it would return to the person that cursed Nadeko, likely causing their eventual death. It starts to become clear what Oshino meant by oddities being natural processes that shouldn’t be interfered with. Araragi’s attempts to save everyone involved will only backfire on him in the long run. Oshino’s role as a specialist is to balance things out, to address an oddity’s root causes rather than violently destroy them.

It’s why he hates treating those afflicted by an oddity as victims. It’s the reason for his catchphrase, “did something good happen?” He questions the idea that oddity-related incidents are misfortunate for those affected. In reality, oddities operate on a clear logic, they appear for a reason - often as a result of the secret desires or wishes of the affected person. This is why they are so effective as a storytelling tool. They are visual metaphors that are physically present within the story.

So, all that being said . . . what do the snakes reveal about Nadeko’s traumas, her secret desires, her internal world? In this arc, at least, the answer is very little.

We can talk about what is there. She finds the bruises from the snakes entwined around her to be shameful, causing her to cover up more when she dresses. They are, in fact, invisible - others wouldn’t be able to see the marks, let alone the snakes themselves, but there’s clearly more going on with Nadeko’s self-image than the snakes alone. We will not learn about it in this arc.

Furthermore, due to the snakes’ invisibility, she suffers in silence, lying about the pain they were causing to Araragi and Kanbaru. Again, it is not just the snakes causing this - Nadeko is terminally incapable of speaking up about her own suffering, causing her to pointlessly apologize rather than actually tell the truth. Again, this is not touched on much in this arc.

Her method of attempting to resolve the problem alone is interesting. She kills a lot of snakes for a solution that doesn’t actually do anything. What does that crime, the willingness to hurt other living beings for her own sake, say about her? We don’t find out.

Nadeko is, according to Oshino, purely a victim. There was no particular reason why she was attacked by the snake. She simply got unlucky.

(Oshino, of course, never saw Nadeko in person, relying entirely on Araragi’s reporting in order to prescribe a solution to this issue. I can’t help but wonder how differently things would have gone if he had actually met her. Although, he was already trying to cut ties with Araragi and co. at this point, so even if he did catch a whiff of the larger issues that might crop up with her he may have done a half-assed job anyway.)

Wrapping back around to the original point here, some may say that Nadeko was poorly written here. That this arc was just bad, or at least flawed due to its lack of focus on the titular character.

But my mind keeps coming back to Araragi’s opening monologue in the novel. How he describes the Nadeko of 6 years ago as a “reserved girl of few words who constantly looked down at the floor.” How her behavior in the present is almost exactly the same, despite her being described as having become “a unique someone that I could never forget.” I think it’s clear that Nisio already had some idea about how her later arcs would go.

This arc doesn’t strike me as bad writing, it strikes me as deliberate. The way that people change over time isn’t an isolated theme in this arc, it’s present as Araragi muses on the future of every main character. Hanekawa isn’t going to university. He himself is trying to get into the same one as Senjougahara. Senjougahara herself is changing from what she once was, shedding the trappings of her oddity affliction. Kanbaru will too, in a few years. He, on the other hand - is presented with the choice left to him by Oshino, in that respect.

It’s notable that this conversation with Kanbaru, in the anime, takes place in a specific location on the way to the shrine - a weird little covered pathway. This gets a lot of emphasis in the anime despite not even being mentioned in the novel’s description of the trip. There are some interesting lighting effects, mostly in the sudden transition from darkness to sunshine as they exit the tunnel. The reason why I mention it is because of Araragi’s conversation with Nadeko that takes place in the same location in the next episode, and once again touches on the theme of change over time, but from a different angle.

Nadeko asks how much he remembers from back when she used to come over to play, and when he says ‘not much’, she’s visibly disappointed, to the point of causing Araragi to break out into a sweat. She says that those days were precious memories to her, and as they exit the tunnel and emerge into the light, she mentions that she was jealous of her friend for having an older brother. It’s an oddly unsettling face she makes, isn’t it?

It’s not just that Nadeko hasn’t changed, it’s that she’s trapped in the past. She still calls him Koyomi-Oniichan, something that he’s clearly surprised by. She still calls his sister Rara-chan, and upon hearing it he thinks about how Tsukihi has changed since then, now being known as part of the Fire Sisters.

When Nadeko is invited into Araragi’s room, she mentions that it’s a different one, almost surprised. As if he would still be sharing a room with his younger sisters. As if it’s even normal to remember which room your friend’s brother was in six years ago.

There is clearly something very strange going on with Nadeko! But we don’t get to see inside it at all. Nisio’s usual last minute revelations center on the fact that there were two snakes, that both the classmate that Nadeko rejected and the friend who was actually in love with him cursed her. We might wonder what this says about Nadeko, for her to spark such resentment. We will continue to wonder. Araragi is an imperceptive narrator at the best of times. He even jokes that the person Nadeko is already in love with, who she turned down a confession for, would probably be him, were he in a rom-com.

However, one element of this story’s presentation that the narrator’s perspective doesn’t seem to influence is the anime’s opening. The anime adaptation does more generally seem to be aware of future developments than the novels and foreshadows them accordingly (for example, Hanekawa’s circumstances).

But Renai Circulation is especially impressive in this regard. For one thing, she’s depicted as drawing manga here - and this is well before Koimonogatari was released even in novel form.

The way the final frames end on Nadeko’s knowing smile towards the audience definitely indicate there’s something up here, but I find the first few images most interesting - the way they’re initially static shots of her looking cute and then undergo a sharp change. She turns around in the first, moves her head to directly look at the viewer in the second, and in the third she snaps her pocky.

I won’t pretend to have completely deciphered the visual language here, but suffice to say that Nadeko is oddly aware of the viewer’s perspective as this opening plays out, her stereotypically moe poses in the last 15 seconds being aimed directly towards the camera.

And speaking of which. She shows a lot of facial expressions here that she'd be too embarrassed to ever display in real life. What’s with that? What’s with . . . the hair colour? This is clearly a stylized version of Nadeko, one that I would argue is deliberately created to give off a cuter impression of her by none other than . . . Nadeko herself. I mean, she’s the one singing the lyrics, right?

If you go to the Youtube comments of any upload of Renai Circulation, you’ll be able to find several comments talking about the clash between the tone of the opening and the show, usually from people who saw the opening first because it was popular and watched Monogatari subsequently.

They can be surprisingly insightful, actually, like this one that points out purely based on the opening you would assume this is from a slice of life show where Nadeko is the main character. Because really, that’s the sort of character that Nadeko would most like to be, the kind of thing that her self-image is focused around.

However, in this opening you can see the cracks already emerging. Take for example the repeated visual motif of her body being outlined by coloured shadows - and the way those shadows start to drift away from her actual body over time. The disjunction between image and reality starts to creep in.

That’s really the lesson of this arc to me - how hard you have to try to not notice there’s something going on with Nadeko. Despite that, we will have to wait a while to see the full consequences of this unfold, but nonetheless I still find the way she’s portrayed here fascinating.

And there we go, the length of these is ballooning already . . . might be a Nadeko-specific effect though. If you couldn't tell already, she's my fave and I'm very normal about her!

#sengoku nadeko #araragi koyomi #monogatari #monogatariposting

90 notes · View notes