#nadeko snake

[fzzr]

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.

[wildcatfourteen]

I'LL BE YOUR FINAL BOSS

[nadekofannumber1]

I’m so nadenormal

[shays-shack]

a medusa nadeko sketch I decided to make look less sketchy

[violet-eien]

Sengoku Nadeko. 🐍

[swampvoid]

I'm watching Bakemonogatari, and as interesting the show and setting is...the fanservice didn't age well.

[shirolg]

Hi everyone! Today, I’m excited to share my latest drawing of Sengoku Nadeko from Bakemonogatari in her Snake Goddess form. 🖌️✨

I’ve put a lot of effort into capturing Nadeko’s divine and enigmatic aura. I hope you enjoy the details and the final result as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Don’t forget to leave your comments and follow for more content!

Social Media: 📸 Pixiv: [https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/24368276] 🐦 Twitter: [https://x.com/lg_shiro] 🎨 DeviantArt: [https://www.deviantart.com/shirolg]

Thanks for watching and supporting my art! 🌟

[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.

[monogataribr]

REFERÊNCIAS EM OFF & MONSTER

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ A MARCHA DO PROGRESSO (1965)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ BAKEMONOGATARI VOL. 06 EDIÇÃO REGULAR (2019)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ BAKEMONOGATARI VOL. 22 EDIÇÃO REGULAR (2023)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ DR. SLUMP (1980)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ KIMI TO NADEKO!, HEROINE BOOK 4 (2014)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ NADEKO SNAKE, BAKEMONOGATARI BLU-RAY (2011)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ OROKAMONOGATARI (2015)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ PLATINUM DISCO, NISEMONOGATARI (2012)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA (2011)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA (2011)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ SPECIUM RAY, ULTRAMAN (1966)

OFF & MONSTER (EP.01) ⨯ YOTSUGI ONONOKI, DESING DE PERSONAGEM

[loopingpyre]

Actually annoying Sodachi Fiasco and Suruga Bonehead are getting moved to after Nadeko Draw, if at all.

If they do all of them later, you still need them before Nadeko Draw, even if they 'aren't that important'. They're still kind of important.

You can't just take Nadeko Snake out before you get to the Tsubasa Cat Bake finale, because it's not that important to Tsubasa Cat. Because it's important to the cast in Tsubasa Cat.

It's the same as why Hana is better before Koi. The character throughlines are important.

[sorairoknife]

come to think of it this was some pretty amazing foreshadowing in the nadeko snake op

like it's setting her up as a writer(well, mangaka)...and the pillars of books kind of look like snakes. I think

[studentofetherium]

Do you think there are similarities between how Satsuki feels about Shiki Tohno and how Nadeko feels about Araragi? To me the idea of Nadeko becoming a vampire is funny for some reason

oh i really like this ask

no, i don't! but let me explain

Satsuki's love for Shiki is as genuine as any love can be. the most important thing about Nadeko's love for Koyomi is that it's a false veneer being used as a shield to protect her from malignant forces. but Satsuki has no reason to protect herself in such a way

Satsuki becomes violent, and she has stalker tendencies, but that's about where the overlap ends, and even then, the way they go about it feels very different. even if they might be two expressions of the same or a similar trope, the way it's handled feels distant

while Nadeko pretends to be normal as a means of hiding herself from society, Satsuki is actually that normal. Satsuki is the girl next door who stumbled into a world she never should have, and it brought out her worst tendencies— yet, those tendencies are not themselves uniquely abnormal. in a world where Satsuki had never become a vampire, she would have lived a normal life, have normal friends, get a normal boyfriend, etc etc etc. becoming a vampire is what opened her to the life of abnormality, such that a different Monogatari character might make a better point of comparison

we don't really know when Nadeko broke, or what broke her, but by the time we meet her, and at any time we see her, she has been broken by society, and is deeply, irrevocably abnormal. from the start, she was like that. when she became cursed, she started sacrificing snakes to undo her curse, of her own impetus an abnormal choice, and one which further pushed her down the path of abnormality. Nadeko never fit in

Nadeko used love as a shield. Satsuki's love was genuine. even later on, once she's in the BAA, we never see anything to contradict her feelings that she had for Shiki. she's likely just moved on, as normal people do

anyway i feel like Vampire Nadeko would, beat for beat, recreate the entire events of Bakemonogatari at her middle school accidently and without any awareness of what Koyomi had gone through

[nadekofannumber1]

i think ZokuNade is supposed to be literally Kuchinawa considering the other versions of characters Koyomi meets are directly their associated oddities (Suruga is only the Rainy Devil, Tsubasa is only the cat, and I've always maintained that the small Tsubasa is Kako, the youngest sister)

Mayoi and Tsukihi are already oddities, and so stay much the same, while Karen never experienced a true oddity, and Sodachi nothing at all

Tbh yeah zokunade is probably kuchinawa, but also there’s like 2 kuchinawas. The one Nadeko manifested, and the one Nadeko revived. Zokunade is probably both, but if it was just revived kuchinawa mixed with the looks of Nadeko and the regrets of Koyomi that would also make sense. Some characters are more reversed internal oddity and some others are more on regrets. (And he really really regrets the Nadeko incident)

The lesser example for a sole regrets one is Karen who’s like, supposed to be an extension of the idea that araragi feels like he’s been ignoring the femininity and personhood of his sister but also that arc works in an odd way bc idk how many people actually mentally internalized karen as masculine before nise 2. It’s an odd one to discuss bc Karen’s character arc is kinda messy (even in its closing statement of Karen ogre.)

Sodachi based regret is a more easy to pinpoint.

Kuchinawa of the shrine and Kuchinawa of the Nadeko have been kinda fused in a way so perhaps zokunade is only 1/4 Nadeko.

Regardless people don’t post kuchinawa enough.

Regardless of if one sees him as just the oddity or a sort of black hanekawa fused new identity situation.

[animehouse-moe]

Bakemonogatari Key Animation Note Volume 1, Book 1: Nadeko Snake

[aokozaki]

Monogatari Arc/AU where the Fire Sisters get genuine Tokusatsu powers somehow. I only think of this because you just know their hero names would be like "Burning Bee", "Flaming Phoenix", and "Shining Snake" or something.

Nadeko gets to be a Fire Sister in this one, I dunno.

[toyota-supra]

what did you think of Nadeko Snake?

Nadeko Snake arc was scary... I liked it! Something about it felt so much more real in a way that's kind of gross... But I think that's because despite already knowing and having a connection with the girl (and much more the other way around!), her actual aberration had little to do with anyone's character but hers! Even in Mayoi's case, a girl with no connection with anyone in the cast, the aberration still had something to do with the other characters. So Nadeko felt a lot like an event or a secret boss of some kind, some side situation that ends up standing out more, and you're not sure if it's in spite or of because of this difference.

In any case, the opening is even better within the context of the show and I could listen to it for hours. Someone said a 2 hour loop is small, but I generally just don't listen to music on loop or for very long at all! I like to listen to an album or two while doing something else and then moving on! I am not that kind of girl

I also really like the snakes thing. I don't know! It's a good arc