Monogatari Series Analysis – Mindful Self-Indulgence

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Revisiting That Vampire Loli In the Crazy Bathroom (Nise 4 Redux)

Omo and ghosty are right, Nisemonogatari is porn, but you know my corner of the blogosphere isn’t going to let the discussion end there. Whereas my first post on episode four chronicled the chaotic confusion that came over me when I watched it, today I’ll be examining what it is I really saw, and determining how I want to see it from now on. It will be uber-kimoi—I’m not fucking kidding.

A lot was going on when I watched episode four the other day. Before I started, ghostlightning had hyped me up like crazy on how badly I needed to watch and post about it. From the start of the Shinobu scene, I was already thinking about how I was going to post about it, while also being overwhelmed both by what I was seeing and by the facts of what I was seeing—one of the most relentless onslaughts of fanservice which I’ve ever witnessed. I quickly lost track of the subtitles and didn’t know what the characters were talking about anymore, so I started messaging ghostlightning to share my incredulity. The result of everything was exactly what you saw days ago.

Now that I’ve rewatched and really taken in the scene, I can react to everything and figure out how I feel—and there’s a lot to figure out. The sheer density of happenings in this scene is more than enough to make it the most memorable scene in anime I’ve watched since… well, Bakemonogatari.

NISE 4 – I DIED. (CLICK THE IMAGES)

Wow, Hanekawa looks way cuter with short—

Random Notes On Nisemonogatari 3

I promise I’m not going to blog this whole show (nor, apparently, anything at all), but here’s some thoughts that might’ve been tweets if I felt like typing that many tweets.

1. I see people bringing up the lack of Karen for the most part, despite this being the Karen Bee book adaptation. I think the titles beyond the original Bakemonogatari arc titles are largely meaningless. Kabukimonogatari, for instance, is the “Mayoi Jiang Shi” arc, and Mayoi never appears in it at all.

2. I haven’t read the novels, but I think it’s interesting to look at the times that they came out. The original two Bakemonogatari novels came out in 2006, and then Nisioisin took 2007 to write all twelve Katanagatari books. Once that was through, he came back to the other -monogatari and has been steadily releasing an asston of novels since. Unlike the original Bakemonogatari, all of the other books only contain one arc. Those arcs still always contain a character’s name, but I strongly get the feeling that this doesn’t necessarily mean the arc is all about them—though knowing Nisioisin, the arc will probably tie into their ultimate fate somehow. By the way, there are like twelve damn books in this series. Between all of the stuff being adapted right now, it only covers the first five. There’s still so much to learn!

3. God I loved this episode. It brought back the horror element of the show, the dark and strange feeling of not knowing what’s going on behind the scenes, feeling that the characters may be in genuine danger, and not knowing what to expect. I feel that Nisioisin’s specialty is setting up a feeling with his long sections of conversation and hijinks, then subverting that feeling with action and twists. What will come of all this? Right now, I feel the one who’s the most dangerous is Hanekawa and the one in most danger is Senjougahara. But it could be anything.

Predictions are meaningless, but the uneasiness is the point.

The Courage To Watch Nisemonogatari 2

If I ever felt like a show as going to give me heart problems, I certainly felt it watching this. The -monogatari franchise still feels to me like the “old friend” that I described in my Finish or Fail post on the show two years ago, but like an old friend, our relationship has only grown in inside jokes, collective laziness to get anything done, and perversion. This has become the anime equivalent of watching porn with a friend.

The Courage to Be a Lolicon (Nisemonogatari)