And so Sodachi Lost comes to an end. This episode couldn’t match the cathartic peaks of last week’s stunner, but it was still a fine conclusion to a solid arc. Ougi’s villainy got some time to shine, and then was directly countered by Hanekawa whipping out her tiger hair powers. It seems like Isin’s haircuts aren’t just thematically important, they actually dictate the power levels of his characters – equipped with her self-actualization tiger stripes, it only takes Hanekawa roughly three seconds to figure out the truth behind Oikura’s mother. That answer didn’t really add or subtract anything from the story, but I certainly liked Araragi’s further thoughts on happiness near the end of this episode. Araragi’s certainly no Hanekawa or Kaiki, but he’s figuring stuff out one step at a time.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Ougi comes lurking around when Hanekawa and Araragi are discussing Oikura’s mother
Ougi mocking Hanekawa for failing to help Araragi. Though of course Hanekawa has been helping Araragi, she just hasn’t directly solved the mystery, which Ougi could do because Ougi cheats
Ougi’s not even being playful now. She’s being vicious and direct
Ougi says she’s already solved the mystery – of the locked room, and where the mother went. But of course she shouldn’t know about any of this
Ougi keeps trying to provoke Hanekawa, but Hanekawa’s staying silent. She may just be trying to figure Ougi out at this point – what she really wants
Ougi demanding he say he loves her more than Hanekawa to get the answer. Playing off his need to help people to torture him
So this is all aimed at Araragi. Can he be nice to everyone at all times, can he help people even if it means abandoning friends or his feelings. She’s still poking at his weaknesses, and still seemingly representing his aberrations
Or was this all designed specifically to drag Araragi and Hanekawa apart?
Hanekawa says to give her ten seconds to prove she was the better choice. She spends seven of those seconds washing her hair back to tiger-mode, and then three thinking up the correct answer. So it seems like Hanekawa’s hair dye basically limits her at school to being the old version of herself – with it removed, she can think freely and embrace all of herself to see things from other’s perspectives, like she does in Hitagi End
Hanekawa is shocked by the conclusion Ougi reached
“Hint: Oikura’s mother is already dead.” Ougi’s delighting in the awfulness of the story
“Disappearance from a locked room isn’t necessarily escaping from that room” key for both Oikura’s mother and Oikura herself
Oikura had been taking care of a corpse
“Losing the will to live and wishing to die are two separate things. What do you think, Hanekawa?”
Hanekawa just wants to protect Oikura from this truth
But Araragi wants to tell her everything
Araragi’s avoidance of the past as a mirror for Oikura’s
“Even concerning happiness, after learning some tips, she’s sure to pass me in no time. But happiness isn’t a race. If she passes me, I just need to learn from her in return. That’s how we learn, teach, and take each other to a higher place.”
“We should become happy properly.” jesus this episode is a killer
Oikura’s aid will be halved, and she has to move again
“What are you doing here, Ougi?” “I’ve been looking for a lost child. That was my starting point.” This is the same place she ran into Nadeko at the beginning of Medusa
“The objective of seeing how you behave with your childhood friends has been met. So as far as balance goes, I think it was perfect for me to lose here”
“Be careful, Araragi. It might not go this well next time”
Hanekawa leaves him at an actual fork in the school building, saying she has to go request a leave of absence
“I opened the envelope as carefully as possible”
Isnt lost child more indicative of Mayoi? Maybe that whole Darkness consuming thingy that made Mayoi dissapear is somehow related to Ougi
At the very start of Medusa, Ougi tells Nadeko that she was looking (but couldn’t find) Mayoi
I really doubt that. A) It doesn’t really add anything to either Ougi or the Darkness and B) it goes against everything Gaen told us about the Darkness (rules of the universe, etc) and of course there’s no reason to believe Gaen was lying. Ultimately, Mayoi disappearing was just a metaphor for accepting death or other inevitabilities: you can’t just hang out with/molest a ghost for the rest of your life. The Darkness was never a problem to be overcome, it was something to be accepted.
That said, I think Ougi is deliberately saying things that hint in that direction in order to taunt Araragi. It’s just another form of prodding at his weaknesses, reminding him of when he failed to help someone. Which hasn’t happened yet, technically, but the audience knows what she’s talking about anyway.
Ougi is definitely looking for Mayoi at the end of this episode. You’re right that Ougi runs into Nadeko right after, but I remember Ougi saying in that conversation with Nadeko that she was looking for Mayoi but she was proving hard to find. A ‘lost child’ is far too fitting a term for Mayoi to refer to Nadeko.
“Lost child” is indicative of Mayoi, and Mayoi is the person Ougi was looking for – but instead she runs into Nadeko. I believe she says the same thing to Nadeko when she runs into her, that she’s looking for a child who’s difficult to find.
Ougi seems to be dropping these type of lines as bait, quite like how she introduces herself as the “niece” of Meme to catch everyone’s attention.
Her use of “looking for a lost child” is likely meant to throw Koyomi off guard since he’s the only person at this point in time who knows what has happened to Mayoi, and he explicitly mentions in the second season that he keeps this from everyone else. This scene likely shows that Koyomi is only starting to get a hint that Ougi is some sort of supernatural being, and explains why he decides to divulge the disappearance of Mayoi to Ougi in order to “test something” despite warnings from Shinobu.
And as a last comment, Ougi says something very interesting. “…as far as balance goes, I think it was perfect for me to lose here.” I think this reinforces Koyomi’s statement that “everything before Ougi is zero”, hence in terms of equality, 1-1 for Koyomi et al vs. Ougi.
In fact, I think Ougi is being sarcastic. Maybe she really intended to “lose” because she knew she would be successful in thwarting Nadeko. Again, Ougi is boasting her control over everyone. Her character is so intimidating – I’m really enjoying this season thus far!
Ooh, good call on the balance line! And yeah, it does seem like the end of Shinobu Time is the first time we see Araragi truly aware that something is up with Ougi. I wonder when the show will loop back around to actually revealing the consequences of that decision.
Yeah. I’ve been intrigued with how owarimonogatari formally introduces Ougi using formulae and math. In fact, I think there was an indirect reference to the same theme of mathematics when Ougi said “I detest things that are twisted around. I just want things to be proper.”
Ougi appears to be similar to the “darkness” that appeared in Shinobu Time, but in her case she seems to even out inequalities. Koyomi ≠ Human; therefore Koyomi must = Vampire.
My math sucks, so this might be wrong, hehe.
I’d like to point out just how much Ougi was controlling that discussion. She was the one that brought things up and always made people react to her. Both times Hanekawa starts to take some control of the conversion – when she stops Araragi from speaking and when she claims victory – in both circumstances Ougi immediately siezes control again.
In the first instance Ougi immediately pressures Hanekawa into proving her usefulness and aggressively holds her to just 10 seconds. In the second instance Ougi starts up a hint-giving game, starting by giving a hint herself but swiftly pushing Hanekawa into taking part as well.
This is something that feels very important about Ougi – she’s almost always the one in control of what’s going on. She leads discussions and events, always making sure she is the one acting and that other people are reacting.
Yeah, that does seem like something Ougi feels the need to do on an almost emotional level, which is obviously rare for Ougi. And she’s never been as aggressively antagonistic as she was at the beginning of this episode, when she was making up for “losing” to Hanekawa earlier.
Really enjoyed all the connections between lines from earlier in the arc and from this episode. For example, Araragi answering his own question from Sodachi Riddle, “just how foolish is Araragi Koyomi?” with “Even though our foolishness is endless, we can become wiser together.”
Araragi’s response to Ougi’s question, “will you repay kindness with ingratitude?” of “Even if it’s ingratitude, I’m glad I have something I can repay Oikura with” reminded me of his thoughts at the end of Neko Kuro, where he claims he doesn’t care about saving Hanekawa but is happy to repay his debt. I feel like the nuance is completely different this time around: in Neko Kuro he is mostly concerned with satisfying his own sense of obligation while in Owari he really believes that he can help Oikura get on the path to happiness.
I know that it’s probably trivial to know what Oikura wrote in her letter to Koyomi, but what do you think “from your left” means?
This might be a stretch, but I’m assuming this has something to do with mathematics (again). Aside from vectors, the only other thing in math I can think of right now with “directions” such as “left” or “right” are intervals, and in terms of terminology, anything to the “left” is less than that to the “right”
For example, 0 ≤ x ≤ 1 is an interval containing all numbers satisfying the equation. The left is always lesser than the right.
Is Oikura implying that she admits to Koyomi being “ahead” of him at this point? If so, I think that’s a remarkable change in her character. For the first time, she sums up someone as having greater worth than her, and that she’s willing to move on despite knowing that.
“From your left” was in the text message from Senjougahara to Araragi. It was just a pun on her name: she signs the message “Hidari” which sounds similar to “Hitagi.”