Alright alright folks, settle down, let’s get to the business at hand. So far, Zoku Owarimonogatari has done a predictably solid job of justifying its own existence, applying Isin’s perpetually skeptical gaze to the very idea of Monogatari having an “ending” in the first place. Our lives don’t resolve into neat little Happily Ever Afters once we’ve tackled our immediate emotional problems; each ending is actually a new beginning, and writing the first page of a new story is often the hardest part. Through challenging the insubstantial relationship between narrative drama and human existence, and making the paralyzing diversity of potential futures literal through the mirror world device, Isin has successfully written a coda that feels both inessential and natural. There’s no new villain to face, just the stark reality of deciding your life’s path.
All that intermingling of personal psychology, life philosophy, and supernatural metaphor is what we’ve come to expect from Monogatari. But beyond that, incidental thought experiment arcs like this also serve a different purpose: introducing us to all the cool characters and potential characters that have touched this world, including imposing yet heretofore unseen figures like Kanbaru’s mother. Mombaru’s unseen presence cast an imposing shadow over Hanamonogatari, and I’m eager to finally get acquainted. Let’s get to it!
Episode 5
And of course, we open with the two of them naked in the bath together. I suppose Kanbaru had to get it somewhere
It looks like they’re actually drawing her with some muscle definition, which I appreciate. Gaen Tooe is supposed to be an imposing presence, a figure even more intimidating than the specialists we’ve come to know
Also just plain appreciate this show celebrating a middle-aged woman as hot in a scary kind of way
“What’s Kanbaru like at school? She’s an idiot, so she gets up to all sorts of idiocy, I suppose.” Harsh but fair. It’s a shame that regular Kanbaru doesn’t exist in this universe – I would pay serious money to see her walk in on her mom and Araragi naked and discussing her school affairs
Their body language is very good – Araragi’s got all of his limbs tucked in, clearly nervous, while Gaen is essentially doing the classic confident manspreading pose at the far end
Araragi reflects on this Gaen not really matching up to the descriptions he’s heard, and it seems true; this Gaen seems significantly more laid-back than the woman whose strident monologues set the stage for Hanamonogatari
“Even if you don’t know about something, you can guess just about everything by looking at it.” I think that might just be you, Gaen
She’s also basically got Kanbaru’s sense of humor, except adjusted to fit this Mrs. Robinson-style situation
“Knowing and not knowing aren’t the only states of knowledge. You can also think you know something, but be wrong.” An interesting distinction. I feel like this treads closely to Monogatari’s reflections on “fake” versus real, and how our perception is often equally, if not more important than the reality of a situation. Which could be Araragi’s route out of this situation – he doesn’t have to truly discover the perfect future he should choose, he just has to think he’s discovered it. Confidence can fuel you when self-knowledge falls short, and confidence applied over time can become truth as well
“Are you sure that you know the first thing about your friend overseas?” Gaen teasing Araragi in multiple ways at once, both gesturing to her understanding of this mirror world situation, and also poking at Araragi’s still-piecemeal understanding of Hanekawa’s motives
“You came here believing a silly suspicion like that? You’ve got a maiden’s heart.” Gaen absolutely does not disappoint; her aura seems more intimidating than Kiss-Shot
“If something appears to be reflected here, that’s just thanks to the desires of the viewer.” She presents this as an apology, but it might also be the answer – that Araragi doesn’t have to find some secret answer in a mirror, but merely ask himself what he wants out of life
In order to convince him to let her wash his back, she dangles the true story of the monkey’s paw before him. Truly a Mrs. Robinson of the highest order
“Those are some nice muscles you’ve got there!” I do love that everybody comments on Araragi’s muscles. Equal opportunity horniness, please
Araragi triple-hedges his thoughts on the matter, barely able to contradict Gaen and state how he thinks giving Kanbaru the paw was a terrible idea. The best he can muster is “what I think, given my world’s values, is that bequeathing it might not have been a good idea”
To which Gaen of course responds “well, it’s not like I had a specific plan in mind.” Goddamnit, Gaen
Apparently the Gaen family are specialists in monster creation, in deliberately breaking off parts of themselves to conceptualize as oddities
“It’s about your other side, but you can’t let it be your opposing side”
“In the end, a mirror is a tool to face yourself from different angles.” She continues to have this arc’s themes on lockdown, offering all manner of pointed hints regarding what Araragi must do
“She’ll one day have to face herself like myself and my sister did.” A statement accompanied by shots of the school track, gesturing towards the still-brewing conflict of Hanamonogatari
“If you can’t be medicine, then turn into poison. Otherwise you’re just plain old water. I raised her on words like those, but they might have been directed at me. To her I was a parent, but to me I was just a crybaby devil.” Oh wow, this is probably the closest we’re going to get to an apology from Gaen to her daughter. And it’s so perfectly Monogatari, too – the advice she offered was actually just a reflection of her own anxieties, the words she herself needed to hear in order to justify her decisions. Those words never had any relevance to Kanbaru’s life, and she’d recant them if she could – Gaen’s one of the few who seems to have accepted they’ve made the wrong choices in life, long after the fact. The scars she inflicted on her daughter were born of her own emotional wounds
“I chose to destroy that devil, but you chose to save your shadow, didn’t you? Stick with that decision. Whether it’s light or dark, there’s no question that it’s your partner.” Rather than coming to terms and embracing the parts of herself she found distasteful, Gaen chose to excise them instead, thus both literally and metaphorically passing her trauma onto her daughter. In contrast, Araragi and Hanekawa’s decisions to embrace their shadows actually set them free
And Gaen disappears, leaving one final hint etched on Araragi’s back: Naoetsu High School
“What? I don’t understand the tone or content of that sentence.” God, I love Isin dialogue
Yotsugi also has some comments on Araragi’s muscles, as usual
The animators are having a lot of fun with this goofy conversation. We even get an extended Clockwork Orange parody with Yotsugi in one of the droog costumes
Yotsugi doesn’t like the idea of listening to Gaen’s sister, and thus elects to go hunting for Black Hanekawa instead. She leaves Araragi with a warning that “there probably won’t be a fight scene, but be careful. Something is waiting for you”
Returning to his home in order to put on his school uniform, Araragi finds a girl’s uniform instead. So it’s true, the Araragi of this universe is actually Oshino Ougi
Aaand he puts the uniform on anyway
Reflecting on all the things he’s seen so far that don’t really make sense if he’s Ougi in this world, Araragi is forced to once again accept that this universe is fundamentally incoherent. Man, lore-centric viewers would absolutely hate this arc
“Just as I lost my ID when I graduated, Araragi will eventually be replaced by Ougi.” Making his anxieties as explicit as possible, returning us to that initial terror of no longer being defined as “Koyomi Araragi, High School Student”
Back at the shrine, Mayoi is getting drunk with Nadeko and Little Hanekawa. As Mayoi explains, Hanekawa’s younger self is a legitimate side she can manifest – not surprising, given Hanekawa herself tends to compartmentalize her life into pre- and post-traumatic eras. Hanekawa cannot recognize her childhood self as anything but an entirely different person, and thus she can manifest here
“This world itself has been the product of a grand misunderstanding”
“All Araragi ever needed to do was notice the existence of his partner.” Even as a drunk child, Hanekawa still seems to have the clearest grasp of this situation
And at last, Ougi is found, hiding out in the classroom where they once trapped Araragi in a time loop
And Done
Oh man, that was a satisfying episode! The fact that this is a fabricated mirror world has meant that most of Araragi’s interactions haven’t necessarily revealed new truths about his companions, with the exception of this world’s version of Sodachi. But with Kanbaru’s friggin’ mom showing up, this episode offered up a wide variety of insights regarding both Kanbaru’s upbringing and the relationships between the specialists, offering an unexpected and very welcome epilogue to Hanamonogatari’s drama. It was also wildly entertaining seeing Araragi get pushed around by a woman who so completely outclasses him; Araragi is a dubious hero at the best of times, and watching him get bullied by one of this universe’s legends is always a treat. With all the clues in hand, let’s see if Araragi can solve this riddle!
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