Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re winding towards the conclusion of Monogatari’s Monster Season, as our elite team of investigators work to hunt down the life-draining killer stalking their town. With four exsanguinated basketball players in the hospital, a similarly drained Deathtopia at Mayoi’s shrine, and one body still unaccounted for, the race is on to crack this case before Kagenui arrives and just punches everything to pieces.

While our killer remains elusive, the journey so far has offered plenty of thematically resonant touchstones to sift through, presenting echoes of both Acerola and Araragi’s passage into vampirism. Acerola believed becoming a vampire was the only way she could take account for the lives she stole, pledging that each life taken would be as precious to her as her own flesh was to the gourmet Deathtopia. But in meeting and transforming Araragi, she actually fulfilled her previous wish: to discover someone she could truly save, and thereby redeem her own existence. Each found a vessel for their self-sacrificing instincts in the other, and with the validity of their existence affirmed, they were each able to grow beyond those instincts, and discover the ordinary, fundamental truth that if you keep living, good things will eventually happen.

“Happiness isn’t a race,” Araragi once said, and the wandering passage of himself and Shinobu speak to the truth of those words. Though the journey has been arduous, this arc’s glance back towards their origins demonstrates just how far they’ve come, all the great strides towards happiness they have taken. Whatever mysteries remain, the emotional growth of Araragi and Shinobu has never been more certain. Now let’s get to work!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re continuing our journey through what I can safely say falls on the “Monster” side of Monogatari’s Off/Monster Season collection, given both its protagonists are either alleged or self-defined monsters. On the one hand we have Deathtopia, an immortal vampire bound only by the proud weight of her own words. On the other, we have Acerola, an unwilling “princess” who brings ruin to all, and wishes only for a single life to save.

Whether they consider them a curse or blessing, both have clearly been isolated by their powers. Deathtopia had spent so much time in her lonely castle that it fell to her servant to inform her the kingdom had fallen, while Acerola’s quest for redemption has only brought more lives to ruin, raising the question of whether her existence itself is a curse. Yet in spite of the fantastical nature of their afflictions, their story echoes a familiar Monogatari refrain: the necessity of coming to peace with your own nature, of learning to love yourself, to accept all your sharp angles, and thereby reach beyond your own torment and positively impact the life of another. Let’s see how our vampire and death princess are fairing!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we are returning to the supplementary trials of Monogatari’s mixed-up heroes, and likely getting into some sort of ornate Shinobu-related fiasco. It is little surprise that the show’s formal conclusion has resulted in all these dangling loose ends – after all, as Monogatari has always emphasized, becoming our best selves is the work of a lifetime. It was actually Sodachi’s first appearance that prompted Araragi to reflect on how “happiness isn’t a race,” and Sodachi returned to reiterate that truth last arc, offering Nadeko the world-weary assurance that nothing ever ends, we just keep working on ourselves and putting one foot in front of the other.

It is up to us whether we find that truth sobering or liberating – whether we lament the endless task of self-definition, or find hope in always having a second chance. But if Monogatari is anything to go by, we should take heart in how changeable our identities truly are, the miraculous fact that merely by dedicating ourselves to new daily practices, we can actually shift our fundamental nature. That we are works in progress will always be a source of anxiety, because it means we are never truly “perfect,” never done with our psychological odyssey. But that great adventure is both the trial and privilege of consciousness; the very fact that we can examine and even change ourselves is the great gift of human nature. Let’s revel in that gift once more, as we return to Monogatari!

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