#monogatari analysis

[nadekofannumber1]

I think an interesting aspect in monogatari is the conception of a room, like in the otori novel nadeko remarks how weird Koyomi’s room is, how it’s impersonal like a hotel room, how it feels like whoever lives there could bolt and leave any minute. The only true trace of Koyomi in his room is the weird porn he’s hiding in it somewhere secret and tucked away.

Tsubasa doesn’t have a room and a lot of neko shiro is her trying different rooms or different homes in that sense. The room is a symbol that shows the broader concept of a home but also the way one exists in a home. She performs the existence of a room despite lacking one, which is fascinating.

Kanbaru’s room is full of yaoi and is messy, and also is very much her own. It’s not impersonal it’s filled with things that enrich its occupant and is a space she can laze around and such. On its own it doesn’t stick out but with broader context it really shows how much the room is hers.

As a Nadeko fan I’ll of course mention Nadeko’s room. An extremely impersonal space of cutesy girly and pink entirely curated by her parents, the only trace seen of Nadeko exists in the closet where the manga is. Nadeko does own things like gaming consoles but they’re curiously never mentioned in the anatomy of the room itself, only that they do exist somewhere in the Sengoku household. Interesting how the space meant to be the most personal contains the least of the self (at least until post koimonogatari).

That’s all I got for now! I just wanted to ramble.

[neokamui414]

CLAMP's legacy as originally starting from doujinshi circles is really fascinating and makes a lot of sense when you understand that a lot of their manga are just straight up loose adaptations or spiritual reinterpretations of some of the most iconic pieces of 20th century japanese fiction, especially literature.

In many ways a lot of their storytelling is best described as "derivative" but I don't really like using that word because it has such a negative connotation. I think CLAMP's genius is actually their ability to iterate on the themes and ideas and character types and other inspirations that they derive from, especially in their ability to translate those elements to a visual/aesthetic format and to add themes of queerness into those stories or highlight the already present elements of queerness.

Like Tokyo Babylon is inspired by Teito Monogatari (and also Peacock King but that in of itself is a subject for a whole other post). And it's not just limited to the quick one-off comedic reference to Yasunori Katō that we see in the beginning of the manga. The title itself is a reference to the first manga adaptation of the Teito Monogatari. And that title choice for the adaptation was itself probably a combination of a deliberate reference to the Book of Revelation which was culturally relevant in Japan at the time for reasons I'll explain in a little bit, as well as the fact that the author of Teito Monogatari based Katō in part on Aleister Crowley. But Teito Monogatari and Tokyo Babylon are fundamentally stories about the exact same subject matter, that is the City of Tokyo itself.

X aka X/1999 is pretty self evidently a loose adaptation of the Digital Devil Story novels, the ones that would go on to be adapted loosely into the Megami Tensei video games. An apocalyptic battle for the fate of the entire world fought in Tokyo between two ideologically opposed groups of super powered beings, one of which is literally called The 7 Angels. There is a magic sword associated with the death of a female loved one, there are references to a whole bunch of religious and occult concepts from both the east and west, and one of the key locations for the plot is an elite private high school. X and DDS/ Megaten are both quintessential examples of media born from the Japanese Occult Boom. Bad Japanese translations of the prophecies of Nostradamus in the '70s that inspired the Book would become mixed with the social and economic chaos that was the Japanese asset price bubble and other late stage capitalist nonsense and then the financial collapse in the '90s is why you have in both Tokyo Babylon (and by extension the manga adaptation of Teito Monogatari) and X this weird obsession for the Book of Revelation in a ostensibly non-Christian cultural zeitgeist. Tokyo was both "Babylon" as in Rome or any sort of other hypothetical city / civilization that represented decadence and degeneration, and it was Tel Megiddo in the sense that it was the place where the end of days and the battle heralding the Apocalypse would commence.

And then Gate 7 is literally just one of dozens upon dozens of fanfic/ rip-off / adaptations of / works inspired by Makai Tensho which came out in the '60s and sort of is kind of the cultural grandfather of novels like Digital Devil Story, Teito Monogatari and the Onmyoji series. It's the modern source of basically every piece of Japanese pop culture that treats the notable historic figures of the Warring States Era as more than just badass warriors but literal demigods, sorcerers and super powered beings. Mirage of Blaze(which also has some pretty clear inspirations from Tokyo Babylon and it sort of exists in a trifecta with TB and Yami no Matsuei in their relation to the Onmyoji novels by Baku Yumemakura but again, that is the subject for another post), Samurai Warriors and Sengoku Basara, pretty much all of the Fate series but especially the original Stay Night and especially especially Redline/ GudaGuda and Samurai Remnant, and a whole bunch of fighting games and Ninja OVA'S are all examples of Makai Tensho's influence.

[youkaigakkou-tl]

What differentiates a God from a Youkai?

The Oogata twins went from Gods to Youkais, right? Yet, Sano is in a Youkai school but without being defined as one. Besides the reveal of his nature and a glimpse of his past, is there a reason for that?

i think, my interpretation of what yohaji is about, and also sort of the stance haruaki takes, is that there's not a huge difference between gods and youkai (and humans, for that matter).

gods can become youkai, humans can become youkai, humans and youkai can have children. all three have lives and experiences that the other two can relate to and empathise with, and all three can communicate with each other if they so desire.

the biggest thing driving the difference between the three is outside perspectives of the individual, and the individual's perspective of the others. gods' disdain and disregard for those they perceive as inferior to themselves, humans' dehumanizing reverence for certain types of "otherness" and fear of other types of "otherness", and youkai's rejection of and defensiveness against the "otherness" that have done them ill in the past

(for that matter, "the difference between gods and youkai is outside perspective" extends beyond the fourth wall too. to a western perspective, perhaps some of the gods that cause storms, disasters, droughts, pestilence, volcano eruptions and so on should be considered "monsters" too. and even just from a japanese perspective, raijin and fuujin are depicted as oni despite also being considered gods, and theres historical (human) figures that have shrines and are worshipped as gods, with aggrandized stories to match)

on the surface level, meiji arc does posit that there are differences between the three, by haruaki saying that he "didnt realise there was that big of a difference between humans and youkai" in regards to the lifespan thing, but you have to consider that kai was bringing that up deliberately in an attempt to hurt hatanaka, so that he could perhaps feel the same pain kai felt. kai brings up the lifespan thing, something he considers an immutable, unchangeable fact of the universe, just as he considered the societal and familial circumstances he lived in to be impossible to change.

but hatanaka marries ibara, and kai lives to be in a world where he's dating a man. the superficial details dont matter in the end. what matters is that there is love in the world and you are surrounded by people who interact with you and who influence you and who you influence.

so yeah basically what im getting at is yohaji is about autism and queerness and depression and trauma and disability. more than its about youkai or gods or folklore, yohaji is about the Human Experience™ thank you for coming to my ted talk

[baron-von-tibbles]

give an opinion on Tsubasa, then!

a petty part of me would genuinely like a version of the show with her as the protagonist instead of Kyomi 🤷‍♀️

Tsubasa Vamp is genuinely such a compelling idea imo

I genuinely think people down-play her queerness, like, projection (trans) and headcanons (dyke) aside, she is bi and she and Senjo had such an important relationship and people seem to forget that

[sinkableruby]

i love being the ougi person but its also kinda sad bc like. theres no like, hachikuji person. posting in depth analyses of the snail and squeeing and going insane. that's so sad

[mo1kkai]

Some technically difficulties but we are back

[super-who-locked-me-in-here]

Honestly it read to me from Will's POV like that attention-getter trope that goes "oh my crush won't notice me? I'll start hitting on their sibling so they get jealous"

Except it completely backfired on Will because Chiyoh did it to prove a point and Hannibal probably had some sixth sense about Chiyoh doing it to prove a point if/when Will told him about the kiss so for once in Hannibal's pathetic simp life he wasn't the jealous possessive bitch that Will had come to love 😭😭😭

sometimes I remember we got chiyoh and will kissing but not will and hannibal like that was so random 😭😭😭

[caramelribboncursetard]

I really like this ost, it's calming yet hollow. Really represents what Nadeko is like at point, an empty shell that can only live for what others expect her to be. Superficial.

[vii0so]

[ BSD 123.5 Spoilers ]

Thoughts, Theories and Analysis

Literally forgot a new chapter was even releasing today but holy shiz today's update was great. I love it, especially this part:

My heart can't take thiiiiis! Would it be strange to say I'm glad we saw Akutagawa cry? Like, I'm happy for him, it's like a weird form of closure / acceptance for him.

He's not dead dead obviously. Just like all the other characters 'killed' by Ame-No-Gozen once this whole ordeal is over he'll retuen.

Honestly, even before the ordeal is over he will return and fight alongside Atsushi (as we see in the look ahead of the anime's last ep). Probably with Ueda's help.

I doubt Atsushi will actually kill Ueda. It's not that I find him too soft to kill, quite the opposite, he can and will kill depending on the situation and the type of person, but Ueda is not a bad person, they didn't want any of this to happen. Ueda is someone who has basically been imprisoned and forced to watch their creations be used for evil. They witnessed one die (destroyed) and now they are witnessing the other one be used for destruction without anyway to stop it.

Thus, Ueda wants to die as a way to free their creation from its fate and themself from this eternity of guilt and suffering in captivity.

To me, this part sounds like a parent who's twin children were turned into weapons of war. They gave them the gift of life only for their life to be turned into a weapon used against anyone the wielder saw fit. Eventually, the parent - seeing one of their children die from wear and the other forced into continuing the same mindless slaughter - can't take it anymore and wishes that they had never brought them into this life.

Random fact: Ame [ 雨 / あめ] means rain and Tsuki [ 月 / ��き ] means moon - a reference to the real author's work - and therefore the bsd character's ability - "Ugetsu Monogatari" (Tales of Moon and Rain).

Anyway, back to Akutagawa, how is he seeing Dazai? For Atsushi's case we got the explanation that it was basically created by his mind under the influence of Q's ability. This is then immediately confirmed.

But what about Akutagawa? Even if he had been affected by Q's ability, the mental burden taking effect only now would be strange.

The most likely possibility is some form of the near death effect, where people who are about to die may see their loved ones (usually deceased family members) telling them words of encouragement and things along the lines of "you did well" and "it's time to go" or even the opposite, such as "it's not your time yet".

So after openly thinking that this would mark his end, his mind conjured up Dazai because a part of him remembered what Atsushi told him about.

Honestly, the strangest part of this whole thing for me was the music. Most people probably didn't think about it much but to me it seemed strange.

If he first saw Dazai and then heard him speak I could say that in his state of mind his brain created an auditory hallucination. But the music starts while his eyes are closed, before he even sees Dazai.

"Atsushi could hear his hallucination while he was asleep."

Yes, but Atsushi's "shadow" was created by his mind under the influence of Q's ability, not as a near death 'these are my final moments' brain response.

Maybe I'm thinking into this too much...music is definitely possible if it was a strong factor from a point of time in his life. Does this mean Dazai has played the piano for Akutagawa or that this is a melody that left an impression on him in some part of his life similarly to Dazai? Maybe neither, maybe both, will we ever know, does it mean anything at all? ...yeah, I'm overthinking this.

Btw...am I the only one who wants to know what song was played?

[lotus-soda]

Okay I gotta talk about this! I got a lot of thoughts and uh here they all are :)

To start, irl Ueda Akinari translated Chinese tales into a more Japanese style (I find this interesting as Ammenogozen kinda translated people between dimensions :)

Secondly, (now this may be a coincidence but I don't think so tbh) he is the Third author (In bsd anyways) to have a literary counterpart who had a connection to China in some way (Please correct me if I'm wrong on this) Akutagawa and Atsushi both wrote at least one or two stories that either took place in China or were related to it (Moonlight over mountain took place in China for context)

now onto the stories of Ugetsu Monogatari and Harusame Monogatari that I think connect to bsd characters!

Shiramine (White peak) - Nakajima Atsushi

While the tengu bird depicted in Shiramine and the tiger in moonlight over mountains are clearly not the same, the stories are quite similar.

A man either leaves or is rejected from his family and travels to another place to vent/write poetry. Both are turned into animals by the end of their story. (Also fun fact, the story the play draws from is is Matsuyama Tengu which depicts the man as a poet, linning up with Nakajima's poet)

(Also Tengu are a form of jappanese Yokai for anybody unaware before this like myself)

I also wanna point out both characters succumbing to their animal and inevitably growing 'dark' and 'monstrous'

Atsushi's eyes are growing dark, a frequent depiction of evil or darkness growing over a character...

Kikka no Chigiri (The Cyrsamthimum pledge) - Akutagawa

Now this has more to do with bsd Akutagawa than his author counterpart (Unless there is a story like this in which tell me cus I need motivation to finish a book of his stories I have lol)

Anyways in Kikka no Chigiri, the main protag is a warrior (Oh look Aku is a knight *wink* *wink*) and falls ill and vows to come back for the man who nursed him back to health on the day of the chrysanthemum festival (He was close to the guy) Also oh who showed Aku the light metaphorically? Atsushi. Who did Aku try to protect and vow to come back for? Atsushi....

In the story The warrior comes home and finds his lord dead, and learns a new one took over, who now everybody follows, even the protag's cousin. The protag's cousin locks him up and the warrior realizes he is unable to go back to his friend for the Chrysanthemum festival. So unwilling to break his promise, the warrior kills himself and visits the friend as a spirit. Afterward the friend travels to see the warrior and kills the cousin after lecturing him on loyalty.

(Alright back to analysis lol) Anyways I think the Warrior is Akutagawa, the friend is Atsushi, and the Cousin is Dazai (Potentially Mori or even Gin) Now let me explain, the Atsushi and Aku parts I feel are self explainable, but lemme talk about Dazai for a moment. So basically my dude up and left Aku leaving (Locking him up metaphorically) in a bad mindset. While I don't think Aku had met Atsushi prior to him joining the pm or really before the series... it's something to think about I guess...

That's all I'll write for now, I might do a part two with other stories, but I got both an Atsushi and Aktagawa book to finish, so until then, eat something, drink water, and get some rest people :)

[maebithebard]

I never interpreted it as him meaning that people can't help or be helped by others - he often says "I can't save you, but I can lend you my power." I interpret this as meaning that people can help eachother and offer them the tools to find happiness, but if the person being helped to find happiness doesn't choose happiness, they won't find it. When Oshino and Koyomi first meet, after Oshino rescues him from the vampire hunters, he says "You saved yourself." Still not entirely sure what he meant there, but maybe it's that Oshino was helping Koyomi survive but it was Koyomi who chose that he wanted to survive that situation rather than accepting it.

But as you are expressing, it's still not an objective message to be taken as completely true by the audience - no message expressed by the characters in the series is, rly. One character will express a powerful message that can certainly be of help to certain individuals in certain situations, but later on another character may express a perspective that contradicts and calls the former into question, and may also have worth for certain situations. Monogatari is completely character driven and everything expressed in the series is expressed from the subjective perspectives of the characters, none of whom are infallible or completely reliable and all of whom's views and even narration can often completely contradict eachother's, and so a lot of stuff is up to the reader or viewer to make of it as they will, which is something I find rly cool abt the series🥰

Thinking about Meme Oshino, and his philosophy that people can't save others, that they can only save themselves. I have mixed feelings about it overall. On one hand, I am sympathetic to the idea that a person can't be helped if they insist on being unchanging, and I would even agree that there's no point relying on being saved by others, because you can't control them, only yourself. But that doesn't mean that I think it is impossible to help others or be helped, there are plenty of situations where it's just self evident that having help from the people around you makes difficult situations more bearable. So why is Meme like this?

I think Meme is meant to foil Koyomi in this case. Koyomi starts the series in Kizu self-isolating out of depression, but it is not something that brings him happiness, or a way he really wants to live. Meme in Bake is the opposite of this, kind of an example of the type of person who really is fine in complete isolation, relying on nobody, being relied on by nobody, moving from place to place the moment he thinks he might be laying down real roots. And he's meant to be impressive, I think, the larger than life figure fully confident in the situation, who understands and can deal with oddities while our main characters don't fully understand and feel lost without his guidance; he really is someone with maximum "power as a human."

But his whole outlook shows what is required to live like that in truth, as more than a side effect of self-loathing and something you apply selectively to yourself. If you really believed that standing alone was the natural state of being, that people's happiness and suffering was ultimately caused by their own actions, then yeah, the logical extension of that is blaming a child for being abused, or saying teenagers are at fault for being depressed.

And even with all this he's not a bad person. He goes out of his way to assist the cast and presumably other random offscreen people as he meets them, he doesn't ever try to harm others (except, perhaps, Kiss-Shot in Kizu, but like. Super Vampire is extenuating circumstances). He's not some social darwinist saying people need to be alone and only the strongest deserve happiness, he really is a good guy, but he sees people as fundamentally alone. There's a saying that goes something like "nobody is an island," but Meme is the counterexample who shows what that island would look like, in it's most positive form. And it's not someone Koyomi can ever really be.

[typellblog]

Hitagi End - An Analysis

Well, that’s it, folks. We’ve finally reached the end of the Monogatari series. It’s even right there in the arc title.

Hold on, I’m being told that there’s another whole season. What the fuck, I’ll be well into 2025 by the time I’m done with this.

But yeah, as usual with the naming scheme the second word seems to be the thing our title character has to confront - Hitagi is in active resistance against the End, and whether in the abstract form of the conclusion of the series itself, or the more literal threat of Sengoku Nadeko, there’s one common feature. Graduation.

One thing I remember vividly from Koimonogatari - from the first time I watched Koimonogatari, several years ago - is Kaiki’s offhand statement that Hitagi and Koyomi will probably break up in college. He says it so matter-of-factly, but it’s not something I ever considered, watching the rest of the series. I was fully immersed in the teenage perspective, convinced that nothing would ever end. It takes the perspective of a washed up older man to break the illusion, I suppose. You always hear the same complaint about romance manga - there should be more focus on after they’re already in a relationship. Getting together shouldn’t be the story’s end. 

One reason why it might be the story’s end is because as long as it ends there you can convince yourself it will last forever. Their relationship will never sink to the level of mundanity, of lovers’ quarrels - there will never be the possibility of being interested in someone else, finding someone else, being replaced. 

That is the kind of idealistic, indulgent, static ending that Sengoku Nadeko desires, and as a result is the kind of ending that Senjougahara Hitagi fights against. 

This is where I say something about Kaiki Deishuu. Something to make sense of what he’s doing in this story. He’s a man in search of an ending, I could say. Ever since the death of Gaen Tooe, he’s been looking for a way to move on. Perhaps this is why he tells Nadeko the same cause of death - the person you have a crush on died in a car accident. So mundane, so unexpected, so implausible. He thinks she will accept it. Does he?

He’s a man who’s already met his end, I could say. Such is the fate of the specialists. They’ve already graduated, already long since handled their personal agreements and disagreements. They’re stuck, now, bound to their own nature, their own rules. They appear only as supporting characters, never the protagonist. Well. I guess that’s a lie. 

In adopting narrators other than Koyomi, Second Season shifts the focus away from his obsession with helping and connecting to others. Koyomi’s interactions with and idealization of women results in a sense of distance - he struggles to see himself in them and their problems. How much of his attempts to cross that distance are really just attempts to help himself? 

This dynamic collapses when the female cast, facing their own issues, are made protagonists in their own right. They experience themselves as the Other, & Koyomi’s standard process of understanding the girl by first understanding the oddity becomes in these cases a process of self-exploration. 

And yet here we are, back to seeing a male protagonist confronted with the issues of women that he struggles to understand. 

I don’t mean to rag on men, exactly, I just think back to how there tends to be less distance between Koyomi and other men, how he’s more capable of seeing them as another version of himself, and I think that the best explanation for Kaiki’s presence here is that he’s filling in.

He himself thinks so, although it’s Oshino, and not Koyomi, that he considers. 

Regardless, the parallels to Koyomi are established firmly enough by the ending. Kaiki was poison to Hitagi but a surprising help to Nadeko, while Koyomi is the opposite. Put that way, their differences and similarities seem readily explicable. Koyomi saves people. He forgives the harm they do to him. It works for the prickly Hitagi, who needs a pillar of support, but not Nadeko, who needs to be told that she isn’t a victim.

Kaiki lies to people, but that doesn’t mean he’s trying to hurt them. Ononoki proposes a reading of his involvement with Hitagi where he had no ill intentions whatsoever. He didn’t try to free her from the crab simply because he didn’t think it would help her to regain what she had lost. He caused her parents’ divorce to keep her from under the thumb of her mother. He even swindled the cult, although more as an act of revenge than anything. Perhaps there was some impropriety in their relationship, perhaps he exploited her feelings for him, but our understanding of the events is vague enough to give him the benefit of the doubt if we really want.

Kaiki fails to help Hitagi, not (just?) because he’s trying to scam her, but because he’s fundamentally incapable of being honest with her. All his actions move around her and ignore her wishes.

When it comes to Nadeko, on the other hand . . . I mean, it doesn’t initially seem like he’s doing much better, does it. He has no luck with his manipulations, with currying favour, with bold untruths. In the end though, the way he helps Nadeko is a lie that they both know is a lie. Really, it’s more like telling her a story. 

And I’ve written before about how Nadeko needs stories.

Kaiki doesn’t tell her anything that another person couldn’t have. Koyomi, Hitagi, even Nadeko herself is probably aware of similar advice on some level. Don’t throw your life away pointlessly. If you want to do things, then you should do them. You can’t succeed unless you try. 

Kaiki’s talent is simply in recognising that Nadeko needs to hear it. Koyomi wouldn’t have thought to say it, because he doesn’t know why she became a snake god. She doesn’t want to tell him either. He’s stuck. 

But it’s not as if Kaiki has some unique insight into her psychology that lets him work this out. As he puts it, he’s not like Oshino. He didn’t ‘see through’ Nadeko, he just straight up ‘saw’ it. He broke into her room, twisted open the lock to her closet with a 10 yen coin and fucking looked. Her parents didn’t know what was in there, Koyomi didn’t know what was in there, Tsukihi didn’t know, Oshino didn’t know, even Hanekawa who heard about it from someone else and thought it might be an important detail couldn’t possibly know without opening the god damn closet.

This is where Kaiki’s habit of working around people becomes useful. Because more than anyone else, he recognises that Nadeko might be fine as a god, just as he thought Hitagi might be fine staying weightless two years ago. He’s not trying to save her. He’s not trying to do what’s best for her. He’s simply trying to scam her, with all the lack of respect for her personal belongings that implies. 

This establishes, perhaps, an important difference between Koyomi and Kaiki, but it also establishes a similarity. In dealing with oddities - in dealing with people - the key is getting to know them. 

This is something Koyomi struggles with, out of a fear of being too forward, a fear of hurting them, a lack of appreciation of his own value, as a kind of half-person, a fake person, that could only weigh others down. Kaiki embraces his nature as a fake and adopts only the most rational and most unscrupulous methods of approaching others.

The question, I suppose, is why? What does Kaiki get out of playing a character that informs all of his actions without explaining them? What does he get out of remaining unknowable even to himself, reacting with surprise to his own feelings and motivations? What does he get from acting without thought, tossing away caution, tossing away patience, and tossing away money in an attempt to toss away the past?

Kaiki values money for its endless acceptability, its exchange value. He doesn’t wish to have money, he wishes to use it, and in keeping with this philosophy, he considers nothing irreplaceable, not even himself. The person named Kaiki Deishuu is deliberately false, deliberately contradictory, and he’s long since given up on getting to the bottom of that particular well.

I begin to understand why he comes up, now, in relation to Nadeko, who is lost in a web of her own identity. 

Sengoku Nadeko is telling herself a story. She has to, in order to not hate herself. She is, and will continue to be, in love with Koyomi-oniichan. This isn’t something that motivates her actions in the conventional sense so much as a wall to keep out the world, to assert that she is normal. So why does she still hold onto it, in this situation where it has become so far beyond normal? 

Because she considers it part of herself. She is still playing the role of Sengoku Nadeko, and she can’t cast aside the most Nadeko piece of herself, the piece that she has spent the most time and effort showing off to other people. It would call her existence into question, make her look fake, make her feel empty. The sense of normalcy she’s trying to achieve is not in how other people see her, it’s in how she sees herself. She takes the pieces of herself that are left, the pieces of herself she’s been given, and pulls them together into a story that makes sense. To her, loving herself means never changing, never throwing parts of herself away, never identifying a problem in her own behaviour. 

She’s happy, Kaiki thinks. It feels a little different from the end of Otori, where Kuchinawa was still presented as a separate existence. He no longer pokes at Nadeko’s insecurities, at least not obviously. In recognising her own role in the whole affair, Nadeko is no longer worried about hurting others, of being seen as a victim, because she fully acknowledges herself as the one with all the power in her interactions. Godhood is an unusual role for her, but she seems happy to take it up, viewing her job as responding to the prayers of worshippers. It's a much simpler, more transactional view of social relations than she had to navigate as a human. She likes people who are nice to her and doesn't like people who aren't.

Ultimately, though, she's still playing a part, putting on a performance for Kaiki’s benefit. Her cutesy habits as a god are a far cry from the more genuine rage she expresses in the classroom in Otori. But then again, she doesn't have to worry about that, because she's not a human. She's no longer a part of society, with all the freedom that entails. An entirely negative freedom, of course. She doesn't have to do anything and thus there's nothing for her to do, besides play games with Kaiki and drink the alcohol she could only sneak sips of behind her dad’s back at home.

She’s happy, but does that matter?

Kaiki doesn’t think so. The other parallel established in the ending is between Nadeko and Hitagi. Compared to Nadeko as someone who never throws anything away, Hitagi is someone who rejects unnecessary things, rejects convenient narratives of victimisation, rejects divine assistance.

Nadeko is broken, thinks Kaiki. Like Hitagi’s mother. Like Hitagi almost was. And being broken has a specific meaning for him - it means no longer accurately recognising the value of the things you have. Nadeko overvalues the things that play an important role in her delusions and ignores everything else. In comparison, think back to Hitagi listing out everything she has to Koyomi back in Bakemonogatari. She has so little, but it’s all precious to her. Not only that, but she manages to offer it to another person. It’s only in recognising the value of herself and also someone else that they can form a mutually beneficial ‘exchange’, a real connection.

In Bakemonogatari, Hitagi’s self is framed as a series of external objects. You are the people around you. In Koimonogatari, Kaiki’s self is found in his money. Endlessly exchangeable, never unique, always mercenary. He offers himself up to Nadeko and gets nothing in return, because she fundamentally doesn’t value what he’s bringing her. Donating to a shrine at New Years’ is a sucker’s game, Kaiki thinks at the beginning of the novel, and he’s proven right enough.

For Kaiki, you could say that the money he spends is spent on himself, on presenting a certain image of himself. So what of the money he takes from others?

He accepts Hitagi’s woefully low payment for the job. He accepts it as a job, because if it’s not a job he’d have to start thinking about what his relationship to her is, if not client and employer. It would become unique, no longer exchangeable for any of the other half-dozen scams he’s running. 

He accepts Izuko’s 3 million severance fee. He accepts it and goes on working. It’s unlike him, Yotsugi says. He’s contradicting himself. The money isn’t being exchanged for anything, he’s just taking it. But isn’t that the job of a scammer? To get as much money for as little effort as possible? Then why does he keep doing the job? 

He’s acting unlike himself. Throughout the novel, he’s constantly pointing out new sides of himself. Phrases he’s said for the first time. Actions he’s never done before. After a certain point, I have to conclude he’s lying. Kaiki acts unlike himself in Koimonogatari because acting unlike himself, unlike the persona he deliberately acts as, is one of his most characteristic actions.

Being a specialist is about balance - or at least so we would assume from the actions of Oshino Meme. It’s about give-and-take. But Kaiki is a fake specialist, a conman. He should only want to take. It’s not a coincidence, then, that he keeps giving. 

I understood it on an intellectual level, but now I get it. I really fucking get it. He’s just, so, Araragi Koyomi. He’s so thoughtless and impulsive, so concerned with appearances, enamoured with his own edginess, stubborn, self-deprecating, cowardly, dense, inconsiderate, self-sacrificing, willful, proud of outsmarting children, reluctant to commit to anything, and most of all half-assed.

That is the characteristic trait of Araragi Koyomi as I understand it. He’s trapped between worlds, vampire and human, but doesn’t seem particularly inclined to choose one or the other. He doesn’t just look to the future, but the past too. In reaching towards what he wants, he’s immensely reluctant to give up what he already has. 

All the way back in Nekomonogatari Kuro, he characterises Hitagi and Suruga as different to him, more forward-looking, prefiguring Kaiki’s comments about Hitagi as someone willing to throw aside the most important things to her to get what she wants. 

It’s funny, because in doing so he also talks about Tsubasa as someone who’s the same, who also looks for solace in the past. Tsubasa, who in Nekomonogatari Shiro we come to understand will casually cast aside the past if it doesn’t suit her. 

She has a different perspective, you see. She thinks Koyomi is different from her. He’s ‘unshakable’, in her words, not concerned about losing his identity. Precisely because he keeps looking back, because he keeps confronting his past, he’s able to accept all of himself, unlike her. 

Despite Monogatari being a series about people changing, several times characters espouse the idea that you can’t change, not really.

The thing is that while change is obviously possible, what this idea cautions against is ignoring and forgetting about what you used to be like. Tsubasa can’t just make a new version of herself whenever things start getting difficult, she has to understand herself as a continuous person composed of everyone she’s ever been. 

The Rainy Devil teaches Suruga something similar, as regardless of the kind of person she wishes to become, the arm can’t fundamentally transform her. It simply shows that she was already the kind of person who could learn to run fast, already the kind of person who wanted to brutalize Hitagi’s new boyfriend. Koyomi’s idea that she’s somehow more forward-looking than him seems laughable when she feels as though Hitagi and her issues are something that she ran away from.

It’s a fundamentally half-assed application of Numachi Rouka’s methods - for running away from your problems to work you have to remain detached, and the devil’s grasping arm is evidence both of Suruga’s failure in that regard, but also of the attachment to life itself that Rouka lacked. No wonder it felt off when it suddenly disappeared in Hanamonogatari. 

At the same time, though, losing the arm is evidence of her change throughout that arc. Her running no longer isolates her, but instead can be seen as a way to connect with others. It’s no coincidence that’s how she ends up meeting Koyomi near the end. It’s his advice that gives her the confidence to get over the finish line, but the first step is abandoning everything and just running - not trying to beat anyone, not trying to hold back, with no particular goal or attachment to a wish. It’s the first time she really can since she started using the monkey’s paw.

Notably it’s Kaiki that offered her an alternative and advised her to just let Rouka have the parts. Kaiki, the one who seemed to be collecting them himself. Isn’t the concept of him possessing what is in a very real sense the remains of Gaen Tooe so fascinating? But it’s the yet-living Suruga that he calls her legacy. It’s hard to say if meeting her, in some way, helped him move on. 

Once again, we see a difference from Koyomi, who advises Suruga to act like herself and do what she wants. Kaiki tells Suruga to do what’s easy, what would cause less difficulties for her, in a similar way that he seems to understand Nadeko is much happier as a god and Hitagi wouldn’t have to confront her memories of her mother as long as she remains weightless.

By regaining her weight and her emotions, nothing will change, Oshino cautions Hitagi. She won’t suddenly make up with her mother. But it does allow her to move forward, to value her memories correctly, not allow her missing weight to weigh on her so much that she will never be able to become close to anyone else.

“She’s different now, more so than if she were a different person” Kaiki says, and it’s so easy to read him as relieved that she’s not stuck as she was when he fucked her up. That she’s still always in the moment where she truly fell in love for the first time. That she was able to remain the same person while still loving someone else. 

Tsubasa’s immense righteousness is subverted in Nekomonogatari, Suruga’s seeming single-mindedness is deconstructed in Hanamonogatari, and despite the effusive words of praise they both have for Koyomi Araragi it’s evident from his internal narration that he’s more pathetic and wavering than anyone else - and perhaps that’s how one ought to be, here. Never able to make a decision on what’s most important. Always most invested in whatever you’re doing right now, whatever person is right in front of you.

Hitagi is a character that we never see from the first person. Koyomi’s view of her as a titan striding headlong towards her goals is never really contradicted in the story, because despite her immensely evident vulnerability, she’s shown as making a more active effort to move on than anyone. 

The shadow of her past relationship with Kaiki hangs over Koimonogatari like a specter.

In Nisemonogatari it’s mentioned that her animus towards Kaiki probably comes from the fact she wasn’t able to hate him in the past. While she was still under the influence of the crab, her emotions regarding her mother were dampened. Kaiki’s acts of splitting her family up likely wasn’t something she was capable of expressing her resentment for at the time. 

If you think of that hatred as a final remaining regret, her kidnapping of Koyomi and confronting of Kaiki in Nisemonogatari the expression of such, then it makes sense that Nisemonogatari also marks the start of her mellowing out, never again reaching the heights of violence she demonstrates at the beginning of that novel. 

An interesting thing about Kaiki’s role there, looking back, is that he’s clearly aiming for that outcome. As soon as Hitagi confronts him, he leaves. He tells her to stop worrying about the past, about the fact that she once had a relationship with him, because he’s thoroughly uninterested in her as she is now. He provokes her into affirming her current self and relationship with Koyomi. And he says that the man who tried to violate her died in a car accident. 

Is he lying? Is it just a coincidence, that he goes with the same manner of death as Gaen Tooe, the same line he feeds to Sengoku Nadeko? 

Either way, the purpose of the line becomes a little clearer. He’s trying to get her, both of them, to move on. To understand that the people who seemed so important to you are mundane, the events that shaped your lives don’t mean anything in the big picture, and your past is just that. It’s over. It’s the end. 

He almost embodies the concept, in Koimonogatari. We see from his perspective and he is indeed far less ominous, far less portentous, far less important, than he seems from the third person. 

He’s also really bad at it. Despite his exhortations to ignore the past, he himself clearly still cares a lot about Hitagi. She as well can’t quite avoid falling back into old patterns of banter, admiration, reliance. 

And his ideology isn’t enough for Nadeko. He can’t just deny what she’s clinging onto now, he needs to give her something new. They called Osamu Tezuka a God, she says, hesitantly forming a bridge between her current self and the future she wants to inhabit. Telling herself a convenient story that patches it all up. 

It results in an oddly ambiguous message. Nisio loves his tricks, revealing something the narrator was mistaken about at the very end, but when Hitagi says she never loved him and hangs up it’s hard to tell which one of them came out ahead in that little back and forth. Maybe Kaiki, the eternal washout, was so enamoured of his own unique subjectivity he never considered the schoolgirl he was scamming wasn’t so enamoured of him. 

Who am I kidding, it doesn’t feel that way at all. Her rejection of the idea that she ever liked him was unconvincing in Nisemonogatari and it’s unconvincing here. And the novel frankly endorses that wilful self-denial. Perhaps it’s important to always act like you’ve fallen in love for the first time. Perhaps it’s important to believe that you’ll never break up with your boyfriend. 

In this seeming endorsement of Kaiki’s ideology, I have to wonder what kind of End Hitagi is even fighting against. 

Nadeko asserts that a single failure is the End, it’s Nadekover, she has no choice but to kill everyone and then herself. In resisting her, Hitagi asserts her right to change, to move on, to love Koyomi even after her life was destroyed by Kaiki. 

On the other hand, Kaiki asserts that failure means nothing, he doesn’t care about anything that has ever happened, after this he’ll just move on and start another moneymaking scheme, same as the last. Hitagi also resists this. She must, if she is to believe her relationship with Koyomi matters in the first place. Her denial that she ever liked Kaiki ends up an odd sort of validation for their relationship. If she did crush on him, that would be important to her, therefore it didn’t happen.

It perfectly mirrors Kaiki’s refusal to admit he ever cared about her. It puts the lie to his whole persona, but, like, it’s supposed to be a lie anyway, I think. They’re both lying to each other and themselves all the time, so much so that they fail to understand even the most straightforward exchanges between them. It’s fine, honestly. They don’t need to be true to each other as long as they’re true to themselves.

One thing that I never really mentioned is the other way you could take this arc title. Hitagi End as in the end of Second Season - the end of the series as a whole, potentially, if you take Nisio’s afterwords seriously (he doesn’t, as evidenced by the several previous times he’s pulled this exact gag). 

Astute fans of the anime airing watch order will note that placing Hanamonogatari, an arc set well in the future, before this one robs it a little of that sense of finality. Nadeko is not so much of a threat, knowing our protagonists survive. This is of course the twist, the lie, the joke of this arc. Life goes on, almost interminably so. The idea that graduation would be the End for Hitagi and Koyomi is as ridiculous as the idea that making some mistakes at fourteen would be the End of Nadeko. 

Even Kaiki’s attempt to escape the narrative, put a pin in the whole thing by killing himself off, is neatly and instantly subverted by remembering his presence in Hana. It’s not supposed to be a reveal, exactly, that this man is a liar. It’s just there, from the first page to the last. 

After Ononoki cautions Kaiki that he’s acting unlike himself, before he goes to talk to Nadeko for the final time, she spends a bit of time telling him what Kagenui’s been up to. Sounded like she was the same as ever, he thinks. I think of this, amongst all his attempts to dramatize his own life, differentiate himself from himself, craft his own ending. His life keeps going on, and Kagenui’s still marching to the beat of her own drum, same as ever. 

Happy New Year!

[nenilein]

Quick, non-exhaustive list of things that happen in the Puyo Puyo Drama CDs:

Arle is inflicted with a curse that gives her magical Alzheimer's (NOT garden variety amnesia) by a faerie

We learn that Draco's pageant obsession stems from wanting more non-human representation in the beauty queen scene

We learn Lemres escaped an abusive household

Ms. Accord sends all her students into the forest to fight her demon cat for bickering in class

Ringo builds an altar to sacrifice chocolate to Ecolo across spacetime

We learn that Maguro was bullied as a kid until Ringo almost literally told him to "git gud" so his bullies just couldn't bully him anymore. And he did. At everything.

Power Rangers AU

Schezo tries to escape the Sega era because he thinks it's making him lose his edge, only to learn how to be a Sega anti-hero from Raffina instead

Ecolo accidentally shows us that Doppelganger Arle is not dead but just stranded in an alternate timeline version of Primp Town, then he gets Arle and Ringo stranded on an abandoned island in yet another dimension for 3 days

Arle has a fever dream about a mirror world where Schezo, Satan and Rulue are in a polycule

Amitie gets gaslit into almost losing her soul to a minor Madou Monogatari enemy encounter who wants to use her as a host body for her powerful magic

We learn that Yu and Rei's death was so terrifying that even Feli doesn't want to talk about it.

Ecolo loses the child in the divorce. Almost commits physical assault in retaliation.

Ringo tries to figure out what Ecolo is made of by drowning, burying and skewering him. Analysis results: "Heck if I know" And these are only SOME highlights. I love this series.

[sinkableruby]

owarimonogatari ge spoilers. rgu spoilers too i think

himemiya anthy and oshino ougi are both girls who exist for guys

and yeah i hear you thinking what, misogyny ?! toxic masculinity ?! thats not a big part of ougis arc and yeah it isnt and also other gender stuff BUT. the spirit is still there!! and i have to say it in that way first to do anthy's part justice

bc they Are both people who exist solely for others sake. their ability to define their own existences have been taken away from them. they have no agency! anthy obviously but also ougi has never had agency. ougi was created by araragi to do certain things he couldn't do himself, and this was literally the sole purpose of their existence. if ur in that situation what are you gonna do? not do it? and probably like, cease to exist bc the universe's internal coding is a total asshole? you don't have a choice, you just gotta accept the burden.

they're very silly and goofy and sinister and smiley about it of course but like. i'll say it now a lot of those smiles are not happy. i mean you look at the light novels oshino "ppl are so dumb i have to laugh at them but im crying when im laughing" ougi (edgelord ougi confirmed? LOL ok ok not really) oshino 'araragi theorizes her smile was poignant bc she knew how short her life would be' ougi like yeah ok. get a life, literally. lol (note this is also. for those who have read it. what ougi stay is about. and what my next big thing is going to be about. this is what the significance. anyway)

and anthy does the same thing! all this fucked up shit happens around her and To her and she just watches it all with the same smile like nothing's wrong. the parallels are insane you guys you cant make this shit up. anthy smiling like nothing is wrong during the duels before slowly realizing she doesn't want to be separated from utena is the same as ougi smiling while about to be erased forever even though she doesnt want to die. its parallels!!!!!! even where ougi's situation gets a little muddied with her being Literally araragi (even though she is still the part of him that he ejected and pushed all this work onto and still just exists for him at first so i wouldnt say this is a point against my analysis here), it still very much applies. and that part of 'being him' can loop back around and extend anthy if you want it to. she does whatever her fiancee wants her to, is molded to and reflects them. a reflection-- is that not, in a very big sense, what ougi is for araragi? you could even say that for anthy, the fiancee of the rose bride's attempted domination of her is a way to dominate the femininity within them, to quell and control it. (if this doesnt make sense my excuse is that i havent finished watching yet. but i think it does make sense, and a lot of it, actually)

theyve both got their Roles to play, and play them they do. anthy, the rose bride, and ougi, the culprit, the bad guy. i think about that 'bad guy' framing a lot too btw. when ougi is talking about her unfazed appearance when faced with Forever Death Via Black Hole, shes like 'don't you hate it when in mystery novels the bad guy is so calm in the face of their comeuppance? yeah that sucks so just letting you know im terrified 👍. gotta wonder what happens when your matter gets erased completely yk. like whats that gotta be like lol.' (not even exaggerating at all really) (also shes so funny she relates everything to mystery novels bc she loves them thats so sweet and real i love that :)) (and then she proceeded to say 'nah i think the culprit should kill themself instead' but i wont get into it)

theyve also both got those cute little interests come to think of it. anthy loves like animals and stuff and ougi loves their mysteries. are these two the Same Character (joking) (but really they should hang out)

theres a line in one of the short stories that summarizes it really well, describing ougi as 'a puppet who had come to life.' and yeah, basically. it's implied to be after the ougi dark resolution so there i have even more ✨textual evidence✨ but like fr. its an incredibly apt description for ougi. if yotsugi is a doll, then ougi is a puppet, who has gained agency (and thats the thing, rgu and monogatari are giving these agency-robbed characters agency, thats what ougi dark did, and im like p sure thats what rgu is going to do i havent finished it lol but i did get sorta spoiled on the ending so i think its gonna. in monogatari... its more rocky i feel. its not cut and dry, its not like whoops you have agency forever completely now. its like you Kinda have it. you Maybe Mostly have it. it's complicated i'm writing about it)... i wonder when yotsugi will get her agency, but part of me wonders if nisioisins plan is that she wont. because she's a doll, she's too stuck, she's fixed to what others need her for, she can't work by herself. she hasn't "come to life" yet like ougi has (being a corpse might do that to you)

anyway uhhhh i'm right good night

[vile-bestia]

why mizu is, in fact, not cis

Everyone is very angry at everyone about how to see or not see Mizu’s identity; being unable to shut up, and having fixated on the show a bit, i’m excited to finally join my first to-the-death-tumblr-discourse-battle.

I'm going to use mostly he/him for Mizu, but please read the premise below. Read the colored strings of text 😭

The main argument for Mizu being a woman is that which has as its basis the fact that cross-dressing is for Mizu an external need: for one, it is a need for protection from patriarchal bonds; secondly, it is a need for independence - Akemi’s story is one of independence as well, of feminine independence, and we have more than one woman pursuing such thing; we could go on with an analysis of brothels as a feminine space, but, alas - and thirdly, it is a need of obligation: Mizu needs to maintain the masculine identity in order to attain the object of his vow. 

I find, however, that while the argument stands as perfectly sound (and as canon) it isn’t exhaustive enough of the layered experience of gender in BES.

The trans coding is simply undeniable to me, whether it was intentional or not. I do not mean to say that Mizu is a binary trans man; that would be an approach as reductionist as confirming she is exclusively a woman. However, I find that some behaviours of Mizu’s are coded as dysphoric reactions.

Most of my justifications for this reasoning come from episodes 2, 5 and 8.

In episode 2,

Ringo is vowing to never reveal Mizu’s secret: “I’ll never tell anybody you’re a g-“; and as soon as he’s about to say girl, Mizu is just as ready to slice his throat. Mizu being worried about someone else hearing or witnessing the interaction doesn’t seem completely plausible to me: they’re alone in snowy woods, and, most likely, Mizu wouldn’t have confirmed time and again how readily he’d kill Ringo. 

Then comes episode 5,

which is in my opinion the most layered and the most exhaustive in regards to Mizu’s experience of gender, especially regarding his experience of the feminine. First and foremost, it tells the ultimate teaching: that gender isn’t but a performance, just as the gender roles are portrayed through theatre in the episode. As for the dysphoric reaction, it's the whole thing. Mizu is miserable even when we suppose that the marriage could be a relatively happy time. That's another reason why I suppose the puppet theatre tells Mizu's internal sense of self as well (see paragraph 4).

(And, about gender being performative, see how kabuki theatre was born in the Edo period and how, before being banned from acting, women cross-dressed to play male characters, and men cross-dressed to play female characters. See “professional transvestites” trained to be prostitutes, Kagema being trained from a young age to „act" like members of the other sex; see how by the beginning of the 18th century AFAB sex workers would try to figure out a way to set themselves apart from wakashu, creating an entirely new space for female crossdressers in the adult entertainment sphere; see ukiyo-e representations - chigo monogatari and yukiyo-zoshi literature; stories by Ihara Saikaku that are full of "transgender behaviours" and more)

Back to ep 5:

1. Theme of performance

The theme of performance, which also is the one of Mizu performing femininity for Mikio (in function of the well-being of Mizu’s mother), but being at once unable to suppress masculinity as the only space in which Mizu seems to be comfortable: e.g., it’s a little detail, but Mizu’s only good in the kitchen when cutting vegetables, because comfortable with blades, certainly not with cooking; again Mizu having to perform femininity is when he does makeup to “make-up”, to soften Mikio’s spirit, who feels invalidated by Mizu’s masculinity when it starts to interfere with his pride, and such other details; I even thought of the sword as a symbol for “learned” masculinity: the first time this thought occurred was when it was characterized by sensuality in the scene where the spouses spar: “Unsheathe it. Let me see your blade;” and I interpreted it as masculinity being the only space that allows intimacy as well; then comes the time where Mizu learns he does not need a sword to fight, meaning to me that she can embody masculinity without having to prove it to others. And then comes the reforging of the sword’s meteorite to include “impurities”, and the rite that Mizu performs. I assume that “a sword too pure” is the symbol of, again, learned hypermasculinity to appease patriarchal expectations, and is too pure because it’s Mizu rejecting part of himself, trying to exclude all “impurities”, whether they are being half white, or being half woman. Taigen himself is the one to tell Mizu he can fight without a sword (ep 7, but done in ep 3 or 4 and ep 6 already), and then the situation starts to bear sexual tension, which I directly link to the sensual connotation of the sparring cited earlier up. Possibly, this particular situation could also mean acceptance of Mizu's lack of a native "sword".

2. Gender roles

But a more sound consideration is (i would like to hope so) the one about the whole marriage being told through puppets, and the puppets themselves. While they are different characters, first of all we see an inversion of gender in the roles: at first Mizu is the Ronin because he performs a masculine role of protection, an “active” role; then, Mizu’s role is reversed in function of his marriage. We see Mizu surrendering (forcibly, being manipulated) to femininity as soon as his mother guilt-trips him into marrying, and the ronin puppet assumes a submissive pose, long before the role reversal.

3. A note:

it yet does not seem to me like the role reversal is, so to say, complete: even after the reversal, the narrator tells details about the ronin that are actually details about Mizu, e.g. when the two marry, and despite the positions of the puppets match the ones of the spouses, it is said that the ronin's loyalty is no more turned towards his "path of revenge," (Mizu's) "but to his bride" - in the perspective explained below, perhaps Mizu's own femininity. Also, i find Mizu might perceive Mikio as the bride, and himself as the husband - as an argument it can't stand alone, or it would bare no strength, but I will use it in correlation with the other points made, until now and later, to argue that Mizu thinks of himself as a guy.

4. Performance of Mizu's sides, assimilable to when she has the vision of killing his white side, shortly before facing the four fangs or whatever their name was

This, and one more tiny detail, bring me to think that not only do we talk about external roles, but about Mizu’s self-perception. I'm referring to when it is said that “for the first time in many years, the ronin felt the storm rage inside him.” The storm is a symbol belonging to Mizu (literally it occurs in the first 2 minutes of the episode), and it is explicit that it isn’t something that happens for the first time, but rather returns. By this point, the gender roles were reversed, and yet it seems to me like it isn’t anymore about the marriage itself, but rather about Mizu’s hatred for and slaughtering of his own femininity, and, of course, the experience of betrayal; with his family (especially his mother, see below), and with his femininity, which wasn’t enough to keep him comfortable or Mikio on his side. (...betrayal which is also about mizu himself betraying akemi, i'd add. Mizu is justified here, but it's important to note the parallels between the two timelines i guess?)

5. That random ass baby

There is, at a certain point, a situation of peace, which I think is represented when one of the puppets is holding a blue baby (supposedly a little ronin) in its arms. I want to suppose that the baby represents newborn love between Mizu and Mikio, before it all fell apart. But the love itself is a masculine love, as we see that it is based on masculine exchanges (fighting, doing fieldwork, taming horses, riding together, whatever) and, it seems to me, assimilable to homosexuality between samurai, which was widespread (insert something about Taigen here). Also Mikio wanted to marry a bro lmao. Aside from that, on the level of Mizu’s self-perception, it might represent comfortableness, a sort of congruence, or, rather, a compromise, that Mizu is able to live in, between natural masculinity and performed femininity - opening up to show vulnerability, love fragile as a creature that cannot defend itself, innocent, naive, trusting. 

6. About Mizu’s mother.

The puppet used for Mizu’s mother before the role reversal is the same that is supposedly used for Mizu after, but I latch onto a detail: the pattern on the puppet’s kimono is the same as the (real life) Mother’s kimono (see for example minute 12:30). I support this by noting the more obvious parallel between the blue worn by Mizu and the blue of the Ronin puppet, but at the same time I'm forced to note that after a certain point the mother has her own puppet. In any case, I see the mother and the feminine puppet wearing the same kimono as being about femininity, and about the mother’s betrayal of her child, rather than about Mizu herself. For one, manipulating him into marrying and abandoning the vow. But also we learn (ep 8) that the woman isn’t Mizu’s mother at all. One could discuss the reliability of Fowler’s statement, but I feel there are more clues regarding the mother’s betrayal: the episode starts with the Ronin, who feels the storm rage inside him at the killing of his lord (Mizu’s actual mother, perhaps) by the hands of a clan whose crest was the Phoenix (which I suppose are the white men, and the curse of whiteness for Mizu). I’ve thought about the four white men dealing guns (Fowler), flesh, opium (and I’m not sure what role “Violet” has in this, but I think they're the opium dealer), and thought that if Mizu’s “mother” was a substitute, the opium she smokes could point to Mizu’s potential father, perhaps even at the surrogate mother keeping contact, and at the surrogate’s betrayal at the same time. But it’s also true I watched the show while stoned, so I would dismiss this.

7. Onryo (note: characteristic in kabuki)

When the birth of the vengeful spirit occurs, I see very well how plausible it is to say that, actually, the rage that Mizu feels is feminine rage, and I agree with that. Mizu’s femininity is his rage, it is heavily related to the mother-daughter relationship, despite the fact that at a certain point the mother has her own puppet. At the same time, however, it is to me the result of the slaughtering of the performed femininity needed to respect the obligation (we remember the wedding was also to ensure the “surrogate” mother safety, especially financial, as well as to keep Mizu bound), just as accepting you’re able to fight with any tool puts an end to the compensatory movement by which you’re trying to prove masculinity to an observer (which, say, Taigen does as well, wanting to prove to Mizu he can beat him - plus, Taigen himself is the one to reassure Mizu on the complete unimportance of it, see how I read the sword symbol a few paragraphs earlier).

In this perspective, the "dye washing away from her kimono" to me means two things: that being what he is is inevitable, and that the feminine rage sets in; Mizu tries to make up for being a "demon", but in the end rejects the obligation towards his husband, and towards her mother; the pattern is not the same anymore, and Mizu is somehow more like his own person, returning on the path of vengeance, strengthened by the feminine, as the reforged sword will be strengthened by the very ritualistic yaki-ire.

--

Episode 8,

I feel, speaks instead for itself,  for the dysphoric reaction is to me extremely clear. Reacting that way to being called a Miss is not a cisgender reaction. You’ll tell me: it’s not a dysphoric reaction! It’s a reaction of disgust to being fetishized for being a woman! And that’s plausible, supported by the “you just keep getting better,” with clear sexual implication, except I think that is also a fundamental trans experience and one cannot limit the way they read the scene to an exclusively feminine experience.

In conclusion,

I don’t think it might be all boiled down Mizu being a masc woman, because of the trans coding. Mizu thinks of himself as a guy. If not a guy, not a woman either. You’ll tell me: “Of course she does, because she’s grown up that way; she was forced to sustain the lie to preserve her life! It's a matter of conditioning!” And while it is true that the initial context points towards crossdressing, and not inherent feelings of gender non conformity or transgenderism, I feel that if Mizu really felt like a woman, he wouldn’t have such exaggerated reactions, and I don’t think they come from his temperament either. And it is disproved that conditioning someone to have a different sexuality or gender identity works in any way - I doubt Edo period Japan or a particular protagonist would make an exception. "But Mizu herself tells Mikio she didn't want to be a man, she had to be one!" Yes, because it is true. But it points to crossdressing. If it were aimed to explain the whole of Mizu's experience of gender in her self, it would invalidate the entirety of episode 5.

In any case, even in situations where he couldn’t be discovered, Mizu does not allow feminine terms or titles, or tries as best to stop them from happening; plus, it’s rather obvious how difficult the relationship with his body is. 

While, once again, reading Mizu as a binary trans man is not enough, I feel like reading him as cisgender isn’t, either. As if, in any case, the feminine experience and the transmasculine one didn’t overlap in many aspects, also during the most tumultuous parts of transition, if pursued.

What is funniest above all is that the whole discourse is substantially useless. The layers of the show open to an infinite variety of interpretations, none of them fundamentally wrong. Mizu’s just quite literally Mizu. It’s a queer unlabeled thing and that’s it. If you take the Lacanian concept of the Real as the hole, properly uninteligible, surrounded by the Symbolic, you'll find that "Queer" is exquisitely representative of the Real, and therefore every label (the Symbolic) is reductive of the perceived experience (indeed the Real). The fundamental lesson about gender that you can derive from the show is that gender is a performative construct. What it pushes you to do is deconstruct your principles, especially if you are queer, since we are all entrapped in the modern western white need for strict labelling; that’s where this whole debate comes from, and it is, once again, pointless.

So, instead making fun of other people because of a set of pronouns, perhaps it would be better to imagine that more options can cohabit together, or that there is no need to label at all. Also be careful about accusing others of a complete lack of media literacy - you should thoroughly examine yours first.

Interesting articles i guess:

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Algoso, Teresa A. "'Thoughts on Hermaphroditism': Miyatake Gaikotsu and the Convergence of the Sexes in Taishō Japan." The Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 3 (2006): 555–573. Algoso, Teresa A. "Not Suitable as a Man? Conscription, Masculinity, and Hermaphroditism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan." Chap. 11 In Recreating Japanese Men, edited by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, 241–261. Mostow, Joshua S. “The Gender of Wakashu and the Grammar of Desire.” In Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, and Maribeth Graybill. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press 2003, 49–70.

taken from this post asking about transgender men in the edo period: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p6x4jk/comment/h9ttgv4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

As a final unrelated note, I haven’t seen anyone praise the MASTERFUL sound design 

bye 🪳🪳🪳🪳🪳

[kraniumet]

HOW can you be so clueless that you "love this character" because you've "watched hours of amvs with her" yet have no idea what kind of show the monogatari series is. as a full grown adult. whose main job seems to be making shallow anime culture analysis.