“In this version of history, the one who annihilated the world…was me.”
Impression
Oh dear. Araragi…so much for trying to get your homework done, huh? I bet it must have been a massive shock to come back and find your entire city demolished, with no-one left at all – just because you never ended up meeting Hachikuji on Mother’s Day in this timeline. To be honest, Shinobu had been looking pretty distressed ever since they came back. While at first I thought it was guilt over agreeing to go back in time, once I saw the zombies (and learned that the world was annihilated in one shot, not gradually) it quickly became clear this was Shinobu’s doing. After all, other than a fully powered Kiss-shot, we’ve never met an oddity (thus far) that can cause damage on this sort of scale.
So it turns out that Hachikuji was immensely important after all! Araragi never ended up finding Shinobu that night – because he’d never met Hachikuji, who would have told him to go to Mister Donuts. Oshino only left because he thought Araragi could handle Black Hanekawa, but without Shinobu there to supress it, he just got killed. Shinobu, who was already planning on annihilating the world anyway, decided to go ahead and turn everyone into vampires after reverting into Kiss-shot. Groups of vampires everywhere kept biting everyone else, and Kiss-shot ended up committing suicide, turning all those vampires into zombie jiangshi things.
How pleasant. Don’t worry Shinobu, you’ll always be the best girl to me! …Even if you destroy the world.
It was standard SHAFT behaviour to animate the zombies as flickering abstract shadows – they looked like the Illegals from Dennou Coil. I also really appreciated their awesome landscape scenery as well 😀 As far as I can tell, the zombies have a vampiric trait in hating the sun, but don’t seem to have any sort of intelligence. Shinobu mentioned they weren’t strictly Araragi’s enemies (as he’s kinda got oddity traits himself) but I doubt they’re friendly. And with them (probably) being the corpses of former town residents, he can’t exactly try killing them. Yeah, they’re sort of screwed, aren’t they.
I know Araragi went on about correcting the issue (i.e. reverting the damage) but at this point, I don’t think there’s any way to return all those zombies to human, especially with this world’s Kiss-shot now dead. Also, there’d be too many buildings to fix. Think of how much that would cost! I can only think of two viable options from here: the first is to find someone who can help them, which they’re trying to do through the fireworks. I’m pretty sure at least some people managed to escape – I don’t see Oshino or Yozuru dying that easily. The second is to find some way to return to 11 years ago once more, and let Hachikuji die for the greater good. As painful as it might sound, that was what happened to begin with. Of course, with the talisman on the shrine, they can’t do that – unless someone fully human manages to rip it off for them.
They’ll find a way to get back. Araragi has to save Hanekawa from Kako, after all. For now, let’s just enjoy this yukata Shinobu – kindly shared with us by the good folks at SHAFT.
