Tsukimonogatari: Yotsugi Doll

Impression

The Monogatari series is as complicated as ever! It’s been a while since Hanamonogatari, which aired as a series of four episodes all bunched together into one sitting back in the summer – I think neither that nor Tsukimonogatari had enough ‘oomph’ to constitute a proper season’s worth of episodes, and as they had a stand-alone (Suruga Devil) and transitory (Yotsugi Doll) sort of storyline they were better off like this anyway. I’m expecting the next few arcs to get their own new anime season though, to properly finish things off. I won’t be splitting up coverage of Tsukimonogatari into four separate posts like I did with Nekomonogatari – rather, I’ll just write down some stuff on Yotsugi Doll as a whole.

With Karen, Tsukihi and Kanbaru eventually getting abducted later on by Tadatsuru, I can see why they’d give the Fire Sisters a good chunk of screen-time – it’s been absolutely ages since they’ve had any meaningful purpose, and I’d actually forgotten how endearing they could be. Though I definitely don’t remember them being that comfortable around Araragi, i.e. parading around in nothing but panties. It made for some wonderful fanservice though. Tsukihi best Fire Sister, amirite? It was pretty much Tsuki(hi)monogatari for the first episode. Though after half a year of Yama no Susume all I can hear is Aoi now instead of Tsukihi. Clearly, SHAFT has tripled two things for Tsukimonogatari: the deep dialogue on the meaning of life, and the fanservice. And maybe the references too – there was that shot with three groups of middle school girls around Araragi. One’s from Madoka, the other might be Hidamari Sketch and I have no idea where the last two are from.

But yeah, two meaningful things came out of including all that stuff with Tsukihi. The first was the revelation that Nadeko is now in hospital. By that I presume she’s alive, and hopefully well. It’s a calmer reference to all the stuff that went on in her arc and its resolution, where the heroic Kaiki ascended to best girl level and single-handedly saved Araragi, Senjougahara and a blonde loli-slave from certain death. The shrine became an unstable area after Nadeko, so it wasn’t surprising that it became the location for the eventual confrontation with Tadatsuru in this arc. But yeah, the second is that it provided a good link to Yotsugi and Yozuru, as they were the ones who tried to kill Tsukihi back in Tsukihi Phoenix.

Yotsugi and Yozuru were definitely enemies in Tsukihi Phoenix – they occupied the ‘new minor character’ role for that specific arc, much like Numachi did in Hanamonogatari and Tadatsuru did in this. But then Yotsugi came back, and now she’s sort of… kind of a friend to Araragi. Like Gaen Izuko, except Yotsugi is probably on better terms with Araragi than she is. While I think they’ve mentioned she was created from a corpse in the past, this is the first time they’ve ever placed real emphasis on her being doll-like – both in the title, as well as how she kept going back to the UFO catcher and had to be fished out by both Araragi and Tsukihi while playing dead. I suppose it’s all part of having her become more distant from Araragi – both that and killing Tadatsuru with Unlimited Rulebook is a reminder that she’s inhuman at the end of the day. I didn’t know they were considered close to begin with – I knew they met up randomly much like how Araragi met Hachikuji, but from the intro scenes it seemed that he spends a surprising amount of time around Yotsugi. Well… he’ll be spending even more time around her now. Yaaaaaay.

So the primary plot of Tsukimonogatari wasn’t so much about Yotsugi herself as it was about Araragi – which is definitely odd, given that these arcs are usually about how Araragi helps out one of his friends who are suffering from an oddity-related incident. This is like the accumulated backlash from all of that – Araragi’s turned into a vampire too much and too often, and now he’s actually turning into one, independent of his thing with Shinobu. Yotsugi made it sound like it was Nadeko’s fault, and I think she really was the main catalyst. I mean, turning every day?! He probably needed it to survive whatever Nadeko threw at him on a daily basis, but then he shouldn’t have gone so often in the first place! Nadeko would never have gotten so suspicious of Kaiki if Araragi’s daily visits suddenly stopped, only to be replaced by a dodgy looking guy who clearly looked hired. Monogatari has been going on for ages, and this arc kind of lampshades the fact that it can’t in fact go on forever – that it has to stop at some point, and that it’s going to happen through Araragi returning to his normal life and renouncing his powers as a vampire.

Even though the Monogatari series is all about wordplay, and thrives on character-based interactions with lots of talking and little actual battles or fighting when push comes to shove (Kizumonogatari being an exception I think) this was even more evident this time. Almost all of the stuff with Tadatsuru was more about the build-up to meeting him than the actual meeting with him, where he seemed to have anticipated having Yotsugi use Unlimited Rulebook on him. All the scenes with Yotsugi and Shinobu playing in the snow were incredibly adorable though, so I’m not complaining! As a whole, I found Tadatsuru a much less intriguing ‘minor character’ compared to someone like Numachi, whose hate, motives and personality alongside the end to the devil’s arm plot made for a really interesting watch. The most mysterious minor character continues to be Gaen Izuko of course, who is starting to border on scary these days. She actually does know fucking everything.

Finally, the ‘minor character’ quickly emerging as a future ‘major character’ looks set to be Ougi, whom I’m disliking more and more with each passing arc. I’m going to refer to her as a she, just because that’s how she appears to Araragi – though she became a he in front of Kanbaru by accident once. Ougi is a shit, seriously – she has hinted before that she’s the identity of whatever this ‘darkness’ is, and it looks more likely than ever that her aim is to pull Araragi’s friends away from him one by one. She directly used her powers to get rid of Hachikuji in Shinobu Time, and influenced Nadeko in Nadeko Medusa. She led to Kaiki being stabbed in Hitagi End, and now she manipulated Tadatsuru in order to try and get him to hate Yotsugi. And then there’s her ‘relation’ to Oshino, which sounds more like it’s a lie each time it’s referred to – meeting Oshino again is probably what’s going to wrap up this series in the end, if anything. With Monogatari moving into it’s final stages I’m predicting it’ll be all about Ougi, Oshino and maybe Gaen, with Senjougahara, Hanekawa and Shinobu being involved. The hype is real!