Owarimonogatari Episode 2: Sodachi Riddle, Part One

I’m scared.

Impression

I can’t seem to decide on who I found scarier this episode: Oikura or Ougi. I mean, it’s not like I expected Oikura to greet Araragi with a smile, but I did think she would a little more… stable than she turned out to be. Oikura just has so much hate for him, and clearly it’s something which has been simmering at boiling point this entire time. Not that it helped her stand a chance against the 1479 damage Gahara punch. But what was it that made her deteriorate this far? In the flashback, she was still a rather haughty person, but she wasn’t this explosive – was it something that happened gradually over two years? Or is it something linked to the class assembly, given that she only ever returned after she knew Tetsujo was gone? Did she expect to be saved by him? I have a feeling that something happened between Araragi and Oikura even before the class assembly – and that it has something to do with why Araragi visited that creepy house every day for an entire summer back in middle school. In the end, if she hates the way he lives, then fine – that’s her opinion. If all he is to her is just a classmate, then she can dislike him and that’s the end of it. But she cares more than that – she hates him more than that. Araragi says she hates him to the point that it feels like he killed her parents. So it has to be something more. And if it’s so much more, then why did he forget?

Ougi Formula was an arc about Araragi, but it looks like this one is, too. It’s dressed up in the guise of whoever Araragi is involved with at the time, but Owarimonogatari so far seems to very much be about further developing Araragi’s character and letting us know about exactly what went on before Kizu. For Araragi himself, it’s time for him to face his reflection and confront the past – which Ougi is trying to slowly coax him towards doing for some reason. As with last week, it felt like she and her long sleeves were in control of everything – including future events, like the small nod towards how she would go on to twist Sengoku and make her cause all those problems. Even the very fact that Araragi visited his old middle school was allegedly because Ougi suggested it. And this is the second time he doesn’t remember something she’s apparently said. Araragi himself seems to have some reservations about her, and why he’s even telling her all that he’s telling her – in fact, if she didn’t previously talk to Sengoku, and if Kanbaru wasn’t the one to introduce her to Araragi, I would have started talking about how I think she’s just a product of his imagination by now. Ougi just appeared the fuck out of nowhere, after all – she didn’t get an introduction or anything. Just partway into Monogatari Second Season, someone was just like, ‘oh, it’s Ougi!’ as if it was the most natural thing in the world to have her as a character in this series. And all of us were like, ‘…who?’

As for the Monty Hall problem, a quick Google search will tell you that it is indeed the right answer to switch doors when presented with the opportunity – but if you were too lazy or didn’t bother, this is why. If there are two doors left, one with a goat and one with a car, then the chance of you getting the car is 1/2 with no extra information. But if there were three originally, and the host tells you that one of the doors you didn’t pick has no car behind it, then switching gives you a 2/3 chance of winning. Imagine it like this: you pick a door, and that gives you a 1/3 chance of winning. Therefore, there is a 2/3 chance that the car lies behind one of both the other two doors combined. If the host removes one of those doors, there is thus still a 2/3 chance that the car is behind the door you didn’t pick that he didn’t choose to reveal to you. It’s just that instead of the chances between each door being split as 1/3 and 1/3, it’s divided up into 2/3 and 0 now that you have the extra information. Another way of thinking about it is by imagining that there are 1000 doors instead – it becomes more intuitive this way. You pick one, and the host opens 998 of the other doors, all with goats behind them. Should you switch? Of course, because the chances of you picking the car from your current door is 1/1000, whereas it’s 999/1000 if you pick the other remaining door. Not switching means you are basically saying you picked the right door from the very outset, out of 1000 identical doors – and what are the chances of that?

Who’s the other girl in the end card, by the way? Hanekawa?