Convince me that Bakemonogatari is not actually about Araragi’s harem and his fetish for lolies. Seriously. After the Mayoi arc it was almost confirmed, and with the splendid (read: erotic) introduction of Nadeko in our latest story arc, I think we should all resign ourselves to the fact that we are watching a serious anime for the lolicon. This is a bad sign – looks like SHAFT will win the Studio of the Year award based on fetishes so far shown in the show.

Jokes aside, the visuals continue to compel the viewer in this episode, especially the first part of the episode as both Araragi and Kanbaru walk up the stairs to the shrine. And we already have our main character introduced pretty fast with her problem, though of course, we are left wondering exactly what that problem is.

Again, I read others’ blogs before this, and of course, despite the fact that by doing this, I am always never linked back to (sobs, there goes all my hits, and I am such a poor and lousy blogger that I never really drive hits to others and never get hits myself >_< ), I think it is important that I give credit to where some ideas for the post have come from and to continue driving the discussion that is a series that can be hard to understand at times, let alone missing seemingly trivial yet important details. Such details can even be spotted by others, and then cleared up by yet others; an example shall be made prevalent later in this episode.

For now, I urge you to go through the posts of others’ blogs that I will reference to. It is through their previous insights, added to mine, that I can make these longer posts in general.
 

Omni mentions that the series has done enough by now to make him realize that both Kanbaru’s feeling unwell, and Hanekawa’s headache, are significant. After looking through the episode a second time to get screenshots, and realizing how the “red” scenes are always right after each, I am inclined to agree with him.

ghostlightning chaffs at the lack of Senjougahara and the harem dynamics, but his post is more insightful than just these two points and cannot be explained in a few sentences. He also has some very interesting comments (why do I hardly ever get those? SEE I SUCK), including one by BluEgnima talking about the deviance of the normal zodiac dealing with a serpent. I will touch on this a little bit considering this is new knowledge to me, but only in the general impressions section.
 

Vendredi provides some very interesting information for me to digest and go through, especially the significance of the snake which I had hoped someone would point out, and he did, to quite a nice extent.

Halconnen, like Kiri, noticed the reaction guys meme immediately, and the latter also provides some background information on the meme. Sankaku Complex of course had a fitting post for it, from which I took one of the pictures that will be in this post later on when we get there.
 

dm00 compares the similarity at the start of the episode (the part I mentioned was visually stunning) to another series Mushi-shi, which I did not watch (though CK informed me that he had heard good things about it).

rayyhum777 makes an important comment regarding Hanekawa in his thoughts about this episode.
 

Finally, Shin cannot contain himself at Nadeko’s pleas for help and has been fapping constantly ever since. He also has totally given me no credit for coming up for his post’s title on this episode, despite me having the IRC records to prove it. That aside, he also mentioned that people said Nadeko was fat, which would have gone otherwise unnoticed except as a trivial remark (and made in indignation) if not for Vendredi’s post.
 

And so we head on now to the episodic proper. Got to love multiple pages for long posts.

Related posts:

1. Bakemonogatari 10 – Tasukete, Araragi-kun
2. Bakemonogatari 06 – In Your Face Part 2
3. Bakemonogatari 11 – Nyahahahaha
4. Bakemonogatari 06 – In Your Face Part 1
5. Bakemonogatari 13 – Return of Fetishes