- Well Ougi has Koyomi under her thumb now, right where she wants him…only for Tsubasa’s womanly intuition and passion to protect a close friend to see straight through her and intervene.
- There is, however, something that we can agree with Ougi: Koyomi has turned into a serious fool now. It could be one of several things — her unnatural negotiation skills, her knowing she can easily trick a pervert like him, her already knowing that what has already happened so far in Monogatari, Koyomi is quite possibly down in the dumps (especially now that Sodachi has mysteriously arrived)…or something else. Before I couldn’t quite believe it, but now I am able to believe that she really is Meme’s niece after all, and not someone who would make up even that. Not that that really has much to do with anything right now; even if he were still around, I don’t think he’d even care if she were able to convince Koyomi to do these stupid things he’s currently been doing.
- And yes, indeed it has only been 3 days since she and Koyomi met for the first time, and she is already treating him as someone she must protect from ‘outside disturbances’…disturbances like the people who already know him the most. Hitagi, Tsubasa and Shinobu (as well as his sisters) know him more than anyone else, so while they can see through her in a heartbeat, Koyomi being brainwashed the way he is now would have to be the one to decide whether he chooses to side with either his family, friends and girlfriend…or Ougi.
- Meanwhile there’s all of us screaming at him at how stupid he can be, letting slip information that’s none of Ougi’s business, telling her precious information about his childhood she doesn’t need to know, and even letting her flirt with him, all at the same time.
- Here the Sodachi Lost arc begins. While Ougi has already followed Koyomi around like a lost puppy, we’ve established a little bit of background on who Sodachi is, how she and Koyomi met in that abandoned house, how he failed to see how much she was suffering as a child…and so now it’s this arc where all of his questions can finally have answers. With both Sodachi and Hitagi skipping school since Hitagi socked her one in Episode 2, Tsubasa has the idea of checking on both of them, only to save time, the best idea would be for them to split up. An idea Tsubasa soon regrets, as it doesn’t take long for Ougi to arrive suddenly to ‘remind’ Koyomi that they were to meet up to celebrate her arrival in high school for sushi (when they obviously didn’t…I mean who really does that?). Even when she’s telling him over and over again that he’s the fool out of everyone, he easily falls into her web. Personally, if I were Koyomi, I would rather have had Tsubasa as a girlfriend. While both she and Hitagi share a lot of traits in terms of brains, loyalty to friends and passion for Koyomi, she’s cuter in my eyes (hahaha!!). Tsubasa was even prepared to do anything in order to get him away from Ougi this week. And for her to be prepared to offer that to him means Tsubasa seriously does not trust Ougi in the slightest, and that she is a very very different person to Meme, her uncle; someone that, at this point, has turned into a antagonist/anomaly.
Even showing up Koyomi as a perv helps…
- While the entire episode revolves around the decision to visit Sodachi at her home, and later to convince either Ougi or Tsubasa to accompany him, playing those half a dozen scenes out doesn’t bother us long-time fans of Monogatari in the slightest. It’s certainly something that happens in a lot of episodes: entire scenes can be stretched out to their max in order to reach the 25-minute length of an normal episode. One would normally think that this is a simple sign that studios only do this when they either:
- …are very short on storyline.
- …want to add as much as they can to each character in the show.
- …want to show off all of their creative animation skills.
- …all of the above.
- This obviously makes sense as the entire series follows Nisio Isin’s stories pretty much to the kanji character, and packing an entire arc into a 25-minute episode would be suicidal for SHAFT. While the extended 2 hour arcs have been very successful as they have let us see an arc story as a ‘movie’, Owarimonogatari goes back to the series roots, and leaves us on tenterhooks over as the cour goes by. Right now, we already know Ougi is a little demon and is prepared to do anything to get Koyomi to tell whatever she wants (and to get him to turn against his friends and family), alongside the issue of Sodachi and whether she’s able to forgive Koyomi…having Sodachi Riddle and Sodachi Lost as one long piece just wouldn’t work. These 5 episodes work way way better.
- I’m hoping for a lot of things now. I hope Tsubasa can knock some sense into Koyomi so he can see the light and not become the fool we can see him as right now. As for Ougi? Well as she’s now become a solid secondary character now, she won’t disappear that easily. I have no idea why Hitagi is skipping school too though; that’s something we’ll discover later, of course. And do I want Sodachi to forgive Koyomi? To be honest, I really don’t know. Right now I’m not even sure what he can even say to her. I mean, what would you even do if you were in his shoes? How do you attempt to calm down a girl who despises the ground who walk on by entering their home suddenly unannounced, her still being in her pajamas and possibly in a disheveled state. Actually scratch that, Sodachi without twintails would be a plus.
I mean come on, get a haircut.
- But after my moaning about her attitude of the world and her hairstyle, I have begun to pity Sodachi a lot now. Out of all of the girls he has encountered in Monogatari, I think she has it pretty bad. While Koyomi lives a blessed life with a lover, 2 sisters, a fancy arty house and a clingy vampire girl, people like (for example) Suruga aren’t so lucky (with her being an orphan and a cursed paw for an arm), or Mayoi (a ghost girl who never got the chance to say goodbye to the world), or even Nadeko (despite being spoilt rotten, her curse will be constantly haunting her until the day she dies). Sodachi, on the other hand, has lost her parents through domestic violence and forced to be home-tutored, betrayed by the people around her who she considered friends and allies…all of this has been built up into one ball of hatred that has effectively become the singular thing Koyomi must fix. He must put aside their past together, and make sure Ougi stays out of his head, so that Sodachi is able to put her own anger behind her and carry on in life. But after fixing so many girls in the past…well, let’s just hope he can pull this off.
Sodachi just has the worst luck ever.
