Chatty AF 236: Monogatari Watchalong Part 5 – Nekomonogatari Black and White (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

PETER: And I do also respect her weaponizing the concept of an Electra Complex to sleep in the same bed as another woman.

VRAI: Listen. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. [Chuckles] Before I started watching for this podcast, I did message Tony and say, “If Hanekawa and Senjougahara make out, much is forgiven.”

[Introductory musical theme]

TONY: Hello! Welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast! I’m your host, Tony, a contributing editor here at Anime Feminist. You can find me at Bluesky at @empty-visions. And with me today are Vrai and Peter!

VRAI: Hey. I’m Vrai. I’m the daily operations manager at AniFem. I am sometimes on Bluesky at @writervrai.

PETER: And I’m Peter Fobian. I’m an editor at Anime Feminist and I’m @peterfobian on Bluesky.

TONY: And we are here today because I’m finally getting to drag Vrai and Peter through one of my favorite arcs in the Monogatari, Nekomonogatari: Black & White. So, the reason we’re doing  Monogatari is because for all of this show’s crazy fanservice, which we definitely talk about, it also addresses really meaningful themes about survivorship, it’s a really good prism and lens into how women are portrayed in male-gaze media and how writers evolve over time in their writing of women, and writing of survivors in particular, around issues of queerness, sexuality, savior complex, and I frankly think it’s a damn good show. So, that’s why we’re covering it.

VRAI: Not every show waits thirty episodes to deliver on the premise it promised you, but Monogatari has always been an innovator in the industry.

TONY: Truly.

VRAI: I guess Eureka Seven also exists.

TONY: Yeah. And the watch order you should go with is Bakemonogatari, then make sure you watch those three episodes that are missing, then Kizumonogatari, then Nisemonogatari, and then Neko Black, and then Neko White. That’s the order.

PETER: That’s what the watch guide on Crunchyroll.com says.

TONY: There’s a…?

VRAI: Yeah, actually, you should probably explain to folks that Neko Black is a separately packaged OVA but Neko White is part of the broader umbrella… is under the listing of Monogatari Second Season, more broadly.

TONY: Yeah, just generally… Monogatari—I don’t want to get into it too much, but Monogatari’s watch order is annoying and so confusing, and the best thing you can do is just… Well, Peter, you said that there’s a Crunchyroll watch guide?

PETER: Yeah, yeah. There’s an article by, I think, Nick Creamer, actually, that has the proper watch order. In addition to that, they also call it “Tsubasa Tiger” and not Neko Black as the first five episodes of Bakemonogatari’s second season on Crunchyroll.

TONY: [crosstalk] Hold on. You mean they call it “Tsubasa Tiger” instead of Neko White.

PETER: Er, Neko White, yeah, yeah. It’s Neko Black, then Second Season, “Tsubasa Tiger,” the first five episodes.

TONY: [Sighs] Okay! [Chuckles]

PETER: Simple! Easy! Not hard at all.

TONY: [crosstalk] So easy! Me serious [Tony says it with the inflection “sewious”] and… we salute you. Um, anyways… So, the reason I was so excited about this season and for you guys to finally get to it is this is the first time that we are encountering a season of Monogatari that is not from Araragi’s perspective! In fact, he’s put on a bus! How did you guys enjoy Monogatari without Araragi?

VRAI: [Sighs pleasantly]

PETER: [Chuckles] I was definitely interested—I did just—You know, it was very novel having characters interact with each other rather than Araragi, period. So, that was a nice change of pace. 

The mileage kind of varied because I feel like it also used their interactions as an opportunity to have lesbian things happen—or at least flag toward that. I imagine we’ll be talking about that a bit later. But still, I think… I was kind of surprised a little bit because I felt like especially Senjougahara acted very differently. 

And also, I mean, just in general Second Season has a bit of a different art style that makes everybody look kind of… waxy? I’m not quite sure how to put it. Everybody’s very shiny and plump, as opposed to the very angular, flat kind of art style from the first season. In addition to that, I felt kind of unstuck from time since I knew Neko Black was essentially the second story arc after Kizumonogatari, but I was not sure where in the timeline of the series we were during most of Neko White.

VRAI: White takes place after Bake.

TONY: And after Nise. And after Nise.

PETER: And after Nise.

VRAI: And Nise. Fucking… Why would you make me remember Nise?

TONY: I’m so sorry. [Laughs] The trauma!

VRAI: Mm. No, no, I had a good— I think they juxtapose interestingly against one another. As I was watching it, I was kind of thinking about how Monogatari kind of managed to carve itself out a little niche in the OVA market right as it was imploding, as OVAs became a severely less viable commercial product—which is also why the hentai market collapsed. 

But yeah, I thought a lot about time and place and release order for lots of reasons. But no, I liked it. I mostly liked it. Um… How to put this. I think that it is an extremely technically interesting thing looking at these two extremely different shows, even though they’re only separated by a year. They have the same director, though, right?

TONY: No! Bakemonogatari is— Well, hold on. Nisemonogatari is Itamura, right? Bakemonogatari was Oishi.

VRAI: Who did Black, then?

TONY: So, Black was also Itamura.

VRAI: Okay. That’s still interesting, though, because to me, it’s something… No, here’s what I mean to say about it. Those two things are interesting to me, especially, I think, given that they are the same director, because it’s really illustrative to me about how it seems like… and obviously this is early going and Second Season is a bunch of connected arcs the way Bake was, I think, so they obviously laid a lot of threads here that won’t pay off for a while, presumably.

TONY: Oh, it bops around in time. There’s things that happen in this season that you don’t see the other side of until we get to Owari. It’s completely bananas.

PETER: Oh, like what Araragi’s been up to the whole time?

TONY: Yeah, some of that you’re not gonna see until Owarimonogatari. It’s ridiculous.

VRAI: Well, my point being more that Neko taking place during Golden Week really shows off how the series is basically trying to claw its broken-femured way out of Bake’s shadow. There are things I like about Bakemonogatari. They sure did direct the hell out of that, and if nothing else, a person ought to be able to preserve works that are that weird and outré even if they’re also irritatingly horny. 

But I think that just the camera consistently takes Black out at the knees, even as Nisioisin has clearly improved a great deal as a writer, and also Hanekawa’s character logic is a lot more shackled to “Tsubasa Cat,” which my opinion of just gets lower and lower the more we get to see of her character.

TONY: You mean “Tsubasa Cat,” the arc in Bake.

VRAI: Yes.

TONY: Yeah! Well, it’s so strange because Neko Black often feels a little bit like a rewrite of “Tsubasa Cat,” right, but with a lot more understanding of her psychology, right, and in understanding that Araragi is really messed up in the way that he’s looking at Hanekawa, right?

VRAI: Yeah, not in a way that’s as good as it would later be elucidated in Kizu, I think, but it’s starting to get that way, and it really is interesting to look at Nisioisin as a guy who’s, in the same line of thought, just crawling out of his own ass with the icepick of slowly evolving writing talent, where he had all these ideas but is only now figuring out how to execute on them with grace. So, it was one of those things where I felt a stab of genuine annoyance when Araragi came in at the end of Neko White.

TONY: Yeah. Yeah.

VRAI: And then I had to take a minute to be like, well, at least he’s only in the Tuxedo Mask position, you know, where he’s just there to sort of give her the window she needs to do her thing and finish the fight. And at the same time, they have to do it. There is no way to simply omit it because we established, way back in Bake, that, ah, gosh darn it, Tsubasa’s big angst is that she’s in love with Araragi and he didn’t notice her. So, we are still chained at the ankle to this thing and have to deal with it, so he has to show up. But the weakest points of White, I think, are the moments where it kind of feels like Bake’s tugging on the lead a little bit.

PETER: Yeah, that was interesting, too, because— I thought that was an interesting conclusion since in the first episode I think they even cast doubt on the fact that she really loved Araragi at all. A small digression here, too, is: one of the reasons I felt unstuck in the timeline here is because in Nise, Hanekawa’s doing so much acting behind the scenes and has obviously developed some sort of, uh, relationship with the characters around Araragi in a way where she’s exerting a lot of influence, that I was wondering if it was going to pay off in this story arc, but it felt like it was almost before it rather than after it chronologically.

VRAI: Yeah, that is a good point. Like, the stuff with Hitagi being almost scared of Hanekawa as like a chess master don’t really line up with their relationship here, which I like much better, but the character continuity isn’t.

PETER: Mm-hm. And her also kind of driving the Fire Sisters into the plot of their part of Nise and then looping Araragi in to save… which one’s the sporty one?

TONY: Kanbaru.

VRAI: Karen.

PETER: Yeah, yeah. To save her from the jackass guy.

TONY: Yeah. I also wanted to bring up… I know you were also thinking about in regards to the house reveal, which you said was pretty emblematic of the problems in Black and the strengths of White.

VRAI: Yeah, we were talking about this over Slack, and I think… I’m half-wondering if a person could get a whole essay out of this, but it’s very interesting to me that both Black and White revisit the reveal that… speaking of “emblematic” things about Hanekawa’s abusive home… I guess I… I really feel like I should start calling her Tsubasa since she says that she has distressed feelings about her last name. 

But one of the things that it comes back to as a symbol of her trauma is the fact that she doesn’t have a room in her own house. And so, in Black there is this admittedly very well-animated and genuinely tense scene of Araragi sneaking into her house and then running away in terror back to his own. And it’s trying so hard, the actors and the camera and the everything, but his horrified lines about how she doesn’t have a room and “My God! My God, bees!”

TONY: [crosstalk] Okay, okay, in his defense, when I’ve gone to hook up with a guy and he leads me in and all he has is a couch in the living room cordoned off with a curtain, I have the same reaction as Araragi.

PETER: [Chuckles]

TONY: So, I have to, you know, hand it to him.

VRAI: I bow to jokes, but… But in writing terms, you can’t… you can’t depict such a delicate realization through something as extremely grand and sweeping as the scene that they go with. It makes it feel stupid and satirical.

TONY: No, it does, you’re right. Versus, in White, though, you were saying that you thought it was much more subtle.

VRAI: Yeah. In White, we just open with her waking up in her futon, and at first you’re like, “Ah! That’s a really narrow room. I don’t know why she has a Roomba in her room.” And then it kinda dawns on you that she’s sleeping in the hallway and that this Roomba has just as much, if not indeed more because it was programmed to belong there, space in this hallway than her. And there’s no dialogue really. She just gets up and goes to school and leaves her bed folded in the hallway. And I felt like it was a really understated, unsettling scene, and it sets the tone really well for White. It’s good.

TONY: I love White, personally. I’ll just be honest here. [Chuckles] I think it’s a truly fantastic arc—mostly, I’ll be honest, because of the bisexuals! So… Okay, so…

VRAI: Yay!

TONY: So, canon, Tsubasa and Hitagi are both bisexual.

VRAI: Hooray!

TONY: Yeah.

VRAI: Hitagi is definitely, definitely bisexual. I’m still not 100% convinced that I was meant to come away with this thinking that Tsubasa really was in love with Araragi. Like, on one hand, that’s the only way that her—

TONY: [crosstalk] With, do you mean, Hitagi? Or with…

VRAI: No, with Araragi.

TONY: [crosstalk] Oh, with Araragi! [Laughs]

VRAI: I am not convinced.

PETER: Well, that—

TONY: [crosstalk] It’s like her—

PETER: It was the whole conclusion to their conversation with Senjougahara, right? She’s just like, “You have no taste for anything. You just eat whatever’s put in front of you and Araragi was put in front of you. So, do you actually love him or is he just the person who put himself in front of you and therefore you accepted him?”

VRAI: It’s obviously setting up for, you know, “I want to think about that and say that again,” and then she does at the very end of the series, which gives her catharsis on acknowledging an emotion as real. But at the same time, I’m not… And it’s also consistent with the monologue in Black about how love is sort of a flimsy feeling that just kinda comes to you impulsively, not something you work out with logic. 

So, in a writerly way, they have set up for this, but emotionally I don’t buy it because so much of White… even though Araragi’s not in it, it’s set around the absence of him, in the same way of going back to that “clawing away from Bake” thing. Like, there are moments in White that truly feel like that Dropout sketch, two women who can’t seem to pass the Bechdel test.

TONY: [Laughs]

PETER: Yeah. I did appreciate the reversal, where they said, “This whole conversation is going to be about a guy, but it’s going to be about what we hate about him instead of what we like about him.” So, they didn’t pass but… that’s very funny. [Chuckles]

TONY: But they do talk about each other and themselves a lot.

PETER: [crosstalk] Oh, they do, for sure.

TONY: Let’s be real here, okay. They do pass the Bechdel test, right?

PETER: They pass it. Yeah, they pass it.

VRAI: Eventually, yeah. Not for most of that first episode. [Chuckles]

TONY: [crosstalk] Mostly through psychoanalyzing each other.

PETER: Yeah. Although, yeah, and Senjougahara, I was gonna say… in addition to her character just feeling much more… I don’t know, maybe she’s just more playful with other people than she is with Araragi because they have that kind of sub/dom thing going on, but she was being straight-up goofy a lot of the time, when she wasn’t being a literal Looney Tunes character seeing a voluptuous woman, picking her own chin up off the ground and pounding her feet and going “Awooga!” at the prospect of taking a shower with Hanekawa.

[Laughter]

PETER: And I do also respect her weaponizing the concept of an Electra Complex to sleep in the same bed as another woman.

VRAI: Listen. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. [Chuckles] Before I started watching for this podcast, I did message Tony and say, “If Hanekawa and Senjougahara make out, much is forgiven.”

I am fascinated by this. Like you said, Tony, as much as I goof about, well, maybe we could talk about… it felt like maybe they were going to talk about Hanekawa and the feeling of compulsory attraction or heterosexuality with that conversation with Hitagi. On the one hand, I actually really like the shower scene.

TONY: Oh, it’s fantastic!

VRAI: It’s very sweet and tender. And while I still have questions about the dynamic they had in Nise, I do like the way that Senjougahara’s characterization here sort of follows on from her arc at the end of Nise, the big bandstand scene, which was like the only good part of that show, where she’s kind of made some closure about herself and that makes her feel free to be more open with other people or at least to try it out. And it’s very warm and sweet. And then at the same time, it is such a textbook case of how bisexuality was treated in the late 2000s and 2010s, because before they, let’s be clear, have sex on screen—they definitely, definitely have sex…

TONY: Yep. [Chuckles]

VRAI: [Chuckles] … Hitagi has a one-off line about, like, “Don’t get it wrong: I’m not like Kanbaru,” meaning “a lesbian.” So, there’s this strong, deliberate separating from the idea of lesbianism, like political queerness, identification queerness, antipathy-or threat-to-men queerness and sexual acts between women. So, it’s on the one hand like, no, they’re not making out for Araragi because he asked if they could have a threesome, which I appreciate. But there is that sense that Monogatari is the famous artsy fanservice series; this is a male-gaze lesbian girl-on-girl sex scene. But at the same time, it manages to come over that because we have built up so much attachment to these characters. So, it’s like… complicated and shit?

TONY: It’s also interesting because this also brings up some adaptational choices the show made. I mean, when you look in the novel, it does not describe the scene in the shower pretty much at all. Yeah, there’s almost nothing other than they just kinda played around. But it does have a whole bunch of Tsubasa’s inner monologue where she is just fantasizing about Senjougahara, saying things like, “She was already wonderful back when she never displayed any emotions. But she was even more wonderful now when she showed a full range of them,” again, alluding to what you said earlier about her change from Nise, right? “It was to the point where I wanted to be the one asking her to take a shower together. Or maybe that’s going a step too far?” You know, just swooning, absolutely swooning for… Just so many of them. And even at the end of the series—and this was cut from the adaptation—she literally says… let’s see if I can find it…

PETER: Man, if they did have a poly relationship and Kanbaru got left out, that would be some dirty shit.

TONY: [Chuckles] If they had a throuple?

PETER: Kanbaru would be the most punished character.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Being Kanbaru is suffering.

PETER: Yeah. [Chuckles]

TONY: For choosing to identify as a lesbian, no girlfriend for you!

VRAI: Apparently not ever. Oh, here, I’ve got it, Tony, if you want me to read it.

TONY: Sure, go ahead.

VRAI: So, we’re starting out talking about Araragi. “He never cuts anything loose. He never throws anything away. We fell in love with how many-loved he is. Good—so my sense that I had never begrudged Miss Senjougahara over Araragi was the one thing that I hadn’t cut off; it was my one true feeling. I still couldn’t deny thinking about how great it must have been, though, so I did tease her at night, and her reactions were so wonderful. Oh. So I did love Araragi. But I loved Miss Senjougahara too. And only when I was able to admit that to myself did I feel like my heart was well and truly broken. Pain and heartbreak—I’d managed to experience them. Having lived thus for about ten days. The moment arrived at last. The news reached me that a rental had been found to replace the burned-down Hanekawa residence─which meant I needed to go. Miss Senjougahara seemed worried and said, ‘You don’t need to leave so suddenly—’”

TONY: Oh, by the way, she lives with Senjougahara for a couple weeks after the whole confrontation with Araragi and the tiger, in the novel.

VRAI: And that’s… You know, you can say that… Monogatari is one of the only series you can’t really say, “Oh, well, that was all internal monologue, so obviously you had to cut it out for the flow of the story, but we’ll convey it through visual language.” Monogatari hates cutting an internal monologue. It has never found a line of dialogue that it disliked enough to cut.

PETER: Yeah. If they don’t have time for it, they’ll literally just put a monocolor slate in front of the screen with all of the monologue in text for you to read.

VRAI: I feel like this is the second time this has sprung up on us. When we dipped into the source material for Nadeko Snake, too, it really felt like it was the adaptation that was being frustrating about something.

TONY: So, it’s interesting, because they added a scene, right, that was really beautiful and meaningful and tender, but it was much easier to sexualize, right, than this incredibly meaningful moment of pathos where Hanekawa is actually realizing her very strong love for Senjougahara that, she even says herself, hurt more, it seems like, than losing the love for Araragi, because as Hitagi said, she didn’t really love Araragi that much; she just loved the idea of Araragi and he was there and accepted her, and it’s like that was enough for her. Right? But, you know, Tsubasa and Hitagi have a lot more in common. I mean, they’re both survivors of abuse. They’re both struggling— They both love-hate the same man. [Chuckles] They both are trying to navigate what it means to be living in really bizarre systems of violence. Right? I mean, Hitagi is very, very, very poor, and Tsubasa’s dealing with the foster care system.

VRAI: Yeah, it’s so interesting to think about… I was thinking about the time period of this series, because they have cell phones and that’s important to the plot in several places, but at the same time I think I messaged you, Tony, at one point to say, “Why isn’t Araragi just jacking it to internet porn?” when he freaks out about how he feels like he can’t go and buy porno mags because Hanekawa might be mad at him, and does that mean he has a crush on her. 

Temporally, it wants to be a modern series about modern youth but also has that problem of the adolescence experience is whatever the author grew up with. And I think when it comes to talking about Tsubasa and foster care, that feels very interesting compared to Higurashi starting at around the same time, and that is very directly rooted in the 1980s and how parental abuses and the failures of the foster care system were hurting children. It’s interesting how the series at once feels… how that can be a double-edged sword, how sort of floaty and out of time it feels—like Peter said. I think that that can contribute to that feeling of “Wait, where in the timeline does this go?” because things do just kind of exist…they exist in that abstract space.

PETER: Yeah. Also, you notice, everybody is wearing their summer uniforms and everybody has gotten a haircut at some point between Nise and Second Season, too, so I was doubly confused since I don’t know why everybody got haircuts at the same time or, conversely, started growing out their hair.

TONY: Oh, you have to understand: every character change is marked by a haircut in any Monogatari season. It just keeps happening.

VRAI: I mean, and they did set it up in Neko Black with Tsubasa saying, you know, “My parents wouldn’t even notice if I cut my hair,” but I expected it to be like an on-screen decision she made, not just something that happened, and I think I was doubly thrown off by the fact that she stopped wearing glasses. Tony, you said that there was a passing line about her starting with contacts. I must have missed it. But I wish they had kept the glasses on her. I think her face looks like it’s missing something without them, although I do really like the tiger stripes.

TONY: Oh, yeah.

PETER: Yeah. I hope they… Although, it sounds like she’s just going to be hiding them forever. Yeah, but it’s interesting that she and Senjou both cut off almost all their hair at the same time. And… wonder what that means.

TONY: [mysterious] What could it mean?

PETER: Yeah, and Kanbaru goes with the pigtail braids.

VRAI: And it looks horrible.

PETER: [crosstalk] It does, yeah.

VRAI: Baby, I’m so sorry. You can’t do it.

PETER: I’m not really a fan of any of the haircuts, to be honest. Although the—

TONY: [crosstalk] Oh, don’t worry. If you don’t like the haircuts in one season, just wait a season and they’ll have another one.

PETER: Oh, okay. Alright, yeah. At least my suffering will be short-lived.

VRAI: Hitagi’s short hair did kinda grow on me. Maybe it’s the fact that her animation is more expressive for this part of her character, but it was kinda cute.

PETER: Yeah, in general she’s just being really cute this season instead of her usual imperious attitude/mortal fear of Hanekawa that came out of nowhere. [Chuckles]

VRAI: No, that part is also cute.

PETER: Yeah. Okay. Oh, that’s the moe? Alright.

VRAI: Gap moe.

TONY: [crosstalk] Senjougahara is just… She is perfect. I love her so much. Any episode that she is in will be twenty times better because she’s in it.

VRAI: [whispering] It’s true.

TONY: [crosstalk] So, I exactly wanted to shift gears a little bit. So, we’ve kind of touched on this when we were talking about Hitagi and Tsubasa and what they have in common. They’re both survivors and they’re both kind of trying to accept the negative emotions they have. But the really weird thing about Neko Black & White is that I think that we’re really starting to see what Nisioisin is doing with perspective here, because there are some characters who say some really horrible shit about abuse, in Neko Black in particular. I’m thinking of Araragi and Oshino. [through laughter] What the fuck was going on there?

VRAI: I think it is— That scene was probably the moment where I was most grateful that we’d watched Kizu before this, because Kizu was written after Neko, wasn’t it?

TONY: [crosstalk] No, no, no. Kizu was written before. Kizu was written before.

VRAI: Hm. Interesting. Because I was going to say, to me it feels like—

TONY: [crosstalk] But it was made, after, into an anime.

VRAI: Okay. I got you. In the anime, at least, it feels like Kizu has a much stronger grasp on Oshino as sort of a morally untrustworthy figure, but, I don’t know, there’s something about how it comes across in Black where, even though I know that I saw those scenes… like, this show has been so dedicated to showing him and Araragi interacting… Perhaps it’s because it is set later than that first meeting in Kizu that the show so builds him up as a reliable mentor figure until he shockingly abandons them at the end, that it doesn’t really work having him spout all of this stuff even though it’s clear he’s… I think— I think it is at least strongly implied that we are supposed to think that he’s wrong, so that Araragi will push him off and act of his own accord and it’s a growth moment and a distancing from authority. But, yeah, there is something about it that feels—

TONY: [crosstalk] But it’s also strange because it happens before Bake. Which is weird!

VRAI: [crosstalk] Yeah. It doesn’t really make sense.

TONY: Right, Araragi goes to him as a super trusted person about Hitagi, right after all this bullshit happens with Hanekawa, where Oshino is saying all these negative things about Hanekawa and basically implying that we should take her abusers’ perspective.

VRAI: Right. Maybe the kid had bad vibes.

TONY: [Laughs]

PETER: Yeah, like, he literally fucking said that. Yeah, I… Yeah, it’s just like, “Oh, do you think you could have a perfect daughter for ten years without hitting her?” And it’s like, what? What? What? What is your life experience?

VRAI: It’s wild! Because it’s such a— Because it’s not necessarily a thing where I think that Nisioisin believes that Oshino is right, outright. Clearly we’re supposed to shoot him down to some extent, but it’s one of those… I’m not sure how much this is supposed to be the “Oh, well, it’s terrible to say, but maybe there’s a kernel of truth in there” thing rather than “Uh-oh, maybe we should take this as a reference that this guy is bad news” and not just “Maybe it’s the truth that the adult world can be nasty sometimes and include nasty things that you want to push back against.” You know?

TONY: Well, it’s also interesting, right, because I think that this is where Nisioisin is getting fucked up with his own timeline stuff, right?

PETER: Mm-hm.

VRAI: Yeah.

TONY: Because I think on one hand, it’s really effective narratively because it’s this kind of heel turn for Oshino where we’re realizing, okay, this guy is kind of fucked up, and then he disappears as a mentor for the rest of the series. Oshino does not come back for almost the entire rest of the series. I’m going to spoil that. I don’t think that’s a crazy spoiler. And so, it works in a sense narratively, as kind of this moment where we as an audience lose faith in him and then are cast into an area where the characters have to figure things out for themselves. But in terms of… once you actually put the story in chronological order, it just doesn’t make sense in terms of Araragi’s development. Although, it does kind of in a sense because, God, does he regress!

VRAI: Oh, boy, does he. Yeah, all of Neko— Black doesn’t really… like, nominally it does, in that the events occur in an order that leads to the plot logic of Bake, but emotionally, you’re right, they really don’t match up. And I think it’s… Yeah, I should’ve said this back when we were talking about the sex scene, but it really is interesting how White… White isn’t free of bullshit. I don’t want to give people that impression. White has the level of bullshit that I am willing to forgive in a show that has good enough writing. It’s on a Flip Flappers level of bullshit, in that these are multifaceted women and sometimes the camera zooms in on their ass. But with Black, it’s really, really—

TONY: [crosstalk] [Laughs] Much less than in Black, I’ll say!

VRAI: Mm-hm! Black’s really annoying and, like, embarrassing at a certain point. Like, does… Okay, one thing I will say about White is I fucking hate the lip cuts. I have a real problem with the way that that’s not only blah-blah-blah literally what the “male gaze” was originally talking about in the original essay; but also, the weird adultification of how consistently, regardless of age, it draws sexualized women’s lips, that creeps me the fuck out, and I think that’s what we can blame for the shit in Wonder Egg. But aside from that, comparing it to Black, Black seems so almost self-conscious of its horniness.

TONY: [crosstalk] Hold on, I think I might have some evidence of that, actually.

VRAI: When you hit the point that Black Hanekawa is having sort of an agonized breakdown and I literally shout at the screen, “That is not what we meant by ‘Pussy out’!”

TONY: [Laughs] Diva down! Pussy out! [Chuckles] God.

VRAI: Like, why— She’s supposed to be in anguish in this moment, and I’m just looking at her cartoon vulva on screen.

TONY: Yeah. It’s very similar to what happens in Nadeko Snake, right, with Nadeko writhing around on the ground in pain and then we’re zooming in on her coochie, right?

PETER: Yeah. Also… Well, I want to say, in addition to that, the fact that she shows up in that scene because he texted her that he was in danger, right? And the series wants to have— She’s running around in her lingerie, so I don’t know where she was supposed to be keeping the cell phone that she apparently got a text on. I couldn’t help but [obscured by crosstalk] …

TONY: [crosstalk] Maybe that— Okay, I was about to make an incredibly dirty joke. Maybe I shouldn’t.

PETER: Yeah, of course.

VRAI: Ahem! [Chuckles]

TONY: [Laughs]

VRAI: [Speech obscured by crosstalk]. We all understood.

PETER: [crosstalk] Like, I don’t think she’s been carrying her cell phone around on her for the past couple days.

TONY: Another note: the director of Wonder Egg did storyboard a little bit for Monogatari.

PETER: Oh, really? Okay.

TONY: Yeah. He storyboarded for Owarimonogatari.

PETER: It definitely wanted to kind of put a pause on this story arc, or at least he had to put a pause, the same kind of way that Kizumonogatari put a pause on it, where they just don’t find a solution to the actual problem and just persist under mutual suffering instead. Even the thing where… Once again, it kind of fulfilled the pattern where the woman is sort of taken out of her own narrative, with Hanekawa actually forgetting the whole thing up until the issue is revisited.

So, I do get the feeling that obviously the solution that they came up with was imperfect or perhaps perfectly bad and therefore kind of arrived based on bad assumptions or, you could just say, Oshino’s absolutely monstrous idea of parenting. But it felt like (maybe this is just the credit I’m willing to give it) the takeaway was supposed to be, oh, that was a series of really poor decisions, and now we’re left with this hanging thread that needs to be tied up later in “Tsubasa Tiger.”

TONY: Yeah. Because I think that, similar between Kizu and Neko Black, we are witnessing Araragi at his absolute worst, right? In Kizu, he is denying a woman agency over the end of her life completely, saying, “You are now required to live as my slave forever.” Right? Which is really interesting to me because I think that Monogatari is a very Buddhist show.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Yeah, I could see that.

TONY: [crosstalk] I think it is very interested in—Sorry.

VRAI: No. No, I could see that. Please go on.

TONY: I think it’s very interested in attachment and it’s very interested in how attachment, especially to permanent senses of self and permanent ideas of who you are, brings enormous amounts of suffering, right? And here’s Araragi essentially saying the opposite of every Buddhist scripture. He is like, “Change is impossible! Neither of us are ever gonna change. We’re just gonna be locked in a cycle of suffering, and it’s just gonna keep happening forever,” right? Essentially saying the inverse of the Four Noble Truths. 

It’s like, “Suffering is real, and that’s why we’re just gonna keep doing it. We’re gonna continue being locked in a cycle of samsara, you and me, forever,” partially as a way, I think, to bait Tsubasa into attacking him, right? But at the same time it’s incredibly revealing about his own sense of self and where he is at that moment in the story and also how much he changes by the end of Neko White, where we see him kind of accepting and embracing change, right?

VRAI: Yeah, as annoyed as I was conceptually to see Araragi, uh, existing in a story where I was really enjoying the narrative having to write around him, his actual character actions were rather sweet.

TONY: In Neko White, you mean. Yeah.

VRAI: [crosstalk] And I still think— In Neko White, yeah. And I still think that his relationship with Hitagi is, like, the best part of him. But I do— It’s very interesting to me and I do wonder how we will continue to butt up against this as the show goes along, because I was thinking about… you know, what’s so great on paper is that… I really loved Hanekawa. I liked Hanekawa before. 

I think Hitagi is still my favorite character, but Tsubasa’s really coming for it because I love characters who… Maybe I relate to some of her maladaptive coping mechanisms, who can say, but I also like characters… I like when female characters, specifically, feel trapped by perceptions of perfection and gendered perfection specifically and I like the exploration of that. I will be watching really closely how she’s written going on from here because the point of this arc is [that] to become real and to step down off of this pedestal Araragi has hung her on, she has to embrace having ugly emotions, but she really only cries and she cries pretty cute.

[Laughter]

VRAI: And it’s real and it’s a venting of her grief, but as far as the animation, she doesn’t even have, like, nose dribble or nothing.

TONY: It’s not even as cute— It’s more cute than it is in “Tsubasa Cat,” where her crying is ugly in “Tsubasa Cat.” And in fact, I remember you saying you thought it was your favorite part of “Tsubasa Cat,” the little moments where she’s ugly crying.

VRAI: Mm-hm. Yeah, it was a nice little flourish. And by comparison, I think it’s because they wanted the moment to feel sweet and connective, but it doesn’t really sell “Okay, she is a human being who is sometimes gross and weird and unpalatable now, and that’s wonderful. That makes her better.” Because, I mean, it’s certainly no secret… You know, when I got to interview the writer of Girlish Number and he was like, “You know, I gave my lead character in that show a lot of traits that are considered… you know, I made her an adult, I made her abrasive and unlikable. 

So, no, she wasn’t very popular with the male fans.” Like, this is just a phenomenon that exists! So, I have a little more willingness to extend [the] benefit of the doubt about this, but we’ll see.

PETER: Yeah, I also feel like… less so in “Tsubasa Tiger” that— I think one of the reasons why, at least, it was— Maybe he just didn’t know how to do this but he was trying to say, “Oh, no, she actually has a lot of negative feelings and urges,” and I guess this just expressed itself as the cat deciding it was going to beat up, what was it, 500 people, or hospitalize 500 people to get all of her stress out or something like that. And then it’s played down a lot more in the Second Season, where it’s more just like she’s even sublimated just her negative emotions and doesn’t let herself necessarily feel them, rather than her wanting to do bad things to other people. Although, I guess [obscured by crosstalk] …

TONY: [crosstalk] Well, she is. I mean, that is Kako, right? That is the tiger.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Burning, burning down, literally becoming an arsonist. But I just feel like, in the conclusion where she had to accept these negative parts of herself, I think it coming out in her just feeling sad about being rejected… Well, I guess, I mean, definitely there’s a positive character development in her knowing that she would be rejected but still willing to ask and get rejected and go through the entire process and have some closure… was nice. I guess I just want Hanekawa to do some evil shit now.

TONY: [Laughs]

PETER: I need proof that she is willing to be a whole human being by, I don’t know, gut-checking Araragi or something.

TONY: Well, I also think it’s interesting because this… it reminds me a little bit of some Buddhist teachings that I subscribe to. In Thích Nhất Hạnh’s work, he talks a lot about our relationship with anger and other negative emotions, other emotions that could potentially be destructive, as we need to take… take your anger, take the part of you that’s angry and hold it like a crying baby and comfort it. And in fact, when I’ve gone to a Buddhist practice, they often talk about, like, “Notice your anger, notice your frustration, notice even the maladaptive coping mechanisms and thank them for having protected you when you needed them.” Right? And that really reminds me of the way that Hanekawa’s relating to them.

PETER: Yeah. Where they’re sisters.

TONY: It’s not that she’s going to act on them, right? But she’s no longer going to dissociate from them. As you said, they are her sisters. They are part of her. They are something that she will hold and carry and comfort like a crying child, right, when they need to. She’s going to give them a home, right, because she knows what it feels like to not have a home. And the thing about negative emotions and the thing about all these negative affects is that when you try to compress them, when you try to squeeze them out of you, they just feel so much bigger because they are meeting your resistance with equal force, to be felt, right? 

And so, I think that she is going to… I don’t know if she’s going to act on those, right, but she’s definitely going to feel them fully and try to give them a home, whereas before, she never allowed them to have a home—and I think it’s really interesting for her to point this out—because she wanted to be loved by Araragi and she thought that Araragi would only love her if she was pure and perfect, the perfect, lily-white, innocent, pure girl. Which, that’s interesting! [Chuckles]

VRAI: I’m not even sure—I think it honestly dates before that. I mean, I think that’s definitely an element of it, especially after the boob scene, where, man, she just wanted him to go second base. But I think that it was something that was a part of her for a long time and is just a part of how young girls are raised, just that “Do not be an emotional inconvenience to others.” 

I think that that is probably embedded in her from youth and then expressed through “Well, once Araragi starts responding with such praise to how perfect and saintly I am, then I should keep doing that because that will continue to engender the positive response.” Because, oh, my God, Tsubasa is so autistic!

TONY: [Chuckles]

VRAI: It truly, truly… My heart. Like, there’s those insert cards about how she was concerned about doing something stupid because they were the rules and she wanted to follow the rules.

TONY: Mm. Mm, mm. She has a lot of rigidity, right?

VRAI: Yeah, and that powerful innate sense of right and wrong! And the following structures and recognized patterns in her morality that apparently so creeps out her parenting. Like, holy fuck, they turned up the autism dial and broke it off for Nekomonogatari White. And I love that. I love that. I do think it’s interesting that while White, I think, has the better writing overall, like better character writing, better writing writing, I think that Black Hanekawa is the stronger apparition metaphor.

TONY: Mm, than Kako, you mean?

VRAI: Yeah, because Kako’s pretty straightforward. It’s not hard to figure out what it’s about; we just have to wait for Tsubasa to talk herself around to it. Whereas I think… The Black Hanekawa reveal genuinely took me off guard a little bit, the reveal that they had sort of integrated rather than it being a simple on/off anime split personality thing, which (thank you, Yu-Gi-Oh!) is still my shit, that it was this more complicated thing of “Well, I took care of…” That it happened after the Sawarineko attacked her parents, and then she woke up and pulled it back in and thus created this new apparition that was now just bent on venting stress in some vague way. 

It’s an interesting metaphor for how the cycle of abuse can perpetuate itself down the generations, in that when Araragi gets his one sensible line that he gets to have, every line about how, you know, “Sure, you can go out and vent all that stress and hurt all these unrelated people, but then you’ll go back home and it’ll all build up again because you haven’t solved the problem.”

PETER: Mm-hm. Yeah, I mean, there was definitely much more… like, literally personal, right? It was… same body. She was kind of willing to articulate why she was doing it as opposed to Kako, who was very dispassionate and unpersonal toward Hanekawa even though it was effectively acting out her dark urges, right? It didn’t even care about why it was doing what it was doing. That struck me as a little bit weird, considering what it’s doing is based entirely in a very violent, dark emotion that was hiding within her, you know?

TONY: Well, it’s also interesting because of what it’s doing, right? It’s destroying anything that she could call a home. Right? It’s not destroying at random, necessarily. It claims it is, or it claims that it does not care about her, but very clearly it’s targeting any place that she’s ever called home, saying, “You don’t get to have that.” Right? “You don’t get to have a home.” So, there’s also an element there of self-hatred, right, and self-sabotage and fear of change, fear of finding that community and finding those people who actually accept those parts of herself that are a little messier, right, and are in fact trying to bring those out of her, like Hitagi does.

PETER: Also just dramatically scarier, I think, in the direction and the visual and just the way she’s portrayed. The tiger just kinda… it [kinda] even burns buildings offscreen, so it doesn’t feel like a very threatening presence the way that the Sawarineko does.

TONY: It’s really interesting to me because, I mean, I don’t know when or if we’re ever going to get to Owarimonogatari, but I think in general with Monogatari, it’s at its scariest when it is… I think the directors often have a really strong way with depicting these doppelgänger figures who reveal the darkest parts of yourself to yourself and using creeping, crawling-around-somebody framing. 

Like, there is genuinely an episode in Owarimonogatari that I find absolutely terrifying, which is not something I usually say about anime, because of how it uses that. And so, it’s interesting that also here is kind of planting the seeds of those kinds of motifs.

PETER: I was wondering if we brought up, before, Senjougahara’s… the moment where she demanded that Sawarineko shake her hand, in effect basically saying, “No, I will accept this part of you, even if it hurts me,” which was definitely…

VRAI: And then I did a little gay cry.

PETER: Yeah, yeah. That was some real top Senjougahara moments right there.

TONY: I love her so much. [Chuckles] She’s so great.

PETER: Yeah, because I think it was the one time somebody basically confronted the thesis of Sawarineko and basically said, like, “No, I am going to accept the negative parts about you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You will shake my hand. And this is me saying that I’m not interested in the pure white presentation that you are even kind of in denial of yourself. I’m aware of it and I am going to accept the real you instead. And hopefully one day you will, too,” which was, I think, really great transitioning into the rest of the story. It was a good moment.

TONY: Well, that’s also interesting because I think it gets at some other aspects of the show, which is how the show is playing savior complexes, right?

VRAI: I feel like every one of these so far has had one particularly good little speech in the middle of Nisioisin not being able to cut down his word count if you held a knife to his throat. But when Araragi’s mom talks to Tsubasa and has that weirdly stern conversation that’s also quite delicate if you compare it to Oshino’s bullshit monologue, this very shockingly delicate threading of “It’s okay to run away from things. But you have to acknowledge that they’re there. The decision to take action to cut yourself off from something that is hurting you is valid. But trying to live on pretending that the problems aren’t there is not.” That’s something that I think a lot of writers struggle to put into words, and so I have to give a little golf clap to that.

TONY: It’s… I mean, what did you think of Araragi’s mom, Peter?

PETER: I mean, she… yeah, it kind of felt like… I don’t even know how to put it. She definitely opened up with what seemed like a pretty emotional salvo. She basically said, like, “Yeah, don’t consider this place home because we’re never going to be your family, by the way,” even though…

TONY: Yeah! [Laughs]

PETER: But then she follows that up by saying family is something that you need to choose for yourself, as opposed to the people who you’re directly related to or whatever. So, it was weird in that she set up a boundary but also said this is something that you need to define for yourself. But yeah, I did think it was a very… And we don’t have much experience with that character yet, but it seemed like she was really taking a roundabout way to say… I don’t even know how she knew. She really had a great grasp of what was going on for a character who had not interacted with her before or after. God, what am I saying? She…

TONY: I mean, we can kind of assume that she’s probably heard, given that Araragi’s in Hanekawa’s class. So, the rumor mill might be spreading. She probably knows that her house burned down, right?

PETER: Oh, yeah, yeah. She probably knows about that. I don’t know if it’s supposed to imply that… I mean, it definitely seems to imply that she knows about her family situation, so maybe she’s keeping an eye on local domestic violence or child abuse or something like that.

TONY: Yeah, because she is a police—she is a cop.

PETER: Yeah, yeah. And it kinda comes down to… it’s like, if you leave, they’re still guilty. But if you report them, [Chuckles] then people will know what they did, including yourself. So, I think it was… yeah, it was a very kind of… “You have to define your situation and act on that definition rather than vaguely struggling against it,” which was a very interesting… It was a really interesting interaction, I guess.

TONY: Well, it’s also interesting in terms of the framing, right, because the animation honestly comes across as almost villainous.

PETER: Oh, yeah, yeah.

VRAI: It’s very threatening in a deliberate way. Yeah.

TONY: It’s using the Shaft-like “looking over the shoulder threateningly” look. She’s always in shadow. We almost never see her full face. As if we’re kind of seeing her from Hitagi’s [sic] perspective. She’s afraid of looking Araragi’s mom in the eye, right?

PETER: Yeah, I guess she was kind of threatening her self-perception and defense mechanisms right there, so maybe it was something that Hanekawa really didn’t want to hear. Oh, and his mom just is very… [Chuckles] I mean, she came on pretty strong, so I think Hanekawa definitely probably felt pretty threatened in that situation, right?

VRAI: I mean, adult women in Neko White are quite threatening in general.

PETER: Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s true. And so far, all of them, like Oshino’s senpai, was—

TONY: Oh! We haven’t even talked about Gaen. Yeah, that’s right.

PETER: Yeah, yeah. So, there was the character who has… the weird doll girl from Nise. And that wasn’t supposed to be the same character, but they both call themselves Oshino’s senpais, right? I was like, “That’s definitely a different character, but didn’t they both say that they were Oshino’s senpai?”

TONY: Well, yeah, because they’re all specialists, right? And so, they’ve all worked together at some point.

PETER: Okay. Yeah, that was an interesting introduction out of nowhere, too.

VRAI: She’s so clearly there to be like, “I’m going to be relevant in about twelve episodes! Bye!”

TONY: More like in about forty episodes. Oh, my God, this show.

[Chuckling]

TONY: Yeah, no, she definitely comes across as very… She is actually threatening. Right? But in a very different way, whereas Araragi’s mom is threatening in this kind of creepy, “telling you things that you don’t want to hear but you need to hear” way. Gaen is creepy in a “telling you things that you don’t know if you can trust because she’s obviously trying to assert power over you” way.

VRAI: Right. Like, they sound like a read, but she has an agenda.

TONY: Yes. And you could—

VRAI: It— Mm-hm?

TONY: I think either Nick Creamer or Steve Jones pointed out that the whole environment swirls around her as if she’s the center of the universe.

VRAI: Although the fact that she and Gaen both exist in… nothing in Monogatari is neutral, but [the fact that they exist in] comparatively neutral framing does also make Second Season feel like a deliberate shift, because I think… Let’s see. What was the note that I wrote down while I was watching Neko Black? Ah, is that “all the girls in the earlier seasons exist firstly through the prism of sexual utility. They can also be other things, but their fuckability is the first thing through which all other things must be filtered even if they are related to you.” And I feel like that is not gone but shifted and more purposeful in White. The bath scene is still… [Sighs] Why.

PETER: [amused] That fucking bathroom is just the most criminal location in the entire series.

VRAI: And you know what? Just—

TONY: [crosstalk] Any—

VRAI: Mm-hm?

TONY: Araragi’s sisters just exist to be sexualized.

VRAI: Yeah, they really— I really, really wanted to like them, but, my God, it’s like they slam through the door like Mayoi, like “Here come bad writing decisions!” I think one of the other—

TONY: [crosstalk] [Laughs] Okay, but here’s the thing: I actually enjoy some of Mayoi’s dialogue with Araragi until it turns horny. But it’s the same thing—

VRAI: [crosstalk] Yeah, I could say the same thing about his sisters!

TONY: Yeah, exactly! And of course the camera, the camera cannot stop looking at Karen’s coochie, right? It’s like…

VRAI: Yeah, we were talking a little bit before we started recording that I think that the boob grab joke could be funny in another context. The fact that this is a horny character, this is perhaps even a consensually horny scene… But, you know, then they trip awkwardly and instead of him falling into her boobs, he catches her by her boobs. That’s a funny joke. Except that this is following up on a season that was all about wanting to fuck your sister, and it’s his younger, 13-year-old sister.

TONY: Specifically the younger, 13-year-old sister who we see multiple scenes of him groping and sexually violating, absolutely without her consent.

PETER: Mm-hm.

VRAI: Yep! Yep, yep, yep.

TONY: Which makes the boob grab joke just feel like it’s funny until you think about it and then it’s not funny!

VRAI: Right. Right, it’s a cute little animation gag. Oops, the context is so bad. Also, just to prove that everything Nise touches turns to shit, there is definitely a line in White about how… when they’re talking about Araragi and Tsubasa both being inclined to meddle in other people’s lives, I think it’s Hitagi who says that “it’s like Araragi is a fake but you’re the real deal,” except then Nise looms over your shoulder about how the fake thing is realer than the real thing and I’m like, “Oh, so this is a putdown on Hanekawa, God damn it!” [Chuckles]

TONY: [rueful] No!

VRAI: Because Nise ruins everything.

TONY: Well, it’s also interesting because Hitagi implies that Hanekawa’s kind of rule-following is in itself also a sort of fakery. Her heart is not in it because… But it’s really complicated, because it’s not positing one as better than the other, right? Because it makes it clear that Hanekawa having this kind of rigid rule-following, almost Kantian deontological mindset about ethics… like “I do this because it is the right thing to do.” Right?

PETER: Yeah, you mean like she buried the Sawarineko and the Sawarineko could tell that she literally didn’t care about the cat at all; she knew it was the responsible “white” thing to do even though she felt no sympathy for the cat whatsoever.

TONY: Right. But it also really heavily suggests that that’s not always a bad thing, because sometimes the affect of pity actively harms the person you’re trying to help, which is… I don’t know, as a teacher, that’s really interesting to me, because if my students for a second think that I pity them, they will flip their shit, right?

PETER: Yeah. Nobody wants that.

TONY: As a teacher, I cannot… I always have to… Any feelings that I have towards my students other than I love them dearly and I see them as whole, agentic human beings who can change their lives… they cannot know any thoughts I have about, like, “Oh, that situation in their life might be insurmountable,” right? That’s not helpful to them. So, I think the critique of sympathy and pity as being often dehumanizing and unhelpful is really interesting, right? And I think that’s one of the interesting things about this whole fake/real ethical dichotomy that I think Monogatari plays with a lot, because I think one of the central themes in Monogatari is savior complex, right?

PETER: Yeah. I mean, that’s the main character.

VRAI: Pretty much. Yep, yep, yep. Because, you know, as we all know, “Tsubasa Cat” isn’t actually Tsubasa’s arc!

TONY: No, it’s about Araragi learning to say, [adopts a squeaky voice] “Help! I need help!”

VRAI: For which Neko White feels like an apology.

TONY: [Chuckles]

VRAI: I don’t know, I did really like watching this set of episodes. I feel like I did get a little burned thinking about… man, must be nice to have 30 episodes of lavishly animated uneven bullshit on your screen before you get to the really good stuff! Sure wish a shoujo would get to do that!

TONY: [Laughs] Yeah. And, I mean, the thing is that it really does just go uphill from here. Every arc in Second Season, with the exception, of course, of the Mayoi arc…

VRAI: Oh, that was what I was gonna say, by the way. One of my notes in my notes document says, “Mayoi enters and a rape joke comes with her.”

TONY: [Laughs] There’s a Mayoi arc coming up, but overall, most of the arcs in Second Season put Araragi on a bus and reveal just a completely different side of the show. And, you know, I’m pretty excited to get to show you guys that side of the show. And that kinda continues through the rest of the series. I mean, half the arcs in the most recent season, Off Season & Monster Season, also put Araragi on a bus. So—

VRAI: Yeah, it really is, even at this point, pretty starkly evident how much Bake imprinted itself on otaku culture, much more than its subsequent series did. But you were saying.

TONY: Which is a shame because I think that there’s a lot that a lot of shows could learn from Neko White. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of shows were influenced by Neko White—to an extent. I’m sure Neko White was influenced by a lot of things and then it was kind of operating in parallel. But, you know, it’s gratifying to see a show kind of spin on its axis a bit and show us a different perspective, and I think that is a large part of what Monogatari is about, which is perspective-taking and recognizing how things that you thought were one way from a different perspective just look completely different. I know that’s so trite, but it’s…

VRAI: But, I mean, there’s a truthiness to it. You feel it in your gut.

PETER: Yeah. I do want to say, I did feel like “Tsubasa Tiger” was a really good look for the series now that Araragi isn’t center stage, because because of his savior complex he kind of gets directly and proactively involved in a lot of situations, whereas in this one I think a lot of… the interactions with the sisters and Senjougahara, I felt like, gave more opportunity for introspection since they were assisting either more indirectly or gently or even unconsciously in Hanekawa reaching her own conclusions. So, I think it opens up a lot of narrative possibility for the series, and at the end of the day it’s Araragi taking direct action to help somebody, so it somewhat removes their ability to help themselves as Hanekawa did in this case. 

So, that’s why the arc was so good [Chuckles], first of all, and especially as, as you say, he’s being less of a participant in all the narratives, it means that I think other characters can do more internal exploration in the same way Hanekawa did without this need for Araragi to be pushing and inserting himself into the situation and seeking a direct resolution that I feel like sometimes would just… Well, I guess he did make a direct attempt previously, and it was awful. So, this kind of opens up a lot of doors for this series itself as a narrative, if that makes sense.

TONY: Yeah. I mean, the rest of the series is really an exploration of— Okay… hm, hm, hm, shouldn’t tell people what to think of the rest of the series. I think this arc is really starting to show us how the show might explore the concept that Oshino says earlier in the show, which is “Nobody ever saves anybody else,” right? “People only save themselves,” which is obviously an extreme statement that we’re meant to kind of go “Hmm!” about, right? Because Oshino is not a character who you’re supposed to uncritically look at everything that he says, right? Far from it.

PETER: [crosstalk] Definitely not anymore, yeah.

[Chuckling]

VRAI: There are a lot of things I like about White that I think it improves on past series, but I also really do feel like Second Season, you know, so far, five episodes in it, is the first series that actually delivers on that idea, the theme that it’s been saying since Bake, which is “People have to save themselves.” Like, clearly, on the one hand it’s always meant to be untrue because everyone becomes better by the communities they form around them, but I think (A) that was always hampered by Araragi and his savior complex, thus leading to the cascade of “Boy saves sad girls” imitators of the 2010s that are the bane of my existence. 

But also, because we are only seeing these girls through his gaze, White’s the first one where it comes clear that what it means isn’t that people have to do this alone; it’s that they have to make the decision that they want help. And, yes, Bake says that, in that all of these girls come to Araragi for help, but it’s so firmly within the hero savior narrative as tropely expected that it doesn’t really hit home in an emotional sense.

TONY: But it’s also worth nothing that Araragi fucks up almost every single time so bad! Let’s think about it, right? Hitagi is pretty much the only one where it’s like an unambiguously good thing that ends up happening, and that’s because she chooses to go through the ritual, she chooses to confront the harm that was done to her and embrace the painful things. Right? But Nadeko… oh, my God, that does not work, right? She’s still got a lot of stuff going on, right? She’s not really healed.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, even if this supernatural part is solved, she could still be getting bullied, too, so it’s like, “Oh, well. The environment still exists.”

TONY: Kanbaru! She’s still got the monkey hand, right?

PETER: Still cursed.

TONY: She’s still cursed.

VRAI: Yeah, she’s still cursed to be forever alone.

[Laughter]

PETER: Mm-hm. Yeah, in multiple ways. Very cursed, yeah.

TONY: She’s getting less pussy than any of the people who attest that they are not lesbians. [Chuckles]

PETER: Yeah, and even in Senjougahara’s case, she had previously had attempts made to solve her problem from the huckster. So, I feel like in her case, it was somebody coming in and claiming that they could help her and they went through the motions and it made her problem even worse, right? So, it was almost like that was the redo that she got, as opposed to Hanekawa, who got her redo in “Tsubasa Tiger” after, in this case, Araragi fucked it up the first time.

TONY: And the second time!

PETER: Oh, yeah, true. I guess he generally… he just didn’t… Yeah, true. [Chuckles]

TONY: [Chuckles] He really… yeah. And that’s why they’re not together, right? That’s why they’re not dating, and I think the show is very wise to have [them], at the end of Neko Black, be like, “Yeah. We’re not dating.” So, in a sense it really makes sense why he doesn’t want to date Hanekawa, although it does leave you wondering, again, like you did in the podcast about Kizu: why is Hanekawa just okay with Araragi talking up Senjougahara in front of her if she doesn’t any of Golden Week?

VRAI: [Speaking in singsong] Who can say? The logic doesn’t match up. [Returns to normal speaking voice] I mean, frankly, this only makes the Anne Rice comparisons stronger, Tony.

TONY: [Laughs]

VRAI: Yeah. Oh, we should make a note that we decided to sort of… I think we will probably continue this if folks still want it, but we decide to sort of take a break here on the Monogatari watchalong to maybe do some other shows and let the feed breathe a little bit. But we’ll probably come back to it down the line next year.

TONY: Yeah. We have plenty of fun things in store for you guys that I think will be very welcome, and we can get to the lesbian arcs of Monogatari later.

PETER: Oh, wow. The lesbianism starts now.

TONY: [Chuckles]

VRAI: Yeah, the one that really makes it difficult to search for the seminal Taisho-era novel.

PETER: Mm-hm.

TONY: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Hanamonogatari is coming.

PETER: [crosstalk] I do want to say, a lot of good anime has come out recently, which necessitates us making podcasts about seasonal shows, which is a good problem to have, right?

TONY: We are living in some pretty good times. Okay, so I’m going to close us out.

This has been Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast! If you like what you heard, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform of your choice. It really helps people to find us.

If you really like what you heard, please head on over to our website, Anime Feminist, and subscribe to our Patreon! We have a wonderful Discord that you get access to when you subscribe to our Patreon. I honestly became an editor partially because I really enjoyed it there, and I was like, hey, what if I could do this more often, spend more time with you guys?

VRAI: Yay!

TONY: And you also get access to some bonus episodes, which we will be making more of.

VRAI: Mm-hm!

TONY: And recommendations that come monthly. And you get to choose—

VRAI: Ish.

TONY: —what seasonal pod… episodes… Excuse me. You get to choose what seasonal shows we cover on our podcasts. So, lots of reasons to subscribe to the Patreon. And with that, we will see you guys later!