Bakemonogatari 12
Summary:
While having lunch in school, Hitagi declares that Koyomi will go on a date with her. He rendezvous at her house, only to be taken for a ride whereupon he is made to call her by her given name without her reciprocating, is interrogated about his grades, made to thank her for her tutoring, all the while having her father listening from the driver's seat. Koyomi is thrust further between heaven and hell as Hitagi starts to stroke his inner thigh, hears dirty talk and even gets his ear nibbled to prove that Suruga isn't an especially ero-chara, just honest.
Having arrived at a carpark, Hitagi leaves Koyomi to talk with her father while she prepares their date venue. Mr Senjougahara thanks Koyomi for being there for Hitagi when he couldn't, for bringing about positive change in his daughter, for making her happy in a way that he hasn't seen for a long time and to take care of her in the future. Hitagi leads Koyomi into the forest where they lie on a tarpaulin and gaze at the stars above which Hitagi duly points out. She has offered him everything that she has - helping him to study, a cute junior, a brusque father and this night sky that was something special her parents showed her when she was a child. Koyomi loves everything about her and she loves him for being kind, cute and coming to save her like a prince whenever she is in trouble. Because of how she was nearly raped by her mom's cult leader, she wants Koyomi to wait a while longer before they have sex. But she's not adversely to kissing and calmly asks him to do so.
Reaction:
I was really surprised that this was a Hitagi x Koyomi love-love oh so romantic episode even though the episode name was Tsubasa Cat 2. Maybe cat oddities are the patron animal spirits of the erotic? But there were no supernatural intrusions into the events of this episode and it was a world of their own (without the LCL sea and giant Rei head in the background) - even though Mr Senjougahara was present, he merely facilitated and left them to their own devices. Suruga and Tsubasa both got mentions; fun to see how Hitagi knows that she needs to feed the former some affection from time to time; also how she is aware of another source of Tsubasa's stress aside from her (step)parents.
Nothing really happened except for several sets of conversation but I really enjoyed them nonetheless. I completely understood Koyomi being freaked out during the lunch conversation as it's already hard for any guy who is not gay or Mel Gibson to figure out what a girl is thinking, much less someone as complicated as Hitagi. But sometimes she can be so brutally frank because she's found that 1 out of a 100 guys in Koyomi who will do the right thing when she lays out all her cards, throwing herself to his mercy protected only by the raiment of spiteful barbed rhetoric as well as explicating on her love and fear of loss. Also really marvelous how the starry starry night scene melded perfectly into the words of the ED, just marvelous. Looking forward to the three webcast episodes.
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October 4th, 2009 - 01:13
This episode is actually important in regard to the Tsubasa Cat arc… but it also made a 10/10 finish for the broadcast series. I loved the dialog banter in this series, even putting up with Shinbo’s now established “create my own disasters and then save the day” false heroics in all of his series.
Looking forward to the DVDs where we might actually get to see what happened rather than a Powerpoint Presentation (just like most of his other series with animation scheduling trainwrecks).
Hitagi has become a quite lovable broken/psychotic/yandere yet vulnerable character… just loved the general maturity level of the series. Too bad we didn’t get to see more of Nadeko and Mayoi.
edit: going to be interesting to see how the webcasts of the final 3 episodes will fare…
October 4th, 2009 - 01:40
I’ve never understood Stripey’s love of yandere girls (esp the crazy jealous types) but Hitagi will be the exception this time. She would be the Most Difficult Chara if Bakemonogatari was a galge but it’s that intoxicating mix(up) that makes her the most interesting and the most attractive.
Shinbo x SHAFT get a lot of stick but I actually liked how the arty farty stuff was used in this series. For example, in this episode, the alternating between Hitagi’s whispering campaign and the traffic-related abstractions worked so well especially since the context was everyone on a car ride too. Funny, visually appealing, clever but not too-clever-by-half.
October 4th, 2009 - 02:22
I actually LIKE those sort of Shinbo-isms. I restrict my complaints to his “the animation didn’t get done so we’re doing static slideshows”. That first showed up in Tsukuyomi Moon Phase during broadcast and every series he’s done since then has at least a few episodes that are just wrecks. Episode 10 of Bake… even had an apology on one of the signs in the first few moments (sorry, its still under construction).
At first I thought it was purely an animation outsourcing problem — but it happens on EVERY one of his series, so as an engineer — at some point you look at the manager of “crisis mode” projects who comes off as a savior but is actually the one who created the disaster in the first place with poor pre-mitigation skills.
October 5th, 2009 - 06:17
She said the lips were ok, but she never said which lips!
/feels bad for saying that
October 5th, 2009 - 14:08
In an ideal situation, it should be both!
After all, I very much doubt that the cultist was a cunning linguist.