Kyousougiga – 09

Koto pleads her case with the chief priest that the mirror world should survive. She doesn’t make any headway, but Inari embraces and praises her for becoming “the other [him he] always wanted”. He stabs her with his sword, putting her in a trance, and she starts to destroy all of the planes. Myoue wakes up in a cave with Kyouko and Kurama, who tells him he was always supposed to rule the mirrored city alone when he was ready. Armed with the beads that contain the power of creation, Myoue rushes to find Koto, snaps her out of her trance, to create a new beginning together.

It only comes as a minor surprise that Inari is indeed a god, the brother of the cheif priest, who was tasked with creating the twelve planes and looking over them for their “lazy dad.” Inari got bored with that existence and a bit too creative, resulting the thirteenth plane, which was outside of his mandate. When he finally returned, preceded by Koto, it was to put an end to the current order of things and start over. He instigated the end, which is in progress as of the end of this episode, while it’s up to Myoue to see to it there’s something after that end. As Kurama tells him in a subterranean pep talk, the world won’t change if he doesn’t.

Kurama’s always been the one to deliver him cold truths, from the time he says he and Yase are “false siblings” to the day their parents leave. It’s fitting that the big bro, false or not, is there to give a sulking Myoue a slap in the face. For so long Myoue’s been fixated on the past and his own denied death. But the truth is that life is gone and won’t be coming back. But he does have Koto, and his prayer beads, and he won’t let everything end the way Inari has set things up…”probably”. Inari pulls a bit of an infodump early on, and the score goes big and movie-like, almost bordering on sappy at times, but after last week’s standoff it’s good to see things on the right track to a favorable conclusion.

Rating: 8 (Great)

Koimonogatari – 04

Kaiki finds a note reading “Stay out of it” on the floor of his hotel room. He flushes it and calls Senjougahara, reporting on his encounter with Ononoki and Gaen’s warning. The conversation evolves to a discussion of whether anyone is aware of Senjougahara’s contact with him, then Senjougahara warns him about visiting Nadeko too much, lest he become “charmed” by her; he considers scaling back his visits. The next day he gives Nadeko an offering of ¥20,000, more string, and a bottle of Sake, which she accepts. When he leaves the shrine he encounters Hanekawa, who is back from overseas to exchange. They share a cab back to the city and meet in her hotel room to exchange information.

In case there was any doubt, this episode makes it abundantly, cymbol-crashingly clear: we’re dealing with noir here. He may not wear a hat or smoke a cig, but Kaiki is every bit the cynical, trench-coated, hardboiled private dick, while Senjougahara is the Damsel in Distress. The overarching mystery to be solved? How to keep her and Araragi alive. In this regard, Nadeko is the mob boss Senjougahara owes, big time, while Gaen represents the commissioner warning him to stop snooping around her town, while Ononoki being her beat cop liason. Finally we have Hanekawa: while she may not carry herself like a femme fatale, we know from her striped hair and troubled past that that’s kinda what she is.

What made this episode and the arc in general so enjoyable is that it pays homage to those historic, timeless archetypes while putting a decidedly Monogatari twist on them. Indeed, it’s twisting them into a cat’s cradle; something of a very precise pattern and structure; every movement fussed over. Kaiki’s call to Senjougahara is sumptuously decorated by the constantly changing colors on Kaiki’s phone, the undulating patterns on the floor and walls, and the dazzling city outside. Dotted with natural gas flares and sporting a giant LCD panel showing Senjougahara performing very familiar movements, things get very Los Angeles 2019…”Kaiki Deishu” even sounds kinda like an anagram of “Rick Deckard”. Will we get the abruptly happy ending the financiers pushed for here as well?

Rating: 8 (Great)

Stray Observations:

• Kaiki’s shower requires comfort with one’s own body, as it displays it for all to see, as rich people’s showers tend to do.
• Not sure we’ve mentioned this before, but we love Kaiki’s notebook is full of chibi diagrams. The art style is identical to the Bakemonogatari next episode previews, the Fire Sisters’ first appearance.
• Kaiki pulls a Catherine Tramell in Hanekawa’s room.
• We never did find out what was in Nadeko’s closet, while this week we don’t figure out exactly what Hanekawa has to say.
• A couple more references: Kaiki’s red sports car in the OP is very Magnum P.I., while Tokyo is lit much like Neo-Tokyo in Akira.
• Another nod to black-and-white of film noir: Tsubasa’s B&W hair.