Opinion time: Love the opening, can't wait to read the lyrics. And Haneoka Kei really keeps growing on me. He really stepped up and really has made Monogatari's music his own. I still think Master Satoru is "better", but this is simply magnificent.
Kizumonogatari PV
HOLY HELL! Maybe we'll finally get it?! My god. The old crew is back, it has the same director as Bakemonogatari, and Satoru is back on the mixing board. I am so goddamn excited, even though I know that it might get delayed once again... Now I'm just wondering whether I should read the book before the movie comes out, or after. And doesn't that PV just look... Awesome?
Anyway, the first episode of Owarimonogatari also came, so here's what some people may have been waiting for:
Surprisingly Complex: Owarimonogatari Part 1
A double episode to start with, and lots of things to talk about.
Visuals / Lens:
Holy crap. That visual flair was insane! And we actually see new things about Araragi.
People: During several wide shots of the class assembly, all people save Oikura, himself, and during the one short part with Senjougahara, people are seen as their names. This can mean several things:
-Araragi has a horrible face memory
-Araragi has an excellent name memory (I couldn't tell the surnames of all my classmates, not by a longshot. And with kanjis? Even harder)
-He personifies people by their names
Or it can mean absolutely nothing.
The Classroom: The classroom is glitched. It is an anomaly that does not exist in time and space. The only times it is seen "normally", are parts of the flashback and before and after the lockdown.
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| Looks like hugging at first, advances to a mental chokehold |
Ougi: You think Ougi was violating Araragi's personal space? So does Araragi, shown by her (At least the alleged gender Ougi has at the time) extreme closeness (Hugging from behind, chokehold, sitting on lap). But! It might not be PHYSICAL space she violates. It might be Araragi's privacy and memories she is violating.
Space: We know from before that Araragi is an astronomy nerd, so it showing up when he's thinking about the beauty of mathematics is not surprising.
Red and Green: Kinda simple, made to show how much Oikura and Araragi differ from each other. Most of the episode is focused on green colours, Araragi's colour, with the background being green for most of the time while "glitched",
Lucky cats: A visual motif during the episode no doubt. They just simply express automatically raising one's hand / arm.
Favorite visual? I loved it when Oikura went to the front of the class and shouted, the chaos of desks and chairs suddenly stops and they go back into neat lines. This, after seeing Araragi get stressed in the middle of the colourful chaos, just nails in the power of Oikura.
So, onto other things...
We start with talk of the Euler's Identity. I am not a mathematician, but I did some research on it. Euler's Identity is a mindboggling theorem that is still a mystery. It is a theorem that has been proved, but not understood. From what I've understood, the idea is that it represents the perfect circle, created by using all the most important parts of mathematics, which results a perfect circle, zero.
I won't even try to claim to understand it. I don't. I'm way more into pragmatic mathematics than theoretical, but Euler's Identity still interests me. Anyway, how does the Euler's Identity connect to the story at hand? It is an metaphor of Ougi. Even though it is said indirectly, what does it mean?
Some would use this to say that Ougi is the most beautiful existence in the world, or to imply that Ougi is a god. I think it means that fundamentally we, the viewers, cannot understand Ougi (Because to most narrators cannot). But she's still there, he's still there, and does things that leave us scratching our heads.
The next thing is going through Araragi's change during and after this class assembly. After the assembly and before meeting Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade, his catchphrase was:
"I don't need friends, because if I make friends, my strength as a human decreases."
It is an statement against the fact that if enough people tell a lie, it becomes "true". We can deduce that this actually has a lot to do with the fact that Araragi is a math genius. If we induce that his prevalence in math also causes him to see himself as a "logical" person, this sort of illogicality would definitely be distasteful, if not revolting to him.
"I don't need friends, because if I make friends, my strength as a human decreases."
It is an statement against the fact that if enough people tell a lie, it becomes "true". We can deduce that this actually has a lot to do with the fact that Araragi is a math genius. If we induce that his prevalence in math also causes him to see himself as a "logical" person, this sort of illogicality would definitely be distasteful, if not revolting to him.
But here's the kicker: He is not like that anymore. What happened? Well, naturally, Hanekawa happened. Every time I start deducing anything, Hanekawa always comes into play at some point. That is why I'm so excited to see Kizumonogatari, to see the pinnacle of Hanekawa, so maybe, finally, I could start to see what is going on in here...
But once again, we've found more evidence on how Hanekawa saved Araragi. She saved him from the curse of self-inflicted solitude. More reason why she is so important to the series (If I haven't hammered that point down enough times already, there's some more).
And to think we haven't even started on the mystery itself yet... To be honest though, the mystery, while being the star of the episode, does NOT have that much I could grab hold of, for me at least. Of course, the story being told from Araragi's point of view, some details are muddy.
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| Authority level < 9000, or is it? |
Araragi said that what is important is not assembly itself, but the outcome. But what about the reason why the assembly itself was held? One could say that Oikura is a justice freak, or that it's her duty as class president, but this might be more personal.
Hypothesis mode activate:
It's invalidation. She resented Araragi for being better than her in mathematics, her favorite subject. But what triggered this was the fact that she feels that her efforts are invalidated by the fact that even when she "cheated" in the test without knowing about it, Araragi still beat her.
Hypothesis mode activate:
It's invalidation. She resented Araragi for being better than her in mathematics, her favorite subject. But what triggered this was the fact that she feels that her efforts are invalidated by the fact that even when she "cheated" in the test without knowing about it, Araragi still beat her.
/Hypothesis
But back to the conclusion of the assembly. More than half of the class raised their hands to vote for Oikura, and after that she never came to school. This made Araragi uncomfortable at school, making him become a slacker. He also never got a perfect grade in mathematics again.
The way it was told, the last one would seem to imply that it was more or less intentional, like he's afraid of getting a perfect grade in math.
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| Oikura wasn't the top student, hmm? Senjougahara beat her by one point. |
Well, I did not stay long on that subject, but hey, I can't control when and where I get my realizations.
So, we all probably know that the reason Oikura is back because Araragi finally solved the mystery, right? I'd bet the opposite. I'd bet the reason, while still being connected to the classroom, is not the fact that Araragi "solved" the mystery, but something else entirely. Can't say what though.
TL;DR?
Ougi is a metaphor for Euler's Identity, the reason for why the assembly was held was revealed to be Oikura's insecurity, and as surprisingly as ever, the obligatory cat was let out of the bag.
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