#Araragi Karen | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

typellblog · 6 months

Text

Nisemonogatari - An Analysis

Being a siscon really did not help with this one.

With Kizu I could somewhat pretend that it was its own isolated arc despite the absurd length, but as the cast ever-expands it becomes more and more difficult to act as though I’m only writing about one character at a time here.

Indeed, we even have mini-scenes for each of our previous heroines. These are deeply oriented around fanservice, albeit in a way that actually also contributes to the characterisation of everyone spotlighted here. (Not that I can say the same for those involving his sisters, later.)

Hitagi gets to indulge her most sadistic impulses in a way I don’t think we ever see again beyond this point, Kaiki serving as both catalyst for her kidnapping Koyomi and catalyst for her changing in a more substantial way in the future.

The mystery of Hachikuji continuing to hang around is once again raised, along with ominous foreshadowing of what this might mean for her future. She starts to emerge as a surprisingly mature character, her gags more obviously deliberate, her advice surprisingly helpful.

Nadeko is given a chance to pursue her one-sided crush on Koyomi. Her techniques are childish but reveal a surprising amount of . . . cunning? Malice? Foreshadowing for her later arcs. In any case, Koyomi remains completely oblivious.

I think the most interesting part of Kanbaru’s scene here is an indication that she’s not as much of a pervert as she presents herself to Koyomi as, and indeed to Koyomi is the operative term here, because as we hear from Hanekawa when Koyomi tries doing impressions of his friends (great scene, shame it was cut in the anime), Koyomi might have quite a different impression of Kanbaru than others do.

Speaking of Hanekawa, she’s the only one that seems to be actually folded into the main plot this time, but simultaneously she feels like she’s growing more distant. She doesn’t get a directly horny treatment like the other characters, instead focusing on a gag about giving Koyomi permission to touch her boobs, but if he ever uses it she’ll hate him forever. Notably it establishes a completely different dynamic to her totally accepting attitude in Kizumonogatari.

Her character growth is significant, putting aside the stereotypical class president look in favour of a more ‘normal’ one, arguably something she’s wanted to do for a while. She had a sort of . . . lack of self-awareness of her own abnormality, before. Her role here is as a positive role model, I guess, for the entire set of Araragi siblings. If they’re fakes, she’s the real deal. If they need to be aware of their own weakness and inferiority, she needs to become conscious of her own strength.

This, of course, doesn’t really make sense until we take a proper look at our arc character.

Karen Bee

To be blunt I struggle to bring myself to like Karen. She feels fake to me.

I find myself in a similar position to Koyomi in some ways, the mentions of his sisters peppered into the Kizumonogatari novel triggering my own weird sense of jealousy/inferiority.

In theory, I should like Karen. She resembles nobody more closely than Emiya Shirou, probably my favourite protagonist of all time. Although, to avoid the risk of derailing into another Fate/Stay Night essay, I’ll make a different comparison. Someone who himself gets compared to Emiya Shirou all the time.

Koyomi Araragi.

How come I’m able to get invested into this guy’s story, his justice, his self-sacrificing nature, his stupid, corny, but sometimes really cool lines, and not do the same for his sister?

I think on one level the answer is simple - I’ve spent the past four books inhabiting his perspective. I don’t have any context, for Karen. Who is she trying to save, and why? What difficult decisions does she have to make along the way? The Fire Sisters’ escapades are treated as a gag, occasional mentions of them playing Russian roulette with the Mafia or getting into brawls with the police, but nothing solid. Karen’s trying to save the middle schoolers getting scammed by Kaiki, but I don’t care about them. I’m not given any reason to.

That’s just a matter of perspective, though. I don’t find it a particularly convincing argument, when Koyomi tells her that her justice is fake because she only acts on the behalf of others. Is that desire itself not beautiful? If you saw the same people suffering that she did, would you not want to help them, too?

I haven’t been shown any of those people, though. So I don’t get it.

But I’m wasting time with this. I can’t see these people, won’t see them, because I’m living in a different world from Karen. She’s still in middle school, and Koyomi is in high school. This is explicitly called out as being a point of change for him, one where he first began to close himself off to others on account of his self-worth evaporating as he realised the world was more difficult than he had thought.

Karen and Tsukihi don’t have that, yet. They’re missing the key element that’s driven Koyomi’s whole character progression over these previous four books - the fact that he doesn’t have any friends. Lol.

But I mean seriously, you see how the problems Koyomi is faced with operate on a completely different level than those the Fire Sisters try to deal with? They have an idea of a clear and simple evil, one that they’ll go to any ends to defeat.

In comparison - Koyomi isn’t fighting villains. He tries to help the victims of oddities, but they can only save themselves, or so we’re told, making Koyomi seem useless when it comes to the big action scenes. What he struggles to overcome is his vision of himself as a burden, someone whose helpfulness is an unwanted favour and selfishness is a destructive, vampiric urge.

Karen and Tsukihi never once consider the possibility of themselves being burdens. They go off to help people heedless of the potentially destructive consequences (which inevitably seem to result).

Karen’s ‘acting only on the behalf of others’ is fake to Koyomi because he’s already come to terms with his own selfishness. He couldn’t help Kiss-Shot, couldn’t do what she requested, because her request was to die, and he wanted her to live. The Fire Sisters haven’t yet been faced with such a difficult problem, haven’t yet been asked whether their self-sacrifice is really just self-satisfaction. Koyomi is scared of hurting people. All the time. He makes his decisions with that possibility in mind. That’s something he’s just had to accept. The Fire Sisters don’t seem to worry about that at all.

When Koyomi tells Karen that before being right, she must be strong, we initially assume he’s talking about physical strength - the ability to defeat one’s enemies. But looking over Koyomi’s past actions, we’ve seen physical strength prove of little use to him time and time again. What he means is the strength of will to not falter in the face of opposition or difficult choices. He may not have been right, when he chose to keep Kiss-Shot alive. But at least he had the balls to do it.

Hanekawa points out he’s really criticising himself with this one. After all, there are plenty of times where he’s failed to show strength, like his struggle to let the second snake go in Nadeko’s case. He couldn’t commit to one course of action or another and risked getting the worst of both worlds. Hanekawa, in contrast, always commits to the bit, never giving away in the slightest that she had feelings for Koyomi after he started dating Hitagi. She’s almost too strong, that was her problem according to Oshino, and indeed in doing so she ended up hurting herself as much as she helped other people.

She has to be aware of her own strength, not act as though everything she’s doing is perfectly normal, hold off on dragging everyone with her directly to the right answer.

In the same way that Koyomi has to be aware of his own weakness, to know he can’t solve everything on his own, and not be afraid to ask for help.

In the same way that Karen hasn’t quite internalized it, that evil and good aren’t always so obvious, that you need to be ready for getting your ass kicked, and maybe you should have asked a couple of people to come with you.

When Koyomi and Karen fight, he gets the shit beaten out of him, but he still clearly wins. Karen struggles to articulate her viewpoint when faced with an actual objection, and eventually gives in, reassured by Koyomi that he never thought what she was doing was wrong.

Hmmm. I notice that I haven’t discussed Karen’s associated oddity yet, the bee. Interestingly enough, it’s just not that important to her arc. It doesn’t influence her personality or behaviour at all, like many of the other characters’ oddities. It just makes her sick.

Oshino’s old adage proves true to an extent - the bee does appear for a reason, in the sense that Koyomi says it's her own damn fault, for going up against Kaiki alone. She gets what she deserves! A bit harsh, perhaps. It’s also her own fault in the sense that her overactive imagination is part of what stimulates its effects so much - the bee is a fake oddity, clinging to a fake person, someone who plays make-believe in such a way that they’re susceptible to a fake disease.

Obviously the fire association with the bee makes sense for her, especially in regard to how it becomes a fever, getting heated up because of justice leads to her pushing herself too hard and burning out. Blah blah blah whatever. The symbolism doesn’t interest me, because I think the far more important thing about the bee is that it’s not representative of a larger problem. Karen acts fairly similarly before and after being afflicted. She isn’t saved by anyone else, but you’d have to stretch to say she saved herself, either. Unlike Koyomi, she has friends. Unlike Hitagi, she doesn’t have difficulty reaching out to others. Unlike Kanbaru, she doesn’t have a hidden side to her, a wish that she can’t fulfill.

I said it already, but the Fire Sisters don’t have regrets. They don’t have any lingering trauma. They’re the ones causing problems for other people, supremely confident in their own righteousness. They may be fakes, but in a sense they’re a lot more real than the rest of the cast.

Tsukihi Phoenix

Well, at least that’s the case for Karen, whose outside image and inside personality are perfectly aligned. For Tsukihi, on the other hand, there’s a bit of a disjunction.

Alright, I guess we’re doing Tsukihi too. I wasn’t exactly planning on both at once when I started this, but I suppose at this rate I have enough room.

What, I haven’t talked about Kaiki yet? God, who cares. What do you want me to say, here. He’s a fake that’s accepted his fakeness in the same way Koyomi asks of Karen. A withered branch to Koyomi’s sapling, the third stage in the Araragi evolutionary tree. I don’t quite get it, how exactly this man is supposed to be Koyomi taken to his logical extent. He’s evil, but in a very deliberate way. He’s not convinced of his own justice, has no interest in promoting his position. He almost feels like he’s playing a character. I’ll get back to him in later arcs, but for now I think the important thing to note is something I mentioned last time - as a male character, his role is more about mirroring Koyomi than being someone Koyomi ought to forge a connection with. As an adult specialist, his arc is complete, so to speak. There’s nothing in him to change or that needs changing.

He’s the polar opposite of the Fire Sisters in that way. They’re too young to have changed yet, not quite mired in the coming-of-age plotline that ensnares this story’s main characters. Kaiki isn’t an arc character, doesn’t need to be won over by Koyomi, but neither does Karen, really.

Koyomi already has a deep enough relationship with his sisters - just look at their openings, the lyrics addressed to a vague listener that’s almost him but feels far too idealised, his image cropping up again and again in their visuals. In Platinum Disco, he overshadows Tsukihi from the background, closing his mouth over her and forcing her to dance headlessly. His influence over her is obvious, almost total. In Marshmallow Justice, he’s buffeted around by the currents of Karen’s flames, speaking to a more antagonistic relationship, her trying to insist on her righteousness to him.

This is an established, regular part of their dynamic. If anything, the biggest change to their relationship doesn’t happen in the arc where Karen is afflicted by an oddity, it’s the toothbrush scene at the start of Tsukihi Phoenix. (Which still baffles me in a lot of ways, but I really don’t want to get bogged down in it right now).

I said it already, but Karen’s oddity doesn’t really represent any deep-rooted psychological issues for her - it’s fake.

Unlike Karen, however, Tsukihi’s oddity is of immense significance to her. Not just in terms of its importance to this arc, but all the way down to its influence on her personality and behaviours. After all, Tsukihi herself is the oddity.

The Shide no Tori, an immortal oddity that adapts to its surroundings. It’s volatile, mercurial, constantly renewing itself. It’s also eternal. The core of the thing is that it has no core, no consistent personality, and as such must take cues from those around it. Tsukihi acts according to her whims, but in the end remains incredibly dependent on others, latching onto them to give her a purpose.

Her justice is fake in the sense that it’s been picked up from Karen and Koyomi. It’s not at the core of her being.

She doesn’t have the same drive for it that Karen does, and as such tends to follow her sister’s initiative.

But, similarly to Koyomi, she does have the ability to regenerate from fatal danger. Just as he would throw himself into danger to help his friends even without it, she’s said to have thrown herself off a building to help Karen without even knowing she has the ability.

In comparison to Koyomi’s selfish, half-assed vampirism, a healing ability that has him straddling life and death without really making progress in any fight, Tsukihi’s immortality is pure. Instant. Perfect. There are no consequences.

There are no consequences. She doesn’t regret because she isn’t given anything to regret. Learning about the supernatural would threaten the Shide no Tori’s position as a normal human, so the memories of being killed are wiped from her mind when she wakes up.

Of course she would throw herself into danger to save someone else. She doesn’t really have a ‘self’ to value in the first place. Everything important to her comes from other people. Koyomi faces immense self-loathing for a similar reason. Tsukihi doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, though. Perhaps she can’t be.

She knows her sense of justice is a bit different from her siblings, and she considers the possibility of the Fire Sisters breaking up. The possibility of Karen changing when she reaches highschool, in the same way Koyomi did. The implication being that Tsukihi would not, floating from hobby to hobby without ever forming a permanent attachment to anyone, constantly reinventing herself like a phoenix rising from the flames.

That’s the Shide no Tori. A clever fake that keeps itself from being noticed by imitating a normal human. Kaiki might say that a deliberate fake may have more value than the original, but even the deliberateness of it is carefully removed, not allowing the host awareness of anything related to their condition.

In that sense she’s not any more or less human than her siblings.

That is, I suppose, the main conflict of this arc. It’s centered on Tsukihi but doesn’t involve her - how can it, when her entire gimmick involves being unaware of what’s going on around her?

Koyomi is opposed by the exorcist sisters Ononoki and Kagenui. Just as Kaiki mirrors Koyomi, they mirror the Fire Sisters. The older, physically inclined, human. The younger, an oddity. And they claim to be defenders of justice.

This is the tricky part about justice, which Koyomi has been trying to impart to Karen. Most people think their actions are justified. Someone like Kaiki is an absurd exception. How can you insist on being right when your opponents also claim they’re on the side of justice? We’re not getting a good answer to that in this book.

Perhaps I’m starting to understand a little how Koyomi is like Kaiki, here. Because he doesn’t claim to be on the side of justice. He never even tries. He gives up that battle before it starts. He’s not on the side of humans. He’s not on the side of oddities. Like the time with Kiss-Shot, he’s nothing more or less than on the side of the person he chooses to protect.

Little sisters are more important than justice. A sentiment I can get behind.

In any case, there’s something a little bit off about Kagenui here. Part of her motivation is hoping to meet Oshino and in his absence she takes on a little of his role - viewing Koyomi as a human, rather than a monster.

Something must have set her off, Koyomi thinks, when she starts talking about him forcing his ideals on others. He might be fine with leaving Tsukihi alone, but what would Karen think? His parents? Tsukihi herself? Wouldn’t she become a real problem if she was aware of her true nature as an oddity?

He responds by saying he’s allowed to force things on his family. Once again, he’s okay with being a bit selfish, a bit of a burden. Koyomi’s sisters aren’t like the other girls he meets throughout the series. He doesn’t need to win them over, doesn’t need to break down the barriers between them and come to a complete understanding - he already does understand them.

Tsukihi being an oddity prompts realizations on his part, but nothing he didn’t already know. He already understands and accepts the entirety of her, in the same way they do for him. So he doesn’t need to worry about forcing something that can’t ever be repaid on her. He’d accept the same for her. They would, all three of them, happily die for each other, and they know it.

Something must have set Kagenui off, talking about this topic, and it seems to relate to her relationship with Ononoki. Are they real sisters, or fakes? Wouldn’t it be a real problem if an immortal oddity was aware of her true nature and tried to practice justice regardless? Kagenui argues that Tsukihi would be cruel and arrogant in the pursuit of it, having been freed from the constraints of human reason.

Koyomi thinks of the former Heart-Under-Blade, someone who was obscenely over-the-top and utterly inhuman. I think of Ononoki Yotsugi, quick to violence, quick to insults, saying she’d be fine if this entire world of fakes was destroyed.

Yep, Kagenui is definitely a bit off, here. Too concerned with matters we aren’t really privy to, at the moment. It’s like the fight with Karen all over again - Koyomi gets the shit kicked out of him, but in the end he’s still standing, and his opponent wavers a little. Finally learning “a lesson ten years in the making”.

She talks about the inherent nature of humanity, the doctrine of innate evil. If we suppose that people are born evil, then any good act requires putting on a fake persona. Like Hanekawa and Koyomi talked about in Kizu, self-sacrifice vs self-satisfaction. They both think of themselves as faking it, only acting like they’re truly ‘good’, but according to Kagenui’s proposal, there’s no such thing as being truly good. The truest good is in trying to be good, a deliberate imitation. A fake that has more value than the original.

So, where does that leave us? One really has to wonder about Koyomi’s decision to not tell Tsukihi (or even Karen) anything about the supernatural. Another selfish decision, in the vein of what he did to Kiss-Shot. It’s in character, at least.

I think it’s interesting how he describes it, after kissing her. There was a time where Koyomi was an only child. There was a time when he only had one sister. But for her entire life, there wasn’t a single moment where Tsukihi wasn’t the little sister of him and Karen. Nisemonogatari is about family, and family, for Tsukihi, is something that she can define herself in relation to. It’s a permanent attachment, created by the circumstances of her birth. Like a cuckoo, the Shide no Tori leaves its young in the nest of another family to prepare them for facing the world. Tsukihi isn’t ‘really’ from the Araragi family, in the same way that she doesn’t ‘really’ have a sense of justice like the other two. But in her deliberate attempt to adopt it- well, you know how it goes.

Koyomi doesn’t need to tell her about the supernatural, about the fact that she’s a phoenix, because in a meaningful sense she isn’t one. She’s his sister. She’s Karen’s sister. That’s good enough.

Koyomi’s last lines are strangely poignant, contradicting the usual epilogue format by occurring before he’s woken by his sisters the next morning. “I got way more involved than usual, but there was no point in staying there forever. For now, I’ll go back to my room and change.” I feel like it’s a comment on the blending of worlds that’s been going on here - he’s part of the backstage, as Hachikuji puts it. His sisters are at the front. He’s entering the adult world, while they’re still kids. There’s a sense that he shouldn’t get too involved in their incidents, and vice versa.

A hopeful reading would be that like Koyomi, they’ll also change. In their own time, at their own pace, in their own way.

But that’s all for now. I managed to be somewhat normal about Tsukihi. Somehow.

#monogatariposting #monogatari #araragi koyomi #araragi karen #araragi tsukihi #nisemonogatari

33 notes · View notes

ougi07734 · 7 months

Text

idc what the mono cast actual heights are bcs in my mind itll always be karen - senjou (she HAS to be tall and especially taller than araragi. look at her) - kanbaru - ougi - araragi (hes like one singular centimeter shorter than ougi and it drives him insane) - hanekawa (like, same height as araragi almost) - sodachi - nadeko - tsukihi - shinobu - mayoi - yotsugi (also rouka is around hanekawa and sodachi s height)

#i like tall women #monogatari series #monogatari #araragi koyomi #hitagi senjougahara #suruga kanbaru #nadeko sengoku #oshino shinobu #yotsugi ononoki #mayoi hachikuji #oshino ougi #sodachi oikura #hanekawa tsubasa #tsukihi araragi #araragi karen #ougi :)

49 notes · View notes

spectratype · 5 months

Text

Araragi Karen - Monogatari.

#Araragi Karen #Karen #Karen Anime #Sports Wear #Sweat #Walking #Black Hair #Tongue #Monogatari #Bakemonogatari #Monogatari Series #Anime

14 notes · View notes

valhallakonbi · 1 year

Text

(reposted from bifauxnenbard on twitter)

#karen #araragi karen #video

41 notes · View notes

sinkableruby · 5 months

Note

what do you think would happen if characters who are not Araragi helped clean Kanbaru's bedroom?

oh hell yea asks like these are so fun

well we see what at least one of these is. in the light novels ougi shows up to "help clean her room" which he mostly does not do but any of it that he does do is him throwing her stuff around completely carelessly and putting a hole in her wall, basically

characters who would help... hanekawa, hachikuji, karen, tsukihi, nadeko, and sodachi. itd all be in different ways though. hanekawa would be the most efficient, organizing piles and labeling systems, and even finding a way to keep things from getting messy in the future (which kanbaru would try to follow out of guilt if she didnt go along with tsubasa's efforts). hachikuji would help but she'd be bantering a lot which would decrease the speed and she wouldn't really put things away she'd just stack piles of things. it would be really good banter though. karen would be reverent for her master and help with all the fire of a pyromaniac. shed be fast but youd have to direct her Exactly What To Do otherwise she'd probably do something silly that doesnt help at all. or she'd peek into a book and get caught up in it. karen yaoi initiation tsukihi would be good at it. she would help kanbaru clean up her room and be uncannily good at it. she wouldnt give kanbaru an organization system like tsubasa though. shed just have a nice conversation while she was doing it nadeko wouldnt want to help, but she would out of a sense of obligation to kanbaru. she wouldnt be particularly good at it but it would get the job done. sodachi i think would actually help post naoetsu. maybe as a strategy to get to know kanba better, or try to look cool. she wouldnt really be that good at it either id imagine

looks like kanbaru has options... many desired effects to choose from

and then there are those who would not help. senjougahara, shinobu, yotsugi. uh yeah. they wouldnt help. senjo wouldnt deign to (and kanbaru wouldnt ask her), shinobu would see it as beneath her (and/or break things), and yotsugi would use unlimited rulebook and like bust a hole in her wall

the difference b/w any one of these and koyomi is that shed have to ask for help. koyomi just cleans it all on his own. ougi would also help unprompted, but that's ""help"" with extremely cautionary quotation marks. tsukihi might also offer

#monogatari #ougiposting #oshino ougi #araragi koyomi #araragi karen #araragi tsukihi #kanbaru suruga #ononoki yotsugi #oshino shinobu #senjougahara hitagi #hanekawa tsubasa #hachikuji mayoi #oikura sodachi #sengoku nadeko

15 notes · View notes

dankocube · 6 months

Text

#digital art #fanart #bakemonogatari #monogatari #monogatari series #nisemonogatari #koyomimonogatari #tsukimonogatari #karen araragi #araragi karen #karen Monogatari #Monogatari karen #tsukihi araragi #tsukihi Monogatari

14 notes · View notes

rangertycho · 2 years

Photo

#monogatari #bakemonogatari #araragi karen #araragi tsukihi #anime #阿良々木火憐 #阿良々木月火 #物語 #化物語

75 notes · View notes

nadenadenadeko · 4 months

Text

#my comic #monogatari #monogatari series #bakemonogatari #araragi koyomi #senjougahara hitagi #araragi karen #tsukihi araragi #oshino shinobu

116 notes · View notes

youretheonewhoblogs · 1 year

Text

monogatari meme

this is the kind of monogatari content we need in 2023 and i’m determined to provide it

21 notes · View notes

gachagachaart · 2 years

Photo

#Araragi Karen #Monogatari Series

21 notes · View notes

monogatarifanblog · 1 year

Text

the top 5 of this poll will progress.

3 notes · View notes

oneesanmarket · 2 years

Photo

Tsukimonogatari: Karen Araragi - Kyun Chara Accent Ichiban Kuji Premium Phone Strap

Size:7 cm

Price: 10€/15 USD

(Shipping price Not included)

Units Available: 1

(Send us a message or comment if you’re interested!!)

3 notes · View notes

fzzr · 8 months

Text

Monogatari Read-Along Re-Watch — Karen Bee

Previously.

Novel

Ah, the Yandere Hitagi scene. This is the most involved cold open so far, and well done. Hitagi continues to be the character who most leans in to tropes. This is not a bad thing by any means, rather it's a lens NISIOISIN can hold up to her and highlight her personality in her deviations from the tropes. In the stereotypical yandere trope, the yandere isolates their beloved from others in order to make them fully dependent on the yandere physically and emotionally. Often this is framed as "protecting" the target from danger, usually in the form of competing love interests. Hitagi plays the scene as though she intends to do the same with Koyomi, but she takes the efforts to keep him dependent on her to such high levels that it is clear that she is teasing (in her usual extreme way) rather than brainwashing him into loving her. We will later find out that her actions are an impulse reaction to hearing Koyomi has encountered Kaiki, whom she considers the most dangerous person for him to interact with. In this sense, she is indeed doing this for his protection, closing the circle of the comparison to the yandere archetype by making it clear that her feelings come from her fear and love rather than some sort of twisted self interest.

Kaiki himself is an important recurring character, through you wouldn't know it from this arc. One of the big questions of Karen Bee (and Nise in general) is the value of a phony. Kaiki presents himself as a non-believer in oddities, even as he is aware of changes to the spirital situation in the area and distinguishes real from fake in a way that could only come from study. In this sense he is a phony phony, using real knowledge while denying its truth to himself and the world. Kaiki is shameless in his fakery, fully self-aware of his despicable actions and insincerity in all his interactions. He presents himself as completely remorseless about the harm caused by his schemes. Even this is a façade to some extent, as we get tiny hints of consideration for others in his checking to make sure Karen has enough money to go home when he robs her and his telling Hitagi that the man who tried to rape her is dead and thus not worth dwelling on as a target of some possible future revenge. There are layers of lies here too. Why would he know that, if he claims not to care about those he swindles? If he's making it up, why would he lie in order to help someone?

Karen, our nominal focus character, confuses me. She's brash and passionate, and even Koyomi has to acknowledge their similarity in acting selflessly. There's no question whether she has the big personality needed to stand among the other characters. The thing is, I still don't feel like I get her. What are her dreams, her fears, her aspirations, her doubts? She wants Justice with capital letters, and projects what that means onto the world. I also have more trouble understanding her relationships than I do any other character. I guess it's in character for her to have unsubtle points of view on people — Yes Justice good, No Justice bad until made into Yes Justice — but I definitely feel like I'm missing things. After the fight with Koyomi he tells her not to develop a crush on him, and she says "too late". That's a somewhat ambiguous answer right now, but I'll be coming back to that after the upcoming Toothbrush Scene.

Structurally, this arc is primarily a sequel to Nadeko Snake, following up on the major loose end of the source of the curses and reminding us that Nadeko didn't really resolve her hopeless crush on Koyomi in that arc. It also introduces Kaiki and the name "Gaen" (linking Suruga into the wider plot as result). Looking forward, yuri aficionado Suruga picks up on things to do with Hitagi and Tsubasa's relationship that will come up soon.

Anime

When I first watched Monogatari as it was airing, Karen Bee was my least favorite arc. As of my previous watch through (not having read the novels yet) it was third least favorite. (I already said what I don't like about Kizumonogatari, and I'll talk about Koyomimonogatari when I get there.) After this watch, that hasn't really changed. I think it just comes down to pacing. It gives each plot point the time it deserves, but the result is the longest arc in the television series in terms of screen minutes.

Still, saying something one of my least favorite Monogatari arcs is like saying one of my least favorite cookies. Like the rest of Monogatari, Karen Bee in the anime is especially held up by how the animation supports what's there. The conversations are generally visually engaging, and make great use of symbolic details to varying degrees of subtlety to communicate things unspoken.

The music is also great as always, with some new tracks added where appropriate. This was the first time I caught the Renai Circulation quote in Yuuwaku, which plays during the visit to Nadeko's house. There's yet another minor key Staple Stable variant during the conversation with Hitagi in episode 6, as well as a more direct reference in Hitagi's new OP. (OK from now on I'm going to stop pointing out when the show uses the theme-song-as-lietmotif trick to set the appropriate mood while calling upon the associations with the character unless it's an especially notable case.)

Conclusion

I wish I liked Karen Bee more. The themes aren't poorly communicated at all — if anything they're beaten through your head. There are lots of strong individual conversations and such, but damn does it somehow feel like it drags.

Really it comes down to I don't think I understand this arc fully — surely the length would be worth it if I did. What was Karen's actual problem? Did she solve it, and if so, how? Was this actually a Koyomi and Hitagi arc and I just missed it? Feel free to explain it to me, because I would really like to understand. For now I'll look back at Nisemonogatari as a whole after Tsukihi Phoenix and see if things are more clear.

#monogatari #anime #original post #monogatari read-along re-watch #nisemonogatari #araragi karen #karen bee

1 note · View note

sinkableruby · 1 year

Note

hey talk about Monogatari ships

YAHOO <- said like mario

although i do want to say that i dont really do many ships either so my ideas may not be sparkling... nevertheless it is a fun ask and i want to do it

i will try to keep big spoilers out of it for once!

ill mostly leave aside canon i think

ships i like:

sodachi/tsubasa: this ones a shout out to you. but also. it is very good... i always think of that idea of them bonding over cooking. not only would they be good for each other with each able to provide the kind of support they'd both need, but i think they'd understand each other too. its good 😌

hitagi/ougi: i dont think i would like this one seriously but its just really funny to imagine. araragi crying in the background, ougi being so confused... its so fucking funny

hitagi/tsubasa: i know this one doesnt work bc like the whole point is that its unrequited and all... but i still think its cute. two best friends and they're gay for each other? that's wonderful. i love it.

koyomi/shinobu: weirdly i do like it. wouldnt say i necessarily like it more than the canon koyomi/hitagi but theres something i can appreciate about how theyre stuck immutably together, bonded forever... once koyomi gets older we dont know how his lifespans gonna work, so theres something there about being lonely and solitary in the world except for just one person who you'll always be with whether you like it or not. it's not exactly a sweet or romantic type thing but its more like a 'you're all i have' melancholy sort of thing.... and thats interesting to me

tsukihi/nadeko: the classic i love this one yeah. i dont even think it'd be a super healthy relationship given how tsukihi is.... tsukihi. but thinking about how nadeko has been pining over her for so long i think itd be interesting, especially considering tsukihi would definitely not be as infatuated with nadeko as nadeko would be with her. and nadeko would have to put up with so much for it... they'd probably break up like every other week because of tsukihi's fickleness, or like have whole periods where they dont talk and nadeko thinks theyve broken up or are fighting and tsukihis just being tsukihi. 'the things nadeko does for love' is basically how i think of it. maybe she'd be better off just moving on... poor nadeko. not very good luck when it comes to love...

suruga/higasa: ok i said i wouldnt talk about spoilers so i wont talk about this one much. but i think they'd be cute together. i like how higasa sees through suruga. i think itd be super cute if she was teasing her out of like a crush. they should kiss

also any like specialist/specialist stuff i'd probably like, just bc we get so little of those guys that its cool to play around with their dynamics. maybe like yozuru/tadatsuru for like a kinda rarepair rivalry dynamic... i could see them as a divorced couple maybe. but really just. any of them. hell maybe theyre even a polycule who knows.

and also rouka/suruga is good but i dont really have any thoughts on it per se, i just like it a lot. its complex... its bittersweet... ya feel

ships i dont like:

koyomi/tsubasa: yeah p much everyone's talked about why this would never work. i might almost like it for like, the angst it would bring but i think it doesnt quite reach there either so its just meh.

koyomi/ougi: m..m... dont like it.. dont like it. i think their relationship is so much more interesting the way it already is so i dont really feel the need to see them in a romantic one yk. i dont think it would be good for either of them either... they will just stagnate if they stick around each other. and also this is like maybe not so applicable bc anything is possible in the ship world but. these two just would never. they dont see each other like that yk. if im looking from an analysis lens here, the camera which is mostly under koyomi's perspective that licks and slobbers over all the girls never does that for ougi. despite him thinking shes like "bewitching" (appearance wise but also probably in the other sense too lol) or w/e. i could write more about this and the harm i think it would do but it'd get spoilery and become a dissertation so ill leave it at this. ummm... dont like it. :p

deishuu/hitagi: ok i see people talking about this one a lot so i just have to put my foot down.. i think its meh. i think its whatever. i think kaiki is not and was not interested in her, and just saw her as a brat who was infatuated with him. and while i do think its possible or maybe even probable that hitagi was infatuated with him while he was scamming her bc she saw him as a savior... i dont think the infatuation would have been that strong. maybe just a little crush, but nothing serious. i wouldnt go so far as to call it love yk, if those feelings were there... and on the idea of that 'if,' i also think its way more interesting if kaiki only THINKS hitagi was infatuated with him when really she never was because it shows the flaw in his perception. like thats the kinda perspective cool thing i like in the monogatari series... thats why i like how its so vague in canon too. the ambiguity makes this dynamic interesting imo

suruga/karen: kind of dont have strong feelings about this one but i cant really see it. i dont think they'd be the right dynamic for each other and it'd become awkward...

ok thats all i can think of for now thanks for sending the ask >:3

#monogatari #ships #time to tag characters.......#ougiposting #oshino ougi #sengoku nadeko #araragi koyomi #senjougahara hitagi #kaiki deishuu #hanekawa tsubasa #araragi tsukihi #seiu higasa #rouka numachi #oikura sodachi #araragi karen #oshino shinobu

11 notes · View notes