It’s amazing how the Japanese can take any simple idea and transform it into something that’s disgustingly bad or flawlessly good or just like in this episode, perversely erotic. Anyway, before I begin I would like you peoplez to know that I’m so not into incest, I’ve got my morals that I’d like to uphold. Your opinion may be different but to each their own opinion or in this case preference. Never the less I foresaw this sort of romance as soon as I found out the kind of series that Monogatari is.
Before the catchy new opening we have the first scenes are like an intro to the new chapter, Tsukihi Phoenix. Now this title obviously speaks so much about the arc. But then, this first scene is pretty much the only thing they show concerning the main story. Then again, they did the same in the first arc to fill in the gaps and make a longer story.
The biggest disappointment I see in this episode, which might as well be the biggest disappointment in the series if so far, is the sudden change in Karen’s character type. I see Karen as this strong, athletic character but in this episode they change her into this perverse masochist, what happened to her strong front? Yeah it probably was destroyed after Araragi “defeated” her in the last episode but it was never really shown properly.
Toothbrush Madness I say!! And like I’ve said earlier, it’s amazing how they come up with such ideas from something as simple as a toothbrush… a toothbrush!! But this sudden lunge into something that is so obviously erotic is not something I like. To me, it this event is a sort of change of pace, the series has always been discrete and subtle about certain things such as romance, and fan service. Yes ever since this series they’ve shown a lot more fan service but this one in this episode is just different. Now I won’t try to explain how it is different because I simply suck at describing the difference.
In a section of the toothbrush scene Aararagi mentions how cute Karen is and was wondering if she was cuter than Hanekawa. But personally Hanekawa is just light-years ahead of Karen, which should be obvious. Anyway, notice how he describes Hanekawa as the ideal woman and goes as far as to say that no one can match her. He’s got Senjougahara but speaks about Hanekawa as though she is higher than Senjougahara. I guess Senjougahara does have a reason to humble herself in before Hanekawa.
Despite my displeasures I found the episode to be very, very, very funny. The scenes where Aararagis facial expression changes as he looks at Karen or when he kicks her in the face or the scene of his reaction to Karen thinking he was going to stick the toothbrush up her ass up to the reaction of Tsukihi after discovering what the other two were doing, in the end I had a good laugh watching this. I wasn’t as aroused, per say, as I thought I’d be. I guess that’s due the fact that I don’t really like Karen’s base character type nor her change, I also don’t like the incest part of things (-.-“).
OkamiSan~
