Bakemonogatari

[Pandadice]

whoooa!! this episode was amazing! this is easily my favorite episode. man, it just disappoints me when i think that the entire show could've been as cool as this episode..

the coloring and atmosphere, and the fact that it was from start to finish, entirely focused on the snake curse without even really mentioning anything else, this is exactly what i wanted.

BUT SERIOUSLY, HOW ADORABLE WAS THAT OP?!

i know right?! i loved that OP!! it was seriously like my favorite OP of this season ¦D

-

also.. i don't get why everyone's complaing about the animation.. it didn't seem any different than the animation of any of the other episodes.... if anything it was cooler

[Yukimura]

I found I really liked this ep, as Kraco mentioned I have been wanting to see what the show could do without any Senjougahara antics to grab and hold people's interest. I actually liked Kanbaru much more as the sidekick for Araragi in this arc. Her cheerfulness and genki spirit appeal well to my preferences for sidekick/morality compass characters. Hopefully Araragi managed to learn a lesson from this ordeal through Kanbaru's wake up punch and one liner instead of having to have Senjogahara rub his face in it with her special style of passive aggressive shaming but I'm somewhat doubtful.

Koyomi still seems to think he has the weight of the whole world on his shoulders and it's his duty in life to save every stray person whose got some sort of problem. At the same time Koyomi doesn't seem to show much appreciation or interest in the feelings of anyone once he's been a catalyst in 'saving' them. Instead of building up his relationships with the people he's already saved he seems to start treating them as potentially useful tools for helping him find and save the next damsel in distress. Whether this will come up in the end as something he has to confront in himself remains to be seen but I hope that the story addresses this somehow as I find it a rather interesting personality quirk to think about.

[Nadouku]

I kind of knew there were gonna be two snakes for Sengoku, but I was a little surprised that Araragi didn't catch that until later on. Aside from that, I was little annoyed by the "cut" parts.

[Ryllharu]

Animation this episode was terrible. Most of the action parts were cut out, and there are scenes when Araragi is talking but his mouth stays still.

It is interesting that it is in fact Araragi's decision to keep himself in the middle of humanity and the other side, just to keep Shinobu alive or something of the sort.

I think Bill's edit said it better than I could, the animation served its purpose of conveying Araragi's sensation of barely knowing what was going on. He couldn't see it, and he was only occasionally catching glimpses of it and hearing it every once in a while. Our view of it was equally disjointed.

Also, SHAFT does this crap all the time, and has for years. It's their thing, and their style. They did it so much in one arc of Tsukuyomi MoonPhase that I nearly dropped the series (my first "shafty" SHAFT series). The scenes were intentionally very disjointed and confusing. It was revealed at the end of the arc why, and everything returned to normal. They did it in ef - a tale of memories as well, to notable effect in episode 7. Panic was portrayed in most of the most visual representations of it I have ever seen. Lastly, Pani Poni Dash and Maria+Holic both exploited stills or panning stills to their maximum effect.


As for Araragi and Shinobu, I think this episode did a pretty admirable job of explaining their current relationship. To my understanding, Shinobu's adult and awesome form cursed him into becoming a vampire, and he was narrowly saved. She was consequently destroyed, and became the adorably cute little girl with a permanent blush she is today. Much like the snake that he wanted to kill here, Araragi is trying to save the "bad person" with Shinobu. He tried to save Sengoku's curse bringer before Kanbaru stopped him, and he already has been doing the same with Shinobu. She cursed him, he freed himself of it, and even now he wishes to save her from the backlash.

[Death BOO Z]

wait a minute, you're saying that all those 'cut' animation are actually 'filler' that will be redrawn in the dvd release?
that's really half assed. I assumed it was an artistic choice of saying "screw this part, we don't feel like drawing, and it's not important".
and this episode had a lot of those.

on the other hand, the new OP is really cute, and they addressed Aragari's 'sis-com' that was mentioned in the beginning.

[Ryllharu]

In all of their series I have seen, shaft has never needed to redo their animation for the DVDs aside from censoring, which they usually avoid the need for completely through creative means. It is as they intended.

[shinta|hikari]

I'm not sure, but were the parts where Araragi was talking but his mouth was not moving supposed to be that way? I initially thought it was an encoding issue or something, but if every release looks like that, then it must be because of the animation itself.

In that case, I really don't get why they didn't animate him talking, and simply chose to keep a frozen frame while the VA continues speaking. It shouldn't be that much more time consuming or difficult.

Still, with Shaft's usual style, they can get away with things like this. They get to save up on money, and people will forgive them for it, as I did.

[Marik]

[gg]​ Bakemonogatari​ -​ 11​ [E3AAF21C].mkv

Ghostory time.

(\__/)
(='.'=)

[Death BOO Z]

next ep is last tv episode?
what the hell, why?

hanakewa as a cat girl was totally hot.

[Marik]

Episodes13-15 will be streamed online, so it won't be too bad.

[Kraco]

hanakewa as a cat girl was totally hot.

She indeed was. I wonder how Araragi is going to solve her case, though. If he has to fix her troubles family situation (assuming that was the truth), it might not be so clean as the cases so far. After all, he can't just remove her evil stepparents. Getting rid of the catgirl was only treating the symptoms not the cause and I can't see one vampire bite would be too permanent a solution.

Although I'm not too sure I'd even like to see some ugly family drama...

What I do want to see before the end is Senjougahara!

[Pandadice]

oh, so no more snake story? moving on from the snake arc? series going back to how it's been all along? oh.. can they just endless eight-loop episode 10 as the rest of the series? i'd watch it...

so more mono-tone continuous conversation about nothing :\. and when we finally got to the introduction of the oddity, it's the most ridiculous one yet... seriously, the chick morphs into a neko-mimi and jumps around sucking up energy, and it's all caused from stress-induced multiple personality disorder? .. i mean, yeah they were able to finally make Hanekawa look attractive, but still, it seems like such a joke oddity :\

[shinta|hikari]

Maybe Tsubasa Cat is stressed because the guy she likes got stolen by a crab.

[Buffalobiian]

Sengoku Nadeko FTW!!

Maybe Tsubasa Cat is stressed because the guy she likes got stolen by a crab.

I'm guessing that too, since it's supposed to be different.

[Nadouku]

Heh, cat-girl and stress... what a combination.

[Buffalobiian]

Heh, cat-girl and stress... what a combination.

Come to think of it, there should be quite a few academically stressed females in my cohort right about now. I certainly won't mind if they all turn up as cat-girls tomorrow and sucked me dr- ... never mind.

[Ryllharu]

Maybe Tsubasa Cat is stressed because the guy she likes got stolen by a crab.

This was my first guess as well. They were talking about Senjougahara right before she got the headache, and a large portion of their conversation in the bookstore was about his relationship with Senjougahara as well.

While it isn't really a huge problem for the other girls so far, a ghost who follows him around, a self-described lesbian just hanging out with him, and a girl who still has plenty of excuses being his sister's friend, Koyomi is spending a great deal more time with Senjougahara than with Hanekawa, whom he used to rely on exclusively before he met Senjougahara on the spiral stairs.

[shinta|hikari]

Bakemonogatari 12 by DD

Because of this episode, Hitagi is now my favorite character in all anime, and Bakemonogatari in my all-time favorites list.

EDIT: These subs are pretty good. There is no need to wait for gg, so watch this.

[oyabun]

Now I understand what you said shinta about not wanting to watch any other anime after you watched Bakemonogatari..

[Buffalobiian]

HITAGI IS GREAT. BAKEMONOGATARI IS GREAT.

@gg: Hitagi > Aion. Sub it.




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Since I love the ED and read the lyrics to it, the star-gazing scene was even better.