LogFAQs > #884473692

Finished nise and nekomonogatari:kuro. I'm not surprised to finally hear araragi say it. "Oddities don't exist". The idea that everything we see in the show is just a convenient dramatization of the lives of some normal high school students coping with real problems as opposed to anything supernatural. Some tall tale being made up to explain people acting out and getting suicidal or otherwise having significant but real problems.

Of course, I expect this to only be a momentary detour, it'll just be another lens by which to view the events through. The lack of permanent damage to structures and the clearly inaccurate portrayal of colors and the clearly imagination focused background support the idea that we are witnessing unreliable events that likely aren't happening in the way in which we are being shown. Such as when araragi is on the phone with hanekawa early on and suddenly she is in the middle of the street surrounded by cars. In reality we can assume this is the image that flickered through araragi's mind when a few cars simply moved past her since he has to imagine her because they are talking over the phone. You could also look at moments where there are numerous identical background objects like bikes or cars as moments where the character simply remembered "there were lots of bikes" and the visuals took it to the extreme but with no detail because he didn't remember exactly what type of bike each one was or exactly which spots had bikes.

However I get the feeling that the show doesn't particularly care whether the events are real or not. When presented with the real thing and an indistinguishable fake, which is more valuable? Even the show itself, while explaining the concept that the show might be fake, posits that it doesn't actually matter if its fake or not.

It's frankly astounding to me that this show is actually successful due to just how much subtlety and how little action there is. It's baffling and runs counter to almost every idea of lowest common denominator entertainment. You could argue this series is one of the most arty series out there even more so than something like lain or boogiepop, both series with some similarities and cult appeal but neither of which received the massive success monogatari did.

Ironically this show about oddities is itself an oddity. It should for all intents and purposes be too clever for its own good but somehow its not. It lacks almost all sense of broad appeal and even has elements that would turn many away like araragi's assaults on hachikuji or his sisters. It's extremely difficult to follow and surrounds the viewer with a sense that we aren't ever seeing the full picture. It applies horror filming techniques to a meta comedy and infuses more meaning into each of its actions than the things it parodies. All things that should point to the show being a commercial failure, and yet, paradoxically, it was insanely commercially successful. Just like when watching the show, it's success leaves me with a sense than I'm not seeing the full picture and that somehow things must work differently than everything else would lead me to believe.

Yes I'm drunk and yes I could probably write a dozen pages on just the 30 episodes I've seen so far. I hope the rest keeps up the quality.
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I'm ninja
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