Spoilers for at least Final Season (since I watched the anime first and am going through the LNs afterwards)

Sidenote - Rouka God is very good Short Story that should be read prior to this entry. I also read Hitagi Throwing because I realized that the other story is in a later Heroine Book (RG is #6 while HT is #5) and it fit very nicely with this arc as well.

I will once again start with why the positioning of this arc is meant as the 3rd entry of Second Season. Even with all of the time jumps of many magnitudes both parallel and perpendicular, Kabukimonogatari ends with Araragi’s summer before his last year of high school and Hanamonogatari begins with Kabaru’s start to their last year of high school. Even with a separation of 365.25 days the worries and feelings are the same even if they are expressed differently but getting over this hurdle yields someone who matured so drastically with Araragi in Hanamono that it gives us an insight of how this arc is the most thematically resonant due to taking place after Final Season and see the fruits of the struggles for the next 1.5 seasons left until Araragi’s graduation.

Rumors have always blinded and plagued Kanbaru ever since she first used the power of the devil. Memories that are basically a whisper are no different than an unsubstantiated rumor. Our own body produces them as it modifies and alters both happy and sad moments of our past with every single revisitation that they don’t hold any merit anyways. In Bakemonogatari (and Kizumonogatari) rumors play a vital role of setting the story into place as Hanekawa hearing a rumor or wanting to hear a rumor of the supernatural lead to Araragi meeting Shinobu and the rumor of Hitagi and Araragi getting together got Kanbaru curious enough because she was shocked that the senpai that she remembered, the senpai that she loved, the senpai that she lost to, the senpai that she failed, could be so friendly and happy with someone else is inconceivable and gets Kanbaru to use the rumor of a memory that was handed down by her mother.

Kaiki and Rouka are intertwined by this chain of rumors were Kaiki feeds them and Rouka receives them and just like he is a collector of money, she is a collector of rumors. Even he barely remembers that person but he and Kanbaru found solace in their own roundabout ways. I am not going to argue the need about the watch order because well this isn’t a review for the anime but I think you know at this point Isin order is the intended order for obvious reasons. Kaiki will do anything for Kanbaru no matter how much she may have been told to hate him because it’s ok. Even if her memory of her mother is an odd one as Kanbaru states herself, it is her memory or rumor to cherish regardless so much so that that person is allowed to even say something simple as good morning to her daughter in just a dream or is that a memory to begin with?