The story feels perfectly finished with the end of the second season, Tsukimonogatari serving as the perfect epilogue, and Koyomimonogatari as the perfect short story collection to go with the main series, except it isn't really. I'm not sure what to expect of the future of the series (a Cencoroll dilemma). The main thing I'm currently thinking about, have been thinking about for some time now, have been thinking about for the damn year or so it took me to finish this novel (damn you, moon-pup Minimus), is the fact that, if I was NISIOISIN, perhaps I would skip over Owarimonogatari in its entirety - never pen those four novels lined up on my shelf which I'm simultaneously excited for and dread. Really, this quartet has been teased for years, for five books and more, this grand finale, the entirety of Tsukimonogatari essentially a quiet, feeble, ice-cold and heartwrenching acceptance of an inevitable end (or is it) - and that's just the catch I'm trying to throw. What if Owarimonogatari was omitted? The last great trick of NISIOISIN's Monogatari Series. The series speeding forward, ever faster and steadfaster until the obvious and inevitable is right around the corner, and then...with this motion clearly shown and verbosely articulated, it just, doesn't show the destination. The destination which has been spoken of in hushed wishpers, word of the street if you will, secondhand gossip, urban legends, until concretised beyond any of such vague forms of information, having gathered as Oshino did until arriving at a more-or-less clear understanding of what has occured in the past in these parts of backwater Nihon, or rather, in this case, what is about to occur - you simply omit. The motion, with the implied destination, which has become obvious; no longer an aberration, no longer a mystery. When it becomes mundane enough, an aberration is nothing more than part of the everyday, a natura maximus. To slice it into clearcut words, it's a case of "the idea of it is stronger than the event itself." A shadow of a musing flashes through my mind, "What if, I simply skip over Owari, and head straight into the next season?" A silly idea, which could be contradicted and reprimanded and ridiculed in various forms.

But in the owari, all these are nothing but mumbles to myself, fancies of what the future might hold, based on experience, based on what I've gathered, which I'm sure anyone who's actually read Owarimonogatari and is in love with the series at large - who can't follow my perception of the series as something which has concluded, in a sense, long ago - would be all too eager to attempt to show evidence to the contrary for. I cannot help my feelings, yet.

And so, there's nothing left for me to do but wearily pick the first thick volume of the Owarimonogatari quartet from my shelf, and begin to read. I can't leave this series behind, yet. I still want to know what the hell is up with this Soidachi Oikura girl, whom I have miraculously dodged all spoilers for throughout the years I've spend reading and thinking about this series (seriously, what's up with me, why so long? talk for another time); my favourite character, Yotsugi Ononoki, has yet to be understood even by the author himself (as he explained in an interview one time), that doll whom I love so deeply, more than anyone in the world, so how could I abandon this series at this point? You're telling me my favourite character and my second favourite character, Tsukihi, team up in the first volume of the next season???

In the end, no matter what, Monogatari will always be a comfort series for me, a work that means the world to me, a work that, whenever I read but a smidgen of pages, a glimpse of an excerpt, spurns me to fancy page-long conversations between two characters I made up on the spot while I traverse and stroll my forewater town. One of the main reasons why I became an author in the first place. I have endless love and endless gratitude for it. One of my greatest dreams in life is to read every work NISIOISIN has ever written.

Thank you, NISIOISIN.