Family Season
Only 6 years for Koyomi and 4 years for me (since I started this franchise). It’s easy to see change in anyone else other than yourself. Especially since we have seen so many entries in Koyomi’s head, we learn a lot through him. And his last lines in this entry really spoke to me.
We’ve been together for so long, after all, you’re practically family to me. We may disappear for a while.
But if you ever miss us, feel free to call out to us however you like.
That’s the beauty of fiction. I can at any point go back to rereread or rewatch whatever I’d like because the anime or text is a snapshot. It can’t really change but the way I interact with it will. Hell it’s been over a year since I last read anything by Isin. Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten the finer details. Plus any insight of how it spaces the way I live takes many iterations to implement because we are pretty stubborn as human beings. Randomly I look back at these older reviews that I always write right after I finish reading the given entry and sometimes as shocked at my own thoughts. But Koyomi not only accepting Shinobu as a proper daughter or Hitagi as a proper wife but also the viewer as his family is heartwarming. Like Floozy’s review, it’s rare to truly grow up with your main character. Due to the space and time and NisioisiN unable to retire that pen of his (thank goodness he is such a prolific writer), it allows for constant new entries to enjoy these characters.
Crazy to think that this is the first time that Shinobu and Hitagi interacted officially. I even double checked and yeah they were never paired together for an audio commentary in the anime either which definitely makes sense if Isin wanted to save that for this itself. Also thinking of the first 3 arcs of Bakemonogatari as the Senjougahara Trilogy is cool. Fun to see all the callbacks to everything in the past even the way of using “love” in English as a Hitagi thing or Araragi being both hyper-focused and observant yet tunnel visioned in the same way. The way that he described his hatred for Shinobu eating humans and how that intensity has faded over time felt very in line to Oikura’s hatred which was a fantastic parallel. Even finding out some of the reasons for Araragi becoming a police officer because of Kaiki and Hanakawa was very cool insights. Especially when you consider the little twist in who Kanbaru actually called was in fact not that conman but the new specialist Nadeko. All and all this was a refreshing read and am very excited for the next one coming out within days as a blast from the past of another family that has been skirted around for years, hell in decades at this point.
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