Character discussion - Araragi Koyomi

[teja208]

Araragi Koyomi, anime male protagonist who managed to standout from your average harem male lead in more ways than one. He maybe a pervert, but most of his perversion doesn’t fall into usual anime trope clichés. He is by far more understanding than many other male leads in anime when dealing with girls. He has the knack of saying the right word at the right moment when interacting with girls, and knows timing when he can act pervert in front of girls and still get away without recieving a single megatron punch or hyperspace mullet. However, he isn’t without his shortcomings.
Now I shall point out his shortcomings by comparing him to another outstanding male protagonist, Katsuragi Keima from World God Only Knows. Both of them are among my all time favorite male protagonists, but when look closer you will find that they’re opposite to each other in terms of their strength and weakness.
Let’s start with Koyomi’s girlfriend, Senjougahara Hitagi. Hitagi is quite a loner, but she is much more straightforward when tackling relationship especially with her boyfriend. Koyomi ability to understand allows him to be able to put up with Hitagi constant violent tendency better than most men. On the flipside, he will have more trouble understanding Tsubasa or Nadeko since both of them are not as straightforward. Koyomi maybe more understanding than other anime male lead, but he’s still quite dense. That is he never made any attempt to look deeper into girls’ heart beyond what appears in front of him.
Now this is where Keima comes in the picture. Keima’s gaming knowledge made him harem genre savvy and have better grasp upon girls true feelings and desires beyond their exterior. For example, when he deals with Shiori’s problem in first season of anime, Shiori rarely speak at all let alone expressing her true feelings and is extremely shy, but Keima can see through her with his gamer deduction and solve her problem. While Keima has a knack in taking the lead in a courting relationship, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t have more trouble with dealing with certain type of girls. As I mentioned earlier, he is opposite of Koyomi. If you follow the TWGOK manga, you will notice that he has more trouble when dealing with more straightforward girls that doesn’t fit in with any normal anime character archetype. His knowledge about girls is restricted to characters commonly found in gal-game. Correspondently, Hitagi character falls into this category. Keima prefers taking lead, thus, the likes of Hitagi mess up his pacing a lot more than more introvert girls. Koyomi is better at following the girls’ lead and he’s also good at riding the tides when there is opportunity for him to act pervert. That’s one of his talents, a bad one that is.
Kanbaru and some other characters suggested that Tsubasa is a better match for Koyomi, but I rather disagree. Koyomi will never look at Tsubasa as anything beyond her perfect class rep image, then Black starts meddling, but even that isn’t enough to improve his outlook of Tsubasa. As for Nadeko, that’s even worse, Koyomi didn’t even notice her crush even though it appears obvious to the eyes of viewers. For him, she’s just a friend of his sisters nothing more or less. This will probably come back to bite him latter in Otori. Just a guessing because I haven’t read the Otori but Koyomi’s Achilles’ Heal is most likely Nadeko and perhaps, in a way, made her a perfect last boss for him.

[Forsaken_Infinity]

Originally Posted by teja208

Araragi Koyomi, anime male protagonist who managed to standout from your average harem male lead in more ways than one. He maybe a pervert, but most of his perversion doesn’t fall into usual anime trope clichés. He is by far more understanding than many other male leads in anime when dealing with girls. He has the knack of saying the right word at the right moment when interacting with girls, and knows timing when he can act pervert in front of girls and still get away without recieving a single megatron punch or hyperspace mullet. However, he isn’t without his shortcomings.
Now I shall point out his shortcomings by comparing him to another outstanding male protagonist, Katsuragi Keima from World God Only Knows. Both of them are among my all time favorite male protagonists, but when look closer you will find that they’re opposite to each other in terms of their strength and weakness.
Let’s start with Koyomi’s girlfriend, Senjougahara Hitagi. Hitagi is quite a loner, but she is much more straightforward when tackling relationship especially with her boyfriend. Koyomi ability to understand allows him to be able to put up with Hitagi constant violent tendency better than most men. On the flipside, he will have more trouble understanding Tsubasa or Nadeko since both of them are not as straightforward. Koyomi maybe more understanding than other anime male lead, but he’s still quite dense. That is he never made any attempt to look deeper into girls’ heart beyond what appears in front of him.
Now this is where Keima comes in the picture. Keima’s gaming knowledge made him harem genre savvy and have better grasp upon girls true feelings and desires beyond their exterior. For example, when he deals with Shiori’s problem in first season of anime, Shiori rarely speak at all let alone expressing her true feelings and is extremely shy, but Keima can see through her with his gamer deduction and solve her problem. While Keima has a knack in taking the lead in a courting relationship, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t have more trouble with dealing with certain type of girls. As I mentioned earlier, he is opposite of Koyomi. If you follow the TWGOK manga, you will notice that he has more trouble when dealing with more straightforward girls that doesn’t fit in with any normal anime character archetype. His knowledge about girls is restricted to characters commonly found in gal-game. Correspondently, Hitagi character falls into this category. Keima prefers taking lead, thus, the likes of Hitagi mess up his pacing a lot more than more introvert girls. Koyomi is better at following the girls’ lead and he’s also good at riding the tides when there is opportunity for him to act pervert. That’s one of his talents, a bad one that is.
Kanbaru and some other characters suggested that Tsubasa is a better match for Koyomi, but I rather disagree. Koyomi will never look at Tsubasa as anything beyond her perfect class rep image, then Black starts meddling, but even that isn’t enough to improve his outlook of Tsubasa. As for Nadeko, that’s even worse, Koyomi didn’t even notice her crush even though it appears obvious to the eyes of viewers. For him, she’s just a friend of his sisters nothing more or less. This will probably come back to bite him latter in Otori. Just a guessing because I haven’t read the Otori but Koyomi’s Achilles’ Heal is most likely Nadeko and perhaps, in a way, made her a perfect last boss for him.

Please, do us a favor and format your post a bit. It's a real pain to read as of right now. Breaking it into paragraphs occasionally (a good practice is to do so whenever you have a change of thought or present a new point) would really help me appreciate your post much more.

That said, I don't think Koyomi and Keima are all that comparable. You talk from the perspective of a fan who considers both these characters a lead of a harem. I don't disagree with that in full but I definitely don't think leading a harem is the defining characteristic of either of these characters. Koyomi's defining characteristic is how he doesn't value his life over others and has a good boy complex. Keima's defining characteristic is how he is an academically and financially sound otaku who lives a shunned lifestyle by choice.

I don't think Keima is any better than Koyomi at grasping the true feelings of a woman as you suggest. I can list several examples but the biggest evidence of that is how he doesn't realize that Chihiro was in love with him before this whole wisp and goddesses deal. He is just better at making a girl fall for him. And really, when you pursue a girl aggressively with the explicit interest of making her see you in a romantic light, and when you have magical demons with superpowers assisting you to keep a tab on all their activities, it really isn't all that hard to make a girl fall for you. People in real life manage to do that with much less resources. What separates Keima from those people is that he doesn't actually wish to be a playboy. He has no ulterior motives, just an earnest desire to save the day. He grows with every interaction he has with "real" girls. And he doesn't magically understand a girl at all. He struggles with them, tries several things and then figures out how to deal with them. I would hate him if he were just some guy who knew how to read women like the back of his hand.

I definitely don't agree with your suggestion that Senjougahara is a normal girl lol. That's such a ridiculous idea. Hitagi is anything but normal. She is a very common archetype in galge - a tsundere. She might be somewhat more complex because she is rather straightforward and honest with her feelings but that's not something that makes her normal. If Keima knew her backstory and her problem and how to solve it, and more importantly, if she was one of his targets, he would make her fall for him in no time. But cross-series speculation is futile and I shall stop with it.

I agree that Koyomi is a bit dense in realizing women's feelings for him but Keima isn't any better whatsoever at it. He has an uncanny ability to make women feel for him but he is totally off when it comes to reading women's feelings for him unless he planted them with his plans. And I don't think this is an abnormal thing. Most males would never get that a girl has the hots for them if the girl wasn't explicit with her intentions. And even if they suspected some girl to have the hots for them, they would have real trouble brushing it aside as anything other than just their overactive imagination. Instead, the way males approach a relationship is to confess and hope the female reciprocates. And that's what Keima does. He sets up events, plans his love and all that and eventually confesses and makes the girl fall for him. He doesn't magically read that x or y girl is in love with him.


And while I am involved with cross-series stuff anyway, this post

Originally Posted by omimon

I have been getting on the Ore no imouto train lately and I couldn't help but compare Kyosuke with Araragi. I mean they both have strained relationships with their sisters yet it all seems so different. First of all Karen and Tsukihi actually makes an efforts to try to be close to Araragi like waking him up in the morning while Kirino is totally indifferent. Kyosuke plays eroge games with Kirino while Araragi plays the toothbrush game. With that being said it gives me conflicting feeling about the future. I mean Ore no imouto seems like its leading up to the Koi Kaze direction yet with Monogatari it seems more like just a joke. Although I'm a lot more incline to believe that Araragi would mess around with his sisters a lot more. I mean Araragi was already "this" close to hitting a homerun. The one series where we get a brother feeling up his sister and they'll never end up together, yet with another series we get a brother who keeps saying he hates his sister yet more likely to go for the "happy end."

made me go finish watching OreImo. I read the first few chapters of the LN way before the anime came out and it was really interesting because the LN was mostly driven by monologues completely inside Kyosuke's head. It was kind of awesome. But the anime could never do justice to that and so I dropped it after a while.

Anyway, I went ahead and watched it and I don't see why you think that Kyosuke is going to end up with a Koi Kaze end. He definitely is a bit of a siscon and can't live without her etc. but I saw nothing to suggest that he viewed her as a woman. Also, there is Tamura, who I must say is a FAR FAR better girl than Kirino (and I am so into imouto moe that I would never put a normal girl over imouto in a show unless the difference between them was just that drastic). In fact, I would seriously hate for this story to end with anything but Tamura end. Kyosuke is an awesome lead and Tamura fits his way of life perfectly. But I know that the LN already explored his romantic life with Kuroneko, Kirino etc. as well. And given that the plot was already a mess, and far more unbelievable than monogatari series despite the latter including the supernatural, I can only say "too bad". Oh well. Koyomi's situation is a lot more enjoyable for me anyway.

[teja208]

Originally Posted by Forsaken_Infinity

Please, do us a favor and format your post a bit. It's a real pain to read as of right now. Breaking it into paragraphs occasionally (a good practice is to do so whenever you have a change of thought or present a new point) would really help me appreciate your post much more.

I see, sorry for the pain, I will keep that in mind.

That said, I don't think Koyomi and Keima are all that comparable. You talk from the perspective of a fan who considers both these characters a lead of a harem. I don't disagree with that in full but I definitely don't think leading a harem is the defining characteristic of either of these characters. Koyomi's defining characteristic is how he doesn't value his life over others and has a good boy complex. Keima's defining characteristic is how he is an academically and financially sound otaku who lives a shunned lifestyle by choice.

I agree that this is definitely part of Koyomi's defining characteristic, but not the one that made him standout from other male leads IMO. Sure it's an admirable trait to have but many other male leads also have them. However, what made him standout is that he is more understanding than other male leads when interacting with girls. He at least can hold decent conversations with them. He maybe a pervert, but he is careful enough not to end up like other male leads and trigger violent reactions from girls most of the time. With an exception when Tsukihi spot him and Karen doing toothbrush, but he get away with that without getting impaled with awls right?

I don't think Keima is any better than Koyomi at grasping the true feelings of a woman as you suggest. I can list several examples but the biggest evidence of that is how he doesn't realize that Chihiro was in love with him before this whole wisp and goddesses deal. He is just better at making a girl fall for him. And really, when you pursue a girl aggressively with the explicit interest of making her see you in a romantic light, and when you have magical demons with superpowers assisting you to keep a tab on all their activities, it really isn't all that hard to make a girl fall for you. People in real life manage to do that with much less resources. What separates Keima from those people is that he doesn't actually wish to be a playboy. He has no ulterior motives, just an earnest desire to save the day. He grows with every interaction he has with "real" girls. And he doesn't magically understand a girl at all. He struggles with them, tries several things and then figures out how to deal with them. I would hate him if he were just some guy who knew how to read women like the back of his hand.

I see your point here and I have to say that I agree that I was wrong with regards of Keima has better insights regarding girls. Most of the things he did are out of necessities to save the girls from wasps, while Koyomi is under no pressure to make girls fall for him. Keima also has demon intels just as you said.

I definitely don't agree with your suggestion that Senjougahara is a normal girl lol. That's such a ridiculous idea. Hitagi is anything but normal. She is a very common archetype in galge - a tsundere. She might be somewhat more complex because she is rather straightforward and honest with her feelings but that's not something that makes her normal. If Keima knew her backstory and her problem and how to solve it, and more importantly, if she was one of his targets, he would make her fall for him in no time. But cross-series speculation is futile and I shall stop with it.

I guess I made a mistake for not making myself clear on this part. I meant to say that Hitagi falls out of the normal character archetype meaning she is far from ordinary. She maybe a tsundere, but a very special case of tsundere.

I agree that Koyomi is a bit dense in realizing women's feelings for him but Keima isn't any better whatsoever at it. He has an uncanny ability to make women feel for him but he is totally off when it comes to reading women's feelings for him unless he planted them with his plans. And I don't think this is an abnormal thing. Most males would never get that a girl has the hots for them if the girl wasn't explicit with her intentions. And even if they suspected some girl to have the hots for them, they would have real trouble brushing it aside as anything other than just their overactive imagination. Instead, the way males approach a relationship is to confess and hope the female reciprocates. And that's what Keima does. He sets up events, plans his love and all that and eventually confesses and makes the girl fall for him. He doesn't magically read that x or y girl is in love with him.

I also agree with the whole thing, but I don't think all males are like that.

And while I am involved with cross-series stuff anyway, this post

made me go finish watching OreImo. I read the first few chapters of the LN way before the anime came out and it was really interesting because the LN was mostly driven by monologues completely inside Kyosuke's head. It was kind of awesome. But the anime could never do justice to that and so I dropped it after a while.

I remember the same treatment with Haganai anime. Just imagine what could happen if AIC Build make adaptations of Monogatari or Haruhi Series. To think that their studio directors honestly believe that things will work out fine without any monologue. What a shame.

Originally Posted by zarqu

Koyomi is just a confused little guy. Someone needs to slap some sense into him. I feel he needs to go on a "journey" of self discovery, maybe even more so than Hanekawa needs to. That is, provided that he even wants to figure out his "love life" (I'm still not sure who he "loves" and in what way), which is nothing sort of complicated.

Obviously as a reader who doesn't understand Japanese, my picture of Koyomi is limited at best. I really don't know who he really is. I'm not too sure if he knows either.

The full (and satisfactory) resolution of the above will probably come near the end of the series.

Journey? Come on, that would make his harem expand even more by encountering girls across the globe. He isn't confused, he's just being pervert just unlike most males, he is an opportunistic pervert guy and what he needs to learn is more self-restraint.

[Forsaken_Infinity]

Originally Posted by teja208

Journey? Come on, that would make his harem expand even more by encountering girls across the globe. He isn't confused, he's just being pervert just unlike most males, he is an opportunistic pervert guy and what he needs to learn is more self-restraint.

;_;

Please never ever again do what you did in that post. By that, I mean never again put your replies inside the quote itself. It makes it really tedious to quote you for future posts. And is really annoying to read. And gives other people the wrong impression that the guy you quoted said those things. That last part can be avoided if you use a color to highlight your replies but frankly, that's even more annoying. Just split the quote into several portions (which you did anyway) and make your replies outside the quote.

[ID555]

Fantastic job voicing him, especially when he does his 'speeches'.

[Haiprbim]

I do not know why there was no post on this thread since the 5th episode, but yeah... Koyomi.
Pretty badass, wouldn't you agree?

[b10nutz]

Yep he is at least for now. I guess he got more combat experience during the time he was gone.