Quote:
Originally Posted by Ice Block
And speaking of the moon scenes:
 
Sinister eye in the sky, that second one. |
Good catch. With a little bit of imagination, you could say they are snake eyes, one white, one red, that is, the eyes of a pair of snakes.
And the moons weren't the only representations of sinister forces gathering upon the shrine. Take this scene for example:
Two snakes, one white, one black, intertwined and opposed.
Little tidbits of visual foreshadowing of what's to come by the end of the episode.
Meanwhile:
Quote:
Originally Posted by hei
...it's about Araragi's growing-up. He decided to prepare for university entrance exam, but there remains another issues such as the oddity business and his relation with Senjogahara. This point was shown in this arc.
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As a few other posters had already observed,
Bakemonogatari plays on themes that are familiar to adolescents, ideas that are actually quite familiar to anyone who has watched enough "coming-of-age" anime. These themes have been building up for some time now, at least as far back as Ep3, as
fish eric observed, if not earlier.
Through the show, Araragi has had to deal with a gnawing sense of worthlessness; to face up to his duties and responsibilities as a son and elder brother; been confronted with the need to make an active decision on whether to accept a girl's confession of love; go through hell to reconcile his girlfriend's relationship with her former best friend.
Yet, through this all, he has remained a largely passive individual who's generally happy to go with the flow. He's eager, almost suicidally committed, to help anyone he can, because he never really bothers to think about the potential outcomes of his actions. A passive person doesn't plan for his future. He merely reacts to the present.
In this episode, however, Araragi realises for the first time, through Oshino's warnings and his (yet another) near-death experience, that there are indeed limits to his power and kindness. Sooner or later, he has to face up to the fact that he can't have everything. He has to choose.
And, that, is how he's likely to grow up.
These are the emotional states he goes through, that have thus far been quite amply portrayed in the anime, through his own actions and also through the comments of the other characters, especially Hanekawa and Senjougahara. From these facts alone, it's not hard to deduce that there is a crucial dynamic between these three characters, the triangle formed by Vega, Altair and Deneb.
So, like
monir, I expect sparks to eventually fly between Hanekawa and Senjougahara. The confrontation had seemed inevitable since the day Senjougahara detected Hanekawa's scent on Araragi.
More crucially, it's more than likely that Vega and Deneb will be doing their utmost to push Altair towards a more proactive lifestyle because, let's face it, they are both in love with him (heck, almost every girl in the show is).
With Hanekawa's arc coming up, and with her departure for world travel drawing ever nearer, Araragi may soon have to face up to some rather unpleasant choices.
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As for poor Nadeko-chan, yes, it's a bit of a pity that she's been sidelined by growing plot developments. She is cute, but as a character, she doesn't quite have the same depth as all of the other girls presented thus far. So, in a sense, she seems to be no more than a plot device. She is there to put Araragi in a position where he is forced, at last, to confront his own weaknesses head on.
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Final point in a long post, it's interesting that Shinobu may be the source of all the oddities that have occurred thus far. Quite a fair bit has been revealed about her in this episode, as part of the continuing process of building
Bakemonogatari's backstory
in media res.
Given that Shinobu's bloodline makes her a magnet for oddities (which makes her a Shikon Jewel of sorts, I suppose; yes, I'm looking forward to the
InuYasha sequel), it now makes more sense why Araragi has become the persistent target of so many "ghosts". After all, he and she now share the same "blood".
It's even more interesting to learn that Araragi could become fully human again by simply stopping his regular blood transfusions. The apparent implication here is that Shinobu may die without Araragi's blood, something that he is not quite willing to let happen.
How much more of this backstory will get revealed in the following arc, and whether it will have any impact on future developments, time will tell.
IT Support
! The OP alone is enough for this to get a 10* from me. Se~no! Demo son nan ja dame. Mou son nan ja hora. Kokoro wa shinka suru yo moto moto...
