Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re returning to Monogatari’s Off Season, as Isin continues to explore the wandering lives of Araragi’s various associates. Isin has clearly found an effective way to have his cake and eat it too, as Monogatari already arrived at a thematically cohesive conclusion back during Final Season, yet charting these continuing adventures nonetheless also fits within the show’s general philosophy. After all, one of the major points of Monogatari is that people are not fixed points, and our psychological development does not comprise clean, conclusive emotional arcs. We are all works in progress, liable to backslide or be stymied by new challenges, and exploring these Hanamonogatari-esque further hurdles has given the franchise life beyond its original protagonist.
With Yotsugi’s self-inflicted crisis now presumably handled, it seems we are turning to Nadeko, who has become something of a shut-in now that she’s found a passion worth pursuing, a source of pride that embodies her chosen identity, rather than the persona initially foisted upon her. Though Kaiki did a magnificent job back in Hitagi End, one push in the right direction does not a self-actualized person make, so I’m guessing we’ll still be grappling with Nadeko’s relatively unmoored sense of self. Let’s see how our passionate young mangaka is faring!
Episode 2
Our first chapter title card features Nadeko waking, her sheets and pillow illustrated in uncharacteristically ornate pink detail, echoing the style and aesthetic priorities of her manga work
This framing is supported by her opening narration, “If Nadeko Sengoku’s life was a manga series that’s currently running, I’m sure I’d think, ‘the protagonist’s personality is all over the place.’” Everyone has a tendency to assign some sort of narrative coherence to their own lives, to see their life stories as dramas building towards some grand conclusion. As someone who thinks of life in terms of the unrealistic expectations of romance manga, and who furthermore has up until now self-consciously defined herself as whatever her current audience desires her to be, Nadeko is understandably anxious about pinning down her actual personality
Her stories are heavy on meta-commentary, and always seem nervous about how her actions would appear to a presumed judgmental audience. Like all of Monogatari’s heroes, you can learn how they see themselves and the world around them through how their adventures are described
“That’s inevitable for a long-running series.” Just as manga characters can’t remain just one thing for decades, so must we as individuals change over time. Nadeko has shifted from comparing her identity to the desires of other individuals to comparing her identity to the standards of the manga she loves
“If you could have the same personality the whole time, I think that would be abnormal.” Yotsugi gets it. Not only do we personally change over time, we also have different aspects of ourselves that we reveal to different people, different personas we adopt for varying company. All of this is normal
“In reality, my current life as a fifteen-year-old hasn’t even gotten a one-shot published.” We are so frequently our own harshest critics – in fact, the best of us are often the most self-critical, most determined to hold ourselves to a high standard. Hanekawa did not have an easy time with that; learning to forgive and embrace her uncharitable instincts was the crux of her journey
A great deal of this anxiety also comes down to the relative time compression of youth. Nadeko sees her last couple years as a series of distinct personal eras, whereas a Nadeko several years down the line will likely group this whole sequence into one era of self-discovery
Out on the streets, she nearly collides with Ougi, a repeat of the encounter that initiated the path towards Nadeko Medusa. Of course, now that Araragi has acknowledged the self-destructive Ougi aspect of himself, I imagine they’ll be less inclined to spark chaos purely to make Araragi indulge in that instinct
In retrospect, it only becomes more clear how important it was that Hanekawa, rather than Ougi, accompany Araragi to Sodachi’s house. Without Hanekawa to counterbalance Sodachi’s words, and with Ougi there instead to actually reinforce them, there’s no telling how Araragi would have handled this new wave of guilt
“For my current self, this is without a doubt the first time I’ve met you, Sengoku.” I believe the only other time we’ve seen male Ougi was during Hanamonogatari, meaning it’s likely Ougi shifted in the wake of Araragi acknowledging them. Of course, Araragi has also had an ambiguous relationship with his gender identity at times, so Ougi’s fluidity isn’t necessarily unexpected
Ougi recommends calling him “Ougi Onii-chan,” recalling Nadeko’s ambiguous relationship with Araragi
Ougi asks if Nadeko is heading to class, and Nadeko asks about Ougi’s bike, desperate to avoid acknowledging her shut-in status
“If you’re heading to school, I’ll take you there.” Ougi now offers to actually return Nadeko to the socially prescribed path – he’s now more Araragi, just as Araragi is more him
Ougi mentions seeing another Nadeko in a school uniform earlier. What a coincidence! Nadeko has just been looking for herself
Nadeko explains the “ten thousand hours to mastery” theory, taking solace in the fact that this means she would “only need to try hard for one year to become top tier”
“Humans have to do this thing called living a life on top of making an effort.” Yep. We can’t entirely dedicate ourselves to our crafts, as convenient as that would be. And frankly, that wouldn’t work anyway – you need time to rest and experience other things in order to enrich your craft as well, to gain the life experience that will infuse your work with human resonance, to be apart from your labors long enough to look back at them with a critical eye
First live action, then flip book animation for illustrating Nadeko’s daily life. It’s so good to see this production so aesthetically reinvigorated
“Living comes before making an effort. Effort can be realized only after living a life.” Ain’t that the unfortunate truth. Our pursuit of our passions, the things that tend to give us artistic types a sense of meaning and satisfaction in life, can only be begun after we’ve dealt with the mundane struggles of everyday living
Nadeko laments that she can’t wait the three years she needs to actually gain those ten thousand hours. In spite of her growth, she’s still Nadeko, still looking for shortcuts, still easily distracted
Ah, I see. Nadeko has received an ultimatum from her parents, and thus doesn’t have three years just to dick around and work on her art
Nadeko’s art is actually quite good at this point, as her sketch pad of Yotsugi drawings demonstrates
“Yotsugi comes four times a week. It’s ruining my feelings of being a shut-in.” A natural flourish of relative perspective in this – Yotsugi refused to reveal anything about her personal feelings regarding Tsukihi or Nadeko during her own arc, but it was clear in the margins that she enjoyed the company of both of them, and was obviously hanging around for other reasons than her ostensible surveillance mission. From Nadeko’s perspective, Yotsugi likes her so much that Nadeko can’t get rid of her
“It’s not like they called me an idiot. They just said what I’m doing is idiotic.” Nadeko still running cover for her parents, seeing the best of intentions in their alternately indifferent and callous behavior
“As a practical problem, effort requires payment.” There are many reasons we can’t just dedicate ourselves entirely to our artistic passions, unfortunately. We find the compromises we can bear
Yotsugi is dubious of the ten thousand hour theory, stating “those who are capable can just get things done really easily.” It’s true – you can either frame the theory as an encouragement towards effort, or an encouragement towards complacency, leaning into the idea that “if I don’t have those ten thousand hours free, I might as well just not try.” Every idea contains its inverse in Monogatari
Yotsugi offers two plans for debuting, though the first would involve leaning on her identity as a cute, troubled middle schooler, and thus essentially involve returning to the cage she’d been trapped in since the beginning of the series
Her second method involves actually putting in those ten thousand hours in a single year. Nice visual flourish returning us to the Renai Circulation studying composition, drawing visual continuity between these ostensibly distinct Nadekos
“To exert too much effort is not necessarily sensible. What you need to think about is the quality of the effort made.” This is where many, perhaps most people ultimately trip up. Those ten thousand hours can theoretically be very useful, but making the most of them demands constant self-assessment, pushing yourself to improve in your problem areas, and expanding your realms of experience. If you spend ten thousand hours rewriting the same basic story, you’re not going to end up any better of a writer than you were at the start; if you spend ten thousand hours reading junk food fiction, you’re not going to end up any better of a reader or thinker. It’s a harsh pill to swallow, but sticking to your comfort zones doesn’t really expand your abilities in any meaningful way
This is partially why anime is in such a sorry state right now – it’s being written largely by light novel writers who only read other light novel writers, a snake eating its own malnourished tail. Nisio Isin reads classics, mystery fiction, psychological dramas, and whatever else he can get his hands on, and his work’s thematic and emotional richness is a direct result of that wide-ranging curiosity
“You don’t need to triple your effort, you just need to triple in number.” As usual, Yotsugi offers a solution that will undoubtedly cause more problems than it solves. At least she qualified this “solution” by saying she wouldn’t recommend actually doing it, though that’s obviously not going to stop Nadeko
Yotsugi recommends a total of five Nadekos, which she likens to your usual team of a mangaka and several assistants
Ooh, love this ancient tapestry-style illustration of Yotsugi’s nature. Can’t quite match the wall scrolls of Shinobu’s history, but their illustrator Taiki Konno has long since left SHAFT, and some talents are simply irreplaceable
Yotsugi suggests creating a handful of Nadeko shikigamis
She also claims that the reason she visits so often is in part due to her resonance with Nadeko’s latent talent. An interesting thought, framing artistic ability as a similar sort of abnormality to the psychological distress that attracts oddities
I suppose that makes sense – oddities are essentially aspects of our psychic wounds given physical form, and thus those who can more naturally conceptualize their interior feelings as physical presences would also attract more oddities. To say nothing of how an artistic temperament frequently aligns with an unhappy psychology – we frequently create art as an outlet, as the only way to come to peace with the distance between our feelings and the world around us. Those who already sleep well don’t tend to see demons around every corner, and thus don’t feel compelled to exorcize those demons through visual art or fiction
That’s certainly another reason I so closely identify with this show; it flatters the idea that suffering textures us, that psychological distress can make us more self-aware or complete. A happy fantasy, I know
Yotsugi suggests revealing Nadeko’s talent to Gaen for another reason – as insurance, a way to demonstrate “I’m more useful alive than dead,” in spite of her lingering presence as a quasi-oddity. An echo of what she must prove to her parents; even in the field of apparitions, you need to work for your food
Yotsugi also suggests making each Nadeko distinctive, to avoid the classic “who’s the real Nadeko” conflict. Given Nadeko’s existing concerns, this presumably means we’re going to get a collection of Nadekos embodying her various states of psychological development
“If it’s my past selves, it’ll be easy to draw them.” Yep. Do you really think Nadeko Medusa is going to help with your romance manga, Nadeko?
So we end up with Meek Nadeko, Flirty Nadeko, Wrath Nadeko, and God Nadeko
We then cut back to Nadeko with Ougi, having explained that her four alternate selves all promptly ran away. Yep, that figures
“I’m sure it’s my meager role in this story to chase after the Nadeko in the school uniform.” Leave it to Ougi to complain about only getting minor parts after nearly destroying the world
“If those four act problematically, all of their problems will fall upon you, Current Nadeko.” A literalization of the difficulty of escaping our past selves. Can Nadeko define her current self so freely, or is she doomed to inherit the legacy of her past personas?
And Done
Thus Current Nadeko chases Meek Nadeko all the way to her middle school, where she will have to confront her past self in multiple ways at once – both through the literal living avatar of Meek Nadeko, and also through the consequences of her past selves interacting with her classmates, now a rap sheet foisted upon a Nadeko who’d really rather abandon middle school altogether. Current Nadeko had been hoping to take the easy way out, to define a new self and launch forward from there, abandoning the embarrassing fallout of her former would-be identities’ actions. But thanks to a little meddling from Yotsugi, Nadeko now cannot move forward without first acknowledging the past, and perhaps even beating that past in a fistfight or foot race or something. Good luck, Nadeko!
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