OP Sequence

OP: 「帰り道」 (Kaerimichi) by 加藤英美里 (Katou Emiri)
Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

Summary:

Hitagi, Koyomi, and Mayoi have started to look for the address that Mayoi is trying to reach, and they pass the area that Hitagi used to live. With a little bribe, Koyomi is able to find out from Mayoi that the person living at the address is her relative Tsunade. The problem is that they aren’t able to find the place, and Hitagi keeps realizing that they’ve gone too far. Her phone’s GPS navigation system doesn’t work either, and Mayoi starts to feel that it’s impossible for her to reach her mother. Given this, Koyomi and Hitagi decide to consult with Oshino, and Hitagi gets to go on a bike. Having earlier stated her hatred for young kids, part of the reason Hitagi is the one going is because she doesn’t want to be the one left alone with Mayoi. While Hitagi is away, Koyomi manages to get Mayoi to reveal that the Tsunade person she’s trying to go see isn’t her mother any more and that she got the Hachikuji last name from her father.

When Koyomi then attempts to pet her, she suddenly bites his hand, and Koyomi has to punch her to get her to let go. Hanekawa Tsubasa shows up shortly after Koyomi heals himself, and so he introduces her to Mayoi. Tsubasa lectures both Mayoi and Koyomi on their respective acts of violence a moment ago, and she also finds out that Koyomi was with Hitagi. Before she leaves, Koyomi asks her if she knows of the Tsunade home, but she claims not to. Koyomi’s phone then rings with a call from Oshino using Hitagi’s phone. After hearing about the snail and Mayoi and rambling a bit about Hitagi’s involvement, Oshino tells Koyomi that he’ll inform Hitagi how to deal with this because it won’t require a ceremony like her crab did since it’s more of a ghost than a god. Once that call is over, Mayoi declares to Koyomi that she’s hungry.

ED Sequence

ED: 「君の知らない物語」 (Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari) by supercell
Watch the ED! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

New OP and ED this week, though the ending song stayed the same. The OP by Mayoi’s voice actress Katou Emiri is very high energy and cute (as is its accompanying animation), but I didn’t like the song itself much. On the other hand, I still love the ending song, and the new animation that goes with it was neat in a slightly dark way.

Preview

The pacing of this episode started to wear on me a bit, particularly towards the end with the Oshino phone scene that made me feel like I was listening to an audio drama CD. As usual, they go off on a lot of tangents inside all that dialogue, like the PTA thing that was an amusing joke and an even more amusing misspelling/typo, and it’s not immediately clear what’s important and what’s not. I’m not even sure if anything in Tsubasa’s appearance is noteworthy (maybe the fact that she knows now that Hitagi and Koyomi are together?), but I do have to say that the more I hear her, the more I love how Horie Yui is voicing her. Speaking of which, Hitagi doesn’t play a huge role this week – though I found it quite interesting that she’s averse to Mayoi – and the episode isn’t quite as fun without her driving Koyomi crazy. Mayoi just isn’t the same.

All this is to say that I didn’t enjoy this episode all that much, but that’s not too surprising since it’s the middle of a three episode arc. My expectations are a little higher for the conclusion next week.

46 Comments

  1. Another dialogue heavy episode but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I’m really loving the new OPs and ED animations and all that. This series is making the Summer far more enjoyable than another certain one I put on hiatus.

    The misspellings were on purpose for anyone not familiar with the light novels.

    Horus
  2. There’s so much color in that OP, looks great. I’m sort of glad Hitagi takes a back seat this ep; sometimes it’s good to have a break and absorb the various other aspects of the show, and it makes it all the more pleasing the next time she leads.

    Meery
  3. Lets be honest here, anyone else just watching this series for the insanely hot slutty purple haired chick? Another useless protagonist and the rest of the anime is so boring and random I just wanna tear my head off.

    Zee
  4. This episode was okay, though not much happened. The only thing that baffled me was why Mayoi suddenly bit Koyomi’s hand, and of course why Hanekawa showed up out of the blue =/.

    SomethingLeft
  5. Solaris, you can hate that anime as much as you want, but I think it’s you who didn’t understand what type of anime it is when you say that “nobody seems to understand that there’s no story behind that fancy graphics”. It has a story, perhaps not a really deep one, but furthermore it’s a comedy so it doesn’t rely only on its story.
    Personaly, I enjoy this much and I really want to see what’s gonna happen next. 🙂

    UberGekkoSan
  6. I can’t help but associate the part where senjougahara gets lost for the second time and araragi points out that she changed a couple of lines to the repetition that is currently happening in haruhi.

    Or maybe its just me and anything that has repetition in it will now always remind me of haruhi.

    marsdrivein
  7. Normally my main complaint about a series with a male lead is that it doesn’t develop enough and that the storyline moves too quickly. I never thought that I would have the opposite complaint about this.

    Grant
  8. UberGekkoSan, i promised i wouldn’t bring my rants out of the 2 blogs where i just started some war against Bakemonogatari. I also contraddicted very my first rule of conduct by not judging an anime only when it’s finished. So i won’t complain anymore here.

    Solaris
  9. I can just comment on the “story” and not on the quality, after all.
    I can understand Hitagi’s behaviour in this episode. She looks kind of pissed of at Koyomi. Well, she met him in that nice sunday by chance. How luck of her. Now there’s a chance that could end up in some dating. After all Hitagi has clearly some feelings for Koyomi. She started talking with the clear intention to drive hime to a love confession. She tries to grab him by offering her like that and what does he do at the end?
    Goes and pick up a child girl. Lol @the lolicon
    Well i’d be pissed off too if i was her …

    Solaris
  10. @Solaris
    Heh, if I was Araragi I’d be pissed at her! All she did was show up and antagonize him (pretty harshly, I might add) all day! Of course I’d be looking for someone else to interact with, unless of course he really is that much of a glutton for punishment.

  11. I can’t shake off the feeling, that everything in this Anime has a reason, everything makes sense if you really look into it and that I am being played with by this Anime in a very positive way.

    Liked the ride so far and I am really looking forward for the next episodes. I had no boring second during the last four.

    Shaleya
  12. I dont know if this was brought up before, but Hitagi was born on July 7th which is the celebration of Tanabata. The ED song is about the Gods/stars of the Tanabata celebration. Perhaps they’re going somewhere with that.

    marinelzen
  13. although nothing happened this episode plot wise, i just never get sick of the animation in this anime. its just fun to watch and i thot the cellphone bit at the end was pretty funny

    sean
  14. Peparent : Plural (double) for parent. Based on Malay grammar where some multiples of nouns are shortened, e.g. bola-bola to bebola. In this case, a 両親 is parent-parent, shortened to peparent.

    Teacher: singular. The communication is only between one 両親 and one teacher.

    Passociation: Passive association. Although Mayoi intimidated about reporting to PTA, since it’s a passive association, it’s probably going to be a futile effort.

    Bribing a kid with 10000 yen is going way overboard. I’d have settled for at most 2000 yen.

    Depicting the sensation when grabbing the kid, as she passed out from the jab, as 青い果実 (unripe fruit) was also a win!

    edomikari
  15. Hrm… I can’t seem to make up my mind about this series. It’s kind of boring but I still like it a lot and really want to read the light novels (but they’re probably harder to read than the average light novel. Also expensive.)

    I just hope they’ll animate Koyomi Vamp and not leave it at those 30 seconds from Ep1.

    Kamion

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