Chapter 1: setup
Chapter Text
i hate araragi koyomi.
i have made it clear for a couple years now that i do not like araragi and have given profuse explanations for these feelings, albeit spontaneously, in short spurts, or only in relevant discussions.
he and monogatari are vast such that despite my years of campaigning against one of the most beloved anime mc’s debatably ever (especially for the “coming of age” genre), i’ve never came close to elaborating on all the things about his character that i’ve felt sideways about. ‘well, this is okay,’ i justified to myself. there’s a limit to everyone’s analysis, especially when you step so far away from consensus, so i was satisfied with reiterating talking points rather than dissecting further, sifting through the miasma shrouding my hatred for this character. in conversation with friends, strangers, mutuals, or just with others on forums, my points would be met with brief debate before differences were settled in fatigue or dispassion. understandable, really—“it’s an anime character, who cares?” well, looking at what this paper became, clearly i did, for reasons more relevant than i would’ve guessed.
this lingering discontent remained stagnant through public debate. a vague annoyance. that is, until i started writing this essay, or very long-winded tantrum—what have you. this whole thing—like, literally, all ~60 pages—was originally a twitter reply to a mutual that exceeded the character limit (hey sboo), so, initially, i didn’t make this with the intent of it becoming what it is now. though, while writing, more and more of what once were petty, formless grievances began to solidify and thus find themselves on a path of reasoning lost to me for several years prior in my araragi-hating (i say as though it were my career path). i realized things that weren’t just personally unnerving to me but, also, things that i’ve come to believe are totally overlooked, ignored, and if not outright rejected by you, the fans, and even the author and myself, the critic. things with real-life implications built on real-life hypocrisies, contrived lies, given clemency by its fictionality; things in araragi’s character, history, and point of view that would’ve exposed his compressed world to the side of his character hidden in absolute nothingness. an internal void guarded by the self-conscious, self-condemning, yet self-justifying voice of a first-person narrator who we experience the entire world through (save for a few arcs).
i use ‘entire’ here very loosely; we saw nothing of the world, only a small, convenient fraction of it—unlike that of zaregoto’s through iichan, another first-person narrator in nisio’s works—for reasons greatly meaningful. araragi’s delusions about progress and growth, and even struggle and hope, that the mainline story leaves unchecked in its conclusion, despite leaving its audience fulfilled, will be looked at with a critical eye. although i’m far from a scholar or intellectual or whatever (at the very least, i’m someone who only knows what i know), i suggest you don’t read passively if you care or are interested even a little bit. i may be underestimating your and my capacities and willingness, so perhaps this precaution is unwarranted; but, those anxieties aside, i will appeal to very few popular assumptions (besides his trend of hypocrisy) about araragi and even monogatari for the sake of better understanding him, the world beyond his scope of influence, narration, and purview; and why, for one, araragi was damned from the very beginning of not only his story but life since childhood. my feelings for araragi, however much they have changed while writing this, are only one string in this web of hatred and discontent founded by none other than the man of the hour.
Chapter Text
the original argument (of the dozens that preceded this one) started with me blasting a much-quoted line from araragi; one that i feel is unjustifiably celebrated (as are many of his moments :/) widely by the fandom.
sparing the vitriol the original post contained and my… ‘inflammatory language’, i basically said that the line was egotistical and self-centered in a situation where he, as an individual, should not have been a factor at all even considering who he was addressing it to.
the comments followed with what i’ll be fair and say were logical points that accurately represent araragi’s sympathizers' perspective of him. to summarize (me, bold text):
- “it shows that he’s finally facing her in his own egotistical way.”
- “that is a fault that goes unaddressed and is symbolic of what led to the situation.”
- “he accepted who he is, and after his conclusion, he developed an optimistic outlook about himself where none existed before the series.”
- “his ‘accepting who he is’ is a copout to avoid self-reflection, by making himself a deadend. doing this preserves the traits he deems most self-defining however harmful. his low self-esteem wasn’t treated but instead buffered through his actions. his way of being isn’t justified by its positive effects on people.”
- “being around people who make him happy would obviously make him feel better, calling it a buffer is weird. getting rehabilitated through others isn’t a bad thing. he had low self-esteem for a long time, kizu was his escapism from the incident in his childhood. his conclusion is him learning to value himself. saying it’s dodging accountability doesn’t make sense.”
as i said, his points were par for araragi’s fans' perception of him; i appreciate them primarily for that fact. though, obviously, there was a lapse in mutual understanding for several reasons (as you can clearly see), but one firstly being, that definitions weren’t agreed upon.
i wasn’t saying finding yourself through others or being happy around them were bad, obviously. also, this being his conclusion isn’t significant to whether he has truly grown or not; history and progress are not linear, and you can regress somewhere while, at the same time, you progress elsewhere.
saying his ambitions and missions “buffered” him by his own intent doesn’t mean they “made him happy”, again, obviously. such means to protect something, usually fragile, with insulant; that which has no inherent positive nor negative effect on the material being insulated. only in its utility as protection is it meaningful. conflating the insulant, the surrounding material, with the matter is what he and his arc (the mainline series) try to do. mistaking the coping mechanisms for the rehabilitative work, in other words. this has nothing to do with how it makes him feel, and that being the metric by which the goodness of his actions and principles are measured (i.e. its effectiveness at making him happy however intermittently and regardless of whomever or whatever else he attained such joy from) by his fans is one thing that i also find contemptible.
insulation is not rehabilitation, and an action's result does not justify its cause.
Chapter Text
araragi’s self-loathing and derogation existed before kizu, but saying it’s because of one incident (that’s actually a direct result of its true origins) is insufficient and falls short of describing an adequate cause. taking what he says, his actions, past accounts of his life, his actions in future arcs, monogatari’s visual narratives, and even the social and cultural contexts and drawing inferences from them is best for answering how his problems came to be, his motivations both explicit and implicit, and how subsequent events in the story affected him.
luckily we don’t have to do all the labor because it’s laid out in kizu: araragi’s cynicism and general disregard for other humans are fundamental traits of his character. everything else in monogatari is built upon these qualities notwithstanding whether later developments change or reinforce them. since that incident was brought up, ill use it to verify this fact further.
he says that he couldn’t think as far back as primary school for a catalyst for his way of being, but that doesn’t mean such issues weren’t present or didn’t exist even then beyond his scope of retrospection and reasoning. that incident and subsequent fallout demonstrates such: he couldn’t recall someone whom he considered a childhood best friend nor had he (as we can infer) considered the impact his presence and friendship could have had until forced to confront ougi, through which his latent regret and guilty conscience are personified. and no, it isn’t just because he was a child—he’s professed his terrible memory before, hence his aptitude for mathematics. such even became a symbol/token of his bad memory throughout the series.
we should assume the symbolism maintained its meaning in his early life, for math was a key component of his childhood. this forgetfulness was something that developed as a consequence of his intentional denial of reality and forced ignorance of his own. this’ll be elaborated on later.
araragi doesn’t consider other people nor so much as have an interest to, even in primary-secondary school where a kid’s social curiosity starts blossoming. this isn’t me slighting him, yet, because the fault isn’t fully his.
i’m led to suspect it’s from his parents that he adopted a similar inattention, superficiality, and lack of interpersonal accountability to people with whom he is indebted. although he says it as though it’s a recent phenomenon, he’s merely talking about the extent of this lenience, and more leads me to infer that his parents still weren’t so emotionally-nurturing in his childhood as i’ll talk about next through his awkward and rather aloof familial situation. this should work as a solid basis for analysis that, of course, he wouldn’t start from given how lackadaisically he talks about his family (which is also meaningful later). i’ll further contextualize it to verify the credibility of my own assumptions, the first of many.
(also my feelings derive from my initial watch and read of monogatari. how can i interpret a character i had no prior experience or expectations for in bad faith? everything i criticize and reason from is grounded on canon material regardless of whether you agree with the conclusions reached or not.)
Chapter Text
araragi marginalizes himself. he wants to be on the fringes of society so he doesn’t have to be burdened with people even though he was never uniquely or traumatically slighted or done wrong by his peers or society (apparently, not truthfully; this is in his defense).
setting aside any personal judgments that someone could make about the “superficiality” or “immaturity” of his discontent—such judgments that i will not be making since his feelings here are important as i’ll try to prove soon—the natural consequence of that deliberate detachment is, most sinisterly—and i don’t intend to sound abstract—a malnourished soul.
humans are social creatures and require kinship, camaraderie, and community with fellow kind for the upkeep of sanity, most primarily, but also identity; so, when deprived, they turn inward and become their own company. this, being in constant dialogue with themselves, for lack of a better word, “hyperdevelops” their ego and self-consciousness. said kinship, camaraderie, etc. listed prior become just as great burdens as the people who’d presumably also be burdens to araragi. that’s where his whole plant thing comes from: he wants to be far removed from it all—the company of others and himself—however not such that he is no longer alive; he simply doesn’t want to be a sapient, thinking, and cared-about lifeform—he doesn’t want to be human—so there’s no burden on himself or anyone else.
“is that just another way of being small—as a person?”
but, he doesn’t want this burden primarily on himself, as you’ll see.
ironically, his becoming a vampire fulfilled this very dream, as analogized in his battle with guillotine cutter where he imagined and materialized his limbs as plants. we forget that oddities are conceptually immanent in the monogatari universe and are only given material form through the innermost wishes of their host. this applies here as well.
as kiss shot’s thrall, he’s on the fringes of humanity and doesn’t have to exist within the context of humanity; he has the option to liberate himself as he supposedly wanted, but he wound up proving otherwise: this desire to be alone (his… “intensity as a person”) through some existential excommunication was as shallow as the damns he gives about other people (--who aren’t exceptionally amiable individuals and don’t overexert themselves to be around him e.g. hanekawa who literally gave him a new appreciation for life. we’ll get to that). so we have this contradiction brewing, indicating that his fascination with being unhuman is misplaced and misattributed, and the cause of which ought to be addressed.
he wants to not live but he doesn’t want to not be alive either, hence his hybrid existence being the condition from which he proceeds in the series, as i’ll elaborate on regarding kizu’s conclusion. this intentional state of social alienation in which he’s grown complacent with and intentionally tries to maintain—evidenced one time of several others by his intuitive self-justification of cutting hanekawa off by dismissing and trivializing their growing relationship, rejecting the responsibility and grief he’d have to carry should he had consciously accepted that he did like her and was doing what he did for the supposed greater-good—
—is on par with the condition of adolescents growing up in suburban areas such as the setting of monogatari / araragi’s hometown.
Chapter Text
brief history lesson, i won’t be overbearing, trust.
suburban towns in the postwar economic boom period were liberalized to several benefits of the state. one most relevantly being to divide, by design, the working class into upper and lower strata. the former offered “a better quality of life”, proximal (in appearance) to the upper class who originally made up the majority of suburban towns, over the latter population of city-dwellers living in dense urban centers that concentrated residential areas with industries, factories, and supposedly “superfluous” third places of recreation and cultural centers (although they too were becoming defunct). the citydweller’s work was intimately linked with the bustling citylife, and the bustling citylife with fellow workers, who were more often than not poor or survive by their wage, which to the migrating suburbanites were all repelling factors from the city (and that also meant regularly interacting with colored people and immigrants which obviously is a fate worse than death i suppose). it’s an intraclass stratification built upon and appealing to populist beliefs to intensify racial tensions, disparities (since money was therefore allocated more to the suburbs than city), and remove a demographic of workers from their labor, nature, and social environment. such migration was even subsidized by top-heavy private “community” agencies doing the managerial labor for corporate and self-interests, making a new life model for citizens to aspire towards with the “middle-class homeowner”. this model is ripe with exceptionalism under the guise of meritocracy, supposed luxury, and of course, self-delusion (the supposed “American Dream”). all of this, while being valorized nearly to the state of fetish in the propaganda, was distancing these suburban residents physically and socially from not only community, but also, each other; neighbor and neighbor; the environment; work; society, in other words, as opposed to the densely populated villages and cities. (most of this is in no small part due to the architectural element alongside the later-described sociocultural ones with every resident having their own expansive private lots). this “upward mobility” for qualified members of the working class circumvented growing tides of class-consciousness, solidarity, and pro-socialist sentiment post-ww2, thus incentivizing division and more funding into the cult of the individual. entrance into suburbia was a concession by the state to protect the status quo, sold as the true fruits of a hard-working citizen’s labor and the cultural hegemonic ideal of the time. what everyone should aspire to. the japanese adopted similar plans as the west which differed operationally by traditional means (rural farmers were a significant part of the planning), but still, suburbia was developed, and from which followed the same social malaises.
the alienating, isolating, and aimless feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness in a stagnant life said to be “leisure” was, for young people, an oppressive force, barring them from cultures, traditions, and communities from which an identity can be found. (hence why they often appropriate the attitudes of radical, rebellious, long-established traditions of great significance in an act of defiance through means that usually are pretty shallow and superficial, barring any amount of personal stake, even time. that’s where the stereotype of the suburban anarchist or punk who hates their dad and plays omori comes from. though, i still believe living in such a place can be a radicalizing experience for the conscious, intentional suburbanite, but this is getting off topic.) it’s a life characterized by its clean-cut uniformity, civility, and detachment from societal and political dregs. life in suburbia attempts to escape from the realities of the world that coexists with it and, by extension, the realities of the internal world of the individual. It’s ironic—no, contradictory; this social atmosphere pressures if not demands a superficial connection with people; relationships steeped in dispassionate formalities and phatics about impersonal matters, and ever-without much consequence, cooperation, or commitment. this lifestyle is rewarded by the illusory dream in which the individual can exist without having to care about anything but itself for the sake of its own ego and, yet, despite its own soul. such a place could only be described as anti-humanity. it cultivates an apathy toward humankind in its abject lack of life. it’s a direct assault on the health of all who exist within its gummy maws that grinds you to pulp without leaving any bite marks. (…well, those with no intention of retiring soon.) a resident who isn’t conscious of any of this is liable to menticide; developing shallow and egotistical habits and ideals that do not really work to escape this trap but, rather, give them a sense of purpose. one or several that cushion their lack of self from being exposed to the dep void in which it inhabits; providing poptarts for their malnourished, starving soul yearning for daily bread. (cough, cough.)
(there’s vast research on this topic, you don’t have to take my word for it.)
this is all symptomized by such that afflicts and is portrayed through most characters in monogatari and their oddities: from araragi and hanekawa to nadeko and senjougahara, be it directly or indirectly (via familial relationships that have been plagued by the neglect, vanity, and nihilism that all could derive from living in such a place... or what have you). this is part of the wider backdrop of the series that i honestly have never seen touched on before.
all of this is also supported by the clever artistic direction the adaptation took by rendering all civilians and residents and background characters absent in araragi’s pov; as opposed to nadeko’s, however, for example, where they’re all humanoid silhouettes whom she at least still perceives as beings occupying space.
this distinction… is telling, implying that the great degree of araragi’s disinterest is not a universal standard that those under the same material and geographical conditions are also afflicted with. much to the qualms i have and will elaborate on later about araragi with these factors in mind that i feel have been profusely and (i hope is true by time i'm done writing this) necessarily detailed.
Chapter Text
anyway, the main point of his plant-thing and the challenge presented by his vampire-becoming is to avoid living with accountability to humans, simply existing by nature of whatever alternative existence he could. no pangs of conscience needed for he’d be of no blame for simply ‘being’. in his outburst while giving his life up to kiss shot he virtually laid out what sort of person he considered ideal for himself to become, which pretty much equates to someone who doesn’t allow anything or anyone to personally affect him. selfish and egotistical a bit? yes, but that’s no secret to the viewer… right now.
it’s escapism, yea, but whenever that’s said, you have to ask “an escape from what?”
the suburbs? his home life? his inhumanity?
try, the burden of interpersonal responsibility. the benignity of a plant to humans is secondary to the relief of accountability of being one to him. (remember this order of priorities.) i think that, and the “why?”, are substantial enough now given the above explanations and extrapolations, but it’ll be further emphasized later.
the same vague, arbitrary proclamation is also why flatly saying he started “valuing himself” doesn’t give the full picture of his growth, because what to him dictates that growth? from where or what is this value derived? valuing himself implies that he had to extract value from something external to himself since he perceived himself valueless, hence his rationale behind the streetlight-kiss shot scene.
what is it then?
well, at the end of kizu we see araragi spare kiss shot at the expense of his humanity by indebting their existences to each other, sharing a burden that he had no real incentive to beyond—his altruism? his selflessness? his kindness? no. absolutely not. you clown. not only for the context provided earlier, he states it himself that he would’ve been swarmed by regret for the rest of his life if he hadn’t “saved” kiss shot there despite seeing her eat another human being and knowing that she does such. why? i mean, yea, it’s been demonstrated that the mere prospect of facing regret and guilt is a basic araragi-repellent, but i assume he could forget them and continue on ignorant of his own burdens as he always has done. this would have been easier for his mental, especially with the excuse kiss shot (guillotine cutter, too) had provided him. he never had a high enough regard for his own life, never mind that of others, proven by his still sacrificing himself to kiss shot at the beginning of kizu even after recalling his sisters and parents.
if anything, having to live mutually dependent with anyone let alone a monster would have been a fate worse than death to pre-kizu araragi, so what changed in that duration?
or, who changed him?
Chapter Text
let’s shift our attention to hanekawa for a moment. she is considered just as much if not more an anomaly than aberrations. araragi corroborated this sentiment, he had to, because of many things of note during that spring break but none more notably for this case than her friendship; more specifically, that which bound araragi to interpersonal responsibility—which he consistently evaded throughout his life—albeit to something as seemingly intuitive as living. so, in a way, she brought him back to ground zero.
it’s impressive; her seemingly selfless and unyielding support for araragi, that is.
but… why? i hope most would agree that her religious infatuation and loyalty aren’t the “thankless charity” she and others’ astonishment would lead you to believe, and certainly, it isn’t exceptional selflessness or kindness, like… she hardly knew him. so, why? and by extension, why araragi?
this excerpt from their first encounter stuck with me.
it’s never expounded upon. araragi is left confused, so he casts it wayside just as hanekawa does. but in hindsight, concerning later revelations about hanekawa, this paragraph’s significance gives meaning to her feelings for araragi and, as I’ll explain afterwards, araragi’s newfound resolve to live where such a concept didn’t exist before her in any way beyond an instinctual fear of death.
see, devoted believers follow and worship their god with expectations that their submission and commitment to living by its principles will bear fruit for themselves, be it in material prosperity, a grant of authority over spiritual things, absolution, or will privilege them to a higher final destination, afterlife, subsequent life—what have you. the reasons are vast across the world religions. generally speaking though, organized religion promises an elevated state in either this reality or another. (this excerpt was about her wanting there to exist such a thing as a vampire, i should add.) however, should there be another “existence greater than humans”, what would be the reward for an aspiring believer? such a transcendent being who doesn’t campaign on eschatological beliefs or divine favor, to whom one could relinquish oneself to live in their steed? what would be the “blessing” from knowingly committing philosophical suicide for… let’s say, ‘a monster’? as i see it, this wasn’t a word puzzle or riddle she was raising to araragi; she was toying with an idea, a temptation rather, that she’s been having, intentionally giving voice to it without revealing what it could imply; hence araragi noting that she seemed as though she were “trying to pick her words carefully”. she was purposefully obscuring her temptation to self-annihilation by way of submission to a “greater-than-life existence”. regarding herself, the reason was to alleviate her overburdened soul, weathered by the stresses of keeping up airs amid her abusive domestic life, hence her excessive humility and self-abasement (“i just know what i know”; her cringing whenever araragi exalts her). her sacrifices would thereby be given meaning and purpose greater than her own despair in its utility to a transcendent figure: a vampire. such has been the function of religion (not to be confused with spirituality) since its organization; turning spiritual life, which has historically been compatible with and innate to material life, into dogma from an—as gospel would have it—immaterial, otherworldly source such that it presides over the material world. for the believer, it’s a way of justifying a retreat from reality’s pressures, heartaches, responsibilities, and struggles by unloading everything on the omnipotent shoulders of the supernatural other or/and subsuming herself in its otherworldly realm of existence. escapism, one of its many manifestations. (this isn’t me denying the legitimacy of any given religious gospel despite the antitheist connotation of this part, i am a Christian after all, but denying the justification for religious institution as another way of consolidating power by attributing the will of a god to man would betray history and science. not to sound gaudy (although i probably already do by this point)). (also, see how that not only differs from but also diametrically opposes araragi’s wanting to dodge liability like he’s some wall street broker?) she muddies her reasons throughout kizu using excuses such as “it’s what a friend does” despite the lack of real substance in their relationship, or as some payback for saving her during those fights, which crumbles in examinations into why she was even a part of them anyway. basically, it’s not because she’s exceptionally friendly or was simply in love with araragi as a person or some nonsense.
(“…if you got to know the real me, you’d feel disillusioned.”)
her interaction with araragi in that first scene was desperation as much as it was chance, hence her even speaking these lines [in the “it doesn't have to be a god” screenshot] where she simultaneously wanted to conceal this shameful truth while still hoping someone could hear her weep. same intentions were demonstrated in the PE shed scene… a bit more subliminally(?).
of course, araragi wouldn’t have picked up on her words’ meaning just from this encounter. doubt he would even with knowledge of all that would transpire in ensuing arcs. still, the narrative had already assumed an ethical premise, be it intentionally or unintentionally, by which the characters’ actions will be measured: that inherent in the act of self-sacrifice is a love of others; that the act in itself comes from a place of concern for others, not regarding harmful reasons/intents for why one may do such—like the viable force of extraction and manipulation in its purported benevolence and extremity—as incompatible with its supposed innate goodwill. self-sacrifice is “kindness” in its most emphatic incarnation in monogatari, such that it superimposes on and sometimes even supersedes the cause one may have in one’s doing of such. the narrative fails to contest this premise which it presents to be “self-evidently true” or “how things are” and needless to investigate—in fact, it REINFORCES it through araragi—birthing moronic terms to describe him such as “selfish altruism”. everything criticized relative to this act of self-sacrifice exists within the hoax that it’s fundamentally good irrespective of cause; a moral good indicative of growth, the thesis countervailing the “self-victimizing” antithesis, regardless of the “why”, while hyperfocusing on others.
Chapter Text
araragi’s an object, teleologically characterized by his invulnerable purpose rather than causes, in a universe that inflicts itself onto him by the nature of his being (not only evident through hanekawa, the oddities (the heroines by proxy), but also gahara: the two closest characters to him. ill get to the latter later); a purportedly naturally-occurring balancing force whom the prime subjects, the heroines, experience, and by whom are changed. the girls are privileged with (or, some would say, ‘condemned to’) subjecthood, that is, the capability of being affected by the world, because they’re treated by the story as idk ACTUAL CHARACTERS WITH FAULTS OF THEIR OWN PRESENTS AND PASTS PRECEDING MONOGATARI THAT SHAPED WHO THEY ARE. uhum.
in this sense, just as hanekawa and the narrative (up to a certain point) try deflecting with her “exceptional kindness”, araragi and the narrative (to the very end) try doing the same… by claiming there are no saviors.
meanwhile, for all intents and purposes, araragi is the de facto savior in monogatari.
araragi’s is hardly substantially scrutinized because he’s rendered to this Christlike figure (no exaggeration), nonhuman, and this is obscured by the fact of the story being told through him which gives some air of personalness/intimacy; his backstory and its circumstances’ apparent mundaneness relative to the heroines gives an air of “normalcy” to the audience, also. the cast doesn’t intimately know him in his youth save for… one person… (not even his family, except partly for tsukihi, as you’ll see), and—as the narrator, but more importantly, as araragi—of course, he doesn’t consciously think about what he sees as “the default” in his life. he doesn’t reflect warmly on his childhood, after all.
all of this exempts araragi from any challenge to the things he’s internalized in his developmental years, the realities which shaped his character. the few times it’s subjected to scrutiny, especially in owari, it never digs deep, and he comes out of it like, “well, lesson learned! i’ll fix that now that you’ve mentioned it,” hence my overemphasizing substantial change; that is, something that influences the trajectory of his way of being and justification for existing, which nothing does.
despite my saying prior the heroines are the true subjects of the story, this can even be extended to every other character in reference to naoetsu and its closed-off, self-contained, impersonal suburban environment. and no i’m not making a grand ask or wanting too much out of the story; the material realities in which a story and its casts exists has been the main subjects of scrutiny in several stories (id like to cite subahibi here, and i will because that’s literally all of jabberwocky ii and such was somberly reflected upon by takuji in imoi, but mahoyo and its characterizations pivot primarily on ecological and environmental causes, and the vn does it so well). a character's upbringing also is often the basis for a lot of fans’ apologia. not to mention that araragi’s the vehicle through which the audience experiences the heroines, so his character is evaluated through THEM rather than all of his experiences which came before them. you look at mayoi, gahara, hanekawa, nadeko, et al., and their lives are put in their proper context from which a cause for their oddities can be found. with araragi and his vampirism that’s never done.
oshino gives an offhand remark essentially saying, “you should really do some soul searching,” and araragi privileged himself with what that entailed—this sacrifice for the sake of self-worth dogma, which was only a bandage for the ever-present wound that is his perceived lack of self in his aimlessness, which falls under the broader dilemma he has with humanity and human beings.
that was what his nature would become. the narrative allows him such power; otherwise, the audience wouldn’t have been rewarded with the main attractants, the heroines, whom, through narrative technicalities that made araragi the gravitational center of the world as described above, araragi has easier access to. also, as i said, he’s the narrator; his subjecthood exists abstractly; it is only ever recognized through his personal and others’ accounts of his supposed “growth”. if he has blinders over his history then obviously, considering that he has no one around who really knows him as he "was" as much as how he "is" (the kunagisa to ii; the zenkichi to medaka), no one else would recognize it, not even ougi, because even for something to be in his self conscious he has to have a recognition or conception of it. mental things don’t materialize from nothing.
it’s like he’s running hurdles on a track, steady jumping over taller and taller ones, tripping and falling on the occasion but nevertheless trudging on, and meanwhile, there’s actually no finish line on the track he’s running, because he’s running it for the sake of the obstacles, not any milestone whereafter other obstacles will come. and should there be no more hurdles, he’d be out of a reason to run and his abject emptiness will once again come to light, even though there’s another track that exists outside of his purview that he can’t even recognize. one where he ACTUALLY DOES FIND PASSION IN ANYTHING BEYOND MAKING HIMSELF A TOOL OF CONVENIENT SALVATION FOR HIMSELF AND FEMALE ATTENTION. LIKE, THATS SENJOUGAHARA’S ENTIRE ROLE IN THE STORY WHICH IS JUST SO FUCKED IN A NUMBER OF WAYS (ill get to it) AND YET HE STILL FAILS TO LEARN.
and, and! they try to justify this with arbitrary conditions that ground some purportedly absolute definition of what entails “saving”.
“only you can save yourself,” right? ohhhh, because i have to want to do it, that’s why! so without the resources and knowledge in which you possess i can still save myself through, uh, pure will and determination? hope? okay? i’ll reify my point about araragi’s savior role: salvation, even in theological terms, is VERY MUCH intervention by an external actor to whom the power to justify/deliver people belongs, for the redemption of those faithful. yes, it does start with faith, but it REQUIRES the savior figure in order for the act to be carried out because it bears with it the resources, the power, the grace to save. (hence why a lot of radicals feel “salvation”—‘great man-ism’, a deus ex machina, or cosmic justice—is opposite to and irreconcilable with “liberation”—collective struggle of an organized, delineated body relying on no external benevolent force or divine grace for determining themselves. i have my own conciliatory interpretations but who gives a damn). and i don’t even fully reprimand oshino for pushing this! honestly, his entire ‘balance’ schtick can be interpreted in a way that necessitates some synthesis of contradictions, which are inherently unstable and imbalanced. (as demonstrated above in the previous kizu excerpt i posted, he was the first character in the series to chide araragi about his oddity, which are the individual’s contradictions incarnate.) however, the “only you can save yourself” thing isn’t so easily reconciled with, and yet… what’s more grueling than that, his subjective idealism, is the opportunistic dickhead who assumes that messianic role to cheat his way through the process of human connection with access to the means of salvation (which is oshino, for the most part, in bake).
this is unlike medaka, who is much closer to the altruistic messianic figure araragi is supposed to function as, in her indiscriminate service to everyone for menial and great things, especially her enemies; subjecting herself to their conditions to understand their plights to the furthest extent. her developing into a subject of the story, a citizen under caeser rule, was what fulfilled her arc—not her defeating the sublime evils or making the bad guys heel turn. one may say it’s because she has the power to dictate reality, but, in the same vein, kumagawa’s cause was also a love for people; people who were exiled from humanity, dealt bad hands by fate, and rendered to social parasites if not subhumans: minuses. in his inevitable fate to lose, he’s the weakest of all, and yet…
for the weak, he fights in spite of himself.
while her heart bleeds for everyone in spite of herself.
both of their passions, principles, and purposes lie within the humans they’ve indebted themselves to; their duties are not their own, but those of others.
again, unlike araragi… who has no passion beyond his own preservation and actualization; who bases his principles off such and uses those brought to him on a silver platter as means to these ends.
“selfish altruism,” so called.
Chapter Text
anyway, he developed his own concept of “self-sacrifice”, and it was first seen in the streetlight (or subway if you’re going by the movies) scene with kiss shot, and it was pitched as noble in an albeit wry way as though his heart was aching for kiss shot. (this isn’t me saying he did the wrong thing and if you at this point still think everything im talking about is vindicated by the result then…..) without recapping what’s already been said about his salvatory enterprises post-kizu, for what reason was he so eager to subject himself to her after his initial reluctance? as a means of distracting and alleviating oneself from insufferable material realities, like hanekawa to the supernatural other… right? no, obviously not, we’re talking about araragi. monogatari requires the audience to accept the premises that “the effect of one thing justifies its cause” and “if two things produce the same outcome, they’re the same.”
rewinding. getting back to kizu’s finale and araragi’s decision, but first, the gym storage room scenes.
hanekawa becomes araragi’s impetus to live after that fight and from there on. he swore to himself before her intervention that he’d die as recompense, if you let him tell it, for allowing kiss-shot to live despite knowing very well that she preys on humans, and that was the resolution he was coming to terms with while recognizing that he, too, would become a vampire, which compounded the stress. it wasn’t until he saw, for himself, her eat a human that he began feeling responsible; implying that if he had never seen her eat guillotine cutter, and were never made aware of such a thing, he’d be alright knowing others whom he’s of no affiliation with are victims to her nature. remember what i said about his order of priorities in the plant section? the good of others is preceded by, once again, his fears of regret, guilt, and commitment. these things that moved him to the brink of suicide. this led me to believe that araragi would have had not-so-great qualms about living as a full-fledged vampire should he had never seen what happened to guillotine cutter and should it have been an inevitable fate;
he could’ve justified himself in the same abstract way he did kiss shot were she to be the one doing the hunting and he, eating from her harvest until he grew indifferent to human life. it’d give himself plausible deniability, however superficial, of the murders; those which he’d also justify by his nature as a vampire. such was the extent of the mental gymnastics he was willing to go through to preserve himself. he also never had any significant attachment to his humanity; it was his recognition of self, rather, regardless of the physical form he possessed (which i will be getting to pretty soon), that he’d maintain in all incarnations. so, it just came down to whether he liked kiss shot more than hanekawa... well, that is, if he weren’t so anxious about breaking from the familiarity of his status quo, despite how adverse to or detached he was from it. aspiring to his humanity, therefore, was obvious to him. this aspiration simply shouldn’t be taken as something araragi really cares much about. that said, hanekawa’s religious infatuation with him bore fruit in her adventures chasing and accompanying him as a vampire through the fights. a reprieve from her abject reality to live as an accomplice to a monster was her ‘reward’. the reason i went into profuse detail about hanekawa’s sacrifices was to compare their nature to araragi’s; contrary to her, however, that is his most defining characteristic, which again is telling.
bullet points:
• araragi, at the end of kizu, sacrificed his humanity for kiss shot; he would’ve regretted it otherwise, and i asked why earlier since it contradicted what drove him to offer himself to her in the initial streetlight/subway scene—that is, kiss shot’s expressed desire to live—because he would have to live with the guilt of denying an existence he perceived much greater than his of what he felt he didn’t have any right to possess over her.
• then i described hanekawa’s own “altruism” which led araragi to garner a new appreciation for life that he hadn’t recognized pre-kizu; a realization that he couldn’t forget, couldn’t deny, or ignore—it was a burdensome thing—for that was the cost of befriending hanekawa.
• then, just as hanekawa couldn’t allow him to die in the PE scene, he couldn’t allow kiss shot to do the same, despite her wishes to die and despite such being for the greater good of humanity—that, again, is the contradiction.
such was not the case because he had grown an affection for kiss shot as hanekawa had for him (although hers was honestly kinda… fetishistic. no hate), no, even if he did it wasn’t the cause behind his actions; rather, it was because he’d have to suffer the burden of knowing he was responsible for depriving a being, whom he then projected life onto after hanekawa imbued life into him, of living. this was intensified by the fact she expressed a desire for death; that which araragi would’ve certainly been more than willing to comply with at the beginning of kizu, for he had little regard for his own life at the time.
he was stuck at a crossroads between:
1. hanekawa, who affirmed life,
2. his duty to humanity, embodied in guillotine cutter and kiss shot’s purposeful demonstration of her antagonistic nature, and, most cripplingly,
3. his own anxieties, primarily those of having to shoulder a burden by himself even if the outcome was to his benefit. he didn’t reminisce warmly on kiss shot, he dreaded the weight he’d have to carry knowing that he killed her when she wanted to die.
hence oshino called hanekawa ‘cruel’ after revealing to araragi kiss-shot’s goal to die by his hands.
this isn’t me saying he didn’t truly like kiss shot or something. i’m ordering what took precedence in his mind, his immediate priorities in crisis, and why guillotine cutter and kiss-shot failed in, 1., assuming he would choose humanity over himself when he’s implied several times he doesn’t really care about humanity or being human as much as himself, whoever ‘himself’ would’ve wound up becoming (in zoku it was analogized in the butterfly dream theory w/ ougi)
and, 2., accepting anything this volatile dispassionate amorphous blobman says at face value. that’s how the aforementioned second path at the crossroads in the prior paragraph [“...his duty to humanity…”] was immediately disqualified such that the audience never even considered it a part of his motivations. even after he saw her eat guillotine cutter and hanekawa talked him up into fighting kiss shot, the ‘protect humanity’ angle was caused by reaction rather than duty, so it wasn’t his animating principle and thus of low-priority; he’s not so noble. rather, it was guillotine cutter’s, and, to a lesser degree, oshino’s, because this fight was for the sake of mankind as he accurately assessed.
therefore his dilemma was truly between hanekawa, his obligation to live, which was intentionally made to seem directly opposed to his own anxiety, his fear of regret and guilt; no consideration for human-being needed. now, remember all i said just now and on multiple occasions and supported ad nauseam that araragi has very little affection and love for his own humanity and therefore humankind at large? because he’s never felt truly human in his self-perceived marginality hence the plant stuff? hence his self-isolation and cynicism despite not having had any severely negative experiences with people? it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that araragi loathed humanity (albeit very flimsily because once again this is all caused by his lack of personal attachment to and alienation from human society).
now……. imagine how little skin he truly shed, how unencumbered he must have been, by the prospect of becoming the hybrid he became to avoid having to carry that weight of killing kiss shot for the rest of his life.
right, forgot to mention i lied prior—this WAS NOT a mutually dependent relationship. araragi and kiss shot were NOT equally accountable to each other, for, in every master-slave dynamic (because that’s what it was (not by those vampiric ‘thrall’ rules)), the master is the independent autonomous actor who wields power regardless of whatever vows one makes, so no matter how sincere a verbal commitment may be, it doesn’t change the imbalance of power. he’s just responsible for maintaining her. araragi could carry on unfettered while shinobu was bound to her humiliated state, dependent on him for sustenance.
but he can get away with saying lofty bs like this as if that changes the fact. as if occasioning that cram school every now and then is such a great commitment.
oh but wait, there is another consequence he has to deal with that just so happens to make his future salvatory enterprise from kizu onward that much easier to accomplish. without having to endure the grueling work of earning trust from individuals who haven’t made him the subject of their monster fetish (i like hanekawa, but… yea), araragi, by his aberrant nature, attracts oddities. naturally occurring defense mechanisms. they’re sublime forces of internal balance that are both necessary and natural in this way, thus oshino’s whole ‘maintaining balance’ thing. just as the vampire was to araragi’s self-marginalization. araragi being an attractive force for them is just so convenient. this will be the focus of the next part.
an ending where the misery is equally shared? yea haha ok. he quite literally only said this to make himself feel better i’m not kidding.
it’s as if yozo oba took his clown act to heart, giving ppl laughs that completely gladdened their days—their lives, even—never changed course after takeichi saw through him and every other “takeichi” who’d cross him in the future, basked in the women he got from that wit and his looks, and dasai sold it as some self-actualization tale.
“more self-sacrificing for dinner, nisio? served on fine china, on the house, with your choicest distressed women?!” like okay dude.
Chapter Text
the compromise oshino offered was easy, so incredibly easy that araragi boldly asserted to kiss shot in her desperate pleas for death that he would be doing such because he “wanted to”, for he could continue living spared of a great burden, and—because he still had the freedom to live independently of kiss shot (who then became shinobu) should he have a change of heart—with only nominal commitment. the fact remained, despite how earnest his promise to her and even others in the series may be, that his commitment(s) would bind him to no material ramifications; he has nothing to lose in this compromise. his flowery assertions to oshino, shinobu, and hanekawa meant as much as he decided they did.
from kizu’s ending, this salvific roleplay in which he’d gamble his life throughout the rest of the series was grounded on two assumptions:
1, that he lost something he truly cherished or would come to take for granted—his humanity, and,
2, that he was being altruistic because the narrative embedded it into the mere act of self-sacrifice as though it were a truism.
“sin is not what you do but the spirit in which you do it.”
this is a principle monogatari doesn’t accept.
i’d say it’s the reverse: “virtue is in the purpose one makes for themselves.”
this would imply that the spirit in which it's done is negligible to the net output since everything would be defined by its end, subsumed in its purpose, rendering the reasons behind such actions philosophically fluid if not trivial; preemptively vindicating the contradictions that may occur from this causal disconnect. making them seem benign.
nisio’s hack ass even pulled one of these tricks in the afterword by compromising particular conceptual definitions and melting them into each other according to some arbitrary standard of “values”.
(assuming you want a leader to ‘march to their own drum’ instead of the drum of those they’re leading is… without digging much deeper, so expected of him.)
only a guy like this dork could make “selfish altruism” a thing his fans would say.
bit of an aside (even more than my other ones): the audience has to remember that an author is also bound by the limited scope of knowledge their experiences and material realities provided them and that just because their beliefs are fictionalized in print/utilized in a phenomenal work of art doesn’t make them sublime. take ougi’s word for it in zoku.
Chapter Text
to rehash a bit before proceeding, araragi’s self-sacrifice is in stark contrast to hanekawa’s, who relinquished herself to relieve her soul of the impersonal, meritorious, straight-laced image she and others cast onto her. hanekawa’s conclusion being to travel and leave to find herself is possibly the best out of all the characters in terms of taking the steps to become their own person. (araragi’s of course was by far the worst as you’ll see later.)
the costs araragi pays for his wanton sacrificial adventurism throughout the series are mostly physical, usually nigh-fatal. …okay, honestly? this is like nothing to animanga protags. let’s be so serious. like, assessing character growth, the degree of any hardship or extent of one’s determination, by how badly a character gets their ass beat is at best naive, particularly for a series whose world is not built upon any power system in which castes are based on battle strength and the like. for someone like araragi who never truly valued his life, it frankly isn’t much of a stake either. the only truly meaningful fight for him was his versus kiss-shot because the results from such fundamentally changed the trajectory of his life past that moment. even a seminal fight like his against seishirou isn’t meaningful as defined above; its purpose is to demonstrate, again, araragi’s commitment to his resolve. i don’t want to say it’s just upping the ante each time since each of those battles is relative to the opposing character, but none post-kizu challenge him ideologically, because from there he’s already fixed his mind on a purpose. oh and he can also regenerate. this is convenient for obvious reasons but even more so for him since it means his battles are episodic and fleeting, and the physical pains will pass after a bit of time; nothing that confronts the paradox in his “selfish altruism” or even his more narrative-focal struggle for long-term commitment. it’s all just evasive enough to keep him from a protracted struggle while also theatrical and gory enough to give an impression of meaningful conflict to an audience.
the other cost he pays is of course mental through his inevitable failures and shortsighted decisions in his “helping others save themselves” (putrid line) that resulted in great regrets. this was the core of a lot of his development: learning to take them in stride, faltering only for a second. good for him. but, again, none of this challenges the root of his (lack of-)character as we’re led to believe. (that is, i’ll restate here in case it hasn’t been concisely put yet, his perceived alienation from humans and hence humanity, both his own and others. monogatari ‘remedies’ him by curtailing the process of human connection by giving him the key to the heroine’s deepest characteristic struggles embodied in oddities, but that remedy is a buffer, not a cure; it, as i said, trims the long, arduous process even to garner so much trust as to bear witness to someone’s truest, naked self, and araragi exploits his utility to the heroines as a hero-like savior to profit himself off this stolen proximity. am i getting redundant? i don’t know, everything here is disorganized as is. just retracing my steps.) his contradictions are preemptively justified using seemingly humble “self-improvement” jargon used with armchair psychology that gives him an air of humility and makes his efforts appear as progress, apologizing for everything he asserts as being “araragi koyomi” just because he consciously and confidently takes responsibility for it now. as if accepting the terms and conditions and extending the detcord of a lit stick of dynamite makes it not a stick of dynamite anymore. and i’m not making any moral judgments, but that individualistic “it’s who i am” deal we get from him in zoku is a dead-end.
with that declared, his way of being is to preserve himself because it’s “what he wants”, as he always repeats, not “what he ought to do”, as demonstrated through a character i’m getting to pretty soon. his challenge then is to accept whatever repercussions come with the purpose he extracts self-worth from despite this purpose being tangential to the root of his problem.
the only thing worse than a disease is a misdiagnosis.
he’s setting himself up for failure.
it’s like…mamiya takuji (again yes again idfc), in both of IMOI’s endings; after his escapades as the savior in his pursuit to ‘fulfill the prophecy’ he gradually comes to realize the futility of his actions in the final days leading to the end sky, that is, the culminating event of his supposed purpose. as his lucidity sharpens and apocalyptic fervor fizzes out into the everyday banality it materially was, he finds himself in an abyss where meaning and ideals become indistinct from the cold, ordinary, faraway sky that was supposed to beckon him to a lost home paved by a cosmic love, an extraordinary eternity. in the wonderful everyday ending, he finds in kimika a passion truer than anything he’s felt in his entire life from his childhood to that point despite approaching inevitable demise, and this is the only moment in his story where he becomes his own person, reclaiming himself from the conditions which subdued him. contrarily, in the true ending, he is left alone to mull over the wholesale absurdity of his life, more notably, his savior-being: his supposed purpose.
i never pass up on an opportunity to post this line.
with no more time, no more resources to exhaust, no more to achieve, it was neither sorrow, regret, nor satisfaction that filled him in the end, but apathy.
to suffer from despair, one must first have expectations, so what would one who was born a minute before one’s death—with no hope or dreams for their life—experience in their internal world besides nothingness?
a town where civilians have been rendered to empty space. a seasoned coward and escape artist. a poor memory. a nonhuman, both mentally and physically, not only as a monster but also a savior. with little regard if not a smug disdain for humanity. the world be damned, araragi has only ever wanted “the melody”.
Chapter Text
i know this might look like a random stray, and yea it kinda is, but i saw this posted somewhere with a lot of positive reception and it annoyed me, so i knew it’d be appropriate here. this is the bs made into aspirational sayings.
i’m not saying you have to cite the reasons starting from the day of your birth for why you take up this or that therapeutic measure; there is a private element to it whose meaning i can’t undermine. but, it does cultivate an individualistic entitlement to truth that would naturally be inclined to pivot around one’s personal biases and comforts, despite the constructive air the individual may attribute to it. this is especially the case for those who haven’t nurtured a habit of critiquing either self or the world in their life, much like araragi, who was raised to conform and retreat to a comfortable place when found in his absurdity. i don’t want to pathologize this egocentrism as a ‘narcissistic tendency’, but it does enable confirmation biases and the like while critical investigation or inquiry of oneself (relative to one’s material condition and how they shaped one’s self-becoming) are hardly touched upon in favor of an immaterial, vague hope for a satisfactory future.
those antisocial attitudes have perforated today’s westernized japan and have become the nature of social life in suburbia as i’ve detailed earlier. and the more i think about araragi’s supposed statuses i’ve read in a musubi (off-season novel) synopsis years ago (pre-translation; i have not (*yet to) read the entire novel although im aware of some major developments), i wonder if nisio consciously made araragi this way, or if he realized a part of himself in his life in the break between musubi—or off-season in general—and zoku (leaning towards this idea). what happens to him in that novel, what he becomes, just… makes too much sense for me to say nisio was portraying some 'redeemable' moral through araragi.
Chapter Text
araragi doesn’t want to counteract these life-negating attitudes; even though it doesn’t require him to fully destroy who he recognizes as himself, he doesn’t want a synthesis. he acts to maintain homeostasis. he tries his damndest to keep feeding his contradictions, but because what he’s expropriating is others’ misery, others’ sadness and burdens, it isn’t looked at as a feeble and self-protective if not even exploitative thing, because it helps others. it’s considered heroic, knightly; he’s again been rendered the hanekawian god described earlier thus forsaking his susceptibility to the world… again.
another character i can compare him to in this case is aoko aozaki, specifically in mahoyo (which i do not have good screenshots on-demand for), who marched full steam ahead in her dualism as both magus and student despite their conflicting natures. she’s just as self-conscious as araragi; she knew well of her own struggles with self-accountability; that this wasn’t because of any resolution she came to rationally;
no, but instead, her cowardice—her weakness—in not being able to reject a duty levied on her even if it puts in harms way what she likes. this was what she supposedly “wanted” or “chosen”, at least that’s what she’d try convincing herself.
one instance where this is spotlighted was during her battle with touko where she quite literally put the balance of the universe in jeopardy by extracting time from the future to rewind soujyuro’s five minutes backwards. touko rightly pressed her, asking how will she fix this, and aoko meaningfully replied that she’ll figure it out later. through her acknowledgment of the contradiction, the “impossibility” made possible through the fifth magic which rewound soujyuro’s time, she also recognized her responsibility to keep this paradox in perpetuity by placing the surplus five minutes several millennia in the future (if im recalling correctly). yes, the situation was dire and urgent, but that doesn’t vindicate her decision which was a direct attack on not just humankind but existence itself. (remember: this entire diatribe isn’t to attack araragi morally—if so you would’ve seen at least one mention of his liking-to-grope-kids-ism by now.) i feel that this moment parallels nicely with kizuragi’s dilemma at the end of the kiss shot fight, but is distinguished in the motivations behind each of these two characters:
- aoko’s resolve to save soujyuro was grounded primarily on her unique feelings for him—letting him stay dead would’ve been more beneficial for her individually, even—which means she recognized it as something she must do for someone she cherishes, so she effectively declared her bias for him over the universe in her actions, and secondary was her feeling of indebtedness.
- araragi’s resolve, which kinda proportionally contrasts, was primarily to save himself from regret, death being too extreme a cop-out and secondarily forbidden by hanekawa, whom he did have a personal interest in but she was not the only impetus behind such a decision. neither was kiss shot herself. he personally, psychologically, benefited from keeping her alive.
araragi never loses his liberty to act on his will and only once had to be dependent on another person(s) to fulfill his duty as a sacrificial lamb—kaiki (and gahara)—in the only arc where araragi was utterly disempowered and forced to the margins. nadeko, for that reason and another, is still his greatest regret i feel (with another person, but it’s needless to mention here), despite the situation being effectively resolved. oshino warned araragi about nadeko, but because he doesn’t sincerely engage with the people he “helps save themselves” nor has a critical eye, he couldn’t recognize nadeko as anything more than a helpless victim post-affliction despite knowing her for most of his life.
he’s streamlined the process of building trust, as i said earlier, that cannot be mechanized through rigid formulae or granted by nature of one’s being. caveats exist, however, for men with capital—that which araragi virtually is in his access to oshino and aberrant knowledge in bakemono.
see, his identifying oddities and his magnetizing them made navigating the heroine’s internal world much easier; he wouldn’t have to develop the trust and proximity required for one to open up to him about their innermost insecurities, those of which embodied in said oddities, since he promises to help them with that little monster-thing pestering them, like some occult therapist, giving him a waypoint from “stranger” to “intimate partner”/“friend” post-obligatory mayhem. straight to the angst, straight to the substantive relationship, straight to the melody, because you’re araragi, the navigator of the female heart.
like, this:
with senjougahara, who was exceptionally compliant in her desperation, araragi never had to build some relationship to earn her trust, which is a far more grueling, prolonged, tedious, and precarious task than a singular moment or a sequence of isolated events. that’s why he is so sacrifice-happy; it makes the patience and flexibility of developing human connection an afterthought because, as elaborated before, the act of sacrifice is a transaction for burden. like, a literal afterthought; senjougahara states she’ll deal with whatever comes with loving him after grafting herself onto the guy. and as i’ve said, he has the resources to help. he’s a magnet for others’ problems from which he can keep feeding his soul despite the burdens he vows to help carry in their steed; these burdens that he imposes upon himself to feign intimacy; that’s his profound “development”. it’s implied in zoku by his function as the impetus which formed the world; his carrying of the 20% which created the 120% “mirror world”.
alright. i’ve referenced and mentioned her enough throughout this paper. after throwing shots and dissing under my breath, it’s about time i address what it is that feeds into my general…lets say, ‘distaste’ about her.
my final points will be from investigating senjougahara, who i have to say is truly the most fantastical character of the cast, bar none—including the specialists, oddities, and hanekawa—for the sole reason that she fell in love with araragi. the real araragi. neither hanekawa’s nor nadeko’s araragis.
tsukihi—whom i alluded to before as one of the few characters who know araragi’s nature—said to nadeko that although people think araragi is the only one for senjougahara, it’s actually the opposite: senjougahara is the only one for araragi.
she’s absolutely right.
Chapter Text
see…she fell in love with his so-called “altruism”, which truly is the most defining trait of his character, as opposed to hanekawa who “fell in love” with him as the supernatural other, the “hero” who’d liberate her, which she had to contend with in her arcs. but, the thing is… his “altruism” is of something closer to the absence of personhood than the presence of such. self-sacrifice, the act of, is a negation of the self for the accommodation of the other, which in itself isn’t indicative of any universal value of the worth of one’s life—it’s relative to whatever is at stake which more often than not is of great importance to the individual or collective—but, when self-sacrifice is one’s defining characteristic such that it’s done as wantonly as araragi does it… well, what is there to that person? in its wholesale benevolence, nothing or no one is particularly special to araragi outside of their quality as someone viable for his help. hence he has no real passion for anything, anyone, besides those eligible, and this duty to self-sacrifice.
(although with araragi it’s not truly ‘wholesale benevolence’ because he does it for camaraderie with girls uniquely (you already know i’m saying something about that) unlike someone like medaka or shirou emiya, but it’s still perceived to be.)
altruism implies there is self-perceived value the sacrificer is putting at stake, and araragi’s stake is his life, but his life in his eyes is given value by his self-sacrifice, and he can only sacrifice to something that needs to be saved—which means, outside of the extraordinary circumstances of life, death, and salvation wherefrom his opportunity to self-sacrifice and thus give himself value comes, he’s a literal blank slate. and honestly? given my tastes, there’s nothing wrong with that, hence my citing the three other nisio protags who were also at times in their development “blank” or “personless”. i like all three, especially iichan. in fact, i have a bit of a bias towards that sort of character.
however, despite admitting this, that trait, in itself…is not a romantically attractive feature. it’s just not, and this is not some false consensus. you have to be more than just willing to be a super compliant super permissive object with no personal principles or passions or intuitions to garner attention from your love interest or anyone really; however, araragi is the gravitational center of the universe so everything is imposed onto him, no initiative needed. his personality quirks are there, yea, but that’s not what’s attracting people. that’s not what attracted senjougahara. i’d even say that what ordinarily would be just indifference or, at best, projection from others onto him is negatively charged by his false humility and social extraction… UNLESS! the lack of personhood, the “selfish altruism”, is an attractive force to some mystical, unprecedented woman of abject desperation who could only fall from the sky and into his arms, literally and figuratively.
right, araragi is a husk with no remarkable charms who senjougahara willfully, consciously, professed to, because…. she liked his personality? that alone is why she wanted to usurp everyone in his proximity and become the one special thing to him—just because she’s ‘like that’…? Yea sure there’s a rational lens one could see her history through that’d give her actions a logic that’s unique and understandable to her, but such wouldn’t change her rarity—exceptionality, even. she is the constant positive force throughout the story that tries forcing araragi to shape the fuck up despite his nature necessitating shapelessness—such being contradictory to the dream she had of becoming his exception. much to tsukihi’s point earlier, she’s the only one who could ever be with him.
also, he has the privilege (the curse, i’d say) to ignore his own lack of humanity, self, and/or being rather than embrace or contend with it like iichan, medaka, or even shichika.
i find that to be most repulsive; he manipulates himself, the world, the audience, and even the author, i feel, into thinking he’s becoming his own person, when, in actuality, he’s only been living off the charity of others’ misfortune…as paradoxical as it sounds.
i mean like come on. just read this nonsense.
this “kindness” is just another phrase for his false altruism, mistaking the meaning of his salvatory enterprising, but she wouldn’t know that because this little thing about their relationship even before becoming romantic it’s just haha this one little thing it’s really not a big deal at all it’s really just this petty small insignificant thing that she’s a COMPLETE FUCKING STRANGER TO HIM SHE DOES NOT KNOW HIM HOLY SHIT I DON’T THINK YOU ARE GETTING THE ABSURDITY OF WHAT HAPPENED HERE.
like what on earth are you doing trying to win some reciprocity from a man whose noncommittal habits you’re very aware of? senjogahara here is just as fantastical, just as far-fetched, as the mythological femcel who supposedly desires most what she’s been denied and cannot attain i.e. attention from males and then bases her self-conception on this perceived sexual and romantic marginalization—this is kinda even hinted at through gahara’s characteristic sexual proposals to araragi—despite the paradox of her [the so-called femcel] body being foremost a sexual commodity rather than an autonomous subject, so it’s not a lack of viability for sexual attention but the lack of personal attention for her as an individual with agency of her own. it’s a laughable concept that people have collectively convinced themselves can exist just through presentation / aesthetic internet subcultures which i guess i suppose i assume attributes a set of personality traits to the femcel aspirant?
whatever im losing the plot here i’m not really even sure why i kept that part in while editing, im just going to cut to the bone of this. ive been skating over it for awhile, so i must be at the end of this essay. this might be the sloppiest part of this entire dialectical clusterfuck. either an absolute dumpster fire or a crude knot that ties everything together in spite of its awkwardness. if you’re even this deep in, chances are you have a couple more eye rolls left in you.
Chapter Text
it’s a power fantasy.
--monogatari through araragi, specifically.
but! this isn’t a condemnation or a criticism i'm levying against the series or even araragi, as eager as i am to utilize everything logically-viable i can against him. that doesn’t take away from anything nor is it an “inherently bad” thing or whatever. that phrase is immediately assumed to be an assault on any fictional work when it shouldn’t be. however, what sort of power and to whom is it appealing, for what reason? one could broadly say that it’s wish fulfillment for guys to score using but their lives, the most basic utility inherent in them by virtue of existing, as stakes. a typical hero’s tale. but i’d cynically go further and say it’s for those who see mental illnesses in women as attractive because it marginalizes them while not debilitating their physical characteristics, giving a greater sense of proximity to them. (araragi’s “altruism” is conditional to girls for a reason—much to my point that it’s self-serving.) this is the topic that usually turns people away, but if you’re in this far, chances are you’re already pretty familiar with me and the angles i take. if not, then bear with me—my intentions are not to condescend or lampoon too harshly nor is it to point an accusatory finger, for everyone is a subject of the conditions which cause them and those i have and will describe. your personal feelings notwithstanding.
in any case, males aren’t born with “value”—that is, the capacity to be rendered a resource for commerce—on a gender basis outside of menial labor. it’s true, not even saying it in a derogatory way. if anything, it’s a grim reality; male-dominated societies established the man as the extractor, taker, conqueror, and accumulator: the “patriarch” who gets the largest cut. the man is not a subject who is affected by his conditions but the object who enacts his will upon the world around him, transmuting everything—even intangible things like human experiences and idealistic images thereof—into capital, commodity, and accessory (from surplus) from which he appropriates value; that even includes his fellow man, as i’ve briefly specified earlier, whose labor power is human capital which the patriarch dictates to. this creates a bleeding contradiction in this supposed gender hierarchy whereby the majority of men, despite the pipe dreams and promises sold by society, cannot attain patriarchal status but only emulate it through consumption and cosplay, not class, for greater consumption capacity is not equivalent to owning the means of production for the commodities being consumed. on the contrary, women, on a gender and sexual basis, very much sexual, have been rendered “commodities” and therefore “valuable”. neither as human nor individual, but as a product—a sexual and social product—which the masculine actor should strive to acquire. (this all will mean something to araragi, the fantasy, and his lack of self.) girls are not autonomous individuals with the capacity of their own personhood, but an item, rather, which the male has to compete with other males to acquire for social capital and status. this is still the bedrock of patriarchal societies despite how socially liberal one might be. this supposed competition to acquire female commodities does more than just satisfy men’s desire for romantic, sexual intimacy, pleasure, and reproductive instincts, but also, the access to such is directly linked to their masculinity; it’s a gender-affirming act; a male’s capacity to attract or acquire female attention directly contributes to their gender esteem and ego… which is inextricable from identity. some… gender-insecure guys, to be euphemistic, envy and confuse this commodification for privilege because it places intrinsic “value” in women, which means, to these guys, that girls will always have access to companionship, however disingenuous, so loneliness isn’t a worry according to them. in reality, which i hope is obvious to most, it’s dehumanizing to render a human subject to a marketable object, commercial good, or treat, even if it’s one of reverence and idolization and infatuation and obsession. the ramifications are vast. one most relevant to this topic is transactional relationships, with expected return on investments, for being a “good person”. for being “kind”. it’s deceitful and self-entitled at best.
see, due to men historically, in patriarchal societies, being the ones who dictate the rules of societies, they too dictated what made the “desirable man” despite the woman being the supposed subject of their advances. (of course, this is talking on cishet norms.) valor, courage, selflessness, and self-sacrifice were made into emblems of admiration in a shiny-armored package. a “struggle” that gives men worth, supposedly, and it is assumed that such is how a male performs “noble” desirability to win hearts, performing a sensitive, humble diversion from the patriarch. the male’s work, sacrifice, and suffering are given a romantic purpose and priority often with little consideration for their cause or intent or sincerity, even, thus promoting performance over substance. as i’ve said before in regards to araragi: sacrifice is not a mark of his person but, rather, the revocation of such. this way of being is not sustainable for any relationship.
this is the pitfall of several male protagonists, e.g. shinji ikari who over-willingly complied and submitted to the impositions of others because (1) he feared that opposing such would create distance between him and the other, and, also, (2) that always doing as one tells him would give him personal favor, when, in reality, him subduing his own wills and desires was what kept him at a distance.
i’ve made a number of cross-references, analogizing a number of araragi’s dispositions with characters across other series whom i feel best fit. some may have been more rhetorically effective than others, some may have obfuscated my point more—that’s for you to determine i guess—however, this other male protagonist is who i think will seal up this point nicely, and, by extension, this concluding part of the essay. one whom i referenced earlier and feel carries the same weight as araragi.
Chapter Text
shirou emiya is a protagonist who also has been subjected to my criticisms for quite awhile now. not nearly as severely as araragi has i mean fuck i’m like 14,000 words in right now on this damned document questioning why i’m even so passionate about this every other second, but still, i repudiated shirou for reasons that generally are similar to araragi. that was until two of my mutuals on twitter and i had a discussion about him in this thread: here
i’ve never been the biggest fan of the visual novel although i’ve read it fully, and this still illuminated me. they gave me a new perspective through which to see fate/stay night. originally where i, and supposedly most readers, would take each arc—fate, ubw, and heaven’s feel—to be their own paths with varying renditions of shirou depending on the reader’s choices, they said each arc is best seen as chronological in his development and parts of a singular, unified story, culminating in heaven’s feel as a final synthesis of his character. with this in mind, i want to look at each arc’s conclusion and the main heroine/love interest relative to shirou, and investigate their end dynamic. (unfortunately, i have absolutely zero screencaps for this one.)
in fate route, saber is the object of shirou’s characteristic heroism, which creates an immediate contradiction—or, conflict of interests—for saber. she suffers the same self-objectification as shirou where they both consider themselves “tools” for protecting the weak whom both ironically see as each other. (shirou’s honestly is rooted in some.. uh, “antiquated views”, to put it nicely, from kiritsugu’s tutelage.) their resolution in the end was to help each other shed that habit together by sharing one another’s burdens. they recognized this self-sacrifice dogma as maladaptive and chose to grow past it for the sake of each other but also themselves… or, at least, the selves they’d learn to become. i think this is a somewhat fair assessment of the route and saber and shirou’s conclusion although, of course, others more dedicated to the fight than me could offer a different more nuanced reading.
next, ubw with rin, which is probably the closest thing to araragi and senjougahara in the series. both heroines (gahara and rin) fill the same role as being the ones who dictate and impose themselves on their respective protagonists albeit with different relationship dynamics. shirou therefore is allowed to act in a fashion comfortable to him; however, with greater hardship, forewarned in the rightful existence of archer who, without exacting details, demonstrates to him by his existence that this way of being IS NOT GOING TO WORK in the long run. like, he says this ad nauseam and describes the future with profuse detail. however… in a showcase of courage! and willpower! and determination! and strength! and greatness! (im gonna vomit) and blah blah more of the world-conquering world-denying world-forsaking cliches that you’d find in nietzsche’s ubermensch, shirou rejects himself, reality, and rationality to continue chasing his ideals. the unlimited blade works reality marble fight is a moment in the series that guys just looooooove to eat up. i get it, though. it appeals to these dreams where irrationality and contradiction can be overcome if not outright rejected by the sheer will of the human spirit and push you into a new realm of power beyond the political oppression, material bindings, and social conditions of your reality. obviously, the struggle for victory necessitates a strong will, but by what cause and to what end? your stubborn allegiance to your self-destructive ideals? get real. anyway, brief tirade aside for the sake of this greater tirade, rin falls for shirou without much need for personal change or consideration for the future or how these flaws could damage their relationship. he played the hero and won his princess and whatever. instead of mutual destruction to make room for protracted growth, shirou and rin as a pair are complacent with how each other are until the future comes, allowing the contradictions to live on for however long he’s willing to fight for them… instead of just reevaluating the stuff he’s been taught and adopted from his survivor’s guilt. (the guilt motive seems to be a trend here.) rin’s reprimanding doesn’t target his way of being but general things that still give an air of growth. it’s no wonder this arc is a fan favorite.
anyway, heaven’s feel, the final route is where the resolution supposedly lies if you’ve accepted the idea of a unified fsn narrative. the culmination of shirou’s character in his journey of becoming his own individual, shedding the ideals he’s been burdened with in his adolescence instead of romanticizing them, and the story treating his fight to protect such ideals as noble or aspirational. oh, and fittingly, this is the least favorite of the three routes with the most hated heroine. i don’t have any deep feelings for any of the arcs and neither shirou nor sakura, but heaven’s feel shirou… from what ive seen, is much more appealing, romantically, to those who have romantic interest in men. whereas two straight male friends of mine despised heaven’s feel and thus shirou in that arc while frothing over him in preceding routes, my female friend didn’t care for shirou through the first two arcs but warmed up to him in heaven’s feel, while one of the mutuals i cited prior, who’s gnc and admitted to lean more feminine in most things, said, and i quote, “basically I just want Heaven's Feel true end with him,” unquote, in our discussion about his romantic character [here]. these anecdotes don’t prove my point, of course, but there’s still value in them here; they imply significance in how gender and sexuality play roles in how a character’s romantic attraction is perceived. much to the point i was making earlier about what dictates the popular masculine-romantic character being guys and male-centric ideals instead of female ones despite women being the supposed subjects of their infatuation. to get to the point, shirou abandons his ideals for the sake of sakura whom he fell in love with. by doing so, he expresses a unique fondness for sakura over that of his ideals, those which would’ve impeded his mission for her. that is more indicative of true love than anything that happened in ubw. people would see that as enabling her selfishness or betraying his character as if some aspects of oneself ought not to be corrected should those habits hamper one’s growth. he put at stake his own life naturally, but more notably, the lives of others who also sought to save sakura albeit, i.e. rin.
this being the culmination of shirou’s characters tells the reader that in order for him to become his own man and regain the humanity he lost by becoming an amorphous tool for other’s salvation, he had to betray his lofty dream of becoming a hero for all and even a hero who fights to maintain his ideals, and thus find a passion for a particular cause—a particular person—despite himself.
that… is colossally more grueling, heartbreaking, and difficult for him as a character than any foe he could have faced.
because otherwise, he’d only be delaying the inevitable. this is where araragi returns.
and this is also why,
(musubimono spoiler)
he and senjougahara break up.
Chapter Text
this is all extrapolation now for ive yet to finish this novel. you can take my assumptions below with a grainier grain of salt if you’re still cynical about my analyses so far or think i don’t have sufficient knowledge to deduce from this particular point in araragi’s story. although i concentrate solely on the fact of the breakup happening rather than the canonical timeline leading up to it, my reasoning maintains itself; this is the logical conclusion of everything i’ve talked about up to now.
that said… araragi was privileged to have senjougahara—an exception among exceptions—graft onto him throughout the series to keep him grounded without him having to reciprocate as much effort as she did trying to become as ideal a girlfriend as she possibly could. i can’t even feel that bad for her since she’s as religious as she is in her determination for him. again, senjougahara’s intent with araragi was to become someone special to him despite knowing his nature depends on there always being some other girl out there susceptible to his wanton heroism. araragi was rewarded for his selfishness and cowardice—that which gahara mistakenly believed were his “kindness”—with a girlfriend who overexerted herself to learn how to be a good partner for him, so because his arc allowed him to continue being the way he is, the inevitable implosion under the weight of the relationship’s sustained imbalance came to be. just like how nadeko unwound after her deflections and escape mechanisms were made futile.
as i said, monogatari does not pose substantial challenges to araragi’s character, not even through ougi, so by the end of zoku, that is, his arc, he’s still firm in his ways. it makes sense—so much sense that i’m starting to believe nisio actually did reflect on araragi in monogatari before writing off-season—that he also (another musubi spoiler) became a police officer.
no before you start assuming i’m not making this point to punch another hole in araragi with trite anti-cop slogans—that’d be too lazy to knock him out how i ought to—but, rather, to describe the function, advertising, and attractive features of a govt-sanctioned police corps to someone like araragi. i know that it’s supposedly a special oddity task force or something, but the same operational basics would apply.
police’s primary responsibility is to uphold ‘public order’. that means to patrol, supervise, and surveil anything with potential to breach the existing state of affairs; anything that foils the economic contracts of the state with capital (i.e. the social relation of wealth and commerce/circulation of commodities and money/money used to generate more money), thus permitting/shutting down activities that either serve or obstruct the interests of capital even if to the detriment of ordinary citizens. so, protecting people by cracking down on tangible things that may be afflicting their community is not so much a matter of the police as is protecting private property which generates profit. companies and real estate qualify as entities with even greater protections than private citizens because they incentivize this cashflow. this all to say that, no, police officers aren’t simply agents of justice; they're more like agents of the status quo, whose “just aspirations” derive from policies that most of the time are lobbied for by these profit-driven companies and their affluent investors; policies that aren’t horizontally argued or democratically agreed upon by most individuals for the betterment of a community or society.
becoming a cop then makes even more sense for araragi beyond the “protect and serve” slogans that do the job of his “selfish altruism” in giving his conviction a righteous air. the law provides a criteria from which supposed virtue exists—these arbitrary virtues that first and foremost serve the interests of capital, not citizens—and the breaching of such laws can be easily-assumed wrong, and thus, punished under the “self-evidently” just law, just as oddities’ existence work as self-evident belligerents to araragi, without him having to develop the trust and proximity to the girls for him to work his magic. regardless of however the oddity police system may work, it’s a natural line of work for who he is. convenient heroism for him to perform.
Chapter Text
…convenient.
that’s a word more appropriate for describing araragi’s stint in the mainline monogatari series.
everything in his story is a convenience.
from his childhood to the end of zoku, perhaps even all the way to his final moments in the series, araragi has always been noncommittal, frivolous, and careless. the series imposes responsibilities onto him, yes, but none of which adversely affects him should they not be upheld or he not care about. him becoming a thrall of kiss-shot, a friend of hanekawa, a boyfriend to senjougahara, were conveniences. he never had to endure the consequences and actual sacrifices of being committed to a thing or person unlike aoko or shirou, who both were put in less favorable circumstances for their decisions; their passions.
that, and everything ive said up to now, is why i say…
this is the worst, most conceited line i have ever read in all of fiction. ever. it’s laughably delusional at best, and the fact it’s heralded in the fandom as inspiring in the context in which it is said makes me wince violently just thinking about.
you have never loved anyone, araragi. even as a child. what you’ve called love throughout the series has been the accumulation of your personal enjoyment, without ever having to truly sacrifice your way of being; not your life which you, yourself, cherish as much as you do other people’s. love is not an event or a sequence of events or dates, love is not “feeling good”, or "being happy", love is not a temporary or permanent emotional state, love isn’t even a perfect match; it’s a process. an ugly, arduous process. one that requires patience, sacrifice, commitment, and concessions—such things that araragi cannot collaboratively task himself with in all of his dispassion and distaste for other humans. in all of his frivolity and carelessness. in all of his theatrics and bonds that condensed the process of love. he is allowed to teleport where he ought to be walking with cemented feet. senjougahara was willing to learn to love while he was still chasing the high of his adventurism. she knew that a tether as strong as “girlfriend” wouldn’t be enough to put him in line. an infantile man like that isn’t even mentally ready to be in love. and the utter nerve to declare that halfhearted affection, which you didn’t even remember until the literal personification of your guilty conscience intervened, as the metric whereby someone should love themself?! you make it so difficult to be charitable when such an act is nothing short of delusional. though, should i give you your kudos, i’d say your manipulation tactics are more sublime than your conning predecessor, kaiki deishuu.
Chapter Text
i think im done now. ill try to conclude all of this as succinctly as possible but not without revealing what i’m sure will backfire on me if people i talk to actually read this far. hope all the talk about politics and history and power fantasies and that lame stuff scared them away. in any case…
this whole paper isn’t just to berate araragi. yea i did a lot of that and i thoroughly enjoyed doing it, as strenuous as writing this was, but he and the things described about him represent internal and external realities for a demographic that is rarely the subject of analyses, both material and psychological. i will say, then, that araragi, for representing them so-intuitively, is…a phenomenal character. he has to be to warrant this much attention from me even if it has all been in a condemnatory tone to the untrained ear. he and, by extension, monogatari is so cleverly deceptive that the audience themselves are fooled. this isn’t me saying that my view is how one ought to read araragi’s character; i didn’t try here to seize the “media literacy” mantle. i welcome whatever criticisms and corrections one may have, for that's how any truly inquisitive person ought to be. besides, it has, in fact, been several years since i completed the anime. i’ve revisited quite a few arcs since then and read the novels a couple years after said watch, but the series is vast; there may be some things here and there that could challenge some of my points if not outright disprove them. i’ll always leave that possibility open. however, that said, i do feel i overstated myself, although as i'm writing this i still don’t feel some things were comprehensively argued on my part. who knows…maybe there’s someone out there lame and, uh, ‘mentally-compromised’ enough to pick up my slack.
Chapter 20: punchline
Chapter Text
the reason i even feel this strongly about him is because of two things:
- i know and have known others in the past and present who are like araragi (no not in the cool theatrical bullshit way or even just in personality i care little about outward performance).
there are hundreds of millions of them, so this isn’t a particular thing to me or my experience, but as i said earlier, people like him come from an intersection of identity (cisgender, unracialized (in the context of the series, within its homogeneity), and apparently straight male teen) and status (middle-class, suburbanite) that are treated as default in society and given little critical investigation despite them as well as others who fit one or two of those categories being victimized by the world in their own particular way. severity of affliction notwithstanding, humans don’t have to qualify for humanity—that is innate to us all—so treating one as though they are exempt from the conditions which shaped them in a world that holistically aims to unhumanize and dehumanize, however privileged and comfortable they are or you assume they are, is a marker of insolence and conceit, if not basic ignorance, if i were to be charitable. it's also the only way to hack at the root of an issue beyond some reductive, essentialist means of analysis overdependent on identity. this is an act that is neither justifying, apologizing, coddling, nor absolving its subjects. you don’t say you’re apologizing for the number 2 by deducing two 1s summed up to it.
my second reason, which may sound like the greatest irony of all to some, but the inevitable conclusion to others, much to the theme of hypocrisy and contradiction:
- i have a deep sympathy for him. it could be considered a forlorn love.
one that i could only have through experiencing and being subject to the same conditions which made him and the same feelings which moved him; the feeling of being alienated from your own humanity never mind human individuals; the same fruitless, insincere attempts at ignoring and minimizing the harm my own self-withdrawal was causing and my reason for self-withdrawing myself in the first place, that circularly being, a self-esteem so low that i feel incapable of human connectivity; and even now, how i’ve accepted my resignation from conventional romantic or even just platonic friendships, steeping fully in those i make through social media, so i don’t have to suffer being seen and feeling as if i’m under constant scrutiny. my desperation is truly self-evident, not merely in my admittance here, but the conscious recognition by you, the reader, the audience of my writing’s profusion and exhaustion for a topic so… i don't know. i’m not getting paid for this shit and yet i wrote 60+ pages. 60+ pages about… fucking araragi koyomi. hammering in and repeating points ad nauseam because i want so badly for whoever is reading this to understand not only my argument but even me merely through my writing and ideas, knowing well that hardly anyone would actually get this far. i'm no better than araragi wantonly sacrificing himself just so he can easily get close to others. to be able to criticize something so harshly there’d have to be some sort of love there as well.
what i somewhat hope can be accomplished with this isn’t just a new perspective for someone to just analyze araragi through, but also, other stories and their material contexts as a whole as well; one of those stories being your own life. not to sound grandiose, pretentious, or sanctimonious (that’d be araragi’s job), but that’s what art is for, and you lose out on so much by taking it for granted or putting a cap on how you can experience it. passive enjoyment is okay, not saying otherwise, but if you proclaim to love something, truly love something, then you would allow that love to be challenged and for it to challenge you. or else you’ll end up like araragi.
sincerely,
with love, hate, and a weary heart,
kim