Bakemonogatari E5: “Mayoi Snail, part 3” (part one)

Alright, time to finish up this somehow both more grounded AND more surreal adventure of Mothers' Day confusion!


Mayoi is hungry. Araragi tells her they'll go get something to eat as soon as Senjyo returns, and asks her what she'd like. Did he forget about the ice cream he promised her earlier? Maybe he just realized there wasn't an ice cream place nearby or something. She says she's not picky, but if they're going to have to wait for Senjyo to get back before getting anything then there's an alternative she has in mind.

Uh. Huh.

I guess either ex-vampires are tasty as well as good healers, or Mayoi is a predatory snail. Like a dog whelk, or a decollate.

Araragi tries to persuade her that he's not food. She tells him not to think so little of himself, he's GREAT food. He nervously muses to himself that yes, he's pretty sure she actually swallowed a little bit of his flesh and blood when she bit him earlier.

Maybe he's not the only vampire in town, as it turns out? Or...well, I'm still not sure that Mayoi is even an independent, physical entity at all, so...fuck, I don't know how anything would interact with anything else, this is a show where a divine crab accidentally steals your body weight while trying to help you deal with trauma, roll OP.

It's kind of too bad that this is the last Mayoi Snail episode. I just hope the next OP will be as good.

Araragi and Mayoi are still waiting for Senjyo's return. Whether the conversation with her wanting to eat his hand is supposed to have happened yet, I'm not sure, these teasers aren't always good about making it clear they're flashforwards. In either case, they're talking about relationships with their parents. Mayoi picks up that Araragi's is strained.

"Parents" plural. Has Araragi's father been mentioned yet? We've heard about his mother and sisters, and briefly seen the latter, but is his dad still around? I suspect that subject will be addressed in later episodes.

After a bit of questioning from Mayoi, Araragi gives an abbreviated version of his life story and his family woes. During his childhood and up through early adolescence, he was the apple of his parents' eyes. Good student, good son, well behaved and emotionally healthy. He mentions parents plural himself here, so regardless of whether or not his dad is still around now he WAS around until Araragi was in middle school. At any rate, when Araragi started high school, something went wrong. He just describes it as if it were some sort of backlash for what smooth sailing his childhood was. His grades plummeted. His behavior grew unruly, rebellious, and violent.

He doesn't mention vampires at any point in his story, but I imagine that this is where he became a vampire. Either this was the cause of his negative change, or perhaps, given the way supernatural stuff in this show seems to work, a consequence of it. No mention of his father dying or leaving either; he just doesn't mention him again after this point.

At this point, he says, his mother and younger sisters all see him as a disgraceful manchild.

So yeah, that "student council VP" thing had to have been a captioning issue, or a my-reading-comprehension issue. He's just working hard to make sure he can still graduate at this point, and I guess Tsubasa is just helping him while letting him occasionally make suggestions about her student council stuff.

Mayoi tells him that being a "kid who never grows up" would make him a lot like her. Interesting. How long has she been in her current state, then? My guess would be "since Hitagi met the crab," but we'll see.

Then she tells him that she considers herself to be one of the most "well developed" girls in her class, and he comments that he already knows that, because he felt her chest while they were fighting.

Mayoi panics, looking violated, and starts freaking out about how her first time being groped came before her first kiss, and how defiled and dirty she feels. Araragi decides that now would be the exact best time to stand over her and offer her that pocket money he promised to give her before.

Mayoi furiously tries to bite him again, but he grabs her by the shoulders and holds her at arm's length while she demands an apology for him feeling her budding, ten year old breasts. Instead, he just thanks her for letting him have the experience. When she demands it more furiously still, he laughs at her and asks what the big deal is, what he did isn't going to kill her or anything. In fact, she should be the one thanking him, because having your breasts groped helps them get bigger as you grow up. She keeps trying to bite him, and also insulting him for...well, for the obvious reasons. He tells her that he WAS starting to feel some guilt pangs, but because of how she's acting now he's decided that instead he's just going to fondle her chest some more.

Another fight happens, complete with cartoon dust cloud. Once again, there's a retrospective voiceover from future!Araragi. Here, he tells us, we see an eighteen year old boy going all out trying to beat up a fifth grader for the purpose of sexually assaulting her. He doesn't believe that the boy in question was him. He doesn't want to think that he was that boy. But, well.

Eh, looking back on your teenaged antics and cringing, that's #relatable amirite?

After the fight, Mayoi (seemingly still fully clothed and unraped, fortunately) is apologizing to Araragi for biting him. Araragi, the new bite marks and gouges covering his arms still healing, shamefacedly tells her that no, it really is him who should be apologizing.

He comments, after apologizing, that she's pretty good at fighting for a kid. She says she gets into a lot of fights at school (unsurprising, given her general disposition), and asks him if he's fought a lot. His reply is pretty much what I'd expect, given his own life circumstances and personality.

I wonder why his little sisters would have been physically fighting him? Curious. Perhaps it will be hinted at in a later story arc.

Then there's a cutesy sequence of them playing pronunciation games with each other that lasts a while. It's nice and wholesome. Then Araragi thinks of his fight with his sister that morning, and wonders how he should apologize to her. Mayoi makes an inference here that never would have occurred to me in a million years, and that Araragi reflexively denies.

Yeah, seriously, what the fuck Mayoi, where the hell did that come from?

Anyway, Mayoi responds to Araragi's own tale of familial woes with an account of her own family. From what she's heard, her parents were once a loving couple, and they always told her that they really do love each other. However, their fights with each other dominates her memories of them for as far back as she can remember, to the point of them being so distracted by arguing and screaming at each other that they were borderline neglectful of their daughter. Finally, they divorced. Mayoi still loves both of them, but it seems like her father really hates her mother now. Her father won't let her see her mother anymore, and Mayoi is afraid that if she doesn't get to see her again soon she'll forget what she even looks like.

So, this would be a childish, emotional perspective on Senjyo's backstory, but with Araragi himself trying to do a tardy stand-in for the cult leader? Sure.

Just then, Senjyo returns, and announces her presence with the declaration that she can smell another woman's shampoo nearby. Her tone is accusatory. Apparently she actually is still into Araragi, if she's expressing jealousy at signs of another woman having so much as come close to him? In that case, I've got some bad news for you, Senjyo; you've left him alone with the woman of his dreams this entire time. Haha, joke's on you! How droll!

She goes on to declare that she recognizes the smell of Tsubasa's shampoo specifically. Araragi asks her how she can possibly know that. She just tells him that she can tell other girls she knows by their shampoo, just like he can by the shape of their hips. He asks her where the fuck she got that from, and she just quotes a compliment that he gave her about her hips back when she was extorting him for compliments back in her apartment in the pilot.

Araragi insists that she's inferring an awful lot from an awful little there, and making him sound like a pervert. Stop making Araragi sound like a pervert, Senjyo. It's unfair and not very nice.

Anyway, I'm going to split this review here. There's a minor detail I glossed over a bit ago that I think might warrant a little extra discussion.