Bakemonogatari E6: “Suruga Monkey, part 1”

I have no idea what to expect from this show, after the previous arc. Honestly, after Mayoi Snail looking at the full ten episodes of Boko Haram still ahead of me in queue just fills me with...I don't know? Dread, maybe? Not quite. I know there's going to be good stuff going forward. I just don't know how much I'm going to be able to enjoy it on account of, well, you know.

Our next supernatural ailment (and presumably our next girl, because no boys besides the designated audience insert allowed) will be monkey-related, it seems. I'm calling it right now; this very same monkey will turn out to have been responsible for leaving the banana peel on the Utena stairs that Senjyo slipped on. Well, let's do this. Or at least try.


We start out with a look at some actual monkeys.

Macaques? Baboons? I think those are baboons.

Then a girl we haven't seen before is running somewhere. Then Araragi is walking down the Utena stairs. Then we cut back to him outside on the street running into Mayoi again. Oh no. Of the montage of imagery we've flickered through, the one we stop on and continue is Araragi and Mayoi. Oh no.

Mayoi is asking Araragi where he's off to. He explains that the aptitude tests (my understanding is that Japanese high school aptitude tests are like the SAT's, only mandatory and also they send you to hell if you fail) are coming. So, he's headed over to Senjyo's house, as she said she'd help him study.

I guess Tsubasa is no longer the study buddy of choice, due to both her and Senjyo being weird about him being around other girls while he's dating the latter. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, but most especially me, neither of them can see Mayoi.

This explanation is interrupted by short flashes of that mystery girl running across the city. I guess she's the one with the monkey related problem and will be running (literally or otherwise) into Araragi and his invisible pet loli.

Mayoi points out that going over to Senjyo's house for a private study session might be counterproductive, since they'll probably just start fooling around and won't end up getting much studying done. Araragi gets annoyed at this assertion. Mayoi just doubles down on it. Araragi tries to hit her, because of course he does. She dodges and swings back. Then he says, um, lol:

Oh my god yes that's a brilliant idea yes yes I would love to see a judge and jury's assessment of your conduct with Mayoi come on find a necromancer courthouse and take her there come on do it please.

Then she asks him if by "where it counts," he means her nonexistent tits or her prepubescent ass. And asks him what it is exactly he could possibly be attracted to in the body of a person not yet even in their teens yet.

That isn't me snarking, she literally asks him that, in pretty much as many words. He dodges the question by claiming he has no interest in said body at all. That kind of denial was a lot more charming back when he was giving it to Senjyo. Maybe it's just gotten a little repetitive? Oh wait no I know what the problem is, it's that Mayoi is a kid, right. They come to blows again. I'd normally be asking someone to kill me now, but if there's going to be an execution in this case I'd really rather it be Araragi getting put on an even existential footing with Mayoi. Cut ahead to them sitting on a bench sharing drinks, when suddenly Mayoi's snail antenna pigtails detect something approaching. That's a thing she can do I guess. An instant later, monkey girl comes shooting passed them in a trail of onomatopoeia.

She literally leaps over them before coming to a halt a few meters onward and turning to face them. And energetically addresses Araragi as "Araragi-senpai." Guess she was looking for him. And looks up to him, for some reason.

Araragi looks appropriately baffled. And also flustered from the crotch/ass shot he got as she was leaping past his head. At least he's looking at Suruga(?)'s charms and not Mayoi's at the moment.

If her name is Suruga, that's probably a play on "saru" or "ape," I'm guessing. Anyway, new intro. I liked Mayoi's better, but at this point the less I see of Mayoi the better, so it's contextually an improvement. A 90's alt-rock style song, accompanied by mostly low energy visuals involving a psychedelic basketball court that Saruga is shooting hoops in while Araragi and Senjyo watch.

There's also one particular image whose parody subject matter is obvious:

On one hand, Utena's over-the-top visuals beg for parody, so I'm for that on principle. On the other, I'm kind of disgusted by this harem trash trying to take the piss out of the landmark feminist anime series. Regardless of the two series' other merits and flaws.

Eh, it's a good song at least. And there's a later sequence of Saruga frolicking through a field of giant, flying lily blossoms that's lovely to look at.

So, there's that.

After the OP, Araragi expresses skepticism that Saruga really just ran into him here by coincidence, while Mayoi sneaks off for reasons of her own (maybe she finally found her good senses) to leave the two teens alone. Saruga replies that...um...I'm actually having trouble parsing what she says here, but it seems like Araragi doesn't understand it either so that's likely intentional. Araragi tells her that whatever story she's trying to weave about why she happened to run into him here, it's not making any damned sense, and she seems awed by his incredible deductive reasoning skills and ability to pierce through all deceptions.

Not sure if this girl is messing with him or not.

...I just realized that I've said that about every single character Araragi has interacted with so far, besides his sisters.

I maintain that I was perfectly justified in asking it all of those times.

She says that she couldn't go to sportsball practice today due to her arm still being hurt, and that - since she had nothing better to do after school today - she decided she'd go track down Araragi and ask him what he thinks about Russia's political trajectory.

This would have been written in 2006-ish, I think, assuming this material was included in the first LN. So we didn't know just how much of a pain in literally everyone's ass Putin was going to be yet.

He tells her that he doesn't actually think that she cares about what he thinks about Russian politics. So, she asks him for his thoughts on India's developing high tech industries. He replies that he didn't read the news this morning, and has no thoughts on the subject. I have a feeling he doesn't read the news very often at all, if ever. I normally wouldn't judge him for this, what with his life being occupied with all these supernatural headaches, but he strikes me as someone who wouldn't bother even if he didn't have that excuse. Then, finally, she asks if anything strange or unusual has happened to him in the last few days. He tells her that other than studying for the exams, no, everything has been normal.

He might be telling the truth there. I'm not sure what "normal" looks like for him, at least since his flirtation with vampirehood, so maybe the time of the series really has just been a typical couple of weeks by his standards.

She continues grilling him on who he's studying with, and eventually surmises that it's Senjyo based mostly on Araragi saying that he's being coached by "someone with really good grades." Suruga seems to think that Senjyo is the only person in Araragi's year who is a good student. Uh huh. This conversation is intercut with some close-up shots of a basketball slowly making its way into a hoop.

Also, Suruga refers to Senjyo with the "senpai" suffix as well. I guess she's just being very formal and reverential toward her upperclassmen in general, rather than Araragi specifically.

Also also, the flashbacks of the basketball also show someone with their arm in a cast. Presumably relating to Suruga's injury that has her currently off the court.

She fishes for some gossip about Senjyo, but Araragi isn't talking. Finally, Suruga bids him politely goodbye and goes shooting away down the street, her still-bandaged arm apparently doing nothing to detract from her balance or concentration. Or maybe it is slowing her down, and if not for that she'd be igniting the air around her through friction.

Her awkwardness could just be extreme teenaged social ineptitude, or there could be something weirder going on. In either case, I don't blame Araragi of being wary of her even assuming no prior bad blood. I blame Araragi for a lot of things, but not that.

As soon as she's gone, Mayoi comes back. Mayoi why do you do this to me. As they head on toward Senjyo's places, Mayoi asks who that other girl was, and Araragi explains that Suruga is just some underclassman sportsball jock who's been tailing around after him recently. On one hand, that's something we could have been shown in previous episodes rather than just told now. On the other, those earlier episodes had enough going on in them already that maybe it's for the best that they didn't clutter things further by introducing a not-yet-relevant character, so fair enough. Mayoi suggests that Suruga might have a crush on him. Because of course, how could any woman not love Araragi amirite.

Also, Araragi's reply to that makes is just such textbook lazy "satire" that you can probably guess what it is before even looking at this next screenshot.

I guess he at least didn't literally say "harem anime." We might be lazy, but we're still not Symphogear lazy.

Pointing out that you're doing the thing while you do the thing doesn't make the work smarter or more subversive. It just makes you a pretentious douche.

When she presses on, he chides her for thinking that everything that everyone does is motivated by infatuation. He also says that even if he was the protagonist of a girl collector game, he'd have finished it now, because he's "conquered" the hardest character already. I hope he's talking about Senjyo there. I really hope he's talking about Senjyo.

Cut ahead to Araragi and Senjyo in her apartment, studying. She follows the jump cut to there by remarking that she feels like something unflattering was said about her, which I guess puts my last question to rest. Anyway, Araragi is struggling with the geometry they're pouring over, and Senjyo is trying to understand what's making this so hard for him.

Maybe she'd understand better if she hadn't been able to magically shut the trauma away for the last few years of her academic life. It's been strongly implied that Araragi fell off the good student wagon when he was turned into a vampire, and he just never fully recovered from that. Or maybe I'm being too charitable toward him.

Senjyo turns the topic to what Araragi's plans are for after he finishes high school, assuming he successfully graduates and passes the exams. She points out that so far, he's just told her he's sinking all his available energy into trying to graduate, but that's going to be coming up in just a couple of months now, so what comes next? He's obviously not college material. Is he planning to look for an unskilled labor position? Is he planning to go to a trade school? Balance some gigs and play it by ear from there? Just be a NEET?

Araragi asks her what is she, his parent? She replies that no, she's his girlfriend, and she wants to know if she'll be able to keep being that when she goes off to college. He responds by collapsing on the floor and telling her that he has no idea. Charming.

She says that, regardless of what he does in terms of his approach to entering the workforce, she'd like to keep seeing him. She suggests getting an apartment together near whatever campus she ends up going to, so that he can look for work or do vocational training or whatever while she starts her degree without them having to leave each other.

A little fast, but then, this is a girl who just recovered from a multi-year period of being emotionally dead.

Araragi is angsting about something while he muses on this. Senjyo asks him what's wrong, and warns him that every time you sigh like that you permanently destroy part of your own capacity for happiness. I'd normally call shenanigans on an assertion like that, but in this setting that could actually be literally true.

She then, out of nowhere, says that she's never broken up with a boy before, and that she has no intention to start with him.

Up until this point, their conversation had been intercut with serene footage of a pair of birds soaring together over the cityscape. As Araragi struggles to deal with how strongly she's now leaning into this, the birds are joined by a dozen others and start flapping frantically and noisily. Araragi muses that really, Senjyo has no more idea of what the two of them are doing than he does.

He asks her if she still carries that stapler and other weaponized office supplies around. She says that she's stopped doing so, and that this is awfully careless of her come to think of it. Hmm. Careless as in she's now unarmed, or careless as in she might get blown away by the wind without anything to weigh her down?

Actually, there hasn't been a single mention of or reference to Araragi still carrying her body weight since the first episode of Mayoi Snail, and even there it was downplayed to just him looking tired and sluggish when riding his bike and using the playground equipment.

Anyway, Araragi looks somewhat comforted by her answer. Understandably so, given what she did with that stapler half a dozen episodes ago. They continue studying, until the sun sets and afternoon turns to evening. Eventually, Araragi asks her if she knows Suruga. Senjyo was also pretty involved in student athletics back in middle school, so they might have been friends from then. She confirms that the two do in fact have quite a history together, from before she met the crab.

Araragi apparently suspected as much. After all, his usual study buddy up until now, Tsubasa, is a more famously good student than Senjyo. There must have been a reason her mind would have gone to Senjyo first.

Except, um. Araragi hasn't exactly been secretive about him and Senjyo dating, has he? If Suruga's been paying attention to him, she'd know that. So if he's going to study at someone's house, that seems like a fair guess for anyone to have made.

I don't know if this is supposed to be Araragi missing something obvious, or if it's the writers missing something obvious. Could be either.

Then Araragi makes the mistake of referring to Suruga by her first name (Kanbaru), and Senjyo freaks out at him and threatens to stab him in the eyeball with a mechanical pencil.

He'll regenerate anyway, she says, so impaling him through the eyeball would be commensurate punishment for cheating on her by being on first name basis with another female.

I guess she still has a lot of work ahead of her before she unlearns those crab-induced habits. :/

Or maybe there's no amount of work that can reverse what happened to Senjyo. Maybe this is just her now.

Araragi babbles and begs for her not to stab him, he has nothing to feel guilty about, he and Suruga don't have anything for each other he just happens to know her fairly well.

Then the tense music lets up, and Senjyo is back in place in her seat as she was before, with Araragi trembling.

Did he just imagine that? The way that scene was shot is similar to a lot of "character catastrophizing about the consequences of saying/doing something" scenes I've seen in anime, so maybe? In this show it's really hard to say what could or couldn't actually, literally happen.

A second later, she says that "she knows she got a little passionate just now," and asks if he was surprised by this. Okay, so yeah, that actually happened then. Araragi tells her that she's going to end up murdering someone if she keeps going on acting like this. She just says that when she does, she'll make sure that her victim is him, because she wouldn't want it to be anyone else. Oh my god this really is just Kara no Kyoukai Abridged. Araragi says that the last person he'd want to be killed by is her, because that would probably be an exceptionally painful and gruesome death.

She gets offended by this. And tries describing her hypothetical murder of him in sensual, romantic terms to try and change his mind. Well, she's gone from badly overshooting tsundere to badly overshooting yandere, I guess. Thanks Oshino, you fixed her.

Senjyo finally brings the topic back to Suruga. The two of them had something of a strained relationship in middle school, it seems. Also, Senjyo "was forced to look after" Suruga outside of school at some point. Wonder what the story was there? Suruga is just one year younger than Senjyo and Araragi, so babysitter wouldn't make sense. Before explaining any further though, Senjyo repeats her demand for Araragi to explain why he's so curious about Suruga, if he already apparently knows her so well.

No pencil this time, but her body language is menacing enough on its own.


Continued in next post.