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

The really WTF thing about this last sequence isn't just the fact that the show drops "oh also Araragi is a pedophile" on you out of the blue. It isn't even just that it all but sweeps that under the rug and expects you to forget about it in the next scene, jarring though that is. Jarring tonal shifts and characters turning 180's and doing shocking things are pretty much constant in this show, and a big part of its psychedelic charm. It's that the show seems to treat trying to sexually assault a little kid as a simple escalation over getting angry and hitting her. Like, those are both the same type of thing, and a consequence of Araragi being emotionally immature and having no self respect. It seems to want the audience to see Araragi's behavior as shameful, but also relatable.

In other words, it's not the main character being a pedophile that weirded me out so much as the story seeming to assume that the viewer is a closeted pedophile themselves.

Then again. For the show's main target demographic, it's probably a fair assumption to make.

...

It's kind of surprising it took me this long to get to this topic, considering that most of the material I've had sent my way has been anime. We were bound to get to it sooner or later.

Technically speaking, anime is a medium. Or, an art style within the animation medium, whatever. Either way, it's a really basic and versatile toolkit that you can use to tell just about any kind of story, in a very long list of ways. Which is why it's always kind of weirded me out to hear people say that "they like anime." It's about as descriptive as saying "I like British music" or "I like color TV." Well, I used to think that. "Anime" sort of has a double meaning at this point. It's a medium, but more recently it also means a specific cluster of genres that dominate that medium. And, "anime" as the genres it's most associated with is made for people who want to fuck kids.

There are socioeconomic reasons for this. Japan's economic straits have forced studios - especially ones specializing in higher budget productions - to abandon mainstream appeal and become specialized whalers. Either going after the shrinking wealthy demographic, or for the types of people who will keep shelling out for media and merch no matter how poorly they can afford it. And, one of those types of people is ones who want to fuck kids.

Shows like this one are made, at least heavily, for an audience to whom lusting after a ten year old's barely developed chest is no different from being horny for an attractive classmate. And no, this isn't just a Japanese culture thing. Japan may or may not have always had a higher tolerance for this kind of shit, but I've seen nothing to suggest that your typical Japanese person is more likely to be a pedophile than your typical American or Brit. Modern Japan just has a media ecosystem in which pedophiles have disproportionate buying power. And at this point, I suspect that it's gone on long enough to have had a self-selection bias on the newer generation of mangaka and animators. I don't have evidence for that last suspicion; just a hunch.

Now, does this ruin the show for me? That's a hard question for me to answer. It's not like I'm surprised to learn that Boko Haram appeals to pedophiles, what with all the child marriages it's conducted. I also suppose it's good that the show unequivocally says that your taken-for-granted pedophilia shouldn't be acted on, what with how ashamed of himself future!Araragi seems to be. That's certainly better than how a lot of anime handles this type of audience appeal. It also refrains from showing Mayoi's body in male gaze cinematography in a way that invites the viewer to jerk off to her, which was my chief complaint about That Episode of Stardust Crusaders. So, yeah, this could have been a hell of a lot worse.

But, that's an extremely low bar to clear. It still way downplays the severity of what Araragi actually did, but like I said, it could have been a hell of a lot worse, and like I said "characters do shocking/violent thing that they aren't really held fully accountable for" is a more general *thing* for this show in particular. The conjunction of that with the pedophile aspect is just much more shocking than the sum of its parts. It also helps that Araragi being a pedophile is pretty much tangential to everything else about the plot and characters, at least so far in the series. That makes it possible to judge the rest of the show as its own thing while mostly ignoring that. But, on the other hand, just ignoring such a WTF thing as "oh also the relatable put-upon main character is a child molester" and giving the rest of the show a pass would be insane.

I'll see this episode through to the end and then figure through how much I'm able to enjoy Mayoi Snail, and the show as a whole, in light of the above. For now, I'll just say that it makes things a hell of a lot more difficult and complicated.

...

So, onward with Lolicon Snail.


Araragi admits that Tsubasa was here, but assures Senjyo not to worry, she was only here for a short time and besides who would be interested in an ancient granny like her anyway. Senjyo doesn't deny being jealous, which is as explicit as she's been so far about wanting to teach Araragi to enjoy the older and more consenting things in life. So, they're both tacitly acknowledging that the other knows that she's (still. for some reason.) into him, but neither are rocking the boat. For now, dealing with the plight of Araragi's truest and most passionate love is a delaying mechanism for talking about that any more.

So, Araragi asks her for Oshino's instructions. Senjyo walks past him, avoiding making eye contact with either him or Mayoi. Her air is like that of a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis to the patient, but ALSO like someone admitting to a crime. The music gets slow and intense in a way that it hasn't been until now. As a preface for Oshino's orders, Senjyo apologizes for not having been honest with Araragi about this matter up until now. It's just that, with herself having been emotionally dead for over two years, she'd just started to assume that she was the weird one, the off one, the one not seeing things properly. So, she doubted herself here, and just quietly, stressfully went along with it.

Is she about to say what I've been expecting the answer to be; that Mayoi is a part of her that she needs to make peace with and reabsorb? It sounds like she might be headed toward that, but...something about the way she's prefacing it seems wrong, for that.

The curse of the lost snailcow, according to Oshino, is that humans who start following it become hopelessly lost. Finding themselves again is easy, though. All they have to do is stop following the snailcow.

Araragi is confused, because Mayoi hasn't been following any snail, cow, or snailcow for this entire time. Senjyo shakes her head, and says that Mayoi isn't the one under the curse of the lost. Araragi is. He's been following the snail this whole time, and Senjyo's own self-doubts made her enable this. If Araragi had actually listened to what Mayoi *literally told him* repeatedly, he'd have gotten the message by now, but he didn't, so Senjyo spells it out for him.

She hasn't seen a little girl today. She hasn't heard one either. She points to where she assumes Mayoi is standing at the moment as she says she can't see anyone there, and doesn't even get the direction right.

Senjyo saw Araragi get up to talk to a "girl" that she didn't see, and teased him about "getting his feelings hurt" without realizing how young the girl in question looked, hence his outraged reaction. She was coincidentally right, due to him being a secret pedophile, but that doesn't mean much because shows like this one assume that all young men are secret pedophiles in order to avoid alienating their target audience. She saw Araragi yell at nothing. She saw him get into a fistfight with himself, Fight Club style. She wasn't judging him for beating up a little kid, back then; she was worried about him, and also afraid for him. Telling him not to touch her or hand her anything he's touched wasn't out of disgust, but fear and confusion. She didn't know if he was hallucinating, if she was hallucinating, or if he was being effected by another supernatural force of some kind that would have been dangerous for her to get too close to.

That's why she was "afraid to be left alone with that girl."

And that's why she walked so far ahead of Mayoi and Araragi; she didn't even know where Mayoi was.

The reason they couldn't find her address earlier was because they were getting their directions from Mayoi, and following the lost snail will only get you lost.

Araragi slowly looks back at Mayoi, and sees her shadow start to bulge, grow, and transform into what her silhouette only suggested before.

Araragi, who ran away from his home and family and then saw something else to distract himself with, was the patient in this arc. Mayoi was the affliction.

Which, I mean. She told him? Repeatedly? I don't really get why he didn't believe her at the time.

Speaking of questionable judgement on Araragi's part...

...

Now, in addition to getting you physically lost, it would be easy to infer that following the snail causes you to become emotionally lost as well. That would explain the normally placid and repressed Araragi flying into these violent rages. It could also much more justifiably explain him having this out-of-nowhere predatory attraction to children, if that's normally a part of himself that's very small and very buried and only became expressed due to the snailcow's mind whammy effect. Certainly fits with his later musing that he doesn't want to believe that he actually is that person.

It's probably how I would choose to read it, had I the freedom to do so. Unfortunately, after watching the sexual assault sequence I paused the video and broke my blind watch rule just slightly. Judge me for this if you want, but I have a dozen more episodes of this show in queue, and if it ended up continuing to be like this I wanted to be emotionally prepared going forward. I didn't look up any details, just googled "bakemonogatari araragi pedophile" and glanced at the results.

The child sexual assault wasn't an isolated mind-whammy incident for him. He does things like this in later episodes too. Araragi is a pedophile who acts on his pedophilia with complete clarity of mind and intentionality. Zero ambiguity. Every word of this post's intro section applies in full.

...

In response to this bombshell being dropped, Mayoi tells her own story. She apparently does have one; she's not just a dangerous nature spirit or the like, as Oshino's description made it sound.

Ten years ago, Hachikuji Mayoi - formerly Tsunade Mayoi - realized that she hadn't seen her mother for so long, since the divorce, that she was beginning to forget what she looked like. So, on Mother's Day, she snuck out of her dad's house and went looking for the address that her mother was now supposed to be living at.

She was hit by a car while crossing a street. She's wandered the neighborhood looking for a house she can never find on every Mother's Day since, and anyone who's tried to help her has only gotten lost themselves.

So, the lost snailcow is a type of ghost. Or at least, ghosts are one type of spirit that can be lost snailcows.

Senjyo continues on from there, telling Araragi that according to Oshino, the conditions for a living human to encounter a lost snailcow require that human to have a strong desire to not go home. Just like the crab taking Senjyo's weight, the lost snail only appears to those who want to get lost. Araragi, obviously, was susceptible. So too, it seems, was Tsubasa, who avoided answering Araragi's question when he asked what she was doing out here herself. Senjyo, whose family and home issues are not related to her current address, was unaffected. Ironic, given that she thought she was the one whose perceptions might be getting screwed with.

Also, it kinda bugs me that Mayoi is hugging Araragi for comfort during this scene. After he, you know, beat her up and sexually assaulted her.

Just getting that down for the record.

Senjyo tells Araragi to turn away from the invisible specter and come with her. It's time to put this whole misadventure behind him and go deal with his home issues. Araragi says he won't do that, though. He promised Mayoi he would get her to her mother's house, and he intends to do it. Senjyo might only have Araragi's word that the spirit even exists. Oshino might not care about the spirits' own subjective experiences, at least when he isn't being paid to. But Araragi does care. That's why he physically and sexually abused her. It also is why he refuses to abandon her to her annual ghostly misery now.

He clutches her shoulder to emphasize the point.

Of course that's what she says in response. Of course it is. Of course he ignores her complaint and keeps doing the exact same thingwith his hand. Of course he does. Why would the scene go any way other than that?

Araragi then, in a display of empathy and emotional intelligence that stands in contrast to everything the show seems to have been trying to say about him up until now, points out that Mayoi's first words to anyone who can see her are "I don't like you, don't talk to me." She knows that no one can actually help her, and she knows that trying to will only cause them to lose their way themselves. Imagine, Araragi says, being that lonely, and yet still having the integrity to turn away any hope of company you meet for their own protection. Also, imagine being in that situation and then getting sexually assaulted on top of it.

Mayoi may or may not actually be sentient. But she APPEARS to be, and Araragi isn't going to take the risk of not helping her if she actually is a conscious human soul rather than just a psychic echo or whatever. He is determined to help her end her torment, no matter what.

...

It would be pretty cool if the show hadn't just provided a much less noble alternate explanation for why Araragi wouldn't want to abandon Mayoi. Too bad it did that, huh?

...

Senjyo responds to this impassioned speech from Araragi by saying that she'd suspected he'd say that. She's starting to get a proper understanding of who he really is, under all the self-degradation and childishness. He didn't help her before because it was her, or because he's working off his debt to Oshino (if that is indeed what's going on there). He helped her because he would help anyone. He can't not rescue. It's who he is.

It's pure coincidence that the two people we've seen him rescue so far are both girls he wants to fuck. Sure. Right.

There's no sign of irony in this sequence. Not even the "we're pointing out the thing while doing the thing, that makes it parody right gais?" kind of wannabe-irony. The show either doesn't realize it's just playing the harem fuckboi cliche straight, or knows but just doesn't care to poke fun at itself for it.

...

If any of the later episodes are about him helping men, I'll take that last part back.

I won't have to take it back though. I know that fate will always sooooomehow conspire to never put him in a situation where he gets to show that heroic impulse for someone who isn't a waifu. You know that too. I'm making a ridiculously safe bet here. Unfairly safe. There should be a law against it.

...

Also, Senjyo mentions that quite a few people figured out about her weight problem over the years, but Araragi was the only one who was willing to try to help her. Uh huh. And I'll bet all the other people who didn't help her also happened to know a magician who heals people from supernatural ailments for affordable prices too, right? We aren't just putting our audience-insert otaku fuckstick protagonist in a contrived situation that makes him the only one able to help and then fellating him for his “unique” willingness to do so, are we?

I mean, maybe we aren't. It's not yet established how common people like Oshino are, or how many others would know how to get Senjyo in touch with him or someone like him. Maybe there are plenty of other people who could have helped but chose not to. I'd call this a fair bet rather than an a sure one. But I'm still taking it.

...

You know, if Senjyo had just put the emphasis on how Araragi was determined to help her even after she treated him the way she did, with the stapler and the threatening to murder his family and so forth, this wouldn't be making my eyes roll. Maybe that is the intended subtext. And if so, I agree with the sentiment much more, because it really would take an exceptional (or desperate, depending on what exactly Araragi's deal with Oshino is) person to keep trying to help her after that.

But she doesn't mention it explicitly. Nor does she say that she'd rebuffed earlier meddlers in the same violent manner.

So, this could be a legitimate point in Araragi's favor, or it could not be. Depends on how charitable one happens to be feeling toward the character and the work he exists in. Hmm, now how do I feel about this show and its protagonist right now? Hmm. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Hmmm.

...

A final message from Oshino is that he has a trick for exorcising this lost snailcow for good, but it'll probably only work just this one time. Senjyo leads Arari and the invisible-to-her Mayoi off in a certain direction.

Remember how we were talking about how exceptional Araragi's determination to help people in need was? You might not, it was three whole seconds ago. Well, it turns out the two other characters with the most screentime are just as willing to help an entity like Mayoi as he is, and I'm willing to bet that the third (Tsubasa) would do the same damned thing herself. Probably without even molesting Mayoi before helping her. How special of Araragi.

Also, Senjyo tells Araragi she loves him.

Eh, she'll get better.

Mayoi sarcastically congratulates them and their big moment. Then, Senjyo leads them off to the old Tsunade address that she and Oshino looked up and cross referenced with news reports of vehicle deaths in the area just to be sure. The Exorcist-esque music plays as the three march through what is now the late afternoon sun through the rezoned neighborhood. Araragi relays some ghost exposition to us that presumably came from Oshino. Ghosts are not able to expand their knowledge base. Whether that means they can't gain new abstract rather than personal memories, or if they can't gain new longterm memories at all, it isn't clear. If it's the latter, it's easy to understand why Araragi is so reluctant to abandon that most precious of opportunities, a grade schooler who won't remember anything you do to her for more than a few minutes.

Actually, if we're calling attention to what Mayoi is and isn't mentally able to do in her current state...oof. We've got some more story problems to talk about at the end.

As the sun finally sets on a Mother's Day that Araragi spent away from home, Senjyo brings them to the address.

The neighborhood has changed a lot in the two years since Senjyo lived here. Even moreso in the decade since Mayoi did.

Even so, just being at the location where the house once stood is enough. Mayoi cries tears of joy, and runs forth into the vacant lot, where she vanishes in a vortex of heavenly light.

Exorcism successful.

I do like that this is a kind of magic that you don't need to actually be a magician to perform. Just a little bit of knowledge about what a lost snail is, a few autobiographical details from the spirit, and internet searches can do the rest. Makes it feel more grounded in its weirdness.

Araragi and Senjyo watch the empty lot for a minute. Then, Senjyo congratulates him.

Araragi points out - and I will give both him and the show credit for including this - that she was the one who did all the work. But then Senjyo says "You know what I mean," and I feel less charitable again. What do you mean, Senjyo? I honestly don't know what you meant by that. It seems Araragi does know, though, because he doesn't ask for further clarification. Guess I'm just the stupid one in this conversation.

The conversation then turns to the two of them. Senjyo finally tells Araragi that she's into him, but was afraid to open herself up to the possibility of rejection first. She doesn't feel like she owes him anything. She's just into him.

...

I want you all to imagine being in your late teens again, just getting to know yourself and the world around you. Imagine being in that state, having your first real romantic and sexual relationship, and needing to wonder - every single time that you and your partner are intimate - if you're unknowingly having a threesome with an invisible ten year old who they tied to the bed.

Did you enjoy imagining that? No? Well, I didn't either, and the reason I had to do it is because you people make me watch this stuff. So, you deserve it.

...

Senjyo tells him that if Araragi says anything weasely or cowardly like "I'll think about it" or "I need some time to think," she will lose all interest in him forever. He doesn't say anything weasely or cowardly. In fact, he says something that shows some backbone and self respect; he'll go out with her, but only on the condition that she never beats around the bush or withholds important information like this again. Not about their relationship, and not about supernatural stuff like people who only one of them can see.

That's a good lesson. Legitimately, this is a great moral for a story to have.

The two of them walk home together. End credits. During the outro song, instead of the usual animation, there's a little montage of Araragi putting up with his little sisters' outrage at him for disappearing all Mothers' Day, and promising that he won't do it next year. Then him oversleeping again. He wasn't out all night like he was in "Hitagi Crab" though, so I'm less sympathetic to him being shaken awake now than I was then. Also, that was before he sexually assaulted a ten year old onscreen. Then, the next morning, he sees Mayoi outside his house.

She apparently didn't move on to the spirit world for good. She just got free of her ghostly shackles and evolved into a higher form of undead.

So. Mayoi isn't gone after this three parter. She's going to be sticking around. And interacting with Araragi. I'm guessing for the whole show, or at least the whole season.

Wonderful.

End episode.


There was a really good concept at the core of this arc. The lost snail-ish twist on the cliched Japanese ghost girl made it feel really fresh, and it didn't even have to change much about pop cultural ghost lore to do it. Haunting specific places at specific times, trying to complete unfinished business from its past life, it's all really basic, well-worn ghost story material. Making it feel so new and different just with a few careful adjustments to framing and presentation is an accomplishment.

It's also exactly the right sort of concept to hand to a studio like Shaft. The haunting, not-quite-real but not-completely-surreal atmosphere and aesthetic is their entire thing. In "March Comes In Like a Lion" it honestly felt like they were struggling to reign the spooky urban psychedelia in on account of the more grounded, realistic subject matter, and only barely succeeding. For a Sixth Sense-ish story like this one, it's a perfect fit.

Good concept. Good fit for the studio. In execution, a complete failure on every conceivable level.

And I'm not even just talking about the pedophilia thing. If you cut that entire sequence out, I'd still be disappointed with this three parter.

Mayoi is the story's namesake, but this arc was really about Araragi. What is it saying about Araragi, though? What's his arc here? What's the takeaway? I thiiink it's supposed to be about how finding it in yourself to help others even when you yourself are lost gives you a source of genuine self-respect, whereas just shutting yourself off from the world like a snail hiding in its shell leads to further self-degradation.

Except...the entire premise of the scenario was that Araragi was only able to learn of Mayoi's existence because of him hiding and wallowing in self pity. And, as Senjyo pointed out, he wasn't the one who helped her in the end. He tried to earlier on, but given his reactions to her resistance (including *beating her up,* which he acknowledged was disgraceful in as many words) that seemed to have more to do with ego than any genuine desire to help. He did seem genuine at the end, but again, that was only after Senjyo had already gotten the solution and was seemingly going to provide it to Mayoi regardless of what he chose to do.

Also, if we're supposed to be getting a sense of what Araragi is all about, here's a simple question: what, other than her looks, is he attracted to in Senjyo? I really am not sure. She told us all about the things she likes and respects about him as a person. I don't know how accurate her impression of him is, but hey, she's a teenager, teenagers are dumb, I can roll with that. But meanwhile, the only thing that Araragi has mentioned (or demonstrated) being attracted to Senjyo for is her body. And sure, that's also very believable teenaged behavior. There's nothing unrealistic about that. However, it's FUCKING BORING. "He's a heterosexual male" is not characterization. Not nearly on the same level as Senjyo's attraction to altruism, or her exultation and ego tripping at her own sexual power. Those sexual traits say things about Senjyo. They're characterization. For Araragi, in a three episode arc that seems like it's supposed to be about exploring him, the counterpart he gets to all that is "likes tiddy."

His characterization is just all over the place. He's self-absorbed and immature...except when he's making these galaxybrained emotional insights that the show seems to want us to take at face value. He's determined to help anyone in perceived need...but also physically beats them and then laughs to himself about it. It feels less like a complicated, flawed individual, and more like just a mishandled character.

Speaking of mishandled characters...Mayoi. Oh, Mayoi.

The whole hiding-in-your-shell aspect was...okay. Here's the question that occurred to me during their walk to Mayoi's mother's true address. Mayoi knew she was a ghost the entire time. She referred to herself as a "lost snail," and by the end it seemed that she knew what that meant. She knew the exact circumstances of her own death, and recounted it for them when prompted. She also knew at least as early as Araragi's phone conversation with Oshino that Araragi was aware of the supernatural and readily believed in it. So, why the hell didn't she just tell him everything then? It's not like she only recovered her memories of how she died at the end. They didn't do anything to jog her memory. They just acknowledged that she was a lost snail (as she herself had been claiming all along), and just prompted by that she told the whole story.

Why was she hiding it? What was she afraid of happening? What was her own equivalent to Senjyo and Araragi's self-doubts and fears of rejection?

Hell, the show seemed to want us to think that she pushes people away because she knows that she'll just get them lost. But, if that were true, wouldn't explaining the situation to them make those people much safer, assuming they (like Araragi made it clear that he was) were inclined to believe in ghosts?

...actually, what are even the consequences of getting "lost" following the snailcow? They didn't actually get LOST when they followed her. They were able to find their way back to the playground perfectly well when they decided to turn back. Her "lostness" only seems to prevent people from finding HER destination. And I guess also losing cell service for a little while. There aren't any clear consequences for following her. There's nothing for her to have been protecting people from. So, that whole attempted emotional crux of the ending falls flat. And her nasty behavior, without a sensible (even through the lens of little kid logic) justification, just looks like nasty behavior.

And then...the show seemed like it actually expected the AUDIENCE to be surprised that Mayoi was the lost snail, rather than the victim of the lost snail. Even though she said the words "I'm a lost snail" at least once. And, when Araragi asked where when she met the snail, she told him that she never MET it, per se. She said this. He just...forgot? Or didn't hear? And the show thinks that we also just brushed it off like he did, for some reason?

Also, adding this bit in after the fact, but I meant to write it in from the beginning: the weird parallels between Mayoi and Senjyo's backstories that ended up being total coincidence would have been fine, if the characters acknowledged them. That would have been fine as a red herring. But the characters never seeming to notice them makes it seem less like deliberate misdirection on the author's part, and more like an author tic. Like, the writer has these elements of divorced family, estranged mother, neglected daughter stuck in his craw for whatever reason, and doesn't notice that he's reusing them back to back. Add to that the (lack of) significance of Mayoi and Senjyo being from the same neighborhood before its rezoning, and...well, like I said. If there being a connection between the two of them HAD been an intentional red herring, that would have been one thing, but I don't think it was.

So, even without the pedophilia, I'd be saying that this feels like an unfinished early draft that needs a lot more work before it can approach the same heights of characterization and emotional drama as the previous arc. And with that, now it's time to get into the really bad stuff.


First of all, this is a harem show. It's about a boy protagonist who collects attractive women, all of whom think he's amazing for reasons that vary from arguably believable to completely nonexistent. Even if things don't get romantic or sexual with all of them, it's still fundamentally this infantile fantasy of being the center of all these women's attention and admiration just for existing. That's fine as a porn premise, but it undermines attempts at serious exploration of character motivations and psychology, which the show seems like it wants to be about. It's not parodying harem shows. It's not doing it ironically. There's not much subversion as far as I can tell. It's just being one.

Aside from undermining its own character work by being this, it also undermines what Mayoi Snail in particular wants us to think about Araragi. An altruist who will help anyone in need, regardless of who they are!...which so far includes a woman with a penchant for fetishy maid outfits who he practically drools over, and a little girl who he sexually assaults. How altruistic. How selfless.

Second, the harem member who Araragi has been the most proactively sexual toward is a ten year old girl who was actively resisting at the time. We're told he'll later regret acting this way, sure. But for now, she still joins the damned harem at the end of the arc, with him having *just* done that. And like I said, I've been spoiled on this not being a one-off for Araragi. There are going to be more incidents, with more preteen girls. This is who and what Araragi is. We're expected to regard this as just something he needs to work on, but root for him all throughout regardless.

I think I could actually really enjoy a show about a pedophile trying to come to grips with his attraction to children. It could even work as a character subplot for a supernatural adventure/drama show like this one. But not when the character is actually acting on it. At that point, any desire to see that character find peace or learn to love themselves regardless of their dark impulses is outweighed by the need for them to be stopped.

And that's on top of the baseline anime issue of seeming to think that every man would sexually assault children if they were shameless enough and had sufficiently little self-respect.

The really sad part of this is that, at least going by the episodes I've seen so far, Araragi's pedophilia adds nothing to the story. It hasn't impacted the plot (at least, if we're to assume that he really did have noble motivations for wanting to help Mayoi). It hasn't effected the way that other characters see him. It feels like it's tacked on. Like, they thought "our male protag isn't relatable enough for ther otakus, quick, we need to make him a lolicon" or something.

It reminds me a lot of the random upskirt shot of Tsubasa in the first episode's first three seconds. Completely insubstantial. Totally tacked on. Only it's much worse than that because, um, you know, sexually assaulting a child.

This show does normal teenaged horniness really well, when it chooses to actually do that. The stuff with Araragi and Senjyo in the first episode of this trio is great. It's cheesecake, but it's cheesecake that serves the plot, adds to the characters (Senjyo much more than Araragi, unfortunately, but still!), and advances the personal arcs. Even the sleazier Senjyo-and-Araragi scenes in Hitagi Crab had narrative purpose; while I feel like they could have been done more tastefully, they did at least advance the story and characters. If you removed the shower scene in Senjyo's apartment, the story would have a hole in it. If you removed the random panty shot at the beginning of the show or the snail molestation in this last episode, the story would just be better.

I've got a lot more Boko Haram episodes ahead of me. I expect that I'm going to really like some parts of it. But I'm not going to like the show. It's crippled and butchered itself so badly right out the gate, sabotaged itself so much by making Araragi the central character, that no number of great episodes will ever be able to make it good as a whole. And that really saddens me.


One more thing. It was brought to my attention that in the time leading up to me starting this show, some individuals in the discussion thread on Sufficient Velocity were describing it as being full of "typical horny teenagers acting realistically horny" or something like that. It's possible they just forgot or blocked certain things out of their memories, in which case that's totally understandable.

If you actually think that this IS a depiction of normal teenaged sexuality though, I have some hard news for you about yourself.