Bakemonogatari E9: “Nadeko Snake, part 1”

Back to Boko Haram. I can't remember if Nadeko is a character who's already been introduced or not. In either case, I can infer that they hahahaha yeah right it's she, it's definitely a she have some kind of supernatural problem involving either an actual snake or a magical phenomenon that is arbitrarily called a "snake." Let's see.


Tranquil music and a stylized bamboo forest. Eventually broken by Araragi's foot stomping down loudly onto the forest floor right next to the camera. Either just another random "haha look at how we're framing this guy as an oaf" moment that doesn't really jive with the character overall, or actual symbolism for what's going to happen in this arc. In the next shot, we see that Araragi is walking with Suruga, who...okay, what the hell is this even supposed to mean now?

That's definite girlfriend body language. And expressions. I thought that...

Eh. Whatever. Harem shit.

They're walking along an uphill trail. Araragi warns Suruga to look out for snakes, as this mountain is supposed to be full of them. Does Japan even have venomous snakes? Huh, a quick google search later, and apparently it does. Multiple species, actually. I learned a thing. Suddenly a girl with a semi-obscuring cap comes charging down the stairs passed them, nearly bowling straight into them. Araragi's narration informs us that he hadn't seen Nadeko in years, which is why he failed to recognize her.

This is going to have unfortunate consequences, it seems.

The flashes of text onscreen goes a tiny bit slower than usual this time, so I'm able to register the words "snake," "scales," "coils," and "curse." This sounds like it might be another violent encounter like last time's. Then the new OP starts and it's...boring. Song is okay soft rock, but with unevocative lyrics, and the visuals are just so-so minimalism. Mostly Nadeko and sometimes Araragi just standing around against a white background. It's definitely the least attention-getting intro thus far. Afterward, we go back to Araragi and Suruga mounting the bamboo-covered hillside.

The trail apparently has torii gates built along it. Are they headed to a temple or something?

Well, Suruga seems to be as curious about what they're doing as I am:

Araragi explains that Oshino sent them up here. The trail leads up to an abandoned shrine, and Oshino needs them to enter it and place some kind of talisman. When she asks why he doesn't do it himself, Araragi explains that it's more work than Oshino wants to bother with, and that he's still paying off his debt for curing his vampirism.

...

Okay, that's confirmation of my earlier suspicion.

And also completely anathema to the inspirational scenes in some of the previous episodes where we're supposed to think Araragi charitable and altruistic for bringing Oshino new customers.

Nothing new to say here. It's just confirmation of some of the complaints I made in previous Boko Haram reviews. Including how weird it is for Araragi to *actually* be remarkably selfless and altruistic sometimes (Suruga Monkey pt 3 being the big standout here), but not in the sequences that get him praised for such (pretty much all of Hitagi Crab and Mayoi Snail).

...

Anyway, Suruga is also in debt to him now. She might be rich, but I guess she can't pay the full fee without her (adoptive?) family asking questions or something. So, she's paying off her debt now as well.

As they continue the hike, Suruga asks him if Senjyo said anything about herself and him spending time alone together like this. She doesn't mention the whole "letting her hang off of his arm with a lovesick smile on her face" aspect of today's activities, but I guess that's just the harem bullshit part of the show and I'm not supposed to acknowledge it whatsoever in assessing these characters and their relationships. Anyway, Araragi says that she didn't tell him anything about today at all, which is fairly surprising given how possessive she is. He asks Suruga if Senjyo told her anything about their planned outing, and Suruga's answer is even more surprising.

I'm not sure I'm buying this, to be honest.

Or, well. On the other hand, a second later Suruga adds that Senjyo also told her what would happen if Araragi tries to make a pass on her:

Okay, yeah, that sounds much more like Senjyo. Regardless of whether or not that first bit was something she actually said, the second definitely was.

...

One patron commented that Suruga's treatment in the previous arc sounded like just another instance of the "psycho lesbian" trope. The reason I disagree with that assessment is because our primary example of a heterosexual woman in this show is, well, heh.

...

From this rather distressing topic, they move on to the subject of Senjyo's birthday, which is coming up soon. Since this is her first birthday since she stopped being so crabby, and her first since they started dating, Araragi wants to throw a nice surprise party for her and invite as many friend-ish people as she still has to try and improve her social life. Suruga says that that sounds fun, but she thinks Senjyo would prefer to spend her birthday alone with Araragi. Finally, they reach the summit and enter a surreal cave-turned-shrine where their objective lays. The topic changes yet again as they stride through the eerie, half-carved tunnel, with Araragi asking Suruga if she's gotten a prognosis on her left arm.

She tells him that she had Oshino look at it again a couple days ago, and that he told her it should slowly return to normal over the coming years. By the time she turns twenty or so, it'll look more or less human again, and she'll be able to show it in public. When asked if she plans to try and pick up her basketball career again at that time, she seems indecisive. Almost dissociative, like that's something she's avoiding thinking about. I can understand her feelings on the subject being complicated.

They exit the tunnel, and step out onto a bamboo forest plateau with a collection of ruined structures on it. Naturally, the abandoned shrine complex is the size of a small city. I swear, it feels like buildings are these unknowable eldritch monuments that humans discovered and are just fearfully squatting in, in Shaft shows. Araragi looks troubled by something about the ruins, but his attention is quickly brought back to Suruga when she starts swaying in place and clutching her head. She looks feverish, and feels suddenly exhausted.

She tells him that she thinks food will help her feel better, and pulls out the picnic she brought. Araragi tells her to sit down and eat, he'll find the central shrine and put the talisman on it himself while she recovers. As he looks for the main building, Araragi thinks back to that familiar-looking middle school girl who hurried past them on the trail. He knows he's met her before, but can't figure out when he'd have become acquainted with a much younger girl.

-___-

Araragi, do you really think that just saying that is going to fool anyone, at this point?

For now, he concludes that this must be one of his little sisters' friends that he has vague memories of trying to offer a ride home to after she came over for one of their birthday parties or something. He finds the main building, and starts sticking the magic paper-thingy that Oshino gave him to the front gate as instructed.

Dead silence as he works. The abrupt cracking of a rotted wooden beam somewhere inside the structure startles him, at once point. It feels like there's some kind of malign presence here. Something about the long camera shots, the silence, the visual emphasis on isolation and ruin. It's very well done, as this show normally does with atmosphere and mood. One definitely gets the feeling that Oshino is trying to contain or banish something that haunts this ruin, with that paper talisman.

Once the paper is in place, Araragi turns around and calls out for Suruga, but gets no answer. She isn't in the place where he left her, either.

A tense, Hindi-techno-ish piece plays as Araragi begins to panic, scrambling all around the ruins looking for Suruga. He finally finds her, standing in place and staring blankly at a very strange-looking dead tree hung with snakelike growths or banners or something. Somehow, she didn't hear him call for her, even from right behind her, and when he puts his hand on her shoulder it seems to snap her out of some kind of trance.

When asked if she's feeling sicker, she shakes her head and points to the tree. Araragi looks where she's pointing. It turns out that those aren't vines or ribbons wrapped around the tree, but crudely tied white ropes. More disturbingly, someone has cut a bunch of snakes into bloody pieces and staked them to the trunk.

Araragi thinks back to the girl running downhill. That blood looks fresh. That's probably not a coincidence. He also remembers the name of the girl now. Nadeko Sengoku. Apparently, seeing mutilated snakes jogged his memory.

Cut to Araragi meeting Tsubasa in the library. She's recommending some study guidebooks for him, to supplement his study sessions with Senjyo. He's really trying his hardest to get into the same university that Senjyo plans to go to, but doesn't want to get her or his own hopes up about it. As Tsubasa helps him pick out some choice textbooks, she also asks him about that weird trip he and Suruga took up the mountain trail a couple days ago. Suruga apparently said something about a snake. Araragi tells her that they buried the mutilated snake carcass they found on the tree, but in the process they found other dead snakes scattered all around the temple complex.

All freshly killed. Each ritualistically cut into five equally-sized pieces and staked against a surface. Araragi and Suruga left the ruins in a hurry after this discovery, and ate their picnic in a park near the entrance to thehiking trail. Neither of them wanted to spend any more time up there than they had to.

...

Hmm. Looking up the parts of the name "Nadeko Sengoku" now. I knew that "Sengoku" sounded familiar, and it turns out that it was from history. Sengoku, "belligerant country," refers to what the Anglosphere calls the Warring States era of Japanese history. Unfortunately, the only thing that came up for "Nadeko" was Bakemonogatari sites, but just knowing what half of her name means sheds some light. Connotations of warfare, and of history. Dead snake bodies at a historical ruin.

My tentative hypothesis at this point is that Nadeko is engaged in some kind of spiritual warfare against the same entity that Oshino sent Araragi and Suruga to put up that charm against. Killing the snakes and displaying their bodies in that way is a ritual for fighting the demon. Going by the examples of the previous episodes, the demon is remotely afflicting her with some kind of gradual curse or mutation, and her snake-killing ritual is slowing it down.

Like I said, very tentative hypothesis. We'll see how far off I am.

...

On inspiration, Araragi asks Tsubasa if she happens to know anything about that old temple. Unsurprisingly, given her history of knowing things, she does. It's the ruins of the Kitashira Snake Shrine. The serpentine kami who was worshipped there had quite the little cult for itself at one time. Why that's no longer the case today, and when the temple was abandoned, she doesn't recall. For now, Araragi just thanks her for helping him make that snake connection, and resolves to report this to Oshino. I'm surprised he hasn't done that already, if the hike was a couple of days ago now, but okay.

Then, suddenly, Tsubasa asks if Suruga gave him a hard time up on that hill. Araragi is confused, and asks her what she means. I'm guessing there are still rumors surrounding the recent history between Suruga, Araragi, and Senjyo. As they talk, on the other side of the library, a disheveled, furtive-looking Nadeko creeps inside and starts looking for occult books.

Like any well-stocked library, this one has an aisle labeled "sorcery and the occult." Which, to be fair, if that IS normal for this world, then that's more eye for worldbuilding than most urban fantasy bothers with. Even if *most* people don't believe in magic, more of them would than IRL, and there would be cultural changes because of that.

Cut back across the building to Araragi and Tsubasa. Araragi says that the only "trouble" Suruga gave him was not feeling well when they reached the summit, but Tsubasa shakes her head and says that's not what she meant. Rather, should Araragi really be spending so much time alone with another girl, let alone one of Senjyo's underclasswomen? Weird way of prefacing that, Tsubasa. That isn't Suruga giving him a hard time, that's broader social dynamics and/or fear of Senjyo showing up with a fistful of paper clips and pencil sharpeners.

Then, when Araragi insists that Senjyo is fine with him and Suruga being friends so long as he doesn't try to get anything out of her, Tsubasa asks if he lets Suruga hang on his arm. Araragi gets uncomfortable, for obvious reasons. I'm thinking either Suruga told someone about this detail, or Tsubasa saw them somehow. Then, Tsubasa leans in, the camera plays over her body, and she tries to kiss Araragi.

Of course, every single female that Araragi knows puts on a softcore show for him and gets handsy in order to test his loyalty or teach him a moral lesson. It's completely in-character for every single one of these girls to do that, and serves the plot. Just a coincidence that it ends up with every girl effectively throwing herself at the protagonist in typical harem shit-slop fashion. Total coincidence. Shut up already, you just don't get how deep it is, and also you're being racist against Japanese people, and also also you're all a bunch of cheap whores for not sleeping with me.

Glad we've cleared that up now.

She pulls back from kissing him at the last second, and chides him for not doing more to resist her. And...attributes this failure on his part to him being too kind and deferential to all and sundry.

She's literally telling him that he's been letting hot girls dry-hump him left and right out of altruism.

How do I even mock this?

Like, is this SUPPOSED to be funny? Is the show already effectively mocking itself here? I legitimately cannot tell. I'm also not sure if that would make it better, or even worse. If it's unironic, then it's just completely juvenile and idiotic. If it's ironic, then it's willful self-sabotage of the story (and of Araragi's characterization in particular, assuming we actually are supposed to think him kind and altruistic) for the sake of trying to look smarter.

Why can't this show just let itself be good?

Tsubasa gives him a final reminder that Senjyo is, in fact, a tsundere, and thus everything she tells him is layered with double-meanings and unspoken boundaries and demands. Her telling him that she's fine with him working alone in the woods with Suruga may or may not actually mean what it sounds like. Okay sure whatever. At long FUCKING last, they stop talking about relationship stuff and start checking out their books. Or...buying them, actually. Looks like it's a bookstore rather than or in addition to a library. As they head to checkout, Tsubasa surprises Araragi with her plans to not go to college next year.

She thinks that she's built up her booksmarts to the exclusion of everything else, and wants to go out and get some hands-on experience of the world before thinking about higher education. That's a very mature and wise approach, honestly, and one that I think more people should be encouraged to take. It's also surprising coming from Tsubasa, but hey, more power to her! Then, abruptly, Tsubasa looks feverish and starts clutching her head.

Araragi isn't trusting this. Too-similar symptoms, too close together in time. There's something going on here. Then, he finally notices Nadeko leaving ahead of them. The shelf she'd been investigating contains a number of books related to a "serpent curse." Araragi trusts this even less now.

That evening (or...another evening sometime later? An evening, at any rate) Araragi meets Suruga at the trail entrance again. He tells her that he saw that suspicious girl from the trail again at the bookstore, and this time recognized her as an old friend of his youngest sister's.

More importantly however, he has reason to think that she's climbing the mountain again right now as they speak. How does he know that? I'm not sure. It kinda feels like there's a scene missing in between the bookstore and now. Anyway, Araragi wants to follow her and see if they can catch her in the act of the ritual snake murder, and see if it's related to the supernatural force Oshino is trying to deal with. The reason he wanted Suruga to come along is because, even though Nadeko is an old acquaintance of his, he cannot just approach and talk to her on his own. She probably doesn't remember him, and she might think he's just some pervert creeping on her; the defensive instincts of a girl who's just entered puberty are strong.

He literally says that. Everything after the semicolon above is a direct quote from the subtitles.

Suruga asks him how he would know that, and he jokingly acknowledges that he's learned through experience. His tone of voice and expression are very much "ha ha, only serious."

...

I'm getting the distinct impression that Araragi isn't afraid of Nadeko *not* remembering him. More the opposite. I commented on the possibility before, but now it's seeming more and more likely.

...

Araragi goes on to say that since since she's a bit of a local high school celebrity thanks to her athleticism, this middle school girl might have heard of her and look up to her, so that's a diplomacy bonus. Then Suruga says...this:

Um.

Please tell me this isn't going the way that I'm afraid it might be going?

Fortunately for me, the topic moves back to the reality of the snakemurder and the possibility of supernatural danger. They steel themselves for black magic shenanigans, and start hurrying up the trail after Nadeko. They reach the summit just in time to see her impale a struggling reptile.

Apparently she stakes them out live, and only cuts them into pieces afterward. Fuck.

In her defense, there are tears in her eyes as she does this. She obviously gets no pleasure out of the animal torture, and wouldn't be doing it if she had any choice.

From behind, Araragi calls her name. Wait, wasn't the plan to let Suruga do the talking? Guess he forgot the plan. Nadeko startles, looking up from her bloody work, and sees Araragi and Suruga standing over her. It turns out that she does remember Araragi after all. However, when reacting to seeing him, she refers to him as 'big brother Koyomi', which indicates that her memories of him are mostly positive. Color me surprised.

Cue flashback. Nadeko was a lonely, friendless child back in second grade, until she met Araragi's little sister Lala (probably a nickname). Oh, will you look at that, lonely newcomer girl finds a single friend who becomes the light of her life, how fresh, we've never seen that before in literally the episode before this one. It's becoming a pattern where every odd-numbered arc introduces a fresh and interesting character backstory, and every even-numbered one rehashes it in a way that could be interesting if there was intentionality behind it but the story doesn't seem to realize its doing. It's not as heavy-handed a parallel as the ones between Senjyo and Mayoi (I honestly thought Mayoi was going to turn out to be a spirit fragment of Senjyo's due to how big the similarities were), but in light of that precedent the parallels between Nadeko and Suruga are pretty author-tic-y. Anyway, Nadeko recalls how she used to go to Lala Araragi's house a lot, where she met her brother Koyomi. And then the flashback abruptly ends, and the screen just flashes this:

..................

OKAY THEN.

He's said to have only been in sixth grade at that time, so maaaaybe he was a little young to have been doing things, but...I just have no patience for the show towing the line or being coy about this shit after what it's explicitly shown.

Is my mind supposed to be going to where it's going, at that? Like, is "oooh, did twelve year old Araragi molest this girl or not?" supposed to be a game the story is playing with the audience?

Return to the present, with them entering Araragi's room. I guess it's too late in the evening to bring her to Oshino without warning. Nadeko notes that Araragi has changed rooms since she was friends with his sister back in elementary school. Suruga energetically crows about how exciting this is; she's never been in a boy's room before.

Given her poor social life as a child and her sexual orientation as a teen, that's not too surprising I guess.

Then, out of nowhere, she announces that she's going to root around and find Araragi's porn collection. Araragi asks her what the fuck. Suruga tells him that there's no point in trying to hide what he's into, because she learned all about his smut habits when she was stalking him in the time between episodes 2 and 6.

She doesn't say anything about what those tastes ARE, so she might be bluffing. But, I mean. It's not like we the audience don't already have a pretty good idea of how much of Araragi's porn collection would be admissible as evidence in court. Araragi panics as everything goes superdeformed for nearly an entire minute of screentime. When the animation returns to normal, we see that this whole time Nadeko has been crouched in the corner crylaughing for the entire time that Suruga and Araragi were freaking out about his unspecified porn habits.

I'm not sure why she hasn't just left, honestly.

When they finally calm down again, Nadeko stops crylaughing and asks them to turn around. When she lets them look back, she's naked but for her panties, and is covering her nipples with her hands. Looking mortified and shamefaced at presenting herself naked, but doing it anyway. The camera plays lovingly over the curves of her thirteen year old body. Araragi and Suruga have a too-long discussion about her underwear.

Soon after this, though, they notice the markings that coil around Nadeko's body. Suruga's first thought is that they look like rope burns from extreme bondage play, because of course it is, but Araragi observes that they aren't burns or scars at all, but reptilian scales.

Nadeko nervously, seeming on the brink of tears again, asks Araragi if he's having bad thoughts because of her naked body, since he's older now. He hastily denies it, and then he and Suruga spend some uncomfortable minutes making lewd comments to one another as she trembles in front of them.

“Please tell me this isn’t going the way that I’m afraid it might be going?”

— me

It went the way that I was afraid it might have been going.

...

Remember in Mayoi Snail, when I said that at least the camera itself wasn't ogling a preteen girl's naked body, thereby making it technically better than JJBA's rape monkey episode? Well, this is worse than the rape monkey.

For one thing, the mortification of the girl is obviously being played for titillation and/or sick comedy in and of itself. In JJBA, while the male gaze lingering on Anne's body was blatant pedo-appeal, at the very least the story was encouraging us to root for her and hope that something bad *doesn't* happen to her. In this scene, the show expects you to just enjoy the underaged nudity and tears along with Araragi and Suruga.

For another, this scene fails on even the most basic Watsonian level of narrative sense. Nadeko clearly isn't comfortable with letting them see her naked, and THE FUCKING SCALES EXTEND ONTO HER ARMS AND LEGS! Why would she do this? Why would she even THINK to strip naked instead of just pulling up one of her sleeves? It's not like Suruga and Araragi pressured her into doing this. They seemed surprised when they first turned back around and saw her naked. Like, even the goddamned Mayoi Snail sexual assault scene at least made sense in-universe. The JoJo rape monkey scene made sense in-universe, at least to the degree that anything in JJBA can be said to make sense. Here, the story is twisting itself into knots and having characters act nonsensically IN ORDER to work in some extra pedobait. Even if you ignored all sense of taste and moral acceptability, this scene would be complete nonsense.

...

Nadeko breaks down in tears, hugging her body to cover more of it, and begs them to do something to help her, referring to Araragi as "big brother" in the process. End episode.


This is by far the worst episode of the show so far. The only good parts of it were condensed into the first few minutes, with the atmospheric hiking and temple scenes, but even they weren't *as* atmospheric as the previous arcs' highlight scenes. Pretty much every bit of interaction between the characters after that point was boring at best and idiotic at worst, the ratio of screentime to story progression was somehow even worse than Mayoi Snail's, and the Nadeko scene at the end was the single worst thing I've ever had to watch since I started reviewing things.

You know what someone should do? Do an extensive edit of this show, excising all the pedo shit, as much as possible of the harem shit, and stitching what's left together into some new starting and stopping points for episodes. This episode, for instance, would probably be cut down to about seven minutes, and would be the first third of the first episode of the Nadeko Snake two parter. Release this new cut under a title like "Bakemonogatari, But For Human Beings." It would be a good show. I'd watch it.