KOIMONOGATARI

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

NOVEL ActionOnimonogatari
MANGA ComedyKimi to Nadekko!
ANIME ComedyMonogatari Series: Second Season
NOVEL ComedyTsukimonogatari

REVIEWS

• 

  inspirashamul

  100/100
  Every single thing in this review is the truth because words should be trusted.

  This is my favorite tale in Monogatari.
  This is the worst tale in Monogatari.

  I will not lie in this review.
  Maybe I already have but who cares really.
  We all lie to ourselves anyways.
  The written word is no different.

  Let's get all the gimmick sections of the review out of the way so we can get onto the boring part where I ramble able a single line that doesn't represent the tale at all and moreso what I ended up latching onto.

  Placement is everything as they say. Or it's actually just me because I've been coming back to it since these reviews started with the beginning of Second Season. Hitagi End huh. She did meet her end. The end of Hitagi from 2 years ago that Kaiki remembered. The one who laughs so easily. The easily breakable girl who continued to thrive. The damage that Kaiki caused without realizing who she was back then and what she cared about. The one who wanted to hold onto those memories, even if they wouldn't bring back any of the pieces. Just as Kaiki couldn't fully save Hitagi, Araragi couldn't fully save Nadeko while the reverse worked. It's just the way things go. That relationship was never meant to be even if it was one-sided as she said. But she also lies a healthy amount because she mastered from the swindler. We started with Hitagi Crab and we tie up all the loose connections to her story here. Even though Shinobu duped the reader in Onimonogatari and the cover reinforced that deception, this story is all about lies anyways so it is quite fitting. It's a crime that this story is experienced before Hanamonogatari for those brave anime fans that follow a production cycle instead of the written one. But I don't really care. Isin doesn't care either. He makes each entry connected and self-contained if you ignore half the story anyways so you do you. Yay! Peace! Peace!

  No Short Stories to discuss that seem to be attached to this tale although Rouka is mentioned but that was read with Hanamonogatari so we are good. Time for the most interesting part of the review.

  Gaen claimed that life is unfair in Onimonogatari. Kaiki continues that policy to some degree with his line that being happy isn't the point of life. And even uses the car accident which probably took away his unrequited love away as a vehicle for deception. Bold. Brazen. Very Kaiki to do though. Because that lost love will never go away. It spurs him to take on this job. The excuse is Kanbaru, but it's the guilt of misplacing the mother's importance on the child. For both Kanbaru and Hitagi. He still doesn't fully understand Nadeko either because the manga was the trump card used when he failed. It was not part of the plan for success. Although money still revolved around both options which is just perfect with his desires. Money is life but life isn't money. In the end, the money didn't save her, neither Nadeko nor Hitagi. Not even Hanekawa whose interactions with Kaiki were the highlight because both recognized Nadeko for what she truly was. That's how much they hated their past selves to realize. Just like Hanekawa, Kaiki's word were as idealistic as his desires were rational. Or was it the other way around. It doesn't matter anyways because this review is wrapping up in a cute little bow.

  For those of you who look at my reviews for the score. I hate you.
  For those of you who look at my reviews for the words. I thank you.
  For those of you who found meaning in these reviews. I apologize to you.
  For those of you who have read in full of these reviews. I bow to you.

  I'll see you in the Final Season.

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• 

  yeqks

  100/100
  partial-review and partial-analysis

  I think love is often the easiest thing to misunderstand at a young age. You’re told from popular stories in especially children’s media that love is an unbreakable bond, that it can lift you up and help push you through all odds and achieve things once thought to be unachievable - but this is only 50% of the whole truth. The other end of the tale is that love is a deathly ailment that swallows you whole and spits out what’s left, leaving you with less than what you had and unable to do things you once thought to be easy. The only reason you believe in this false idea of love as a child is because you hope it to be true, even if a doubt were to exist in your mind you’d stuff it down because the truth you want to believe is more important than the truth that will disappoint less in the grand scheme of life.

  “People want to know the truth. Or, they want to believe that what they already know is the truth-what’s actually true is secondary.”

  There is no bigger liar than someone who tells a story. To believe the words written in a book is to believe the person who wrote the book, it’s the reason learning history in school requires you to source separate articles on a single topic, because people like to lie in order to believe what they think is true. This even extends to one’s own character, people lie to the person they are in order to fit in with others, they lie to themselves in order to be understood by others, in order to be perceived in a certain way by others. If it weren’t synonymous with professionalism, not as many people would choose to wear suits to work or other professional events. Being a professional means you have to lie, otherwise you appear less professional than you truly are. Of course no matter how much effort one puts into lying, misunderstandings are unavoidable, but when someone misunderstands it’s an opportunity for someone else to take advantage of them. The only liar second in their greatness to that of a storyteller, it’s ourselves.

  Kaiki Deishuu is synonymous with falseness. He is a fraud in every sense of the word, but it’s because he’s a fraud that when he begins narrating the story for Koimonogatari, he clarifies that the story he is about to tell will be filled with lies and half-truths - inviting the readers into his view of the world, distrusting and deceptive to everyone and everything and informing his audience that storytellers are all liars and that you should always pay careful attention to their words. The cover of the novel even depicts Senjougahara and it’s been teased that she’d be narrating this story for a few installments leading up to this point but all that just turned out to be false, a con from the author. The only person you can trust is yourself, but what happens when you’re the one conning yourself? Only believing what you want to believe is true about yourself, rejecting the truth and living in falsehood - at that point should you even be able to trust yourself? Kaiki even lets slip lies he didn’t mean to tell on occasion, due to his habit of lying at every turn. If Senjougahara were described as a “cloistered princess” who’d “built walls around herself” then it’s appropriate to describe Kaiki as an endless Matryoshka doll. What’s seen on the outside houses a smaller, more honest inside, but it’s unclear to say if that inside doesn’t have a more honest inside of its own. Kaiki is a man so layered in fraudulence it becomes impossible to discern his true motives, with every act of decency comes an indecent act. But does this decent act become devalued once an indecent one occurs? Even with a full story dedicated to him, the only things learnt appear to be just 50% of his truth.

  Money. The consistent, only real unwavering truth is Kaiki’s love for money. Of course money is but a substitute for value, what a person sees in it is what it becomes, it holds hardly any real value to Kaiki, but he can’t bear to watch people throw away their money in hopes their wishes come true. Throwing away value for the sake of something unattainable. There is no emotion to be found within money itself. It’s a means to gain something else, it’s exchanged for something desired, and that something desired can be exchanged for money. Living as a Vagabond, Kaiki hates things that are irreplaceable. He doesn’t own a house or a car, traveling by means of taxi, plane, subway or on foot. To own a house and a car creates a dependency on them, you become emotionally attached to them because you use them every day, but with money you use the bills you have and they’re replaced with new bills later on. Money is the only source of a replaceable value, and money is a lie. If you see no value in money then it becomes but mere pieces of paper. If you don’t believe the value to be true, then the truth of its meaninglessness is revealed to you. It’s in the same way that you can throw around lie after lie and in the end they mean nothing if they aren’t believed, or if they’re met with a lie in return. Lies are not irreplaceable, you can think of a new one if one isn’t working but if they’re not believed then they’ve lost all their effectiveness. If believed, however, they’re the easiest way to make money. To become a professional liar, you have to lie to yourself, and your existence has to be a lie. You can’t be seen as true to anyone if you never let your expression change or change your vocal tone, if you’re only dry and never sympathetic, if you’re never honest with yourself and only take action if it benefits the lie you spin to others about your identity. However human beings are never not subject to change, it’s impossible to be one thing without also being another or be one thing and only one thing forever. Nobody is void of mistakes no matter how professional you claim to be, and even if you were to be a professional fraud there are always going to be better frauds out there than yourself who aren’t professional. Believing only what is to be seen about someone is believing in their falseness and allowing yourself to be betrayed by their true nature. This story is how Kaiki falls for a con, and how he rejects a god in order to reach his conclusion.

  The only reason he believes to have taken the job is for the sake of Kanbaru, the daughter of Gaen Toee who was his former love before she was tragically killed in a car accident. This is a lie. Every question he asks to himself in this scene is asked from the perspective of his honest intentions for taking on this case, and his responses are from the perspective of his lying character’s motives for taking on this case. To avoid misunderstanding, he only makes choices based on the character he plays for other people, only doing things for money and never allowing his emotions to give weight to any of his actions. Lying to the reader, but perhaps also lying to himself. In fact, mentioning Senjougahara, it feels as though the two get along the best out of everyone Kaiki meets. Though perhaps it’s only what I want to believe is true. They’re both liars, both lying to protect their hearts from outside interference, and it’s because of this that they can’t connect. When Senjougahara appears to be honest, Kaiki lies. When Kaiki appears to be honest, Senjougahara lies. They can never clear up their past to one another because neither is willing to admit the truth. Whether or not Senjougahara’s past feelings for Kaiki were true, or if that was something inferred by Kaiki, will never be known because it was in the past. Your memories warp to create something out of the past that might have not actually happened to save space for new memories being made, and you can never trust your own memory because it may never be an accurate retelling, a story, and thus a lie. It’s believed to be true because you want it to be true. So neither of them are correct, and whatever you wish to infer will be the only truth because it’s what you, the reader, want to be true. After all, Senjougahara is a woman who believes every new love is her first love and even if it may be false her belief in it makes it true. She’s someone who values Araragi as an irreplaceable value because her irreplaceable values were taken away from her, his existence strengthened her enough to that he may as well be here first love, because though she claims to “had fallen for anyone who tried to save her” only one proved to be the real deal. It’s a lie, but it reflects 50% of the truth. Araragi was the first love to actually aid her in the removal of her aberration. It’s why she’d gladly lose her life if he was allowed to live, so he can stay irreplaceable. This is also why Kaiki refers to her as foolish, because she believes that the cost of her love is without a price. She’s willing to pay whatever she needs to pay for Kaiki to save her love, she believes in an irreplaceable value even though anything irreplaceable can be lost, as Kaiki’s love had.

  This lie of professionalism he exhibits by taking such a burdensome job for only 100,000 yen (around 660 usd) shocks Senjougahara but it should shock the reader as well, considering he lies again later when he declines Gaen’s request to withdraw from the job for a payment of 3,000,000 yen (a few hundred over 20k usd), I say decline when he accepted as a lie to take the money but really ended up declining - in any case he claims he only chose not to withdraw because when told to do something he feels a strong inclination to do the opposite. This is only 50% true of course, when Karen confronted Kaiki in Nisemonogatari telling him to leave he up and ignored her and continued his cons, but when Senjougahara asked him to withdraw from the town and never return he immediately accepted without any pushback. No retaliation, no cons, just withdrawal. Of course he claims it’s because she’s scary and could kill him, but in that scene he also tells her she’s become a boring girl - implying that he knows she’s changed and probably wouldn’t kill him. In both of these instances he listens to Senjougahara regardless of what he would normally do. Ononoki even points out his sweet spot for Senjougahara as she recounts something Gaen Izuko had told her, that Kaiki was the one who defrauded her mother’s cult, only for her to move on to a higher ranking cult, and how he was the one who drove her and her mother apart because he saw no future for her otherwise. That it was because of his misunderstanding of the young Senjougahara, that he drove her family apart. It was because he couldn’t understand past the surface that he caused her to grow a hatred, a unique hatred, towards him and him alone. When Kaiki tells Hanekawa that perhaps Nadeko doesn’t need to be turned back into a human, pointing out that she looks happy as a god, Hanekawa corrects him by informing him that just because someone looks happy doesn’t mean they actually are. Just because a young Senjougahara resented her mother didn’t mean she wanted to be removed from her. Kaiki sarcastically denies all of the stories Ononoki tells, but feeling the need to sarcastically deny them invites an idea that it bothered him to be painted as someone who meant well. The self-lie that he is only who he is on the surface, that what’s underneath is no bigger a lie than what’s visible.

  On Kaiki’s final visit to Kita-Shirahebi Shrine, Nadeko asks him what he wished for, something he claimed he’d done when he began his trips. The lie that he’d had a wish in mind. Of course there’s many wishes he can make, the man is full of desires and just a measly 10,000 yen into an offertory box for something like a wish granted by a god should appeal pretty greatly to a man as seemingly endlessly greedy as Kaiki. But he refuses. He rejects an easily granted wish for something easier, and in a sense rejects something in a similar vein to money, choosing to put forth a lie and to have it fail. The signs were fairly obvious, Nadeko’s overly friendly attitude and attempts to play dumb, her enjoyment of everything he brought her, her impatience and urgency placed towards Kaiki’s wish being granted, and yet Kaiki saw it as how it was. He was tricked by a con because he played to their tune expecting them to have been playing to his. It’s with this confrontation that Kaiki shows his efforts at being the real-deal, confronting Nadeko about her decisions after his investigation and his attempts to gain understanding of her, originally to help him con her which it turned out to be ineffective because lies mean nothing to someone who always lies. Nobody’s feelings can remain hidden forever. No lie will always remain a lie forever. The same way the truth of his feelings for Senjougahara were discovered by Gaen, Nadeko’s manga would eventually be discovered by someone who wanted to know what was in her closet. She never really loved Araragi, he was just something to distract her from talents she thought of as embarrassing. Things we find irreplaceable are always embarrassing. It’s because they differ from others, but that’s what makes them a part of you specifically. The love Sengoku feels for Araragi is a replaceable irreplaceable value, a value given to her by storytellers, her love for Araragi is hardly personal. It’s something she can barely describe, but because she wants it to be true, she believes she is in love with Araragi. However her love for Araragi weighs her down, becoming a god just because of him and only being motivated by her obsession with him, Kaiki reminds her of her passion, something she hid from everyone in an attempt to lie that her only interest was in Araragi. He then says things he later describes to Araragi himself as “the usual stuff adults say to kids” - that dreams can always be achieved and that you can do anything, the things you’ve probably heard someone tell you before. Kaiki frames it as just being another lie, but if Nadeko was deceived by those words then she chooses to believe they’re true. There’s always a lie to deceive anyone, you just have to tell them what they want to hear. Kaiki phones Senjougahara to say goodbye and update her on the status of the job, Senjougahara asking Kaiki if he really thought she was in love with him all those years ago, and upon Kaiki’s confirmation, she says “I see, someone got duped. By me.” and then goes on to say: “Watch out for wicked women from now on.” to which he hangs up. Perhaps this was what Kaiki wanted to hear, and was thus deceived, or perhaps she was lying and attempting to deceive Kaiki by telling him the opposite. “Wicked women” hardly even specifies who to look out for, given Kaiki’s recent experience with Nadeko. It’s with this that Kaiki wanders back the way he came, and is then ambushed by one of the middle schoolers he’d sold a charm to, the one who’d had his curse on Nadeko reversed by Araragi. The victim or victimizer hardly matters, in this situation the easiest person to blame is Kaiki, so the kid attacks him in retaliation. Kaiki lays in the snow, ending the tale on what appears to be his demise at the hands of the victim of his own con, and yet he returns in Hanamonogatari. His statement at the beginning held true, and in the end he really only told 50% of the truth, the rest is up for you to decide on your own.

  It’s with this that I feel it appropriate to end this writing. The main idea? Perhaps it’s that lying is but a cycle that births a new lie, or that lying is a cycle that ends in a truth, or that truth and lie are different but one in the same, or that too much of something can take away from your life, or that an obsession with happiness is incorrect, that too high an intake of happiness will poison your perception of it, whatever you take away form the novel is the main idea. The truth is nothing but what you believe it to be. So to keep it thematic, this review only sums up 50% of my total thoughts and analysis of this work. To put it another way, it’s a partial-partial review and a partial-partial analysis. 25% of the whole since I suppose it was already 50% to begin with, I only title these as “partial” reviews because nobody can fully understand anything and there’s always room for further learning. So in a way this is my Matryoshka doll. As for the novel as an experience, this is one of the most engrossing novels I’ve read and surely the best entry in this series. This was a fairly easy novel to wrap my head around by the end of it, and it even got me emotional. Pieces of it were inspiring as well. If it inspired me to publish one of my writings then its lies must be worth some kind of truth.

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