12 Days of Anime--#12: Dat Toothbrush

What better way to kick off 12 Days of Anime but with a scene that makes you wonder whether Shinbo is an artistic genius or a pedophilic madman?

So, before I begin, a quick note about how I choose my topics for the 12 Days tradition. I like to focus on characters and scenes that really stood out to me over the past year, and don't cover the stuff that affected the anime community/blogosphere because others do it much better than I can. That said, this one kind of covers all three categories.

 
I marathoned Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari back-to-back in the lead-up to Nisemonogatari's final episode because I wanted to see what all the hype was about. I enjoyed Bakemonogatari a lot, but the shift in tone in Nisemonogatari was surprising on a couple of levels. One was how perverted the main character, Araragi, had suddenly gotten. Don't get me wrong; the Monogatari series clearly has an eye for fanservice. It's just that in Bakemonogatari, it seemed like the main pervert in the series was the camera (read: Shinbo). In Nisemonogatari, Araragi is far more actively engaged in provoking the girls into fanservice-riddled situations. And the big one was episode 8. I'm not against fanservice, but incest is a huge squick for me, so I was very uncomfortable throughout the episode. My favorite part was when Tsukihi walked in and asked them what the hell they were doing. However, I don't deny that the episode looked fantastic.

My face the entire episode.

Some of you called it art, or said that it raised the bar for fanservice. I'm not going to dispute anyone's opinion on that scene, but I'm curious; how many of you, after Nisemonogatari finished airing, completely forgot about this scene? Does it still resonate with you or appall you, or do you just not think about it anymore? I guess I'm interested in the shelf life of a scene that was widely agreed within the aniblogosphere to be interesting artistically, never mind the content.

Images from Crunchyroll.