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.
I can't say it resonated with me, (I don't want to brush my sister's teeth). It didn't appall me because I know its not going to step over the line. I think about it sometimes because its so hilarious that Araragi falls into a trap of his own making. Something he does throughout a lot of Bakemonogatari and the sequels .
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty good way of looking at it, and surprisingly not an interpretation I've heard before. I guess we all just got caught up in the "fan service" part of the scene.
ReplyDelete