10 Second Anime - Monogatari Series Second Season - Episode 14

Monogatari Series Second Season - Episode 14

You're cute! Cute, cute, cute, cute! But let's change your hairstyle and radically change your personality anyway. Tell the teacher off, tell the class off, kick some stuff around, but it's not the snake's fault. Oh no, no sir.

It appears that liking cute, young girls runs in the family. Araragi just can't help it, and neither can his younger sister Tsukihi. You know, if I were Nadeko, I might be getting a complex being told by the women closest to my crush that "she's the cutest thing next to me!" Shinobu told her that very thing last episode, and now Tsukihi. Hmm, we may be seeing the root of her madness forming. Shinobu said that it was good for her that Nadeko just happened to be cute, Tsukihi dragged it out of her that she took that to mean that she was cute and nothing else, and feels guilty when people are affected by her cuteness. Tsukihi pronounces this nonsense. Now, the word for cute in Japanese is kawaii (可愛い), which also means precious or tiny. It's meant to evoke a feeling of needing to protect the cute thing, which is what Nadeko is feeling guilty about. Tied again to the title of this arc: bait, lure, trap. She had also grown out her bangs to hide her pretty face and wore baggy clothing to avoid this, but the unsure and unconfident mannerisms that accompanied this avoidance also added another dimension to her preciousness. She was cute no matter what she did. Tsukihi takes drastic measures to end Nadeko's cuteness torment. Snip!

Drastic haircut leads to drastic personality change. She finally tells off her homeroom teacher for trying to make her do his job in addressing the students' broken relationships after the fake charms episode earlier in the year. Then she storms off, kicks down a door and a podium telling off her classmates to suck it up. Yeah, you were all being fake and hypocrites to each other before, but now it's out in the open, deal with it. As she leaves school early (what else can you do after that kind of display?), the snake spirit claims that it's not his fault she acted like that. He just happened to be there. Hmm. Snakes lie in eastern and western culture, so who knows if he's telling the truth here, but he needs to placate Nadeko so she'll keep helping him find his corpse, and he offers more wishes to sweeten the deal. He now knows where it is: somewhere in the Araragi house. While sifting through Araragi's stash of lad magazines (all glasses themed, huh?), she finds a paper seal with the snake spirit's body in it. Nadeko asks if her wish that Araragi can return her love can come true, but Araragi suddenly appears and plainly tells her, "no, it won't." Cliffhanger!