10 Second Anime - Monogatari Series Second Season - Episode 25

Monogatari Series Second Season - Episode 25

"So Mr. Kaiki, you're going to deceive me too?"

Wow. I was not expecting that response from the ditzy mad god to Kaiki's outright lie. However, we can tease some foreshadowing from Hanekawa's conversation with him at the beginning of the episode.

First of all, Hanekawa does not believe that Nadeko actually loves Araragi, because she is so self-absorbed, she snubs or ignores others, and only pays attention to her own delusions. That gives me a shiver, because somehow Ougi was able to feed her enough information that she accepted to make her own delusions of a snake spirit, convincing her to eat the talisman that had the snake spirit that was taken from her earlier in the story. Hanekawa even knows about the locked closet, but Kaiki says to himself that whatever is in there is utter nonsense, frivolous even, and couldn't possibly help in his con of the ditzy mad god.

The other thing that Hanekawa asks about is whether Oshino has a niece. She is referring to Ougi, but Kaiki thinks she's only asking about Oshino's family in her attempts to find him. Kaiki says Oshino has no family. He was born alone, and has no one he's related to in this world. Uh oh. So we have three pieces of information related to the story.

First: Nadeko is self-absorbed and pays attention only to her own delusions. This could have major implications to the lies Kaiki will tell, and whether she believes it. From her reaction at the end of the episode, she's not buying them.

Second: Ougi is not who she says she is. She is deeply involved in this story, as she is the one who got Nadeko's delusions working to make her the new god of the Polar Snake Shrine. But as someone who has said that it's her job to punish liars and "bring to an end, things which must end," why would she turn a delusional girl into a god, into an aberration that is no longer doing what it must? I'll have some better thoughts on that after the next episode. All I can say is, maybe her target wasn't Nadeko at all.

Third: the hidden thing in the closet is frivolous nonsense, according to Kaiki, but somehow so non-frivolous that Nadeko's parents still haven't opened her closet months after her disappearance. When something couldn't possibly mean anything, nor help in a Monogatari story, well, of course it's just the opposite.

Meanwhile, during the month of January, Kaiki continues his visits to the shrine, paying his dues, playing with little kids' toys, and bring sake to the ditzy mad god. She really learned to like sake...

On the 1st of February, he believes it's time to pull the trigger on his con. On the way there, he runs into Ononoki ("yea, yea"), who warns him that his biggest failures have always happened when he tries to be something he is not. That's a big warning for a town that has already suffered from the nameless darkness.

Through Ononoki, we hear about the events which caused Senjougahara's current circumstances, living with her father and swindled out of their assets by the cult her mother joined. We learn that the mother had joined a smaller cult first, which was crushed by Kaiki, and explains their prior relationship, but then the mother joined a larger cult, which wiped them out, and ripped her mother away from the rest of the family. Senjougahara had loved Kaiki before in some kind of girlish crush, as part of his actions to swindle money from the smaller cult, but grew to hate him after learning what he did, because his actions drove the mother to the next cult. Complicated emotions there for Senjougahara to ask him for help to save her current boyfriend and herself. Kaiki tried to be a white knight, but he's a conman, and made things worse when he became something he was not.

With all these warnings, how could Kaiki's plan not fall apart? His plan was simple. Set the hook of not talking about one's wish if you want it to come true, and then reel her in when he tells Nadeko that the people she wishes to kill have died in a car crash, which just goes to show that her wish can't come true because she's been telling everyone about her wish. In that moment, the shrine rumbles, as she absorbs this information, and then her self-absorbed delusion asserts itself, "So Mr. Kaiki, you're going to deceive me too?"

Kaiki's mistake is that he never set the hook. All that time he was spending at the shrine, not talking about his wish, he thought Nadeko was actually growing curious about it. She wasn't. She only asked about it because she wanted to play a god who grants wishes. She didn't care about anyone else or their wish. Kaiki was part of her little plan to be a good god, and if he wasn't going to play that part, well, that ditzy mad god can get really angry. As someone who always claims he is a fake, and has no spiritual powers whatsoever, Kaiki is in real trouble. Unless, he's been lying about that too.