Review of Owarimonogatari - Episodes 4-6

IncendiaryLemon

Captain Karen
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<b>Review of Owarimonogatari - Episodes 4-6 by IncendiaryLemon</b>

After Araragi was reunited with old classmate Sodachi Oikura in&nbsp;<em>Sodachi Riddle</em>, he&nbsp;tried to get to the bottom of the reason why she harboured so much hatred for him, with the help of the mysterious Ougi Oshino, supposed niece of supernatural expert Meme Oshino. Now Araragi has determined why she&nbsp;hates him so much, he returns to school, knowing he must confront Sodachi once more. Despite his realisation, he still can&rsquo;t shake the feeling that her hatred runs much deeper than he thought.<br>

Episodes 4-6 of&nbsp;<em>Owarimonogatari</em>&nbsp;make up the arc&nbsp;<em>Sodachi Lost</em>&nbsp;and whilst&nbsp;it has its moments and is not bad, it&rsquo;s the weakest section so far.<br>

What makes this the weakest of the first three arcs is Episode 4 which could pretty much be considered filler for&nbsp;all that it achieves in moving the plot forward or revealing useful information. The only thing that really happens is that Araragi goes to Oikura&rsquo;s house and picks who to take between Hanekawa, Araragi&rsquo;s close friend and former crush, and Ougi. This is something that could have easily been done in a couple of scenes but instead is given a full episode with padding that makes this particular section really drag. The padding consists of the scene where&nbsp;Araragi chooses&nbsp;between Ougi and Hanekawa (this takes up half the episode) followed by Hanekawa voicing her concerns about Ougi to Araragi; this, once again, is over-long. Once this is out the way, however, the next&nbsp;two episodes are sublime.<br>

Whilst this is a new arc,&nbsp;it continues the Oikura story and essentially acts as the final part of a trilogy, dabbling in the mystery genre to great effect once again. This element works a bit better than in&nbsp;<em>Ougi Formula</em>&nbsp;as the mystery is presented at the end of Episode 5, so the audience has a chance to make guesses before the solution is unveiled in Episode 6. However, something I disliked about the story was how neatly its issues were resolved. Without spoiling anything, it wraps itself up in a way that is very clean and has no real lasting impact. I feel you could skip this entire arc, and by proxy the previous one too, and not lose anything of great importance to the overall <em>Monogatari</em> story or its main characters.&nbsp;This might&nbsp;be something to do with the fact that this series takes place before most of the second season, meaning that if a <em>certain character</em> hadn&rsquo;t left by the end of the arc, it could have created continuity issues.<br>

In terms of characterization,&nbsp;<em>Sodachi Lost</em>&nbsp;is completely focused on enhancing and developing Oikura. Episode 5 in particular goes the deepest we&rsquo;ve seen into her back story and it&rsquo;s excellently done with some fantastic visuals. It really makes you feel a deep sympathy for a character who was portrayed earlier as being quite mean-spirited for seemingly little reason. None of the other characters are really progressed and Ougi remains as much of an enigma&nbsp;as she did at the start of the series, something I hope that the upcoming 6-part arc&nbsp;<em>Shinobu Mail</em>&nbsp;will remedy.<br>

<strong>In Summary</strong><br>

While there are definitely some unsatisfactory issues with these episodes &nbsp;the&nbsp;<em>Sodachi Lost</em>&nbsp;arc is still fantastic for the most part and delivers some really great character development for Oikura as well as the usual&nbsp;<em>Monogatari</em>&nbsp;charm.<br>

<b>Final score: 8 out of 10</b>

<b>Additional screencaps</b>

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