Bakemonogatari: 02 – Stapler Smex
Staplers also have the right to feel good.
Tsui here and I will be the one handling Bakemonogatari by now. So yeah, expect four shows from me this Summer season: Haruhi Suzumiya’s Endless Eight-ness, Princess Lover!, Spice and Wolf 2 and this one. Wow, since when did I learned time management?
Intro: “staple stable” by Saitou Chiwa
I think they’re having an idea of putting in different OPs for every arc, or episode? I guess. Anyway, I really love the song. Saitou Chiwa CAN sing xD. Staplers scrolling over and over animation is also cute, but the most epic part (and the one which I am referring to on the OP line and title) are the shots where the staplers are having sex xD. ▼
Continuing off from where we all left last week, Meme is open to Hitagi’s favor. After that, Ararararagi and Hitagi went back to Hitagi’s house for her to clean up and take a shower before they come back to his place again for the ceremony. Hitagi took a shower, have a little chit chat with Ararararagi about her parents. Telling him that she currently lives with her father, after divorcing with his mother who’s under a very suspicious religion.
Hitagi then comes out of the shower naked, shocking a blushing Ararararagi, which led him panicking. (What a loser.. ) Hitagi then continues the talk while she takes her time dressing up slowly in her underwear.
Damn, Hitagi is HAWTT. :nosebleeds:
Really nice fanservice, I must say. And *cough* SHAFT really do know how to make dialogue scenes still worth watching. We have seen so much of Hitagi’s assets too. From down to the bellybutton and up, lol she really doesn’t care to show her everything =P. Plus Hitagi teasing Arararararararagi (I just get lost in his name) with her assets is win.
W-Wait. Is that the same guy wearing those Hawaiian shirt a while back ago?!
So they finally meet up with Meme in his building for the ceremony. Meme first said that they won’t be permanently removing nor destroying the crab in Hitagi, but they would be asking a favor from the god. With that, it means that there might be a certain payment for that, whether from whoever person must be chosen, because they can be careless.
Then they continued the ceremony, in a weird room full of candle lights. Meme also had Hitagi drink something to calm her down. Meme finally started by asking some basic questions to Hitagi, as she answers them briefly one-by-one. Up until he asked something that reminded her from her dark past. That was when she almost got raped.
:doomed:
Hitagi then gets face-to-face with some entity in a crab’s form, which is the cause of her “illness”. I really like the animation in this scene. I thought it’s was really awesome. It might hurt others’ eyes though because of all the bright red that may cause seizures but it’s still damn awesome. Glad to see SHAFT doing it all awesome again on serious cases other than the usual comedic ones.
Meme said that she has to say something to the crab beside him, but Hitagi declines what she has to say to it. With that, the crab got violent and enraged, which results to Hitagi being attacked towards the wall. Meme then comes in to take the crab down by force, but Hitagi stopped him. And instead, she asked for forgiveness on the crab. Hitagi is in tears, just to get her weight back as well as her mom.
Woah. What seemed to be a cold and heartless “tsundere” from the first episode broke down in tears? Miracles can happen after all.
Getting on to Hitagi’s background. She says that her mother got involved in a forbidden religion, and she had their leaders to come over by their house to perform a ceremony for her and her sickness. But instead, they attempted to rape Hitagi instead. Hitagi fought back and saved herself on the bright side, but it turned out to be for the worse because her mother just got penalized by them being hurt.
It was Hitagi’s fault after all that her mom got into some suspicious religion because she always gets mysteriously sick. That also had been the cause for her parents’ divorce as well. Then she met the giant crab, cut her bonds with her mother, and other than that, she also lost her whole weight along with it.
That’s some crab you can’t just find anywhere on the streets.
Hitagi just broke down continuously. Lol wth, I don’t know if that affected her being an ice-rock status from the previous episode but I was like “WTF” when I’m seeing her cry right now. I personally think it’s a great development for her to show some vulnerability.
Looks like the crab is out of her now. And even though she had lost her family, she showed no regrets and smiled instead, admitting that in this situation, she had gained a very important friend, who is Arararararagi.
HITAGI SENJOUGAHARA IS SMILING O_____________O!!!
On the next day, Arararararagi gets awake by his sisters. Having almost nothing to do, he just thought of checking out his weight. And much to his shock, he gained almost double the weight he had. From 45 kilograms, he now has 100. That might have been probably the payment for the gods helping out Hitagi’s problem.
Next ep: *insert text here*
Impressions:
Woah, what a pretty impressive episode again! I just thought that the first half filled with fanservice wasn’t really necessary though, but at least SHAFT is good on showing Hitagi’s nice assets, so not a really big problem for me ;P. Hitagi is just one hot psycho girl.
Seiyuu performance was actually good as well. I never get tired of all the talking again to be really honest. Hiroshi Kamiya did a pretty decent job talking on his mind ‘ala Kyon, while Chiwa Saitou continues to be impressive being the cold Hitagi, whom had finally been broken down in this episode.
Also, it seems like romance is finally brewing now. I wonder on how would it play on the series having different arcs with Arararararagi meeting different girls. I just hope it wouldn’t be too harem-ified because it would definitely suck.
So yeah, they pretty much ended the arc well. Good storytelling in my opinion, and I guess everything had been cleaned up about Hitagi. I can wait for the next arc and another new OP if possible. This show is just weird, it’s addicting.
And the best part of the whole episode actually happened at the start of it:
HAWT AZZ SLAP
More screenshots on the gallery next page.
About tsuiteru
POWUH: iLurker with 14 comments
HITAGI IS HOT
“I think they’re having an idea of putting in different OPs for every arc, or episode? I guess.”
Yeah there will be a brand new OP for every arc covered in Bakemonogatari.
POWUH: Lovely-pyon~ and Metanorn's Hime-chan~ with 371 comments
I like the OP. And godzilla-Hitagi. lol xD Not sure what to think about them showing a different one for each episode but if it’s for a different arc, that would make more sense. :/
Wow, ep 2 looks so good without even needing to watch it. o.O *hasn’t watched it yet* XD
But I really liked Hitagi’s backstory and how her crab-weight dilemma got sucked into it. Or the other way around…yea, that’s how it started anyways.
And another wow on Hitagi breaking into tears. I didn’t expect to see it so soon but like you, I think it’s a great development on her character as well. And it doesn’t give off the sense that they’re rushing through it though I can’t really say that until I watch it but looking at all that action, it’s probably just right.
lol Poor Araragi. ^^;
As for the other girls’ arc, I don’t think they’ll have enough time to make it harem-like (maybe show fanservice but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be a harem). They have to focus on all the supernatural spirit ghost stuff first and that takes up a lot of an episode. :/
Thanks for the review! ^^
.-= Xiao Jie´s last blog ..PreSpoiler: Nakayoshi & Ribon August ‘09 Issue =-.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 94 comments
I don’t usually like perverted/nekid fanservice but . . .SHET! HITAGI’S SO HOTT INDEED :nosebleeds:
.-= Sapphire Pyro´s last blog ..First impressions on NEEDLESS: The start of another epic series! =-.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 78 comments
I’m a girl and I still think Hitagi is indeed hot :nosebleeds: rofls.
And wow, this show is… I don’t know what to say. I’m quite new to Shaft and I’m like shocked to see their style. Just :ehh: in a weird but GOOD way. This show just pulls me in.
Some parts in their style are just disturbingly scary but cool 8D, like this one, this one, and this one :freeze2:
POWUH: Occasional (51-75) with 57 comments
Leave it to Shaft to turn up the weirdness. There were a couple of highlights but the best one was the a$$ slap in the beginning lol.
.-= TJ´s last blog ..Fullmetal Alchemist 97 =-.
POWUH: 1100-1199 with 1187 comments
I love the OP!!! The song is very cute. I hope they’ll release a single with all the OPs ^^. Chiwa Saitou just sounds so good.
Yesh~! Action! Finally action and it doesn’t disappoint. Plus SHAFT doing it is just eye-harming awesomeness XD. And as usual, I really like their style of storytelling again. So modern and fierce.
But lol speaking of fierce, looks like Senjougahara lost some of it XD. But yeah, crying is beautiful anyway, but I wonder if she’ll permanently change to a softer person and lose that cool tsun psycho b*tch personality she had on the first episode.
But OMG I love that I can officially call her and Araragi an OTP <3!!! Having romance finally added into it just makes me anticipate more on this ^^.
Lol @ Araragi gaining more than the double of his weight. I wonder what would be the other "prices" when he helps the others XD.
OMG I hope it wouldn't turn too harem-y when Araragi gets into different arcs DX! I agree with Xiao, they should focus on the supernatural stuff more and everything will be completely awesome :oha:
Pretty good episode again! Good job covering this, Tsui ^^.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 119 comments
This episode:
First half = eye candy
Second half = eye raep
Lol srsly, great episode again. It’s just surprising to really see a girl stapling someone’s mouth to cry a day after that though lol. Hitagi was awesome. I hope we’ll get to see more of her stationery weapons.