Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 06:00PM
I stopped blogging about Bakemonogatari after episode 7, because I was quickly loosing interest.  We finished with the Monkey, went on to a Snake, and touched on a Cat, all without the interest and fire I felt for the first half of the series.  It took me a bit to realize why, but it was simple.  No Senjōgahara.  She appears briefly to wrap up the Monkey story line, but is completely absent for the Snake and barely mentioned for the Cat.  It was clear that the back and forth between Senjōgahara and Araragi was what drew me into this show, and characters like Kanburu, Sengoku or Hanekawa (Monkey, Snake and Cat) just don't cut it.

That is why Episode 12 is the most perfect episode of anime ever created, period. In a bold move, they completely abandon the Cat story line to air this episode.  Fans of Hanekawa are going to be pissed, but they can suck it.  This episode focuses completely on Senjōgahara's version of a date with Araragi.

Araragi, as usual, shows his normal sense of self-preservation: I'm afraid words and pictures can never capture the verbal action going on between the characters.  For example, they spend 12 minutes in a car.  That's nearly half the episode.  In any other series, you would also feel like Araragi here: The reason I love the interaction between Senjōgahara and Araragi is completly personal.  Senjōgahara is a great character, smart, sexy and sarcastic, someone who would beat me down in a mental show down without breaking a sweat.  Araragi is my surrogate in that battle, and he always performs exactly the way my mind would hope I would react.  His strengths are not intelligence or power, they are sincerity, honesty and compassion, traits that don't get you very far in a cold world outside of a storybook like Bakemonogatari.

The date itself is amazing as well, but again impossible to describe in simple words.  Senjōgahara puts it all on the table, and Araragi comes through as he always does for her.  The perfect ending.  Let's leave it at that.
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