At the end of last year, we were treated to another 4-episode mini-series from the Monogatari-series, this time depicting the story of Yotsugi Doll. I finally got around to watching this story and here are some quick thoughts. Contains some spoilers.
Even though the story is called Yotsugi Doll, Yotsugi is not the real focus of the story. Yotsugi and her handler Kagenui do play extended roles in this story, but the story is mainly about Koyomi, and how he is slowly turning into a vampire once again because he keeps using his vampire powers to help the girls in his life. And we don’t really get into that story until the end of the first episode. The basic story is that Koyomi finds out he can’t see himself in the mirror and asks Kagenui and Yotsugi for help. Kagenui and Yotsugi determine that Koyomi is becoming more vampire and he cannot reverse the effects, but he can stop the effect from getting worse by not using his vampire powers from now on. Out of nowhere, some random guy kidnaps Koyomi’s sisters and Suruga, and Koyomi then has to decide whether or not to use his vampire powers to save his girls.
As with pretty much every other Monogatari, Tsukimonogatari consists mostly of the characters talking and talking and talking, while doing some amusing things over some stylish backgrounds. For the first two episodes, the chatter wasn’t too bad, since most of the first episode and a half was pandering to fan service with Koyomi messing around with his little sister Tsukihi, and episode two had Shinobu being cute after Kagenui stepped on her head. Episode 3 and 4 wasn’t as entertaining in comparison, since the kidnapping plot and the villain just showed up out of nowhere, didn’t really know why he was there, and then everything was resolved with 5 seconds of action. 4 episodes, and then literally five seconds of fighting… but hey, the Monogatari series are not about action and that’s all there is to it.
The whole story with Yotsugi, Kagenui and the bad guy seems like a red herring, and the most suspicious person is once again Ougi, who appeared to offer “encouragement” to Koyomi. It’s pretty obvious that Ougi is connected to the kidnapping and a lot of other events that happened through out the series, but nobody takes any action against her. Yotsugi can see that Ougi is responsible for the events of this story, but Koyomi can’t figure it out. It seems that Koyomi and most of his friends can’t grasp what Ougi is up to, and they are never suspicious of her even though her actions and words are all very suspicious. Hopefully we’ll find out why when Ougi’s story gets animated.
Tsukihi is conquered by Koyomi in this series, after her sister was conquered during the teeth-brushing play in the previous series… Congratulations to Koyomi for this achievement!