-Best moment by far was Kanbaru pouting at Kaiki as he picked her up
-Second best moment by far was Kaiki's glorious, glorious facial hair. Dude rocking the beard like a pro.
-Speaking of glorious hair, Araragi had a comparitively minimal role in this story but he certainly made use of his screen time to great effect. I do worry about Karen though...
-As per usual, the central conflict is nothing particularly earth-shattering with a couple not-so-shocking twists thrown here and there. It's all a backdrop for developing the central theme of the work after all. This time we have what is fundamentally a story about taking control of your own destiny. It's interesting though, as it kind of eschews the typically optimistic "you are what you choose to be" or "follow your dreams" reasoning and approaches the theme from a decidedly different direction, simply by putting forth the question of "When you or someone you know is in trouble, what do you do?" There is a lot of detail and nuance explored in the work along with your typical Nisio bullshittery which can be troublesome to wade through, but I think a lot of what's put forth is clear and direct enough to allow the watcher to draw something useful from the experience. So in other words, it's typical Monogatari. I could say a whole lot about that final basketball match in the context of the larger story but it's late and to hell with that for now.
-Kaiki once again steals the show, and not just from his beard. His scene acts as a coda of sorts to Koi, as it clarifies his relationship to Kanbaru's family and the reason why he helped Senjougahara. It all feels so genuine when you watch him explain why he's out to help her. And yet in the back of your mind you just wonder, you know? Was he really helping Kanbaru out of a bout of sentimentality? Or did he just see a prime opportunity to be rid of an annoying "business rival"? Alas, we may never truly know for sure what's truly going on in that head of his, but then it's best that way, is it not?
-Shaft was Shafting it up far more than usual. Given how about 97% of this story was talking talking and more talking I suppose it's to be expected. It's hard to tell when Shaft is making a deliberate visual metaphor and when they're just dicking around, or possibly both. To their credit, the most striking visual metaphor that stuck with me was the sea of floating basketballs, suspended in their neat little formation right as Numachi called 'halftime' in her exposition of her past to Kanbaru. A formation that required little more than a slight nudge from Numachi to completely collapse into chaos at the same moment Kanbaru emphatically chose to hear about the true nature of what she was doing as opposed to staying ignorant.
