How far does one go to help a lost child? In the case of returning narrator Araragi, the answer is too far, across the veil of time. Dutifully (if unknowingly) following up on Hachikuji’s cheeky foreshadowing, he concerns himself with his young lady friend and her fate in this instalment of the cult-hit series, heroically unable, once again, to find his own way home.
 
Thus the tale is also, or more so, about the journey itself, the dark honeymoon of a trip he takes into the past with the dweller in his shadow, Shinobu. Even among a cast that routinely disrespects chronology with their meta-commentary, she takes the cake, or the doughnut, by rewinding the clock for a perverse road movie, one that by and large goes nowhere, spatially.
 
It’s Kabuki not as in the theatre, but with the character for “tilt”—as in a slanted attitude toward the world, the posture of a bohemian. Or, perhaps, of a legendary vampire who once sought death, and of a high school senior who once tuned out life doing their dandy best to attend to an embarrassing wealth of aberrations in a provincial town.
 
(Source: Kodansha USA)

Second season of the Monogatari Series, part 1/2. Contains the arcs Tsubasa Tiger, Mayoi Jiangshi, Nadeko Medusa, Shinobu Time, and Hitagi End, from the Nekomonogatari White, Kabukimonogatari, Otorimonogatari, Onimonogatari and Koimonogatari light novels, respectively.
 
These stories take place after the end of the summer vacation when the apparition of the bee had left and the apparition of the phoenix avoided any consequences… Now that Koyomi Araragi and the girls were entering their new school terms, they were once again about to encounter supernatural beings…but this time, they may not be so easy to deal with.
 
Tsubasa Hanekawa, Mayoi Hachikuji, Nadeko Sengoku, Shinobu Oshino, and finally Hitagi Senjougahara. The girls’ loneliness, their confessions, and their departures… 5 new “stories” begin now.
 
(Source: Aniplex) 
 
Notes:
 
 Includes 3 recap episodes from the TV version (Ep. 6, 11, 16).
 
The recap episodes were not included in the Blu-Ray version of the anime.

A tale of heroine Tsubasa Hanekawa from her own perspective, in her own voice—if that can hold true for a damaged soul who, depending on who you’re asking, suffers from a split personality or a supernatural aberration. The bone-chilling brokenness of her household, where father and mother and daughter keep three separate sets of cookware in the same kitchen and only ever prepare their own meals, and the profound darkness nurtured in the genius schoolgirl’s heart, come to life, if that is the word, through her self-vivisection.
 
(Source: Kodansha USA)

Our sorry hero, his reformed girlfriend, and the amnesiac class president have all graduated from their high school out in the boondocks, and self-described Sapphist and ex-basketball ace Kanbaru, retired by reason of an “injury,” is starting her senior year and the narrator of this volume—her voice far more introspective than the smutty jock’s we thought we knew.
 
Bereft of the company of her beloved mentors, the only other person around her with any working knowledge of aberrations the junior Ougi Oshino, apparently a relative of the Hawaiian-shirted folklorist, she feels a bit alone and blue, and sick with dread that the devil residing in her left arm courtesy of the Monkey’s Paw might act up again while she sleeps.
 
Investigating a rumour that she fears might lead back to her, the former star ends up peering into an abyss of negativity called Rouka. Trapped in a pit the like of which could only be escaped by the one girl who was able to pull off slam-dunks in her basketball nationals, can the penitent Kanbaru, however, still be aggressive?
 
(Source: Kodansha USA)

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