kicking start the 1st special, it was Kokoro Connect.
The ending from its 13th episode did seem a little weird since the conclusion was left hanging on Iori's thoughts and I was actually predicting a 2nd season to be coming, following the progress of the light novels. Nonetheless the continuation of the series, or perhaps to give it a proper closure, was the introduction of the 4 special episodes up to the 17th. That indeed sheds more light on the character of Nagase Iori and clears up her personal problem that she had always carried with her since she was young. For too long, Heartseed has been giving the five many emotional problems through various experiments such as body swap, time reversal etc. to reveal some secrets that friends might have been keeping from each other. Whether or not it was a good or bad secret, all of those resulted in a stressful relationship between them and overcoming them made their friendship stronger, and perhaps love too. That was when the start of the extra episodes stunned me when Taichi actually got rejected by Iori who realises that her main problem of adopting personas wasn't solved.
And that resulted from the last and worst phenomenon that could befall them, emotional link and transfer. Basically it transmits a person's thoughts and randomly transmits it to another of the five, where the originator only knows that his or her thoughts has been sent and only those who have received would know. Basically for a person who constantly puts up a persona and does not know her "real" self, it was perhaps most beneficial for Iori to discover her true personality, but that doesn't mean it'll turn out to be a easy thing or that her personality is the same. In fact, it took the turn for the worst, and with the phenomenon going on coupled with the emotional stress, Nagase Iori broke.
The moment when Inaba started questioning about Iori's rejection of Taichi and her thoughts of thinking that Inaba was a busybody shot through to her mind. In reality, what a person says on the outside might not be what the person thinks inside and for Iori's case, it took a much worse turn when she actually realises that THAT was "her" that she has always been searching for. A cold, negative, and an exact opposite of who Iori is to the rest of the group. And that was probably her 1st realisation and the 1st stress point that broke her. In other cases where being honest with your feelings and being willing to share the pain or to give help didn't quite help Iori here and even Taichi wasn't much of a help. As a person looking from a 3rd person viewpoint, it was pretty obvious why Iori wasn't fixed by her friends' emotional support and their willingness to help. It was the same phrase that they had kept repeating themselves: "Wanting to see the old Iori back" or "Iori wasn't like that in the past, please return to your usual self". It was pretty obvious when the same subject was stressed multiple times, that her usual self wasn't exactly Iori's "real" self, but instead just a persona of being a cheerful girl that people would love to be near her. And for the others, they didn't realise this fact that wanting Iori to return to her usual self was just adding to her own stress when she herself knows that the Iori that they wanted to see return wasn't her, or Iori herself.
The possible reason why Iori had rejected Taichi was simply because she guessed that Taichi was in love with the "ideal" Iori that he has always been interacting with and not of the "real" Iori that he does not know. She was possibly afraid that one day when her persona fades, she might have betrayed Taichi's feelings since it wasn't what he had imagined her to be. The confrontation between her and Inaba was truly impactful, since it clearly shows how Iori had seen Inaba as, a selfish girl who wants to her and Taichi to be together and when they're close to being a pair, comes into them and says that she loves Taichi too. Ultimately, it all boils down to Taichi's honest words that had triggered Iori to return to being their friend even though her persona was lost. It did take quite a long time before Taichi could put his feelings into words, in an answer to the question on which Iori did he fall in love with. What Taichi had told her was that he loves her as an individual and not as how a person seems or act on the outside. He knows that inside the cold Iori, she was still a caring girl who treasures their friendship and that was the trait that he had fallen in love with, not with just the mere exterior of how a person acts or display her own emotions.
Unfortunately, their new found feelings didn't actually quite last since Taichi realises that he had been a selfish one as well, ignoring Inaba's feelings for him and just going for Iori. He did accept the fact that Inaba was in love with him but yet still decided to confess to Iori without considering Inaba's feelings. The relationship between Taichi and Iori has went through many ups and downs and ultimately, it was the best for them to return as friends since their feelings for each other has been cleared up from it and for love, they're both not quite ready yet since Iori has since decided to live as her new self, an independent person who does what she wants. And so in the end, they both admit that they were in love with each other once and Taichi returns Inaba's feelings and the two got together in the end.
A much more ideal ending I would say, with the love triangle being resolved and Inaba and Taichi becoming a pair in the end. The both of them sure look good together :) Overall this series has the most cliché moments as a love drama but at the same time, the most emotional and dramatic series I've seen since perhaps Clannad. This series clearly shows the strong bonds of friendships, how people interact with each other, some of which hide their feelings for various reasons and just saying "sharing" wouldn't quite make it. You could actually feel from the characters when they realise that their relationship as friends are threatened when a emotional phenomenon begins and after every incident, their bonds get stronger and looking at that, makes you feel good for them as well. A story of friendship and it's development, a rather good series I would say.
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The series that actually gave a preview of an upcoming sequel in 2013 was Bakemonogatari. Yes, the famous animated work by SHAFT. And so what actually came along was Nekomonogatari - Kuro. Where it depicts the story of Araragi and Hanekawa before he first encountered the falling Senjougahara who at that time had suffered the oddity of the weight crab.
The extra four episodes actually gave more insight on the relationship between Araragi and Hanekawa, where the two were already very good friends in the past and at that time, Hanekawa was probably Araragi's first love. The episodes showed Hanekawa's first encounter with the Meddlecat and more light was shed on her own family who were not her legitimate parents. And that personality that she had created to fit into the household made it possible for the Meddlecat to take over her as an oddity.
From what Oshino says, Oddities exist because people think they exist and in the end , it wasn't clearly shown that it was the meddlecat that had possessed Hanekawa but rather it was Hanekawa who had took control of the oddity. What actually gave an opening to the meddlecat was through Hanekawa's actions that she gives on the outside, being a star student and all that, and just going along with the flow in her own family, where she does not argues or talk back even when she was fit by her "father". Even Araragi got all shocked when he realises that Hanekawa doesn't actually has her own room in her own house and had just put up with that silently over the years, resulting in amounting stress which the meddlecat took its chance and got into her body.
Normally for an oddity that just takes over the owner and hurts her, what the meddlecat had told Araragi was that it felt sorry for Hanekawa who had buried it (in the appearance of an injured cat) because she knew that it was the right thing to do and not because she was actually sympathetic towards it. And that course of thinking disgusted Oshino and that pissed of Araragi as she was his dearest friend and Oshino's insulting words were enough to make him angry. Now that's just weird in seeing that a vampire like Araragi got all injured badly with the fight between the two, until the answer was given that its strength was not from the meddlecat itself but instead was coming from Hanekawa herself, who was a clever student and knew about many many things and strategies to counter, which perhaps had included the vampire and Oshino's methods as well. It didn't take quite long before Araragi actually thought up of a way to kill or remove the meddlecat from Hanekawa, which included the use of a katana that slices only the oddity and not the human. And since Oshino didn't actually knew such a sword exists, Hanekawa was clueless about it and Araragi succeeded in his plan, although almost losing his own life.
I was pretty surprised when the final confrontation between the two when Araragi sent Hanekawa a message that he was in danger, that the person or neko in front of Araragi was actually Hanekawa herself and not the meddlecat. So that actually proves that Hanekawa was in control of the meddlecat all this while and attacking people while in the form of the oddity was a stress buster for her, for someone who has to retain her own star student image that she has always been keeping up with. What came even more shocking was Araragi's method of slicing the meddlecat: by swallowing the katana and making Hanekawa slice his body into half, resulting in the blade cutting into Hanekawa. I didn't actually quite get the idea on what Araragi had planned to do, but what I am guessing is that he was afraid of Hanekawa's knowledge of the katana and that seeing it might give her an idea of how the blade works and instead gave her a surprise by cutting her from a blind spot. A rather nice provoking plan but with half the body severed, that actually really almost cost Araragi his life, as his regenerating abilities don't quite work with the cat's energy drain. The fight was all cool until Shinobu joins in, plucks her hand out and let her blood flow over Araragi, which regenerates his lower body.
OK... so apparently when a body regenerates, it regenerates the pants, socks and shoes as well?! That was really out of the context. I mean the Monogatari series has always been weird and can be explained even with supernatural happenings, but this was just way out... A rather nice way to use the oddity killer blade too, swallowing it and then using teeth to bite instead... classic vampire style but why the katana then? That was pretty anticlimax...
And so Araragi knows that he now isn't quite in love in Hanekawa but has developed into a wanting to die for her to save her kind of thing which to him, doesn't quite means love and from then on, it was then that he first met with Senjougahara and the bakemonogatari series begins.
It was a good backlight story for Araragi and Hanekawa and her 1st encounter with the meddlecat, more is now understood from their relationship back in the Bakemonogatari series and that the meddlecat appeared again in that series was that the stress source was now Araragi who Hanekawa had fallen in love with. Now that explains more about Hanekawa's new behaviour in the Bake and Kizu series where she doesn't behave all star-student style like in this four episodes and rather
"I do not know everything, I only know what I know"
So that's where her experience had came from...
Being a monogatari series follower, boy am I happy to see the short preview over at the end of the four extra episodes, that a full monogatari series would be arriving in 2013, which includes a full arc of each of the individual stories between the different oddities and the girls, which I believe will be more of plot building and character development that surpasses the bakemonogatari series which only gave a few background on each character. Definitely looking forward to that this year!
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