Judgment Commentary! | Owarimonogatari | Episode 7 "Sodachi Lost, Part 3" [Reaction + Discussion]

And now my personal analysys of Sodachi's character: Fragile and left behind by her mother, just like Hitagi. Brought up in a broken and abusive household, just like Hanekawa. Completely lost in life, with not a single assurance for the day of tomorrow, like Hachikuji was. Hating herself more than anything, like Sengoku. Completely consumed by rage and envy of another's love, like Suruga. Not romantic love, but the love from a family. Sodachi has been through similar situations than those of the other girls. Many times even to a worse degree. She is the frailest and most britle, but at the same time, she is also the strongest out of all of them, because she is the only one that never relied on an aberration to be able to cope with her own life. Always hurting herself, losing herself and bringing herself down, but always being herself and nothing else. There's a line in the novel when Araragi is in her old house with Ougi, after remembering Sodachi in fact lived there, that sums it up perfectly: "Now I understood. It wasn’t an abandoned home. A right and proper first-year middle schooler foolishly misunderstood it to be abandoned. Haunted by ghosts? What was I talking about? How ridiculous. This place was as human as it got." No supernatural, only human. The Sodachi arc is probably the best "standalone" arc in the series and one of my favorites, it's the one that ignited my love for Monogatari after all, and it can be defined in just one sentence: Oshino Ougi is Oshino Ougi, Oikura Sodachi is Oikura Sodachi and Araragi Koyomi continues to be a fool.

And then we reach the conclusion for the Sodachi Arc, probably the one with the most bitter and melancholic endings of all. So, first things first: -The envelope at the end... is actually a puzzle xD A puzzle that is only solvable in the original japanese printing. A riddle involving Hitagi's messages, that's why they were kind of written weirdly (and even Araragi points that out). A guy on Reddit translated the solution if you want to see the contents of the letter just search "solving the riddle of Sodachi's letter". -The two Sodachis kissing in the opening are the Sodachi from Elementary School and Middle School, a metaphor for both of them after their major turning points happened merging together to form who she is today; -Now the mention of the Fire Sisters in this episode. I don't know if it was the anime that cut the sentence or if it was just poor subbing, but, like I said last video, their parents sheltering kids was a common occurrence, so Koyomi didn't ask them if they remmembered a kid being brought to their house and living there at that time, but he specifficaly described Oikura, that's why they didn't have any idea, because just like with Koyomi, events like these didn't stand out to them (and they were VERY young); -The ending with Ougi on the bike looking for Hachikuji is when she bumps into Nadeko and the Nadeko Medusa arc starts; ________________________________________________________ Now, bear with me, 'cuz this is most likely going to be my longest comment to date, there are some points I'd really like to bring up. Sorry in advance xD -The first would be to expand the view we've got on Sodachi's math complex and her borderline psycho personality involving math from her highschool days. As she said, she had to take care of her mother since middle school and that was a lot of responsability for a kid that age, she had barely any time to study and her grades plummeted and she was incredibly frustrated. The school actualy took sympathy to her and bumped her grades, that's how she was able to enter Naoetsu High, a very prestigious prep school. That's why she felt so proud to be a Naoetsu student in their first year, because she felt undeserving and had to prove herself. Her personality flipped and that's why she had such a complex towards her grades, especially math, her once favorite subject. -This also connects to the next point: their house was a dump. Taking care of her mother kept her so busy she didn't have time to do any kind of cleaning, besides, the house was too big for one person to manage, let alone a kid... She preferred to ditch the house and move to a smaller one after her mom disappeared than to try and clean it. -And the disappearance is the third: her mother didn't disappear suddenly, it was gradually. After starving and rotting she decomposed to the point her body was unrecognizable, melting into the room completely, that's when Oikura realized her mother had gone somewhere. From Oikura's reaction when Araragi told her, it's obvious she knew that was the case, she just repressed those thoughts, like she said last episode: she prayed she'd never wish for her mother to disapper; she prayed she'd never wish for her _already dead_ mother to disappear. It's just like a Calculus problem: the Limit of X tending to 0; X in this case being Oikura's Mom and 0 being her unrecognizable nature; when did it happen? At what point you couldn't tell it was her anymore? It's impossible to say, it feels like X tends in that direction and never really reaches it. Ougi even remarks that the unkept environment probably helped speed along the decomposition of the body. It might not be that much of a stretch thinking the cleaners might not have noticed a human corpse in that state if we consider they weren't expecting to find one in the first place. Specially if we consider she was curled up in a corner along with piles of trash, they would most likely have protection covers for their faces and eyes, making it more difficult to see clearly as well while they shoveled everything into their trash bags. All the mushy cardborad boxes from their moving, all the food Sodachi left in the room, all the dust collected, all the crawling bugs that made their way in there and nothing ever being cleaned for over a year. A true dump of a house.

My guess would have been a game show/math question

deli

fun fact: Sodachi's seiyuu is the same person who voices Armin from aot.

Quang ANX

The anime would never tell you but to save you the trouble it was a message inside a message that basically spelled Sodachis phone number and her willingness to be friends again in the future with Araragi

Chance Lewis