Judgment Commentary! | Otorimonogatari | Episode 1 "Nadeko Medusa, Part 1"

When Araragi narrates stories, he never tells us about people around him that are not important, that's why the city seems so empty in his stories, but in Nadeko's case, she recognizes other people's presences, but she never looks at their faces due to her shyness, so they are show just as unidentifiable silhouettes. Also, for some nice symbolism, the kanji for "Otori/Decoy" is written with the character for "Bakemono/Monster" inside a box-like kanji. If you pay attention during the opening, there is a part that shows Nadeko sleeping inside that box, as if meaning she is the "monster" in "decoy" :) And about Kaiki's chrams, they were actualy fake. Oshino says back in Bake that they would never have activated and, in fact, didn't for any other middle schooler in town, but Nadeko, being scared after being cursed by her classmate, panicked and started looking for ways of breaking the spell. Her doing the ritual the wrong way and doing it in the shrine that gathers aberrations is what caused it to activate. Glad you remembered the "I hate my body" line, most people just brush it off. Unfortunately, Nadeko is very hated in the western community, even though japanese fans love her. Hopefully you'll like the deepness of her character. Other than that, pay close attention to Nadeko's voice work, Kana Hanazawa does an incredible job of bringing her to life

Remember in Nise when Kanbaru said to Araragi: "It seems you have yet to recognize the final boss" while talking about Nadeko? and when Senjougahara joked around with Araragi about Nadeko being the ultimate enemy? yeah, that stuff is coming back now xD. Take note of the hypnotism imagery when Ougi was talking with Nadeko. Nadeko herself even remarked upon how fast time passed when she was with Ougi. We can posit that something important happened during their conversation but we were not shown it during Nadeko's narration of the incident, similar to what happened in Tsubasa Tiger with the skipping chapters. Already, we can see the unreliable narrator in effect. we see the background characters. They are depicted as these vague blobs without distinct facial features. When Nadeko entered the classroom, there were also multiple frames of eyes looking at her. This shows how concerned Nadeko is with people's gazes but not the people themselves.

I'm going to guess that Nadeko seemed like she was only a victim because we saw her from Araragi's perspective. Hard to say because it seems like Nadeko is also an unreliable narrator lol. I wonder if the entire series subtly uses the un-reliableness as a means to convey that everyone's perspective is unreliable in some sense. I wonder if even Oshino would be an unreliable narrator?

deli