The reason Oshino stole Shinobu's heart before she even fought with the 3 vampire hunters is that in the very first movie Oshino tells us his specialization as a specialst: He is a balancer. If he thinks the scales are too tipped in one direction then he adds enough to the other side to make them equal. Long story short, Oshino stole Shinobus heart so that the 3 vs 1 would be an even and balanced fight that could've gone in anyones favor.
What Oshino couldn't have known, however, was that the scales were slightly more tipped in favor of the vampire hunters now that he stole her heart since Shinobu came to Japan in the first place to look for a place to die (the homeland of her first servant). So she wasn't really trying that much against the vampire hunters even in her weakend state since she actually wanted to die. Then came the conundrum: At the very last moment she got scared of death and was looking for some kind of out. Araragi unluckily came just in that moment. He came to her help in that single moment where she had doubts about dying - where her fear of death was greater than her wish for death. I can't even begin to imagine how disgusted and disappointed Shinobu felt with herself when she realized that later on. She made the same mistake she had made in the far past. She made another servant who didn't even want to become a vampire. All she wanted to do from that moment on was to encourage Araragi to retrieve her limbs and gain his trust so that her "betrayal" later on would hurt even more so that he wouldn't have to feel guilty about killing her. This was all a giant charade to make Araragi kill her and have him not feel guilty about it.
2021-08-09 05:33:16 +0000 UTC
Every episode I just love your reactions more and more, truly top tier. Now:
-As a nice piece of trivia, the kanji for "Shinobu" is written with the kanji for "heart" under the kanji for "blade", hence Shinobu = Heart-Under-Blade.
-And you are right, starting with Kizu is completely fine, even Nisioisin himself says that might be a great entry point for the series, especially if you're a shounen-accustomed person (even though I kinda like the shroud of mistery surrounding Shinobu in Bake and prefer it in the "correct" order).
-Also, addresing Guillotine Cutter, this is told in a promotional short story for the second Kizu movie, it is told by Kiss-Shot's perspective and is called "As a Human", but it's acctualy a very interesting thing: he went to the cram school looking for Kiss-Shot even though he knew he had no chance against her full power and when he confronted her she says she doesn't intend to battle and that she already had plans of dying for the sake of turning Araragi back, but has no idea of how to make a guy so altruistic like him get the resolve to do such a thing. Then they actually _work togheter_ and Guillotine decides to offer himself for her to eat in front of Araragi so he would go through a reallity shock and mental breakdown to make him realize he has no other option than to fight her. Isin is truly a genius.
