Recap: Senjougahara begins to understand Hanekawa after she spends the night at her house. While Hanekawa is sleeping, a familiar guest pays a visit.

Jel’s Thoughts: I totally get why some people don’t have the patience for Monogatari’s copious amounts of dialogue, but if you enjoy that kind of thing this is was some top notch material. Just as I was starting get bored with the two girls getting chummy, Black Hanekawa shows up and it’s clear the tension between the two hasn’t gone anywhere.

I’m finding this arc particularly fascinating not only because it is told from Hanekawa’s perspective, but also because Senjougahara is really the one in the driver’s seat. She seems to be the one wanting to figure out Hanekawa’s connection with the Tiger, including keeping an eye on Black Hanekawa in the process. So she really seems to be playing the hero role here, and I’m totally OK with that. It was cool seeing Black Hanekawa confront the Tiger and be more of a protector than a villain, but it was even cooler watching Senjougahara stare her down and subsequently pinpoint one of her master’s vital flaws. Senjougahara’s observations in the final scene of the episode were really the key moment here and a fine example of NisioIsin’s style of writing. Add in the amusing Japanese cooking show presentation and it was a pretty great scene overall.

It’s going to be hard for me to write about this series every week without just gushing how much I love it, but needless to say I’m really happy to be back watching and writing about Monogatari. Seeing as this is the show’s first two season run, I’ll be interested to see if the story arcs remain about the same length. By that measure we should only have one or two more episodes of Nekomonogatari White before returning to Araragi’s story, so I will just enjoy this while I can.