Recap: Araragi returns Mayoi’s backpack, but their carefree day is interrupted by a new threat. Fortunately Ononoki is nearby to save the day… sort of.

Jel’s Thoughts: After yet another recap, episode 17 probably wasn’t the best start to Onimonogatari as it highlighted two of the series’ weak points: the increasingly complicated timeline and Araragi in full on creeper mode. I’m all in favor of non-sequential story telling, but I don’t feel like it’s adding anything but unnecessary confusion. It doesn’t help that we skipped an entire arc as far as the novels go (Kanbaru’s story in Hanamonogatari), but from what I understand that happens chronologically last anyway… see what I mean? At least you can use Shinobu’s dress as some kind of measure of time. You’ll notice she is wearing white again here while she was wearing black during Otorimonogatari.

As far as Araragi pervving out over very young girls, about the best I can say about that is we’ve seen worse? There was also a certain poetic justice to Araragi spending half the episode getting leered at in his boxers, not to say that excuses the way he treats Mayoi but it was somewhat amusing to turn the tables. As far as the completely out of left field Shinobu kiss, that was clearly a dumb overreaction. Still, it felt like total overkill, particularly in how it was lovingly framed by Shinbo’s Creeper Cam.

Moving on to things that did work, I was surprised how much I enjoyed the scene with Ononoki. I’m still not sure I care much about her character yet, but I can’t help but think her two scenes this season have been pretty cute. Something about her loss and rediscovery of her humanity, whether it’s through her grudge against Shinobu or Araragi’s muscles, seems to connect in a different way than the other girls – like she may have more in common with Araragi than anyone. We’ll have to see what happens when we inevitably explore her backstory, but at the moment she’s growing on me.

Overall this episode was a mess and I’m ready to keep moving. Going deep into Shinobu’s past might be interesting, but it might also just highlight once again how we need to see Kizumonogatari already. At this point in the novels that story would have long been available, so it seems kind of unfair that we’re going to keep dancing around it in the anime… THANKS MADOKA MOVIES, I’m sure you deserve all the bad things people are saying about you and I called it the moment you were announced! *ahem*, ranting aside I do think it’s cool how there is a growing sense of danger as we are clearly approaching the end of the Monogatari series. I’d even say there were some death flags flying for poor Mayoi with all that snail talk, and I have to wonder if there might be some kind of tragedy before this is all over. Despite a few inevitable hiccups like this episode, I’m totally invested in finding out what happens next.