Monogatari (Hanamonogatari): Season 1/ Episode 3 "Suruga Devil, Part Three" – Overview/ Review (with Spoilers)

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Overview

Rather than the story shifting to finding Numachi, we instead learn how she came to have 2 devil’s parts.

Review (with Spoilers)

Well, it seems Kaiki’s purpose has come and gone since Numachi shows up at Suruga’s school. Leading to the idea that whatever is to go down will get dramatically sped up due to the episode limit of the season, which honestly I don’t have a problem with. However, being that Numachi walks a dark path, you have to wonder if we are going to be given an adequate enough amount of time for her to tell her story. While also maybe rekindle something between her and Suruga.

Topic 1: Love & Basketball – Numachi & Suruga

Summary

Being that what brought Numachi and Suruga together was basketball, and now things are in Numachi’s favor due to having Suruga’s monkey paw and a leg to match, it is decided they will play one on one. Leading to Numachi to get many baskets and Suruga to only get a few. However, you can see that all this intense competition has awoken something in Numachi once more. Thus leading Numachi to tease Suruga as Suruga would tease Araragi. Though, before you get hot and bothered, know all she does is kiss her on the cheek.

Commentary

As interesting as their basketball match sort of was, the real interesting part didn’t come into it seemed they would rekindle whatever used to go on. For while mention of the devil’s parts and Numachi’s return was definitely interesting, I really wanted to see if Suruga would give in or not. Mostly because, as I believed I mentioned in the last episode, it would be nice if someone besides Araragi and Senjogahara got some semblance of a happy ending.

Topic 2: My Story (Part 1) – Numachi & Suruga

Summary

After the basketball game, and then Numachi making Suruga very uncomfortable since she likes to be the one to tease, we are treated to a rather long monologue from Numachi in which she explains what happened over the three years since Suruga saw her last. The gist: She got injured after going from soccer to basketball for a better challenge to her athletic ability; after getting injured, she became very unhappy to the point that even after she recovered she didn’t want to return to her school; and lastly, what led her to recovering mentally was collecting the misfortune of others which made her seemingly feel less bad about her own issues. As for how she got the monkey leg? That is being saved for episode 4.

Commentary

Thankfully, the Monogatari series always creates the strangest environments to help ease the sometimes boring monologues characters have. For with Numachi’s monologue taking up half the episode, and her story honestly not being that interesting, I was glad that once I got the gist of things I could watch the odd environments presented in which basketballs were all floating midair, or how they were walking around this giant staircase or around this pool like thing. For, to be quite honest, the whole speech very much felt like filler in the worst way. Mostly because Numachi almost comes off pretentious as she talks about how, before the injury, she was so good she wished she was worse so people would hate her less. Then the reasoning behind her going to basketball being she outgrew soccer and thought of soccer as easy compared to basketball being normal. And, all in all, there is something about these two which sort of reminds me of Araragi and Senjogahara. If just because Suruga, like Araragi, is asking for the most basic of answers to her questions, yet Numachi, like Senjogahara, is deciding to make things over complicated just to seem mysterious.