The Color That Bleeds Through

Discomfort is one of those feelings most people would want to avoid, simple because they would rather be quite the opposite. So when dealing with things like stress, envy, or any other negative emotion, people would most likely try to solve their problems quickly, or just push it aside for something more enjoyable.

But what happens if you leave those pesky emotions unchecked for too long? Well, Hanekawa Tsubasa seems to be one character who has experience first hand in something of a separation of uncomfortable emotions. With the arc of Nekomonogatari Shiro coming to a conclusion, these themes of problematic emotions and acceptance, bleeds though the five episodes, featuring our fractured feline female friend, Tsubasa.

Since Hanekawa Tsubasa is one of my favorite characters in the Monogatari Series, I was grateful to see more character development of her, even if I didn't pay that much attention to Nekomonogatari Kuro.

Nevertheless, Tsubasa finally being able to reflect on why more apparitions are showing up around her, was a nice mystery to unwind. First one of course being Black Hanekawa, who deals with her stress, and now the new apparition -- named Kako -- who is for her burning envy.

The fact that the emotions Tsubasa didn't want to deal with, are represented as different personalities, or things physically separate from herself, is one interesting symbolism of how detached from "black" emotions Tsubasa is. It shows how deeply compartmentalized Tsubasa's emotions are; getting to the point where everyone around her saw her as pure, but the other two apparitions are just extensions of her own personality.

That compartmentalization allowed her to have an interesting contradiction in her mind, basically the fact that she excepts anything and everything -- which was revealed by Senjougahara during her meal with Tsubasa; everything except her own emotions, which she ran away from and let other entities deal with them on their own. For her to overcome her own inner conflicting thoughts, Tsubasa need to be called out on it -- multiple times actually -- so she could finally deal with them objectively.

The episode was one of the better one, simple because it stitched together pieces that were revealed in the previous episodes, making for a fantastic ending to an arc.

Araragi did end up showing up conveniently near the end, to give that little extra push, that got Tsubasa to complete except herself for her impurities. Although I do think the episodes before were rather slow, the package as a whole was one great way to showcase someone using a psychological defense mechanism. All that beautiful symbolism made that final "Tadaima", said by Tsubasa so contently, that much sweeter. Plus Tsubasa looks great with her "tiger stripes".