Tsukimonogatari

Started watching Hanamonogatari. Considering how Koimonogatari turned out by focusing on characters that I liked, I’m expecting to dislike this because I like Kanbaru the least and all the other characters so far are new or rare ones.

Finished the arc now. As expected I didn’t like it much.

It always bothered me how characters who hunt for money don’t seem to use it for anything. Sometimes it even seems like they are continuously broke, either as a joke about how they fail to make any use of the money, or sometimes suggesting they actually do spend it on something external. Some other person’s medical bill for example — I hate that trope though. In Honey & Clover it was revealed in the end what Morita was saving for. Also my friend joked that the assassin Golgo uses all his reward money for tuning his weapons.

Watching Tsukimonogatari. Getting this far in the series, the patterns in the world’s rules start to become more apparent. For example Hachikuji was punished by “the rules” for not behaving as her kaii kind should have (and Kiss-shot faced the same threat long ago). Now Araragi is being made into specific kaii, a vampire, because he has behaved too much like one.

This kind of thing is exactly why series with good “lore” are so fun. It’s not only that the countless details of the lore are interesting, but that good writers have the lore make sense and create puzzles for you to consider what might happen, as you can expect the universe keep consistent.

Touhou and Fate are the two other big examples of good lore for me. There are some western examples too, say Dune, but somehow there’s a different vibe to them although I’m not exactly sure what it could be. Maybe it’s that western series which work hard for consistent rules of magic usually use the magic purely as a plot device and tool rather than as inseparable component of the world. In other words they give the magic a secondary role and choose to focus on something else.

She has a “curse” to not be able to walk on the ground, well that explains a lot of that woman in the most amusing way. “Curse is just a strong word for paranoia”. “Even if you can’t use a mirror, you can always look deep into my eyes to see your reflection”