Rubenerd

If I could come up with a witty opening line to discuss an episode of Bakemonogatari where something advertised didn't happen and instead we were treated to a cute date episode, I'd probably put it here. In lieu of this, the above sentence will have to suffice. Forgive me for sounding distracted, I'm wearing a jumper and it's actually quite warm out today.

Despite being titled Tsubasa Cat and the assumption that it would be about Tsubasa and her catlike oddity, we got a drawn out conversation between Koyomi and Her Senjougharaness, I'm sorry Hitagi. If I refer to her as Her Senjougharaness she may construe that to mean I'm discussing matters with her father in the car. Allegedly she's not a fan of that.

This entire episode could be summarised with one word which looking back now seeing as we're in paragraph three should have been put further up the top somewhere. "Awww." After having a troubled childhood and a father who's always away on business (I would have no idea what that's like -__-) Koyomi has changed her life and her father comments that he hasn't seen her that happy in a long time. Awww.

And what does their date consist of? Lying on a tarp looking up at the stars. Awwww. And how does the date get started? By her awkwardly trying to figure out the words. Awwwww. I can imagine a few people were agitated with the lack of action in this episode, I thought it was cute. Awwwwww. There was even some suggestive talking and some Haruhi inspired ear action. Awwwwwww.

As to the title to which I've already discussed, I genuinely thought at the beginning when Koyomi suggested the day was unforgettable "but…" he was referring to the fact a random person who'd morphed into a cat was going to appear and ruin their evening or something of that nature. No, it turns out this episode was about showing Hitagi in various different up close poses pulling different facial expressions. Like episode 02, I lost count after a few dozen times.

Warning: cheesyness alert. Despite the limited number of scenes and the slower pace, I really did like this episode in an overly cheesy fanboy way! I actually thought the scene with the discussion of Hitagi's dad and Koyomi was sweet, and choosing to go on their first date to a place where her parents used to take her to look at the starts — as cheesy as it sounds — made me smile. I remember my late mum and I going to Ubud in Bali and looking over this particular spot where you could see the terraced rice fields fade off into the distance and in the evening the flikering candlelight in the soapstone carved lanterns down the streets; one of these days I'll take someone dear to me and show them the same things in the same way :).

As for the graphics, they were still excellent even if some of the same stock road footage was used in several dozen places. What struck me was the fact her father's car wasn't one of those retro modern white two door "vehicle" that up until this point were the only ones we'd seen! Even more shocking: I can never spell "vehicle", and both the Mac OS X and Gnome spell checkers can never figure out what I typed! Thank heavens The Googles suggest spelling.

Because of a combination of not having internet for several hundred years, then assignments all being due at the same time, then work piling up (they always come in threes) I had to push this episode discussion whatnot back for several weeks. Bakemonogatari watches saw this ages ago and are probably already watching and discussing the online episodes. Is that a new thing for a production house to do? Haven't heard of anything else being released in this fashion.

Stars are pretty. Singapore banned the night sky with it's luminescent dense city night light glow, particularly ironic given their flag has five stars on it. Adelaide has pretty night skies. I'll stop now.