Mononogatari – 04

The returns are still incoming in the Patron Pick poll.  But if I’d hoped for any sense of clarity about Mononogatari based on this episode, I didn’t get it.  It remains very much in the same band for me – doing very little either to annoy me or to get me really interested.  At some point the potential I see (or think I see) in the premise becomes irrelevant if the execution can’t start delivering on it.

The romance angle between Hyouma and Botan was obviously inevitable.  As for the way the series chose to play it, it turns out that the real reason Hyouma is in the Nagatsuki household is a one-year arranged marriage trial.  Botan didn’t know about this, but Hyouma’s grandfather did – and Haori (who seems veery much the leader amongst the tsukumogami) was the driving force behind the whole idea.  Hyouma’s complete lack of social skills are still good for a chuckle, but the gag is starting to repeat itself.  Let’s hope his character can move beyond that in relatively short order.

Both sides are coming at this from the same angle – worry about their young charges not showing any interest in the romance department.  I was surprised to hear Hyouma was 21, I had him pegged as a 17 year-old or so (based on his behavior).  The fact that Botan’s tsukumogami are actually a trousseau (a collection of possessions the bride prepared for a wedding) so it makes sense they’d be hung up on it.

I’m still open to embracing Mononogatari, but it would be unusual for the switch to click on this late in the game given how little current I feel so far.  Let’s see what the voters have to say, in any case.

High Card – 04

Ditto.  In terms of the tweener aspect, anyway.  The road to the bubble is different with High Card than Mononogatari, but they end up at about the same place (so far).  Rather than wonder if we’re going to get something so far untapped, with this show it’s more a question of whether what it delivers is compelling enough.  It’s fun, but hardly setting the world on fire.

The new face, Wendy, is the last of the major characters to be introduced as far as I can tell.  She seems to be some sort of wayward heir of a swordfighting family who’s ended up with High Card.  Also whenever Wendy draws her sword (this is because of her card) she turns into a berserker calling herself “Love and Peace” who just wants to hack everyone in sight to bits.  This all gets pretty weird if you ask me, but maybe there’s more to the character than we’ve seen so far.

Again, let’s wait and see what the voters have to say here.  My overall preference between these two series has tended to shift from week to week, but as I noted, overall there’s not that much between them.