On some level this was kind of a surprising episode of Mononogatari.  I haven’t seen it go quite this conventional romcom, but I suppose the story has been building up to it.  I’m not sure I’d say these sort of light-hearted hijinks are the series’ strength, but they have a certain awkward charm to them.  Because Mononogatari is so resolutely unpolished, these character moments come off as pretty honest.  I wouldn’t want it to do this every week, and the final third of the episode felt much more in the sweet spot, but it makes a nice change of pace.

The opening salvo finds Kagami taking Hyouma out on a “date”, which is really a check-in to see what the status with Botan is.  It’s also a training session to get him used to the idea of going around with a girl, and it’s clear that Hyouma is resolutely clueless about pretty much all of it from Botan on up.  It’s easy enough to believe this guy never actually had fun – at least in a situation where he was aware he was doing it.

Meanwhile the Bureau of Traditional Music continue to make quite an impression.  The music side of it is no joke to them – their day job may be enforcers, but they’re all music instruments so the urge to make music is incessant.  In fact Nagi speculates that their actions in protecting humans may be driven by their desire to protect their audience.  They stop by the villa for a chat later on that no doubt constitutes the headline takeaway from the episode.

Having survived Kagami’s assault, Hyouma is then accosted by Botan’s two club friends on the street.  They’ve been sold the story that he’s Botan’s cousin, and he’s sticking with it, but they still suspect at something more between the two of them.  Clearly there is – Botan completely dissolves in embarrassment every time the subject comes up, for starters.  And as for Hyouma he’s too inexperienced to categorize what’s happening here, but he also doesn’t realize he too is supposed to be embarrassed and talks about his puzzlement rather openly.  He has no idea what’s really going down between himself and Botan but clearly he realizes something is.

That visit by the Bureau seems friendly enough, but Tsumabiki has a theory about Botan and Hyouma that she wants to verify.  Basically, that Haori and the Nagatsuki tsukumogami are trying to pair off Botan and Hyouma in oder to strengthen her ties to the human world, and avoid a situation where the marebito inside her takes control and she becomes a “living God”.  Love is certainly a tie that binds, and Haori’s denials could hardly be less convincing – Tsumabiki appears to be correct.  But she and her fellow instruments don’t plan to intervene, even if this would be in violation of the “don’t make use of Nagatsuki Botan” rule.  That forestalls a confrontation, but it’s still a pretty important tidbit of information to lay out there at this point in the series.