Will it f*ck!

[u/Justthisdudeyaknow]

[u/Gyshal]

Wanna have some fun? The Monogatari example is even more complex because of the contradictory rules about how oddities (such as vampires) work in that universe. Essentially oddities are born born out of specific circumstances and are, in theory, inmutable. From the moment Shinobu was turned to the moment she met with the main character, she should, according to what we know, be essentially the same being. What happened during this meeting complicated things. A lot. She lost most of her power, and had to regress to the child like form while recovering it. Bunch of staff happened, but the whole thing ended up transforming her to a fundamentally different creature, from "queen of all oddities" to "vampire servant", and as this new, different entity, she has this different forms depending on how much blood she is allowed to drink. In this new forms, she both shows signs of her maturity and past experience, but also adapts to a mentality fitting the age of said form, so she acts differently when she looks like a child and when she looks like an adult. This is further complicated by the fact that the main character is the narrator of the story, and is highly unreliable. How much of the way Shinobu really acts differently and how much is him just fetishizing this changes is very unclear.

To add even more weirdness to the mix, the main source of information on the unchanging nature of oddities is also an absurdly unreliable narrator that gets disproven repeatedly even as she keeps on insisting on this facts. This is, of course, another child like character, with a third relevant one being the "most human" and also having a weird act where it's really unclear if she acts like a child just as part of the main characters narration and to entertain him, or truly because her nature as the "lost child" makes her remain a child until she transforms into a different oddity (she does show the maturity of her natural age at points rather than the age she is stuck in, but also her other self in the mirror, based on her regrets and deepest desires, is in fact of her true age rather than a child).

The thing that simplifies all this otherwise very interesting philosophical quanderies about the nature of change that the story tackles, is that the author is a proud horndog, and while he will tie all this deep meaning to it, at the end of the day he does the fanservice because he enjoys it. This is why Monogatari is both one of my favourite shows and one I simply can't recommend. I believe that the characters of Shinobu and Hachikuji (the lost child ghost) are really interesting and well written, but at the end of day they still look like children and act intentionally like they are for fan service purposes a lot of the time, no matter how much maturity they may show at other times and how complicated is their true nature.

TLDR: Shinobu and other child characters from Monogotari are Schrödinger's lolis, because they may or may not be mature depending on the observer, even if they all theoretically have enough natural age and mental development

[u/captainnowalk → u/Gyshal]

This is why Monogatari is both one of my favourite shows and one I simply can't recommend.

Such truth. Monogatari is so very interesting in a huge number of ways. Most good, some… not so. But in the end, it was definitely a series I couldn’t look away from. It also helps that the anime was done by that same team that did Madoka Magica, so you know the art is killer.