Nademonogatari Read:

This book was better than I expected.  There were the usual insults hurled at Nadeko, basically amounting to describing her as an irresponsible, stupid, deceitful girl.  But there was a lot of countervailing praise that stood up for her as well.

Courageous, considerate, crafty, cute -- with enough c-words I guess I can forgive the rest.  Besides the praise and blame being thrown around, the events described are nothing but praise for Nadeko.  She tackled a lot of challenges in a row that required a great deal of IQ, EQ, and guts, all in a single day, and lacking any superpowers.  Actually she was outgunned the whole time.  She ended up a heroine much more praiseworthy than Araragi's one-size-fits-all-plan of 'get hit a lot and then leave it up to Shinobu.'

I guess Nadeko could be blamed for causing the shikigami storm in the first place (the same plot occurs in Calvin & Hobbes 'Scientific Progress goes Boink!'  She created a bunch of shikigami Nadeko's to do her homework but go figure they didn't want to do it either.  Well, close enough to that.)  But she only did that because she was advised by the specialist Ononoki to do so and that it would work.  Trusting your friends is hardly a sin.  And in fact it did work out in the end so her trust wasn't even misplaced.

Honestly, Nadeko has never done anything wrong in her entire life.  All criticism of her is misplaced.  She's the perfect woman.  Every complaint made against her is ridiculous.

She killed snakes to avoid dying from a curse?  Anyone with a wish to continue living would do that.  What choice did she have?  She didn't know anyone else who could save her so she tried to save herself, what's wrong with that?  It's more like -- why didn't anyone come save her before it got to that point in the first place?  The people who didn't save her earlier are the only ones to blame.

She loved Araragi?  Virtually every girl in the series does, and all for the same reason, he's the best guy they know.  Araragi is so ridiculously cool that it would be weird not to love him.  He's even seduced both his little sisters even though they have an instinctual aversion to that sort of feeling, what on Earth was she supposed to do?

She kept loving Araragi even when it wasn't convenient to him or Hitagi?  So, what, objective judgments of a person's character can be turned on and off like a faucet?  How do you stop loving that which you love?  Why should her feelings change?  And why should Hitagi get to have Araragi when she's such a better match for him anyway?  She'd make him infinitely happier because she's an infinitely better girl, so why shouldn't she want to keep at it until she won?  It would be better for everyone involved.  In fact, even Hitagi is aware that she doesn't deserve Araragi, the only person fixated on having a relationship with Hitagi is Araragi himself, which to me is his character flaw, not Nadeko's.

She gave an angry speech to a bunch of immature school kids who richly deserved her angry speech?  She saw a problem and she fixed it.  When did that become blameworthy?

She didn't want people to harass her so she grew out her bangs?  Really?  Maybe people should stop harassing her all the time?  Isn't that a little more pertinent?

She spends too much energy worrying about what others think of her and too little accumulating various material trappings like an education, a job, money, prestige, status, power, blah blah blah?  Actually she has the right order of priorities and everyone else is wrong.  If we all started by wanting to be liked and acted accordingly the world would be an infinitely better place.  All these zero sum struggles over meaningless things, aren't they the cause of all the war and suffering on Earth?  All scientific studies show that human happiness is determined by the richness of your social life, nothing else.  Every material advantage pales in the face of being loved.  The love of one person contributes more to your health and longevity than all the doctors and hospital facilities in the world.  So Nadeko living for love was on the right track.  Everyone else is on the wrong track.

She tried to kill Araragi for ruining her hopes and dreams?  Ridiculous.  This was a trap set by Ougi, who hated Araragi for being such a screwup and was using Nadeko to get to him.  First he planted the suggestion in her mind, and then the talisman screwed up her mind from there, so she was effectively under Ougi's mind control the entire time.  And even then she still managed to be an incredibly cute, sincere, good girl, and was even able to overcome all those mind control devices and return to normal using her own strength of will -- so if anything she should be praised.

Every decision Nadeko made in her life was the sensible thing to do at the time, the thing anyone would have done in the same situation, and she's only been a blessing to everyone around her from start to finish.  Her very body and voice is already such a blessing to the world that no amount of behavior could ever push the balance scales into the negatives.  She could destroy the whole world for all I care, so long as everyone gets to see her killing them first.  It would still be a net positive transaction.  But Araragi especially, after all the service she's given him, she has the right to kill him a million times over and he'd still be the net beneficiary.

Not to mention the two beautiful opening songs Nadeko has sung that are priceless treasures in my music hall of fame.

The only blameworthy thing about Nadeko is the blame she keeps heaping on herself.  But even that I don't blame on Nadeko.  After all, it isn't Nadeko saying those things, only Nisio Isin posing as Nadeko.  The true Nadeko knows everything she did was right, otherwise she wouldn't have done it in the first place.  The true Nadeko is proud of every decision she's made across her entire life and has no regrets.  Actually I see this with Kirito too.  The only times I detest Kirito are when the author forces him to hate himself, second guess himself, criticize himself over stupid things that aren't blameworthy at all.  Kirito is pretty much the perfect man, but he's constantly trying to commit suicide and goes into physical seizures over how awful he is.  It's absurd.  Whenever he gets like that I just tune it all out, saying, that's Reki Kawahara again, the real Kirito is proud of his life because it's a great life filled with nothing but blessings towards all.  I don't give a crap what Reki has to say about it.

I killed two laughing coffin serial killers!  Oh, woe is me!  I'm a killer!  It's driving me crazy!  How awful that I'd do that!  Give me a break.  That's called a hero.  When you kill villains you're a hero deserving of praise.  What the hell?  It's all so stupid.  Everyone knows that.  The hero's role is to defeat the villain.  Did Dorothy break into tears and fall into a comatose state for the sin of having killed two witches?  Give me a break.  Even little girls are tougher than Kirito and know what they did was right.

Oh well, that's a little off tangent.  The point is Nademonogatari is a fine addition to the corpus and it's nice to read anything about the girl I love, especially stories of her kicking ass.  There were also a lot of unique funny scenes that only such a silly plot could have come up with.  I'm really impressed by Nisio Isin's humor across all these off-season volumes.  I don't remember the original series being nearly as funny.  Next up is Musubimonogatari, the last fully translated into English Bakemonogatari volume.  Then I'll be fully caught up again.  But I sure will miss this sugar rush of good literature once it's over.