© 西尾維新／講談社・アニプ
This is one of those episodes that is more about the characters than the story progression. The entire episode is two conversations, one in the afterlife and one at Hachikuji temple. The overall aim is to explore a little more about Shinobu, her dual nature, and how she views Suicide Master.
It's a bit hard to understand but Acerola and Shinobu are immediately the same person and not. The human Acerola “died” when she became a vampire who threw away her humanity and became a freak. However, their memories up to that point were identical. So while Acerola was in heaven and Shinobu was on Earth, both knew about the Suicide Master well and both were certain that she was not the culprit.
As we saw in the previous section, Suicide Master would rather die than eat poor quality food. And both the fairy tale heroine and the vampire agree that Suicide Master would never eat and drink indiscriminately like the case Araragi and Gaen are investigating. Both also seem to think that they are at fault in Suicide Master's current state that after tasting their blood, no one else can be appetizing, but this logic may have a flaw. While Suicide Master is actually smaller than we've ever seen her before, she would certainly disappear completely after 600 years of constant starvation if that were the case.
How much of Shinobu's (and Acerola's) thinking on this matter comes from ego instead of logic, which comes from their belief that they are special. Sure, it doesn't seem like Suicide Master is nurturing schoolgirls, but that doesn't mean she's currently starving because of Shinobu/Acerola. It just makes me wonder how many of the connections made throughout this episode are real and not imagined.
That said, everything seems to point to another vampire in town trying to pin things on Suicide Master. There's another code to break and we also have a deadline approaching when Kagenui will come to town, at which point no vampire (other than Shinobu) will be safe.
It all makes for a good set-up for the final act of this story, even if it doesn't move it forward at all. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out—and how misguided my attempts to solve this mystery are.
MONOGATARI Series: OFF & MONSTER Season is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
