I hate Oh Great. I really do. His adaptation of the Bakemonogatari manga pulls heavily from this Off Season material for Hanekawa so its really a shame that I got spoiled on the twist of Tsubasa Sleeping because of the panels that were spread around Twitter. I get that the managaka gets his creative freedom and the art is fantastic but I can still be a little annoyed. That being said it does not take away from the third arc of Wazamonogatari at all. But we are getting ahead of ourselves as lets start with that origin story of KissShot AcerolaOrion HeartUnderBlade which uses two different narrative twists on both the gender and the appearance throughout the arc and comes as a surprise when they are revealed both after the arc ends and with the afterword as Isin gets one last pull on the leg. Its actually cool how my mental image of Deathtopia Virtuoso SuicideMaster or whatever her name is changes like that. The actual narration of the master was confusing to be honest it took be a while to realize who was even talking when starting the tale itself but I guess that is the point because once I got deep into it I was eating good. The middle tale of Karen was middling. I dont like Karen but I also dont like Tsukihi but the benefit for the last tale of Orakomonogatari was that it was told from Ononokis POV. The only through line was the family of hikers that came along and how Araragis overprotectiveness shed a light or moreso cast a shadow/burden on Karens journey even if it was an overall net positive effect especially for Shinobu getting all those doughnuts. I think the most interesting part was why these tales were tied together in this volume because of the reliance of vampires. Shinobu wanted to become a vampire to eat the ones that kill themselves. Karen unknowingly relied on a vampire to find herself even if at the end she really truly only relied on herself at the final stage. And Hanekawa purposely told us her reliance on the outcomes of Kizumonogatari manifest in the usage of all the vampirism that was sleeping away. Both Hanekawa and Sodachi put Araragi in their thoughts often in their own tales which sandwich the first two volumes of Off Season which is interesting to time about because it really felt like the amount of times that Sodachi cursed and hated on Araragi in her Fiasco was the same amount of times Hanekawa talked about doing something wild in protect to protect Araragi. So far Off Season has been living up to the hype as I am excited for the solo volume on Nadeko and the final volume because I can finally read those Zaregoto crossover stories that I couldnt get to yet.