Araragi's immortality starts eating him alive in ways the show never explicitly names, and you watch him rationalize catastrophe in a bathroom mirror like it's just another morning. The Monogatari series has always been about conversations that cost you something; this one costs him his humanity one scar at a time. A four-episode arc about a girl made of dolls becomes the moment the entire series admits its protagonist was never going to survive his own story.

Koyomi Araragi notices something wrong with his body during a bath, and it is the kind of wrong that demands immediate attention. It is February, he is cramming for his college entrance exams, and the trouble with Nadeko Sengoku has just been quietly settled by Deishu Kaiki. His reflection has vanished from the mirror, a trait of a true vampire. Shinobu Oshino's advice sends him to the doll Yotsugi Ononoki and her master Yozuru Kagenui, an oddity specialist, and the change may be a form of payback for his past deeds. Kagenui soon lays out a hard choice: stop using his vampiric powers or lose his humanity for good. The four-episode entry mixes comedy, mystery and the supernatural with some ecchi.