Hitagi Senjougahara

Overview

Summary

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"Unfortunately, a psychotic virgin, starved for love and likely to fall for anyone who would be a little nice to her, has set eyes on you."

— Hitagi Senjougahara

Hitagi Senjougahara
Kanji Name	戦場ヶ原 ひたぎ
Kana Name	せんじょうがはら ひたぎ
Romaji Name	Senjōgahara Hitagi
Character Information
Alias	Gahara-san Senshougahara
Age	18
Gender	Female
Birthday	July 7th
Weight	5 kg (Weight Crab influence)
Personal Status
Classification	Human
Status	Alive
Relatives	Unnamed Father Koyomi Araragi (Husband)
Professional Status
Occupation	Student Businesswoman (later)
Affiliation	Naoetsu Private Academy Manase National University Valhalla Combo
Equipment	Stationery
Media
Work of Origin	Monogatari Series
Novel Debut	Bakemonogatari (Part One)
Anime Debut	Bakemonogatari Episode 1
Manga Debut	Bakemonogatari Vol. 1, Chapter 1
Voice Actor	Chiwa Saitou

Appearances
Novel Appearances
Series	Monogatari Series
Volumes	Bakemonogatari (Part One) Bakemonogatari (Part Two) Nisemonogatari (Part One) Nisemonogatari (Part Two) Nekomonogatari (White) Otorimonogatari Koimonogatari Tsukimonogatari Koyomimonogatari Owarimonogatari (Part One) Owarimonogatari (Part Two) Owarimonogatari (Part Three) Zoku Owarimonogatari Nademonogatari Musubimonogatari Shinobumonogatari Yoimonogatari Ougimonogatari
Anime Appearances
Series	Bakemonogatari Nisemonogatari (anime) Monogatari Series Second Season Tsukimonogatari Owarimonogatari Koyomimonogatari Owarimonogatari Season Two Zoku Owarimonogatari
Manga Appearances
Series	Bakemonogatari Seishun Kijinden! 240 Gakuen
Other Appearances
Miscellaneous	Hyakumonogatari Okitegami Kyouko no Bibouroku x Monogatari Commercial

Hitagi Senjougahara (戦場ヶ原(せんじょうがはら) ひたぎ, Senjōgahara Hitagi) is a main character of the Monogatari Series. She is a student of Naoetsu Private Academy and a former victim of the Weight Crab Aberration before being helped by Koyomi Araragi, who would later become her boyfriend. Later, she becomes a businesswoman, working for a competitor company to her father's.

Personality

For the longest time, while under the influence of the Weight Crab, Hitagi was a guarded person, appearing cold in order to hide away her oddity from the rest of the world, hiding herself beneath a shell of aggression and appearing unapproachable to the rest of her schoolmates. During this time, she pushed away anyone who tried to help her or get close to her, most notably her former friend Suruga Kanbaru. This distrust in other people was born out of her inability to shoulder any regret, lingering hatred or any other such burdens, due to her interaction with the Weight Crab. However, as noted by Deishuu Kaiki, Hitagi is a person who refuses to let gods carry her burdens, instead wishing to shoulder that weight by herself, no matter how painful it may be, which leads to her eventual taking back of the weight that the Crab severed from her. Her refusal to let sleeping dogs lie and desire to face her own past instead of just letting it go also manifests in her restoring her relationship with Suruga. In Kaiki's words, Hitagi is a person who always treats her current love as her first, showing her ability to move on and not be chained down by her past.

At first, during conversations, mostly with Araragi, she tends to have an acid tongue and dish out plenty of insults to him, dramatically showcasing how superior she is compared to him. This is, however, just a front she uses to avoid embarrassment, rarely ever saying what she thinks directly, only doing so during their romantic moments, such as on their first date. Over the course of the story, Hitagi's personality becomes more mild, this change being referred to as her "rehabilitation", as she slowly grows into a more stable and well adjusted person, starting from her first reunion and standoff with Kaiki. While still retaining her ruthless facade, it's much more easily seen through, often showing bursts of her true emotions, most notably when she cries after finding Tsubasa Hanekawa sleeping in the abandoned Eikou Cram School. Another point of growth for her is her final encounter with Kaiki, finally resolving their past once and for all and thereby overcoming all of her most pressing regrets. After this, she is shown as much more lively, no longer afraid to express her true feelings to those she cares about.

Unlike Araragi's more moral and justice oriented mindset, Hitagi is more of a rational and calculated person, her realistic viewpoint combined with her high intelligence making her a highly successful businesswoman later on in life. She does not reciprocate Kanbaru's feelings of love, but still considers her a great friend and junior. Araragi also theorizes that Suruga's perversion stems from her senior's influence. Hitagi also has a complex relationship with Tsubasa Hanekawa, both having been in love with the same person. From Araragi's eyes, Hanekawa initially seems to hold control over Hitagi, with Hitagi even calling Tsubasa "master". However, as seen from Tsubasa's own perspective, their relationship is much more evenly stacked, with Hitagi having a lot of care for Tsubasa and wanting to make sure that the girl remains safe during the Hysteria Tiger incident, as well as trying to point out her faults in order for her to improve herself. In regards to Kaiki, Hitagi appears to show an enormous amount of resentment, at times even threatening to kill the man. However, her true feelings are shown to be more complex when she asks for the swindler's help in saving her and Araragi's lives from Nadeko Sengoku. While she still doesn't forgive him for what he did to her family, she is grateful to him for saving her life and, while actively attempting not to, even shows some of her true feelings to him, crying when he assures her that he will definitely manage to do the job. Additionally, she also appears to understand the man well, sending him a threatening letter to pull out of the job with the knowledge that being told to do so would only increase his determination. She claims to have never loved him in the past, although this statement is quite possibly false.

Appearance

Hitagi is a young woman with long purple hair (brown in the original novel) and blue eyes. She is mostly shown wearing the Naoetsu female uniform, consisting of a pink shirt with a purple tie and purple skirt, alongside a pair of black stockings. She is also shown wearing a variety of casual clothes, such as: a white suit jacket over a white shirt and white skirt (for the ritual to exorcise the Weight Crab), a pair of white shorts underneath a black one piece dress, with black stockings and white high heels (with this outfit, she also styles her hair in a ponytail). She is also shown wearing her long hair tied in an updo hairstyle, with the sleeves of her uniform rolled up to her shoulders.

After her first reunion with Kaiki, she cuts her hair in a short bob haircut. During the events of Hitagi End, she is shown wearing the Naoetsu uniform under a light blue jacket and hat and a blue scarf. During Yotsugi Doll, she is shown tying her slightly longer hair in a small ponytail, and wearing a pink cardigan over a white shirt, with brown shorts and black stockings. During Hitagi Rendezvous, she is shown tying her now shoulder length hair in a single braid (which she jokingly refers to as copying Hanekawa's style), and wearing a white sweater dress with gray thigh high stockings and brown boots. At the end of Koyomi Reverse, she is shown boasting a totally different style, tying her now once again long hair into twintails and wearing white boots, a blue miniskirt and a pink midriff exposing long sleeved shirt, showing a white cartoony ghost-like design on it. She also wears a white scarf cardigan over this outfit.

Background

Hitagi was born into a fairly affluent family, her father having a fairly high position in a foreign corporation, allowing them to afford living in a mansion. As a child, she was sick with a life threatening illness, and had to go through a dangerous operation that almost killed her. During this time, seeking relief, her mother ended up joining a strange cult. Hitagi did end up surviving the operation, and recovered fully from her illness, but by that point, her mother had already become immersed in the cult, and the two slowly grew more and more distant as they relationship deteriorated. During middle school, she was a highly athletic member of the track and field club. In this time, she met Suruga Kanbaru, who grew to love the girl, and together, they formed the Valhalla Combo (ヴァルハラコンビ, Varuhara Konbi).

Later, the mother, now fully brainwashed by the cult, invited a high ranking member to their house, who, under the pretense of a ritual, attempted to rape Hitagi, who fought back by hitting the man with a spiked shoe. This retaliation made the cult penalize Hitagi's mother, who ended up giving over most of their property to the cult, leaving them in a much worse finanicial situation. Some time after this, Hitagi ended up witnessing the Weight Crab, a god who, at the unconscious request of the girl, took her emotional pain away, removing the regret and sadness she felt over how her relationship with her mother ended up. The crab, however, unable to distinguish between physical and emotional weight, also removed most of her physical weight, leaving her at only five kilograms.

Now saddled with this oddity, she began searching for ways to remove this affliction, and in doing so, ran into five conmen. The first, Deishuu Kaiki, after having learned of her situation, decided to go against his usual methods and actually attempted to help the girl, first by destroying the cult that the mother was brainwashed into. However, this did not work, as the mother simply moved on into a higher ranking cult. Having judged that the mother would never be a good influence on Hitagi, Kaiki decided to split her from the family, taking high amounts of money from them and thereby forcing them to divorce, with Hitagi being taken in by her father. Kaiki, however, did not account for Hitagi's own feelings, being unable to understand them, and so she went on to resent him for destroying her family.

Now in poverty from Kaiki's actions, as well as the four other swindlers she ran into, Hitagi and her father moved from their mansion to a very small apartment in Tamikura Apartments, and the girl enrolled into Naoetsu Private Academy. Following after Hitagi, Kanbaru entered Naoetsu, and tried to help Hitagi from her affliction, but she responded violently, similarly to her response to Koyomi. As a result, Kanbaru kept her distance from Hitagi ever since, thinking that it was the only way she could help her loved one.

Abilities and Equipment

• Stationery: Hitagi is known for wielding large amounts of stationery, particularly staplers, as weapons to threaten others with, such as Koyomi. At first, she always wears these on her person as a self defense mechanism, but as her rehabilitation continues, she eventually stops carrying the stationery altogether. Later, she even jokes that the character trait of attacking Araragi with stationery is reserved to her, even though she no longer uses it.

Quotes

• (Hitagi's words to Araragi, while attacking him) "Curiosity is like a cockroach. It likes to stumble upon secrets that are supposed to stay hidden."
• (Hitagi professing her love to Araragi) "Unfortunately, a psychotic virgin, starved for love and likely to fall for anyone who would be a little nice to her, has set eyes on you."
• (Hitagi to Araragi, after having been told about Mayoi Hachikuji by Meme) "Different conclusions are reached when one fact is viewed from two separate points of view. When that happens, there is no immediate way to judge which point of view is the correct one. There is no way to conclude one's own conclusion is the correct one. But for that exact reason, it is also premature to decide one's own conclusion is wrong."
• (Hitagi talking about her insecurities to Araragi during their date) "Right now, I'm afraid of losing you. Although my life hasn't been very fortunate until now, I'm glad if I caught your eye because of that misfortune. Because of that, I was able to fall for you. So we'll definitely do something, but I want to wait just a bit. So, right now, the last thing I can offer you... Is this starry sky.".
• (Hitagi to Kaiki) "I'm no ally of justice. I'm just an enemy of evil."
• (Hitagi's conclusion about Hanekawa) "To have something you detest is about as important as having something you love. Yet you accept everything that comes in your way. Because if you like anything and everything, they all end up being the same thing in the end."

Trivia

• Hitagi's first name, while written in katakana, when instead written in kanji would be 肥田木, written with the characters for "fertilizer", "field" and "tree". According to Hanekawa, this is a public works term, and it symbolizes her to be a field where Araragi, the tree, can flourish, referencing the massive personal growth that his relationship with her brought him. Furthermore, when written in katakana, Hitagi is ヒタギ, the first two characters of which resemble the kanji spelling of the Japanese holiday Tanabata (七夕), a celebration of the meeting of Orihime and Hikoboshi, which is also a motif of the ending song of the Bakemonogatari anime. The holiday is also on July 7th, Hitagi's birthday.
• Hitagi's last name, Senjougahara, can be translated as "battlefield", reflecting he initially ruthless personality and her inability to feel safe anywhere during her time afflicted by the Weight Crab. It is also the name of a place in the Tochigi Prefecture of Japan, where a mythical battle between the gods of Mt. Nantai and Mt. Akagi is said to have taken place.
• The name Valhalla Combo is a pun on the names of its two members, with the "varu" taken from Kanbaru and the "hara" taken from Senjougahara. Aditionally, the name references both the kanji in their names, as Valhalla is a mythological resting place for heroes who died in combat (echoing the "senjou" in Senjougahara, meaning battlefield), ruled over by the god Odin (echoing the "kan" in Kanbaru, meaning god). According to herself, Kanbaru is the one who came up with the name.
• In her phone call to Kaiki, in response to the false name he gives, she also uses a false name, Senshougahara (千沼ヶ原, Senshōgahara), which roughly translates to "thousand marsh field", and sounds highly similar to her real name.
• Hitagi's trademark stationery, the stapler, is meant to reflect her animal motif, a crab's claws.
• Hitagi has been compared to another Nisio Isin character, Soushiki Zerozaki, as both of them use stationery as weapons, Soushiki utilizing a pair of scissors named Mind Render.
• Hitagi's blood type is O.
• One of the voice actors who originally auditioned for the role of Hitagi was Marina Inoue, who would later voice another character in the series, Sodachi Oikura.
• During midterms in her first year, her overall placement was 1st. Her scores were:
  • Japanese: 92
  • Math: 98
  • Science: 96
  • Society: 94
  • English: 93