「消失」/「Me」

Much to everyone’s surprise, Haruhi reappeared suddenly in the summer of 2009. Much to everyone’s surprise, one particular chapter was extended eight times its length and earned the ire of pretty much everyone. Much to everyone’s surprise, the thing that everyone thought they’d finally see would finally happen, even if it was half a year later in a movie theatre.

To be honest, I think the thing I am most mad about regarding Endless Eight is that it pretty much poisoned the Haruhi well and has made it impossible to convince some people to be interested in Disappearance. And that’s terrible, because Disappearance is the best part of the entire series.

Even having read Disappearance about a year before and even watching the awful eyecancer version of the movie, it was still fantastic. And I imagine I’ll be glued to it when I watch it again in glorious 1080p.

The thing about Disappearance is that it’s so different from whatever came before it. I mean, an obvious cause is Haruhi’s absence, what with her being the pivot that the other characters hover around. But it really feels like it’s in a different genre. Beyond the first arc of the anime, there really aren’t any other huge moments like the ones that are delivered in the movie. And I’d say that’s because, beyond the first arc, there wasn’t really any reason to until now.

And so, unlike most of the short stories we’ve seen, Disappearance takes the hugest leaps in terms of character development and the general direction of the entire series since it started. I mean, there’s a reason why the only volumes of the light novel that are sitting on my shelf right now are Melancholy and Disappearance. This is really the first indication that there’s something more to this series than random SOS-dan shenanigans.

The movie isn’t quite as fun as you might expect, but it is pretty enthralling like a good mystery should be. But most importantly, it assured me that my tastes weren’t entirely questionable. I was right the first time: Haruhi was something special.

So the Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya follows ENDLESS EIGHT ENDLESS EIGHT ENDLESS EIGHT ENDLESS EIGHT. With that, the second season of Haruhi is cemented in mediocrity.

Reading the second volume of the light novel after having seen short stories from the third and fifth volumes was pretty interesting. There are a few gems in there, but in general, it’s not quite as strong as some of the other volumes. That’s understandable, though. It was only the second volume and I can see how cool it would have been to see the resultant movie several volumes later. It’s expected that the later volumes would have stronger writing.

Still, Mikuru shooting stuff out of her eyes and Yuki saving the day is great. Shamisen and his philosophical insights are also great. Kyon getting pushed to the limits of his patience is fantastic. But why isn’t Sighs enough to placate the rage over ENDLESS EIGHT ENDLESS EIGHT ENDLESS EIGHT? Isn’t it not ENDLESS EIGHT ENDLESS EIGHT ENDLESS EIGHT which means it’s great?

Again, let’s consider what was animated this season: Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, Endless Eight, and Sighs. What did the predicted broadcast indicate? Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, Endless Eight, Sighs, Disappearance, and one or two other chapters. Instead of animating arguably the best arc of the series and another chapter or two, we got the same chapter eight times.

It doesn’t matter whether or not Sighs is a return to form and that it’s not ENDLESS EIGHT ENDLESS EIGHT ENDLESS EIGHT ENDLESS EIGHT. Sighs isn’t Disappearance. Instead of seeing crazy time travel and alternate universes, we got the making of The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00. Instead of seeing an arc with an enormous amount of character development, we got more of the same. Instead of getting an epic capstone arc, we got more supplementary chapters.

The thing that is most disappointing is that they went out of their way to deliver a mediocre season, when all they had to do was do a straight adaptation. I guess I’ll be looking forward to Little Busters! instead of the next Haruhi, because at least they don’t screw around with Key games.

Endless Eight

So, Endless Eight. I’m not sure what it is about Haruhi that makes every party involved go insane, but we’ve seen it happen to fans, the author, the publisher, and now the studio. I’m probably going to be giving Kyoto Animation the benefit of the doubt and say that they are inept and not malicious, because honestly, they’d be inept either way. From that interview about how they went about producing the arc, it sounds like they genuinely thought that they were being brilliant artistes.

There’s a theory that Kyoto Animation did it to manage expectations. That theory is dumb. All they had to do was deliver a solid and close adaptation of the light novels into anime form. This isn’t some monumentally impossible task like it is for Umineko. The theory also makes no sense. It’s like saying the next light novel volume needs to be tripe in order to make the following one more successful.

Endless Eight

The finale of Endless Eight shows us that it was possible to do the entire chapter in one episode, much like Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody. I can’t believe it either, but some people liked watching seven more episodes of the SOS-dan doing mundane things. I wonder if they would have still liked it if they understood the squandered opportunities that seven episodes would have delivered:

• Sighs
• Where did the Cat Go? and Snow Mountain Syndrome
• Charmed at First Sight Lover
• The Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina
• Editor in Chief Striaght Ahead!
• Wandering Shadow

All of these have either more interesting stuff that the SOS-dan does or contains more character development. Managing expectations? My expectation was for another season of solid side stories capped off with Disappearance. What I got was two side stories, a waste of half a season, and the lingering fear that the studio still has some trolls up its sleeve. And we haven’t even gotten to Disappearance yet.

So, Endless Eight. I’m not sure what it is about Haruhi that makes every party involved go insane, but we’ve seen it happen to fans, the author, the publisher, and now the studio. I’m probably going to be giving Kyoto Animation the benefit of the doubt and say that they are inept and not malicious, because honestly, they’d be inept either way. From that interview about how they went about producing the arc, it sounds like they genuinely thought that they were being brilliant artistes.

Endless Eight

There’s a theory that Kyoto Animation did it to manage expectations. That theory is dumb. All they had to do was deliver a solid and close adaptation of the light novels into anime form. This isn’t some monumentally impossible task like it is for Umineko. The theory also makes no sense. It’s like saying the next light novel volume needs to be tripe in order to make the following one more successful.

The finale of Endless Eight shows us that it was possible to do the entire chapter in one episode, much like Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody. I can’t believe it either, but some people liked watching seven more episodes of the SOS-dan doing mundane things. I wonder if they would have still liked it if they understood the squandered opportunities that seven episodes would have delivered:

• Sighs
• Where did the Cat Go? and Snow Mountain Syndrome
• Charmed at First Sight Lover
• The Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina
• Editor in Chief Striaght Ahead!
• Wandering Shadow

Endless Eight

All of these have either more interesting stuff that the SOS-dan does or contains more character development. Managing expectations? My expectation was for another season of solid side stories capped off with Disappearance. What I got was two side stories, a waste of half a season, and the lingering fear that the studio still has some trolls up its sleeve. And we haven’t even gotten to Disappearance yet.

It hadn’t occured to me until a week before the new episode of Haruhi aired that I could have just read the light novel translations on Baka-Tsuki instead of waiting three years for the new anime. In fact that us usually what I do for most other anime: watch as much as is available and go to other sources, usually the manga.

The problem with light novels is that they’re a lot harder to translate. For anime and manga, there’s really only dialogue and whatever signs are on screen. Light novels however, are entirely text. In anime and manga, if you’re a bad translator, you have visual cues to help the viewer understand your crappy translating. For light novels, the reader’s understanding rests entirely in the text, and therefore, your translation.

As a result, light novels take a much longer time to translate. They’re usually far behind their anime adaptations, usually because they only get popular after they get an anime. It’s only in instances like Haruhi where the publisher screws around with the audience for three years that we get complete translations of the volumes that are available ahead of the anime.

The light novel volumes are arranged so that they’re either a series of short stories or they contain one plot arc. For instance, the anime animated one volume that contained a plot arc, Melancholy, while all the others were short stories from other volumes. For the most part, the important things happen in the arc volumes with some incidental stuff happening in the shorts.

The most interesting thing about the light novels is the focus on Haruhi is lessened and we get to see the other characters grow and do stuff. There are entire plot arcs where Haruhi is not the focus. Sure, she’s the focus and reason of the SOS-dan and weird stuff still happens because of her, but she’s not always the one being examined and she’s not always the one who has problems.

It becomes clear Haruhi isn’t just a bunch of random stories about the SOS-dan. Stringing the plot arcs together, you can see a narrative being woven. Some things that make this clear are the conflicts that come up. The anime doesn’t make it too clear that the Organization, Time Travellers, and Data Entity aren’t necessarily allied and that there are tensions between Yuki, Mikuru, and Itsuki at first. Eventually, they become friends through the SOS-dan, but it’s not until the appearance of opposing factions that their superiors officially start working together.

Each character has their own struggles. Yuki, created to interface with humans, wants to become more human. Mikiru, who has information withheld from her by her superiors and relies on Kyon, wants to become less useless. Itsuki, who used to be normal until he got his esper powers, begins to have trouble keeping up his facade and wants to be normal again.

The later volumes of the light novels are especially fun. I mentioned that the short stories contain incidental information. This doesn’t mean they’re pointless. They contain some character development. More importantly, they contain obscure details that the author sets up to use in later, more important plot arcs. I really enjoy that because random details come back to fix problems later on. The author doesn’t forget what happened or what he’s set up from earlier.

Is it worth reading the novels now that the second season is reality? Yes, especially since the last few volumes won’t be animated, and it’s these that contain a lot of the meta-conflict. But, if you’re enjoying the anime, you might want to wait until it’s over before you dive in so you don’t spoil yourself. because lol Endless Eight.

Here, we have shows that are really big and will continue for an unknown amount of episodes.

160 km/h

So I dropped Cross Game. Yeah, I’m a terrible person. But you don’t have to be terrible. Cross Game is fantastic and is something almost everyone can enjoy. Really, you should be watching it. Why aren’t I watching it then? Because the subs are released pretty inconsistently and I already read the manga. Hah, it turns out I’m not horrible.

Yes, Cross Game is about baseball and even though the baseball plays a really large part of the story and there will be long games, the real draw is in the non-baseball part of the characters’ lives. Apparently, this is a setup (right down to the tragedy) that Adachi has mastered because he’s been writing 20 years of manga like this.

Ｈ！Ｉ！Ｎ！Ａ！

I really like the Hayate no Gotoku manga and I liked the first season the most when it was animating the manga arcs. Call me a purist, I guess, but I’ve found that more often than not that it’s really hard for people to come up with good stories for characters that they haven’t written. Even for a gag manga like Hayate, a lot of the filler, while pretty good as far as filler goes, just felt really off at times.

So I’m really happy that JC Staff is going back to animate the many manga arcs that were skipped over in the first season that I really looked forward to. Some people seem to think that this season doesn’t deliver in the crazy humour and constant references and I’ll counter this by mentioning that there is some plot this time and that there are still many, many references. If you’d ever taken a look inside he manga, you would be confident that we’re getting the same Hayate that we’ve come to expect.

My favourite part of the first episode? The ED. Hinagiku > all. The OP was less awesome. It was weird hearing Elisa not singing something TENMON composed. They probably should have gone with KOTOKO again.

Equivalent Exchange

Remaking something that only came out five years ago seemed really odd to me at first. Then I remembered that the same happened for Kanon. But then I realized that the first Kanon was pretty bad and that the first FMA, other the terrible WWI end and Hitler movie, was acually pretty good.

Even though I started reading the manga and even though it really was a lot better than the anime I wasn’t sure how I felt about BONES remaking the anime to follow the manga storyline. The biggest problem for me was that the manga still wasn’t finished. What would happen if they miscalculated and we were given another subpar ending?

But another part of me was watching Soul Eater. Soul Eater was, for me, the biggest example of why I should want a new FMA. Everything about Soul Eater’s production was phenomenal. I knew that no matter what I thought about the adaptation of the story, I wanted an FMA that looked as good as Soul Eater.

After the initial announcement, I forgot about it until the OP and ED was announced. Once I heard that YUI was returning with the FMA OP and hearing the song, my interest in the new anime was revived. I went into the first episode eagerly. 「again」 is a fantastic song. The ED, Uso, isn’t bad either, especially when watched with its animation.

Since then, I think my enthusiasm for FMA petered out a bit. It’s not the fault of the show, it’s just that there were more interesting things capturing my attention and the fact hat this was my third time going through the beginning of FMA. It’s not exactly compelling once you know what happens that well. That’s not to say I’ve lost interest in the show completely. I’m certain that once we hit manga material, my interest will be sufficiently piqued.

Haruhiism

Haruhi returns with an unknown episode order. The earliest speculation had Endless Eight at one episode, but now it’s looking like three. I suspect that means Snow Mountain Syndrome won’t get animated, since I would lump it with volume 7. This also pretty much means that Disappearance and Sighs are probably going to take longer than everyone thought.

The ED, 止マレ！, has no dancing, but it does have some shenanigans that you can only pick out if you watch each episode’s simultaneously. The OP, Super Driver, is more in keeping with the eccentric stuff, what with all the subatomic particles floating in the background and comic book onomatopoeias. The songs for both aren’t great, but the animations make them, which if you think about it, was exactly the case for the first season.