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.
