{"id":3008,"date":"2009-06-20T00:00:43","date_gmt":"2009-06-20T07:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikoto.wordpress.com\/?p=3008"},"modified":"2009-06-20T00:00:43","modified_gmt":"2009-06-20T07:00:43","slug":"haruhi-2009-12-um-wow-that-wasnt-all-that-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/flomu.net\/blog\/2009\/06\/haruhi-2009-12-um-wow-that-wasnt-all-that-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Haruhi (2009) 12: Um… wow. That wasn’t all that good."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nice shirt.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Though Haruhi S1 was, in essence, a bunch of random events mashed together, this episode brings such a theme to new heights (or rather, lows*). \u00a0This episode presented to us the SOS Brigade’s entire summer in twenty minutes – a seemingly impossible task. \u00a0And it partially was.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell…<\/p>\n

This episode had too much for its own good.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Watching Yuki’s emotionless reactions was certainly the highlight of the twenty-five minutes I gave this episode (and god, that “snakes” fireworks<\/a> and the gun parts cracked me up). \u00a0A close second was Kyon’s ever-awesome sarcastic comments.<\/p>\n

But<\/strong> that was basically it. \u00a0Everything else was so mundane, so un-Haruhiesque that I barely managed to finish watching the episode.<\/p>\n

When the events took up one episode apiece (for example, the baseball episode and the SOS v. Computer Society game episode), there was enough elbow room to allow Haruhi’s eccentric personality shine through and make what otherwise would have been a boring episode into a fresh, fun, new one.<\/p>\n

However, this episode bombarded its audience with event after event – all of which have been presented in one shape or another in at least several other slice-of-life anime\/manga. \u00a0For example, fireworks appear in almost every single slice-of-life comedy, as do beach and\/or pool episodes. \u00a0Compared to bug catching and fishing, baseball and computer games are much less common in most slice-of-life comedies.<\/p>\n

Choosing these events was, in itself, a flaw – though not a fatal one yet. \u00a0The fatal flaw, IMO, was that these events were squeezed so closely that Haruhi’s inhuman personality didn’t have time (or audience attention span) to get across.<\/p>\n

Now this isn’t to say that Haruhi didn’t make some Haruhiesque comments. \u00a0She sure did. \u00a0Her looking for Martians is a great example of this method that just didn’t work in this episode. \u00a0Although it’s basically what Haruhi would have said in any other episode, it doesn’t work here because the audience is constantly looking at new scenes, new settings, and new patches of the SOS Brigade’s summer.<\/p>\n

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I must admit that the episode did a commendable job trying to solve this:<\/p>\n