Anime Review: Fansubs, Part 2

I’m bumping Karin into its own part, and continuing with just one show for today’s post.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: This show will be licensed for Region 1, make no mistake. And I will be buying every DVD the moment it hits the shelves, even though I’ll have seen the show already through fansubs. How can I describe it without giving spoilers? It’s just too good to give the jokes away. Sigh.

It is, hands down, the funniest show I have seen in ages. I haven’t seen writing this hilarious since the very first episode of South Park. And they do it without scatological humor and kids using locker-room language. One poster on the Anime News Network forums compared the snappy humor to an American sitcom, but that’s an insult to Melancholy. American sitcoms are potty humor by comparison. The dialog and narration are so tight that there’s hardly a wasted word or scene. You almost don’t even notice that there’s some seriously weird stuff going on. Haruhi, as the female lead, is a maniacal tyrant, bullying the others in the SOS Brigade to get her way. She’s not mean, she’s just incredibly focused, and others are just objects to her. Kyon is a cynical-but-amiable slacker who makes the mistake of accidentally befriending her. And the others were dragged in by Haruhi… or were they?

Edit: The show is based on a series of novels, but the anime writers are adapting on the fly, as the screwy order of the episodes is their doing, not the original writer’s.

	“From East Middle School, Suzumiya Haruhi. I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, sliders, or espers here, come join me. Thatisall!
	Kyon makes the mistake of unleashing her latent mania. Despite his thoughts, this is not extortion.
	This is extortion! The poor guys in the computer club never knew what hit them. Before Haruhi was done, they’d been blackmailed into giving up their best computer, running ethernet to the SOS clubroom, and hacking the school’s server to give them net access.
	Mikaru gets dragged into another one of Haruhi’s exploitive plans… This sometimes succeeds in bringing out Kyon’s protective instincts, but Haruhi’s bizarre behavior usually catches him off-guard. And when it comes to bunny costumes, he’s rather conflicted.
	Haruhi (off-camera) objects to the inclusion of Kyon’s little sister on the baseball team, before deciding that it is a good idea after all–a handicap will keep them from defeating the other team too badly.
	Koizumi, Kyon, and Yuki, waiting on their turn to bat. Curiously, Yuki is not wearing her glasses in this shot. I don’t know if that means anything or if it’s an oversight. She normally wears them to read and when she’s batting.
	We can end it this inning–if we don’t care about the fate of the world, that is.

Is this plot going anywhere? I can’t tell. Actually, I don’t care yet, either I don’t know where it’s going, but it’s a fun ride. Not only are the writers great with the dialog and episode plotting, but they are willing to take some huge risks. The very first episode isn’t even about meeting the members, and you never see Kyon (who is narrating) until the end. Instead,

The second episode backs up to the beginning of the school year to show how first-year students Kyon and Haruhi met, and the SOS Brigade got started. Kyon narrates that has only recently put aside UFO’s, superheroes, psychics, and all the other junior-high fantasies to join the mundane, boring world. “As I graduated from middle school, I also graduated from those childish dreams.” But during the class introductions on the first day of high school, the cute girl behind him introduces herself with an angry frown and a rather unique statement that the class isn’t sure if they should laugh at or not. Much to his everlasting regret, Kyon somehow manages to make a connection with her, and he becomes responsible for accidentally unleashing her latent mania on the school, where they are both first-year students.

Naturally, he suffers the most for this by being the first to be dragged into the club she decides to start: The SOS Brigade (translated: “The Save the World By Overloading It With Fun Suzumiya Haruhi Brigade” Kyon objects it should be “Association.”) The fourth member (literally kidnapped into the club) is a shy and uber-cute second-year girl named Hikaru Asahina, whose sexual allure is often abused by Haruhi for some purpose or another. The third could be considered the robotic Yuki Nagato, although technically she’s in the Literary Club. And Koizumi, the last full-time member, appears with no explanation at the beginning of episode four seven!

The third (shown, second actual) episode continues the setup of the SOS Brigade, and at the end is a revelation that the viewer has been waiting for ever since the cat decided to start ad-libbing his own lines during the first episode. So the fourth episode should start the adventure, right? Wrong. The writers yank everyone’s chain by having an three-episode adventure happen between the third and fourth episodes — and then not telling the viewer anything about it, other than by inference! By the time episode four seven starts, Kyon and Suzumiya, if not the whole group, have just been “involved in a world-cramping incident” that Kyon doesn’t want to talk about. They are now being dragged into a baseball tourney by Haruhi. Of course she can’t even conceive that they could lose. So when that’s exactly what starts happening, Haruhi gets very upset. Koizumi then gets a mysterious (to the viewer) phone call, informing him of some dire goings-on, and that Haruhi will accidentally destroy the world from sheer pique, if they don’t win the baseball game! No pressure or anything, when you’re behind 0-7 and there’s a ten-run rule in effect!. “If we lose this inning, it will be the end of the world.”

Faced with the choice between saving the world by winning the game or preserving the sanctity of baseball by refusing to compromise morally, most writers would have the heroes gamely dig in and pull out a miraculous-but-fair come-from-behind victory through sheer guts and determination. Not this bunch! Kyon and crew promptly throw morals to the winds and start cheating like a serial bigamist. Of course, they’re able to cheat and get away with it because of the real joke of the series”

Suffice to say, for the near future, I’m going to be watching every Wednesday to see if this energetic, whacked-out show has appeared on the download lists.

Update 5/2/06: The show appeared a day earlier than I expected and I watched it tonight. As I half expected, they’ve backed up to the very end of episode 3 and continued with the conversation between Kyon and Yuki. The writers come through again. Oh, the show isn’t still delivering side-splitting laughs like the first episode; it’s tweaking the viewer’s nose while messing with your head. Episode spoiler below: