Yes, the pictures have mouse-over captions!

 
Summary

Episode opens with some Carl Sagan Google Earth type view, then mega fast zoom-in to nail Haruhi-chan square in the forehead. Except she’s probably got the hardest head in the universe, so she cracks the lens. So it goes. She’s also in Lego-esque CG. So it goes.

After pedaling up that hill he always talks about to return home, Kyon is welcomed by a pissed off drill-kicking imouto. Turns out he left her at home all day with nothing to do, except beat up on Shamisen. Oh yes, violent and clingy bagloli, a side we didn’t see in the real series. Afterwards, Kyon heads to bed, where the image of hitsuji Mikuru-chan and shepard wanko Haruhi-chan pops into his mind. I should mention at this point that while “hitsuji” means “sheep”, “shitsuji” means “butler”, like Hayate, Sebastian, etc. Ha ha.

Anyways, through some inexplicable transition, Kyon ends up in the dream world where sheep are moe and dogs are tsundere. And mountains talk, as Mt Fujitsuki floats up behind him and starts chatting it up. Curiously, there’s a “MADE IN” tag on his back, which begs the question – where? Japan, China, or by some poor kid in Cambodia?

So their conversation makes absolutely no sense, which I suppose is funny in 2009. There’s some talk about luckiness and Mt. Fuji and Kyon turns into one of those netherworld dudes that Itsuki’s boys beat up on routinely for a one-line tsukkomi response.

Then ‘Tsuru’ya-chan shows up, spouts a few lines of her idiosyncratic nonsense, and Kyon inexplicably starts to look for an eggplant (is this based on some old Japanese play that all Japanese know about?) and finds it on the ground, attached to a cell phone. Eggplant is “nasu” in Japanese, so I guess that’s close enough to “Nagato”.

Kyon decides that he’s had enough, and wants out – who else but Nagato to explain in that moenotone voice how to do it – go to sleep in the dream world and you wake up back in the real world. Naturally, Haruhinsomnia shows up again and counts some Mikuru sheep… and Kyon wakes up. Ughhhhh

 
Thoughts

I guess this is a good place to chronicle just what the hell’s been going on over at Kadokawa these past few days – after announcing in Newtype last month that there would be a BIG ANNOUCEMENT in this month’s issue about Haruhi (yes, they announced an annoucement), together with a caffeinated Hirano Aya CM mentioning NEW HARUHI ANIME, people were getting pretty excited, given the timing and the deeelaayyyys with season two – well, turns out the “new anime” was just a rerun for those people who didn’t get to watch it the first time around.

Seriously? How many people is that? Two? Perhaps the whole joke with “Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi” is that we’ll never actually get to see it.

So anyways, people were pretty pissed off at Kadokawa for trolling them hardcore, but it ain’t over yet… they had previously announced the Haruhi-chan anime, slated for YouTube release on Friday the 13th (should’ve seen it coming), and when it finally went up on Kadokawa’s YouTube channel, we were treated to none other than a NICE BOAT video.

At least School Days had a good reason for pushing their broadcast back – some batshit crazy schoolgirl went Higurashi on her dad the day before.

So anyways, suffice to say Kadokawa’s marketing team is at defcon 1 right now, and while they’ve since apologized for their recent transgressions, I don’t think anybody is going to take anything they say seriously anymore. Watch – next, we’ll have an annoucement that Haruhi is getting a blu-ray release, and it’ll just be DVD. It really conjures up images of the saying “don’t bite the hand that feeds”, but what if that hand is constantly giving you the middle finger? Bastards.

As for the episode itself, I’m not quite sure what to think – I haven’t read the Haruhi-chan manga but I hear it’s pretty good, and uhhh I guess they didn’t quite capture the quirkiness in the sub-5-minute episode. Like Lucky Star, they’re probably make a ton of cultural references that just fly over my head, so if anyone out there knows anything about wtf is going on, please enlighten me!

If anything, it’s pretty cool that the original seiyuu cast is all present – KyoAni probably has them all on speed dial (did you know the Munto girl has the same seiyuu as Minegishi in Lucky Star?), and as usual, they do a solid job. Kinda wished the art would’ve been better, given the voice cast, but I guess they’re busy divying up work between Clannad, Munto, K-ON, Haruhi-chan (clearly not Disappearance).

OFFICIAL YOUTUBE LINK

40 Comments

  1. The lengths that Kadokawa has gone to alienate their fanbase is unprecedented. On top of all the above mentioned, the subtitles for these episodes are weak, and the transfer is pretty low-bitrate. Not that the original Haruhi-chan manga was that good (too inside baseball for foreigners).

    Sammy
  2. You know, they never said anywhere that what’s premiering in April is actually a rerun. It probably is, but that’s just speculation and ambiguous wording.

    Frankly, I loved Haruhi-chan. Mainly because I love Haruhi.

    Kaisos
  3. The nice boat thing provided me a nice laugh, along with fits of rage seeing as it wasted precious bandwidth I could have used for something else. Given this is the closest thing they’ve come to as a next haruhi season, I think fans are going to be happy to watch and follow it, but disappointed in general, seeing as this doesn’t really offer real plot continuity, but instead, cheap laughs.

    As someone who fell in love with the series when it first aired back in fall of 06, I have to admit, given the epic amounts of cryptic messages, ambiguous word advertisement, and plain trolling, my anticipation and love for the series has been sorely hurt. Kadokawa’s advertising department must be full of marketing geniuses though, seeing as rather than producing a surefire successful sequel of any sort, given the amount of material they have, they’d rather produce a cheap original net animation video with no plot continuity in hopes of appeasing fans enraged with their failure at keeping their words, and trying to keep this franchise alive.

    The way I see it, at this rate, they’ll tell us this IS the second season of haruhi, and that we’ve just misread everything they’ve advertised over the last 2, or almost 3 now, years. I wonder how much the haruhi cult has died down since the 10th novel has failed to materialize since it was promised back in 07, and the second season existence’s seems to be all too dubious given the amount of false misleading advertising.

    In all honesty, if they were going to produce an ONA, they might have wanted to tackled a kyonko (ie. Haruhi gender bender) version of the story, since Kyonko is love and all the rage amongst the remaining fans, apparently. Doing so would have entailed finding new voice actors, but I`m pretty sure there would have been a better pay off though.

    On another note, I did enjoy this for the most part; however, it is definitely no where close to what I expected to be a continual of the franchise, and definitely not something I`d bother watching if not for the sole reason that it has the original seiyuu cast.

    Rawr
  4. Kadokawa apparently didn’t get the memo that making the same joke for a couple years is lame.

    I don’t mind a little teasing if I end up getting something worth the while. A mediocre 5 minute webtoon is not worth the while.

    RP
  5. “Oh yes, violent and clingy bagloli, a side we didn’t see in the real series.”

    Or in other words, one that doesn’t exist. Whoever made this stupid and unfunny thing clearly doesn’t give a shit about the characters one bit, and for that I offer a completely sarcastic “NICE JOB GUYS!!!”

  6. “Whoever made this…”

    The original creators much? It’s also based off an official gag 4koma.

    Haruhi-chan is intended to be an exaggerated parody of the original Haruhi series. Everyone is supposed to be OOC…

    Kaisos
  7. This had to be “aired” on the 2nd of January 2009, early morning. Then everything connects – not so many fans got to see it then.
    But since they were late, they had to go in for “NICE BOAT” so that to create the topic that would take the rage of 1/2 fans instead of the full entire 1 of rage went on account of the lameness of this “-chan” show.
    Blame the crisis.

    tg8
  8. At least Kadokawa already stated Ep 2 and beyond will be “subject to the whims of the SOS Danchou”.

    That’ll give them plenty of maneuverability to come with the goods and avoid another Nice Boat.

    Peanutbutter003
  9. Lol I love how Kadowkawa Trolled the Masses, And hard Too. Thats the only thing they can do right. I gave up on haruhi Season 2 Long ago. I suggest Many people do as well. The disapearing act is quite flawless.

    Exia
  10. I guess being “Nice Boat”-ed is better than being Rick-Rolled.

    Did find this 5 minute short very funny, capturing great nuisances of the character interaction in the first season.

    I really wonder what’s been holding up the second season this long. Behind the scenes power plays? Reminds me of the wait for the game Duke Nukem Forever.

    MarcosV
  11. If I recall correctly, the first episode broadcasted for the first season wasn’t exactly particularly meaningful either (it was their strange student video) — I’ll wait for a second episode (if there is one) to judge any sort of “second season”.

    Until then, this counts as an ONA for me.

    cbhl
  12. So I hear that KyoAni is the new Sunrise. Is this what they were doing for the past 2 years? Making uninteresting spin-offs with weak jokes and having fun with Paint. Yeah, uh, turns out that chibi Haruhi not so great after all. Who would’ve thought? It sounded very solid. Not. On other news, how about them boats?

  13. well i like it but this 5 minutes ona isnt worth waiting for 3 f***ing years
    i gave on 2nd season a while ago
    but somewhere deep deep deep deep DEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPP inside my heart
    there is still a itsy bitsy little tiny sparkling hope left
    oh please great haruhi-sama do something
    oh great goddess nagato do some data manipulation

    jigokushounen
  14. I’m calling it now. The marketing, the re-run, the Nice Boat, all in for massive torture and butthurt sessions before the actual Season 2 premiers on television.

    You heard it here first. 😉

    fllay

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