「涼宮ハルヒの消失」 (Suzumiya Haruhi no Shōshitsu)
“The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya”
At this point in time, the Haruhi series needs no introduction. Unless you’re an extremely casual viewer, or have a streak of uncanny avoidances, you probably know who or what Haruhi is. You may not know that fans have been waiting for this movie for a long time, and you may not know that this is not a stand alone movie. If you have not seen the prior two seasons of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, and you wish to enjoy this movie, please do so now. For everyone else, these impressions are written with the expectation that you have seen the movie beforehand, so if you have not had the pleasure to do so, well what are you waiting for?
After the final episode (Someday in the Rain) of the current broadcast run finished today, it was announced that there would be a movie version of the next volume, the Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi, coming Spring 2010. No other important information is given, other than the extended shot of Yuki. I’m actually a bit apathetic towards more Haruhi at this point, but I guess we’ll see how it turns out.
More exciting to me right now is the first episode of Darker than BLACK Ryuusei no Gemini which just finished airing. I’ll have a full post up a little later, but it was as good as I’d hoped it’d be, and they did a nice job reintroducing the series and its concepts. It had a surprising amount of lighthearted moments in the first half, but then things got really exciting, building up to a great cliffhanger, and they even killed off some characters already (or so it would appear).
Today’s episode of Haruhi was indeed Episode 00, and they even kept the Hare Hare Yukai ED at the end. As such, there’s really no point in me blogging the entire episode, and I probably won’t say anything about the last three either if they are indeed Live A Live, The Day of Sagittarius, and Someday in the Rain, unless there’s some sort of announcement for new material.
Summary:
Despite the fact that the pond is gated off-limits, Haruhi doesn’t let that stop her and leads the group to the water to shoot another battle scene.
Summary:
Haruhi wants Yuki to use magic against Mikuru for the next scene, but when Yuki just waves her wand around, Haruhi decides to have Kyon add in some special effects afterward.
As a reminder, there are no new episodes of Basquash or Fullmetal Alchemist this week because of the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics. A new episode of Bakemonogatari, however, will be airing later today.
Speaking of Basquash, I really like the full version of the current ending song and have been listening to the newly released single all week. In contrast, I still don’t like the current Haruhi opening song and laughed when I saw how ridiculous the PV of it was. It certainly doesn’t make me think any better of Hirano Aya.
As much as I wanted to blog it because it’s a good series, I really can’t find the time for Sora no Manimani. School recently started again, and my final year of grad school is going to be a doozy. I would still recommend the show though (Jaalin likes it even more than I do).
A few people have asked me about my thoughts for the upcoming fall season, and while I haven’t done any significant research on it, my first impression was that it’s even more full of sequels than usual. There’s something like nine or ten of them out of less than thirty new shows, and it’s a shame there aren’t more completely original series. Regardless, I suspect I’ll definitely be watching Darker than BLACK, InuYasha, Railgun, and Kimi ni Todoke.
Summary:
After the athletic festival in which the SOS Brigade wins a relay race thanks mostly to Yuki’s surprising speed, Haruhi sets her sights on the upcoming culture festival.
Fortunately, KyoAni didn’t try to pull something by airing another episode of Endless Eight or anything like that. They actually moved forward with the Sighs of Suzumiya Haruhi, which means showing how the Mikuru movie came to be. It was a decent set-up episode with, not surprisingly, a lot of Haruhi bossing everyone around along with Kyon’s snide comments, plus it started with a brief sports festival bit. Full writeup coming in a bit…
Summary:
As Haruhi starts walking towards the exit, Kyon knows that he can’t let her leave, and he tries to desperately to think of something to stop her.
Let it be known that on the 6th of August, 2009, Endless Eight came to an end. It was a pretty good ending too; not worth sitting through all the repeats, but good on its own.
In other news, there was a nice Darker than Black 2 commercial with today’s episode of Basquash, and I’m pretty excited about it for October.
Of course there was still no end, however there were actually a few small but arguably notable differences this week, iteration 15527. For one, Kyon actually tries saying “I love you” to himself after Itsuki suggests it during the stargazing scene. The déjà vu effect also felt more pronounced since there were a few times they’d show the same scene twice through Kyon’s eyes. It also seemed like they were skimping on the animation a little during the explanation scene given how there was over half a minute focused on just Itsuki’s watch. None of this made the episode worth watching, but like I said last week, I’m going to continue tuning in for completion’s sake and so that you folks who (probably wisely) stopped will know when to come back, assuming this arc hasn’t soured you entirely on the show. Regardless, here’s to hoping it ends at eight next week.
Other than the usual clothes and stuff, I didn’t notice any particularly noteworthy differences to point out in iteration six (#15524 in the series itself). In fact, I even found myself starting to doze off several times because it was the same old, and I knew all the lines already. Being the completionist that I am though, I can’t not watch the episode just in case something does change or they do finally end it, so I’m resigned to the fact that I’ll have to sit through this at least one or twice more, if not five or ten. What still irks me is that they put in a full animation effort into each of these episodes, effort that could be used on episodes with new material. We could be an entire novel volume further by now, but no, more Endless Eight.
