Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu - Episode 7

The last instalment of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu ended with quite a commotion, and for some reason I really couldn't figure out what it was going to be all about. I can only contend that my brain was having a slow day, as in retrospect the whole thing was quite obvious - Of course, Haruka's father had found out about her secret love of anime and manga.

This in itself had all the makings of a decent plot, and indeed one that could have been strung out over several episodes. However, what we actually got instead was something so ridiculously overblown that it really served no purpose but to completely devalue the whole thing. For all of its foibles, this series has at least kept itself grounded quite reasonably in reality, yet all of a sudden this was thrown out of the window with Haruka's father sending troops and helicopters to find her daughter after she'd run away from home. To top it all we had Hazuki as some kind of martial arts expert and... well, you get the picture.


I might have forgiven this had the episode been funny as a result, but quite simply it wasn't (and I suspect it wasn't really trying to be beyond making the whole situation ridiculous), and it only served to detract from what was the actually rather sweet blossoming relationship of Haruka and Yuuto.

In closing then, I can only mark this episode as "See me after class, and don't let this happen again!". This series is fine (in its own mediocre form) staying grounded in reality as it is, it doesn't need flights of fancy to help it on its way.