With the Summer holidays finally over (yes, yes, I know... insert your own witty comment here) it's back to school life for the SOS Brigade, starting with a sports festival which means embarrassment for the club's members as well as a decidedly difficult to explain relay race performance from Yuki.
With that done and dusted, attentions turn towards the forthcoming culture festival, with Haruhi once again considering how the SOS Brigade can make a splash at the event. The answer is, of course, to make a movie, which segues rather nicely into the elements of this story arc which were included within the original series. Thus, this instalment acts as a prequel of sorts to that classic episode depicting the finished move, allowing us to see a little of Haruhi's thought processes (assuming they're decipherable at all, of course) and also just how she managed to end up with a digital camera and firearms for the production.
I have to confess that compared to that wonderful episode that this is building up to from the original series (which remains a personal favourite of mine for its comical traits), this is actually a slightly dull offering that fails to live up to even that first new episode back from those heady pre-Endless Eight days. It isn't all bad though, as Haruhi's enthusiasm is largely as infectious as ever and both herself and Kyon have some great lines and exchanges which never cease to amuse or entertain. Overall then, a passable attempt as things go, but we're still not back to the classic Haruhi goodness of yesteryear.
Ahoy Hanners :)
ReplyDeleteCare to explain something for me again about this series of haruhi? Am I correct to say that the episodes are prequels, in that they are chronologically set before the end of the last series? Kinda of like the second season of FMA is?
There were probably some huge clues to this in the episodes that I overlooked but I was wondering if this is the case for all of them or just some of them, like this episode which obviously comes before the culture festival and screening of that ghastly film haruhi made. :P
Actually, given that summer comes in the middle of the Japanese school year, and the series of events depicted in this second series of Haruhi have thus far been based around August and September (Tanabata is the 7th day of the 7th month of the lunisolar calendar, roughly August by gregorian) then this comes somewhere in the middle of the events of season 1, given that the six episodes of season one which ACTUALLY deal with the chronological progression from starting school through to Haruhi nearly ending the world are in the beginning of the school year, and 'Live a live' and the 'Adventures of Asahina Mikuru' episodes are after 'The Sigh of Suzumiya Haruhi'. So, as always, don't try to rely on a 'normal' construct of time to understand episodes of SHnY
ReplyDeletei agree about the lacklusterness of this episode hanners, i'm actually quite worried that endless eight might have ruined haruhi for me. if so, we can all catch a flight to uji japan (where kyoani is based) and find who personally was responsible for the endless eight and do unspeakable things to him/her.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Sighs was always pretty damn boring, and it's no different in the anime. Kyoani are a bunch of morons for screwing this season up.
ReplyDeleteDno bout you guys but when i watched this ep, i just felt bored, i ended up fast forwarding thru scenes just like i did with every endless eight ep. I think E8 has destroyed whatever interest i have left of this series.
ReplyDeletePersonally, the opening scene was the high point of the episode for me. Yuki's sprint made me do a double take and then laugh as hard as I did at Haruhi's Dynamic Entry when I realized what happened.
ReplyDeleteAh I should have known that haruhi would have no time for episodes with the kind of progression we are used to ;) we should watch them from a time space where E=mc Escher.
ReplyDeleteThanks Aidan!