The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya Thread

[Chronocidal]

Maybe near completion in the sense that they're approaching a kind of climax in the story, but there is still a ton left unresolved. The author has already been reported to be working on book 12.

I may have to come up with a massive infographic type thing to show the timelines soon. The timeline in this story has so many loops and twists it's starting to look like someone's knitting a temporal sweater.

If the whole masquerade of hiding Haruhi's powers from herself comes crashing down at the end of these books, then the end is likely pretty near. I can't see the story going on much longer without that as the motivating factor. I just can't see it working if she learns how to use her own power at will, because the series dynamic would be ruined.

If the rumor I read about a time jump forward to college is true, then I wouldn't be surprised if they finish the series as they leave high school, but even within those bounds, several characters are going to drop out of sight due to graduating... unless they continue into college. But either way, Asahina and Tsuruya will be graduating at the end of the current school year, as is the Computer Club president, and a few other minor characters I think.

As for breaking up the animation by A/B stories, it could potentially work, but there are several sections that aren't long enough to make up half an episode. You could possibly fit several sections in one episode, and they don't actually consistently alternate. It's more like, A, B, B, A, B, A, A.. or something like that. It depends on which plot is given weight at the time. Visually, I could actually see them do it by artificially tinting the video to either blue or orange, as shown on the book covers as the contrast for Haruhi/Sasaki.

Also, besides the initial prologue of the story, which is quite long on its own, we're now up around 8 individual A/B sections. I need to check again if they are each a single day, but I don't think the timeline fits that. You'll need a lot of episodes to cover this, so much so that this story sequence would probably approach an entire season, with no room for side stories, or possibly another movie if the story winds up going where I think it will.

There's plenty of stories to make up a third season, and a couple of really massive ones will compete for the majority of it. The story with the duplicate Asahina from 8 days in the future is a long complex one, and could easily take up 4-5 episodes or more. Then you have Snow Mountain Syndrome, which is at least 2-3 episodes more, and the literature club book publishing bit, which might be good for 2-3 as well. Throw in the short stories involving the dog and the guy with the crush on Nagato, and you've got a solid season. I'm probably forgetting something important here, but I'll check the story list later.

If they keep up the chronological order from this point on, the next story should be Snow Mountain, followed by the story in "Scheme" which includes the resolution to Disappearance. The Nagato crush story falls somewhere in there as well, with the literature club book story being near the end of the school year (I think) and directly before where book 9 comes in. If they have extra time, they could always throw in Haruhi Theater, which is (sort of) supposed to take place during Snow Mountain.

After that.. either they make a 4th season for books 9-12, or they make movie (or two). Considering they're introducing a whole heap of new characters here, I can't see anything ending just yet.

Actually, what would be very interesting.. I can't really see it happening, but let's just say at some point all hell does break loose, Haruhi does become aware of what she can do, and suddenly things become very nasty. So far, there's no motivation given for either the Sky Canopy Dominion or the other jerk future guy. They obviously have their reasons, and Haruhi's power is a hindrance to them, which is why they want it... well, let's just say neutralized.

Heh.. I really can't see this turning into a violent conflict, but given the tactics used in "Scheme," I'm not sure what to expect. If this gets ugly, and Kyon has to reveal Haruhi's powers to her to save Nagato, I don't know where they'll go next.

I mean, a past book firmly placed Tsuruya in a position to be a mastermind behind a lot of stuff here, and now they're even dragging Kunikida and Taniguchi into it, not to mention whoever this new character I keep hearing about is. What's got my head spinning is that I can't think of any reason why you'd drag more characters in at this point, unless they'll be needed in the near future... as allies.

Gah, so much speculation. I wish they'd finish those translations already, it's been a month since the books came out.

Edit: Random stupid crazy crossover aneurism moment. I keep finding more things like this. The dub voice for Emiri Kimidori? Hynden Walch, who also does the voice for Starfire, was in the movie Groundhog Day.

Edited June 30, 2011 by Chronocidal

[Chronocidal]

Ok, I couldn't resist, and read the about the first half of book 10, and the last half of book 11, since that's what's been translated. Obviously a lot of stuff was left out, but the overall plot was still pretty much complete.

Ok, so the deal with that potential new SOS Brigade recruit was much weirder than I imagined. Technically, sure, she did kind of slide between parallel dimensions, but her origin is one of the most bizarre things yet in this series.

The plot with the Anti-SOS Brigade almost turns into an anti-climax I think, just due to how things work out. They're still around, but the conflict has subsided a bit by the end. All in all though.. yeah, what with all the new material they introduced, this series is nowhere near over.

Forgive my nesting spoilers, but this one really blows things out of the water. Read at your own risk.

Alright. The SOS recruit? Her name is Yasumi Watahashi. The characters for her name, pronounced in their entirety, and in traditional order, come out to "wa-ta-ha-shi ya-su-mi-zu" since the "zu" was left off. Think about that for a moment, and look at what it resembles. Flip the order of a few characters, and you get the following:

"wa-ta-shi ha su-zu-mi-ya."

That's right. Haruhi's subconscious pulled a Voldemort, and generated a manifestation of her own ideal club recruit.

Not only that. This person caused the alternate universes on purpose, as a defense mechanism. She split the universes so that bad things could happen in one, and an unaffected SOS Brigade would still exist in the other, specifically so that when things re-merged, there would be someone capable of fixing the problem. Because of what she did, even when the new alien tried to take out Nagato, there was still a perfectly healthy copy of her ready to take action when needed. The effects of this get really weird, leaving everyone involved with two sets of overlapping memories.

In other words, Haruhi is subconsciously aware of everything. Even to the point of breaking the universe preemptively as a defensive countermeasure against threats to the SOS Brigade.

The weirdness, and possibly terror, doesn't end there though. The jerk time traveler? Holy cow. Nothing is revealed as of yet, because it's all "classified information," and the guy might not be trustworthy to boot. But when Future Asahina appears to stop his plan (which is to flat out kill Haruhi btw), he loses it, and nearly breaks down in tears because he can't bear to lose his onee-san. Take that however you will, but thoughts of what that could potentially mean are frankly pretty scary.

The time travel foreshadowing in this scene is not a happy thing. In fact, it points to the idea that Asahina may in fact be pursuing this time line, no matter the cost to herself. Oddly though, at one point, she specifically says that the future can be changed, so things are not hopeless, but for something like that to happen doesn't seem likely. In fact, this seems the motivation the other time traveler has all along.

Mostly his plot is to remove the powers Haruhi currently posesses, and grant them to someone who would follow his directions, and use the power to completely rewrite the timeline from scratch, eliminating the entire time pretzel of the earlier books, and enabling time to flow smoothly again, removing the effects of Haruhi's "time quake" event three years ago (which is actually four years ago now) that keeps them from going back further in time.

Anyway.. between all this crazyness, and how Kyon got warped to college for a few minutes (where he meets an older Haruhi who wonders why he looks so young) before popping out of thin air over Haruhi's bed, things are just.. yeah, wow.

One reviewer was sad that a lot of the characters recently introduced don't seem to be permanent additions to the plot, but I seriously doubt we've seen the last of them by far.

[BeyondTheGrave]

Should I buy both seasons on dvd or wait for the inevitable blu-ray?

[Keith]

Should I buy both seasons on dvd or wait for the inevitable blu-ray?

Import the Japanese bluray, also comes with awesome cast concerts. Oh, and it's subtitled! Dub may be there too, but I've never cared to check.

Edited July 1, 2011 by Keith

[ly000001]

I saw the premiere of the English dub at AX2011 on Friday. I thought it was generally a good dub (for the record, I usually side with "sub" on the "sub" vs. "dub" debate). Surprisingly (or maybe it was surprising only to me), most of the people who attended apparently didn't see the movie or read the book beforehand, at least based on the loud gasps to

Kyon getting stabbed by Asakura.

They also found a solution to Kyon's "Yuki/snow" line, although it isn't perfect:

Kyon: Yuki...

<Nagato looks up at him>

Kyon: ... it means snow, doesn't it?

<Snow falls into frame>

(The kanji for Nagato's first name, 有希, actually means "Has Hope", and even though he's wasn't addressing, he's still using her name.)

There were subtitles for the text portions of Kyon's self-interrogation scene, but unless you were sitting in the first few rows, you couldn't to read them. The people who could read them tried to help the others by reading them aloud, but since they weren't reading in sync, they ended up talking over one another and becoming a loud mess

Also, some tidbits from the Q&A they had with the voice actors before the movie:

• Crispin Freeman said it took him 43 hours to record his lines for the movie. Normally, he spends that long to do one season of a TV series.
  
• Still related with the above, Freeman and Stephanie Sheh attended the North American premiere of the movie last year, but Sheh wasn't able to watch it. Afterwards, when she asked him how it was, his reply was "I (Kyon) talk... and I talk... and I talk..."
  
• Freeman and Sheh are fans of Doctor Who. In an outtake, Sheh deliberately called Asahina's time travel device "The TARDIS." Robert Napton says he might include it on the DVD/Blu-ray, but I'm not sure how serious he was.
  
• Wendee Lee says this will probably be the last time she plays Suzumiya. (Nobody gave an explanation why. Is she retiring from voice acting?)
  

[BeyondTheGrave]

Import the Japanese bluray, also comes with awesome cast concerts. Oh, and it's subtitled! Dub may be there too, but I've never cared to check.

Are they affordable?

[Shaorin]

OH MY GOD. is this series getting convoluted as all hell or what?

it's beginning to remind me of "METAL GEAR SOLID; SONS OF LIBERTY" oh, what a headache...

Edited July 4, 2011 by Shaorin

[Keith]

Are they affordable?

Can you really put a price on that much awesome? But to answer your question...not right now it's not, the pre-order pricing was a lot more reasonable than the current pricing.

OH MY GOD. is this series getting convoluted as all hell or what?

it's beginning to remind me of "METAL GEAR SOLID; SONS OF LIBERTY" oh, what a headache...

What was confusing about MGS2?

[Chronocidal]

Also, some tidbits from the Q&A they had with the voice actors before the movie:

• Freeman and Sheh are fans of Doctor Who. In an outtake, Sheh deliberately called Asahina's time travel device "The TARDIS." Robert Napton says he might include it on the DVD/Blu-ray, but I'm not sure how serious he was.
• Wendee Lee says this will probably be the last time she plays Suzumiya. (Nobody gave an explanation why. Is she retiring from voice acting?)

The Doctor Who thing is actually pretty funny. I'm not a huge fan of the series, but I'm familiar enough to know that the Doctor has used the pseudonym John Smith in the past.

As for the voice acting, I wonder if they're planning to recast both the Japanese and English voices at the same time? I mean, Aya Hirano's retirement is still a rumor I think, but it certainly sounds like an odd coincidence. Though, given Wendee Lee has been voicing characters since the original Macross was dubbed, I wouldn't blame her for wanting to retire.

In other news, my hardcovers of the first five novels should be sitting in my apartment complex's main office right now according to the USPS, but I didn't get a delivery notice in my box. Hopefully they didn't send it somewhere else by mistake.

Also, I had an extremely funny conversation with a friend of mine the other day. We've been watching through the entire series (she hadn't seen season 2), and we're going to finish with the movie (hopefully on July 7th). Now, before I say what happened, I need to clarify something about our relationship. We have a pretty amusing Kyon/Haruhi-esque dynamic, with her providing the wacky ideas (mostly), and me usually facepalming (to an extent). She's also got it firmly entrenched in her mind that thinking something too much makes it true.

The other day, I casually asked if she knew what day was coming up. Keep in mind, we'd just watched Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody a few days earlier. She looks at me and goes, "Your birthday?" I almost died laughing right then and there, and she looked at me like I'd snapped. I cued up the conversation from the beginning of that episode (where Haruhi asks Kyon what day is coming up, and he guesses it's her birthday), and we both couldn't stop laughing for a long time. She actually hadn't remembered the conversation, and wasn't trying to make the reference after all, but we both thought the role reversal was incredibly funny.

[Marzan]

OH MY GOD. is this series getting convoluted as all hell or what?

it's beginning to remind me of "METAL GEAR SOLID; SONS OF LIBERTY" oh, what a headache...

Well I think that part of the appeal of this series is how Tanigawa has been touching upon the complexities and anomalies that time travel and alternate universes would cause:, not to mention the presence of a teenage divinity that can unconsciously alter the fabric of reality. All presented in a very moe package, but its still not easy. And from what we've read, it does seem that the plot is thickening. Look forward to seeing full translations out soon

By the way, does anyone know if the Rampage of Suzumiya Haruhi is out yet? Amazon UK has as official release date june7th and yet when one tries to actually order it, it says that it's not yet released.

[Keith]

Well I think that part of the appeal of this series is how Tanigawa has been touching upon the complexities and anomalies that time travel and alternate universes would cause:, not to mention the presence of a teenage divinity that can unconsciously alter the fabric of reality. All presented in a very moe package, but its still not easy. And from what we've read, it does seem that the plot is thickening. Look forward to seeing full translations out soon

By the way, does anyone know if the Rampage of Suzumiya Haruhi is out yet? Amazon UK has as official release date june7th and yet when one tries to actually order it, it says that it's not yet released.

Rampage came out last month.

[Chronocidal]

I've actually lost track of the titles due to being more familiar with the series than the books, but assuming you mean book 5, it's definitely out. I should be getting my copy of that shortly. I ordered books 1-5 from amazon about a week ago now.

[Shaorin]

OH MY GOD. is this series getting convoluted as all hell or what?

it's beginning to remind me of "METAL GEAR SOLID; SONS OF LIBERTY" oh, what a headache...

What was confusing about MGS2?

i think i put that wrong;

i meant the total Mindf*&k that the story continuously pulls on you,

especially in in respect of the presence of it's "direct sequel" MGS4. oh god...

Well I think that part of the appeal of this series is how Tanigawa has been touching upon the complexities and anomalies that time travel and alternate universes would cause:, not to mention the presence of a teenage divinity that can unconsciously alter the fabric of reality. All presented in a very moe package, but its still not easy. And from what we've read, it does seem that the plot is thickening. Look forward to seeing full translations out soon

By the way, does anyone know if the Rampage of Suzumiya Haruhi is out yet? Amazon UK has as official release date june7th and yet when one tries to actually order it, it says that it's not yet released.

perhaps it's just that i've never been much of a fan of Time Travel stories; FAR too difficult to logically quantify, IMO.

in not so serious fare, such as the BACK TO THE FUTURE series, the concept seems to work fairly well.

however, in actual hard SF, such as STAR TREK and the like, Time Travel, as a concept, must be handled VERY carefully

in order to make any sort of sense at all, and even then, some major elements just don't seem to gel, at least to my mind.

now, factor all that, with the fact that Asahina-chan, whom i happened to take an instant attachment to, half a decade ago,

before i learned barely anything at all in regards to the SUZUMIYA series, in fact, happens to be tightly caught up

in an especially convoluted variation of this sort of fictional scenario,

and you just might begin to grasp why i seem to have the proverbial ants in my pants in regards to the series' canon.

i mean, i've streamed the first few eps of the first SUZUMIYA series, and rather enjoyed what i watched.

indeed, it has even compelled me to consider purchasing the two existing seasons of the Anime on DVD.

HOWEVER, from what i've grasped of the later story elements of the series, through research from threads like this,

as well as WIKIs and the like, i'm beginning to form the opinion that i'd be doing myself a profound service by

continuing to hold Asahina-chan in a personal vacuum, safely separated in my mind from the Suzumiya Canon

and it's multitude of manifest complications.

indeed, it's FAR too late for me to simply drop Asahina-chan as my no.1 favorite Anime chara to date,

deny the profound attachment i have to her, and seek out safer waters.

i just wish that she was attached to a more mundane, realistic character drama,

rather than the convoluted, quasi-sci-fi trainwreck that i tend to feel the SUZUMIYA series to be.

and here, after leaving "TENCHI-MUYO!" and my old puppy-love for Ayeka Masaki Jurai behind, ten years past,

i thought i was for once, finally all the wiser of getting myself entangled in character attachment

in a series that i happen to take great exception to, story wise.

look's like i've done f*&ked myself real good once again.

too bad i cant just get myself all attached to Minmay or something. Good God.

i mean, SDF MACROSS was ONLY my literal Gateway Anime, so very long ago...

Edited July 5, 2011 by Shaorin

[VFTF1]

Wait...wait...there's no new episodes or movies beyond the Dissappearance Movie and the second season right? I'm not talking books...just anime. Haven't missed anything, right?

Pete

[ly000001]

Wait...wait...there's no new episodes or movies beyond the Dissappearance Movie and the second season right? I'm not talking books...just anime. Haven't missed anything, right?

Pete

Right. Before the Tohoku Earthquake put the kibosh on the Tokyo Anime Fair, there were rumors that there was going to be an announcement for the third TV season, but there hasn't been anything substantial as of yet.

[Keith]

All I'm saying is wait until you see Dissapearance. It really puts the season 2 storyline into perspective, and persoanlliy made me really excited to see more layered time travel shenanigans.

[VFTF1]

I did see Disappearance a while back. My long-winded review (which starts out with musings of what might follow) :

http://dyrl.pl/detale.html?id=997

Pete

[Marzan]

Rampage came out last month.

Yeah thanks. Just ordered it from the US instead. Will take much longer to get here, but it's not like I haven't read them before...

[Chronocidal]

Yeah, I should say if anyone doesn't have them and wants them, I did manage to save the fan translations before they were licensed. I've got everything up through book 9, and various pieces of book 10 and 11. The actual translations of 1-5 are really pretty though, lots of nice artwork and such thrown in. I just wish they'd pick up the pace translating books 10 and 11. While the overall story is there, it's missing a big chunk.

Although, arguably, reading the ending and learning about what happened to Yasumi without reading any of the development she had does make the ending a bit easier to swallow I suppose.

I'm anxious to see what this Tanabata announcement is though. Suppose I'll have to wait till either late tonight, or tomorrow. In the meantime, off to watch the last three episodes of the series to prepare for Diappearance tomorrow.

Edited July 6, 2011 by Chronocidal

[Keith]

While we're on the topic, Disappearance has a U.S. release date finally. September 20th!

[Chronocidal]

Oy, after watching Disappearance again, it's just been hitting me exactly how crazy the entire time travel mess is. I mean, it all kind of fit together already, but it just occurred to me that the trip in Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody was done specifically to set up Kyon with a means to fix things when Disappearance happened. Haruhi would have done what she did back then anyway, but putting Kyon there gave him the key to fix everything. They just love to screw with causality so much.

Good to hear about the US release of Disappearance, I might have to pick that up on bluray.

I've been listening to Suzumiya Haruhi no Gensou too, and it took me a good while to get it, but I just realized that I think one of the tracks is actually an orchestrated version of the 8-bit computer music you hear while they're playing Day of Sagittarius. I'm not even sure why it just hit me, but I've had the orchestrated version in my head all morning. I need to get the track labels translated, so I can remember what they actually are. Plus, I need to get myself a copy of the show soundtracks at some point.

After listening to the orchestrated Mikuru theme again, I'm really starting to want a special edition of that episode. Not so much a rehash.. but I want to see what it would look like in Haruhi's head. I just think that orchestrated theme deserves a fitting movie/show to go with it. Not necessarily episode length, though I don't think they'd want to devote an entire feature length movie to an inside-joke.

As little sense as the plot of the club movie made (I mean, despite the crazy multi-layered metaphors for the actual story), I think you could potentially work the plot into something that could be fun in its own way, as a semi-serious sci-fi/fantasy epic. Sort of like what they did with the movie Chicken LIttle, where they made a hollywood-styled retelling of the events of the film into an actual movie (which of course was nothing like what really happened).

I don't know if the plot would stand up to being taken seriously, but I would love to see the characters acting entirely in-character for the movie roles. I mean, even if everything was played completely seriously, I think it would be hilarious to see them acting their roles as Haruhi intended. It'd be worth it just to see Yuki playing some kind of cliched evil witch character, especially if they have her acting the part, complete with a massively evil laugh. Mikuru being some kind of badass actual combat character would be something to see as well. Plus, I think the voice actors could potentially have a lot of fun with it.

Darn it, now I'm suddenly wanting to write a completely serious version of that story.

Edited July 12, 2011 by Chronocidal

[Shaorin]

While we're on the topic, Disappearance has a U.S. release date finally. September 20th!

is it going to see a DVD release as well?

[Chronocidal]

Don't see why they wouldn't release it on both dvd and bluray, they did the same for the Eva Rebuild movies.

By the way, I just realized that I forgot that Day of Sagittarius already had the music switching between 8-bit and orchestrated during the episode. I guess I just never paid that much attention to it. Half the fun of the orchestrated album is just figuring out where all the tracks are used in the anime. Some, like that one, were already orchestrated, and aren't that different, but some stock background tracks are really altered.

[Keith]

Yup, Disappearance will be on both Bluray & DVD.

[Chronocidal]

Random thing for the heck of it, because I found it, and I really want a better english version of the song after hearing this.

[Keith]

Random thing for the heck of it, because I found it, and I really want a better english version of the song after hearing this.

Is the Russian version that fast on the actual disc? Because that's way too fast. As for the English dub version, Bandai actually did end up doing another version to fix it.

Edited July 16, 2011 by Keith

[Marzan]

Is the Russian version that fast on the actual disc? Because that's way too fast. As for the English dub version, Bandai actually did end up doing another version to fix it.

LOL.

Nagato and Slash are kindred spirits.

[Chronocidal]

I went looking for the Chippettes version they used to have, but all I found was this.

[Keith]

Wow, I feel incredibly stupid for missing this, Kyon is Leon in Frontier!

[ly000001]

While we're on the topic, Disappearance has a U.S. release date finally. September 20th!

It's been delayed to the 30th: Bandai Entertainment - San Diego Comic-Con 2011 - Anime News Network

which is odd, since that's a Friday, not a Tuesday.

Edit: NM, both RightStuf and Bandai's Otakon panel have the Sept. 20 release date again.

Edited July 31, 2011 by ly000001

[Keith]

It's been delayed to the 30th: Bandai Entertainment - San Diego Comic-Con 2011 - Anime News Network

which is odd, since that's a Friday, not a Tuesday.

NYORO~N!

[Chronocidal]

Any update on this July 24th announcement that was supposed to happen? I haven't been able to find anything yet.

[Bri]

Any update on this July 24th announcement that was supposed to happen? I haven't been able to find anything yet.

Afaik, the "big" announcement is that there will be an electronic version of The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya available on July 21, and the wishes people could post will be on display in August.

No information about the additional announcement at the end of July yet.

Edited July 25, 2011 by Bri

[Shaorin]

well, fellow Valk Jocks, i finally bit the proverbial bullet and picked myself up the first series complete collection;

that is the version of the set i should get, if the seller is accurate about their stock photos.

it should arrive in a week or so.

i've had my rather considerable trepidations in regards to this series for a very long time now, despite it's visually fetching nature.

and yet; i just can't seem resist it any longer; it just doesn't seem right to have never owned nor seen the series

that my personal Favorite Anime Chara of All Time happens to hail from.

let's hope that this thing doesn't end up becoming one big-a$$ed Ta-Ta to what remains of my personal sanity.

i also picked up this rather beautiful 130 page Artbook as a companion piece;

-hell or high water, good or bad, i'll finally get to see what all the hub-bub that surrounded this series for years was all about.

more than a bit late, perhaps, but better late than never, i suppose.

i just really hope that there isn't a demon beneath this series' pretty facade,

like i have always suspected since 2007. the prettiest flowers tend to have the sharpest thorns, after all...

well, cross my heart, and hope not to lose my mind...

Edited August 4, 2011 by Shaorin

[Keith]

Only suggestion I'd make is that you should pick up the second season as well, since the episodes there actually take place during various points in the first season.