Note: This is the second half of an article that wound up being too long for one post. You can read the first half here.
Picking up from where I left off, Kyon and Yuki’s nighttime stroll is one of my favourite scenes in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, and it succeeds at doing something that most scenes can’t—building an atmosphere.
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Nagaru Tanigawa’s Suzumiya Haruhi franchise needs no introduction and it won’t get one. The same goes for KyoAni’s movie adaptation of the fourth book, Disappearance; it hasn’t received nearly universal acclaim for nothing. Instead of informing you that the film is good, as you’ve no doubt already discovered for yourself, I’d rather dig into it and attempt to figure out why it’s good. Fasten your seatbelts—we’re heading into closed space and it might be a rough ride.
Note: This post is longer than it should be so I split it into two—the second half can be found here.
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I have a strange history with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I first watched the anime series shortly after it aired, but since I had only just started venturing beyond shounen and modern sci-fi/mecha at the time, I never really understood why I liked it. I memorized the Hare Hare Yukai lyrics and proudly gave the show a 10/10, but I couldn’t really point to one specific aspect of it and say “this is why this story is a masterpiece”.
Thankfully, that problem is now solved. I recently decided to go through the first of the nine published novels, and just as I expected, the memories from four years ago came back in a flash – except this time I’m not hindered by blind fandom.
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I don’t really want to talk about Endless Eight. I was away from the blogosphere while the long-awaited sequel to Suzumiya Haruhi was airing, but the drama that surrounded it quickly turned it into a trainwreck. There were some who liked it and many who didn’t; there were theories flying around about trolling and carefully written meta; there was the infamous “betrayal” of Aya Hirano and Yamakan himself. The end result was messy, not unlike a trainwreck, and it’s a little bitter to look back on.
That said, Endless Eight was probably the most memorable anime of the year, despite not being the best. It’s one-of-a-kind, as far as I know, both for its content and for its implications. Unlike other time travel stories, KyoAni was clearly aware of what they were doing here, engaging in a battle of wits with legions of fans. I’m not sure why they did it, and I doubt we’ll ever know, but their cryptic advertising and unorthodox directing of the past prove that nothing in Haruhi is unintentional. Unlike the relatively ordinary novels, the first season was literally tossed on its head, and the Hare Hare Yukai dance became a symbol of moe as an industry-wide trend. Haruhi was loud and obnoxious from the very beginning: much like the titular character, it does what it wants when it wants and doesn’t isn’t afraid of anything.
In that sense, the second season was an ironic success. I can’t say that I enjoyed it nearly as much as I could have, but KyoAni succeeded in throwing an impeccable curve ball that made even more of a splash than the seemingly insurmountable first season. When I look at it that way, I can’t help but feel that they accomplished their goal.
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It might be a bit of a stretch to call MangaGamer’s forray into the commercial visual novel translation scene a home run, but they’ve certainly been the talk of the town over the past year. Leaping into the fray with Da Capo, they proceeded to buy the licenses for Shuffle, Higurashi, and some other respectable titles and beat the fan translators at their own game. Of course, there have been some hiccups in their own translation quality (and let’s not forget their choice of font), but I think we can all agree that their emergence has done more help than harm.
The future looks strong for MangaGamer right now, which is good news for those of us who want to get our hands on DCII and the rest of Higurashi, but they especially deserve praise for listening to their customers. If you’ve been anywhere other than the underside of a rock for the past month, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Censorship has been one of the biggest issues of 2009, pulling our beloved 2D goodness into a mess of politics and ethics, but so far the practical influence on us has been minor. It would be a bit too congratulatory to outright thank MangaGamer for deciding against the removed CGs in Soul Link – it might well have been a wise business move and nothing more – but the fact remains that many companies are unwilling to listen to the pleas of the consumers. For better or worse, though, the English-speaking visual novel community is a small place, and no business can survive by angering their target audience.
If JAST‘s partnership with TLWiki is a sign of things to come, we might be heading into a time in which professionals and amateurs don’t have to be at odds, a time in which we can cooperate under the same fandom with the same ideals. It’s unrealistic, I know, but I’d like to think that 2009 has taken us one step closer to a world in which we can all play the same eroge and live happier ever after. If that isn’t paradise, then I don’t know what is.
~ ETERNAL
つづく
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