Haruhi S2 ep 4 – Ep 2 ver. 15499 – Ep 3 ver. 2 – When something fails and it’s not the viewer

Is this gonna drag more?

OK, seriously, have you read my Haruhi season 2 episode 3 review?  Have you watched EITHER episode 2 or episode 3? Then you really don’t need to watch this one, except for the extra moe.  I could see how episode 3 MIGHT have been needed (although a good storyteller could easily avoid the repetition), but episode 4 is just going overboard.  I’m not sure who to blame for this one… KyoAni for following the novel a bit TOO close and proving once again their storytelling skills are as good (or as bad) as the source material or blame the novel?  I will give the novel the benefit of the doubt, cause books have ways to repeat the same thing without obvious copy-paste, and just blame Kyoani.  Sure the novel isn’t a classic masterpiece but I shudder to think that ANY writer would pull a repeat in a book twice in basically the same way, so while I have my doubts about the quality of the novels, I don’t believe it’s the novel’s fault, although the facts aren’t speaking in its defense one bit yup, I read the related chapter, it’s clearly not the novel’s fault, it’s Kyoani deviating from the source, and messing up as always.

Of course, Kyoani did their best in making it appear like new material and basically targeted at supplying the same moe under a different wrapping.  Well, true, the moe is there, different clothes, different takes, it LOOKS like a new episode for all intents and purposes, save ONE…  THE DAMN PLOT!  ALMOST ALL THE DIALOGUE!  If they wanted me to have some serious deja vu, they failed, cause instead of deja vu, I feel like Yuki.  If they wanted me to feel like Yuki, congratulations, I’m every bit as annoyed as her, probably more since Yuki isn’t really the passionate type and she possibly feels more bored than frustrated.  Watching the same thing 3 times under different takes, an act which has no real meaning other than making you pull your hair out as it doesn’t supply any new information or advance the stalled plot in any way isn’t really my idea of good storytelling.  We can accept that the plot was normally stalled in episode 3, although, as I said, they could easily have erased episode 2 and blend it with episode 3 by the use of flashbacks/still shots/etc etc.  All in all, we’ve seen 3 episodes, out of which we needed just ONE good episode.  Two episodes  were bearable, three+ is overkill.  The overall idea of being locked in time and repeating is ok and all, and it’s bound to get resolved eventually, but the anime storytelling is now bordering on ridiculous.

Anyway, if you managed to survive the above rant, plus the episodes themselves, here’s the post’s gallery for the fun of it.  You got to take the bad with the good and, at the very least, the thing was still moe despite being utterly pathetic in essence.

Viva la revolution!

Haruhi on top. Well, it is a rather interesting notion.

I still think Koizumi wins for having Mikuru there…

Onward, peons! For Glory!

Well, this one suits here better I think.

Here’s a bit more moe to ease the pain.

A bit of surrealistic Haruhi here

More HaruhixMikuru, mwahahahaha

The group’s new swimsuits.

The brigade needs more moe and Haruhi knows where to get it.

The hero. Yuki, I feel for you. But you could have just suffered alone and let the plot progress.

CAKE?!

New ones. I might have preferred the other ones though…

Well… on ONE hand I’m kinda disappointed there’s no oppai groping. On the other, sweet Haruhi is nice.

Yeah, I know, I can’t believe it either.

/me is switching places. /kicks Kyon. “My need is greater than yours”

Sometimes I think they do that on purpose… Is major yuri inbound?

Yay! We’re having fun! Again! or Again x 15499!

Moe Mikuru and Ultraman Yuki.

Yay for recycled fresh moe.

Don’t worry, Kyon… It’ll end soon… It’s BOUND to anyway…

Mikuru crying x 15499. That’s an ocean of moe tears.

And yet another HaruhixMikuru. Might as well switch to straight yuri, I wouldn’t really mind, Mikuru deserves some Haruhi love after all the abuse.

You don’t say… What about us…?

Trying to find your comrades there?

You know, Yuki, you COULD wear something different, too.

Well… They seem good enough from over here, I suppose.

Please… Don’t come back this time… I know you will but please…

And there you have it.  The thing I fear that may actually happen is having the next episode being yet ANOTHER repeat, maybe until around the end where Kyon has some sort of revelation and finally gets what Haruhi wants to do or something.  All in all, they might as well wrap the thing up and move on, cause in the end, unfortunate though that is, this episode just made the whole arc fail.  I suppose I got some more HaruhixMikuru footage and Haruhi was being nice to her, so I shouldn’t be too distraught, but I can’t but feel I’ve wasted around 30 minutes watching the episode, taking screenshots, and possibly another hour or so actually reviewing the thing.   From a moe perspective it’s as good as ever, but even moe series can’t be THAT blatantly repetitive.  For those that were actually blaming K-ON’s episode 10 for being pure repeat, you can have fun will all these identical Haruhi episodes. I doubt I’ve seen more of a straight and totally unnecessary repeat than these three.  K-ON’s supposed repeat was way better, which is insane thinking about it, because Haruhi is supposed to be a moe series with a better plot than K-ON, so it SHOULD have been better, not worse.

Someone should REALLY get his act together and make a decent episode again…

PS I kinda forgot to mention it but WTH is wrong with the raws? All fansubs I download have absolutely horrible image quality…