God Only Knows: The Viewing Order of Haruhi Suzumiya. (review)

There is a scene in Neal Stephensons excellent novel Cryptonomicon 
where the main character, Randy, wishes to dive to a sunken submarine a 
couple of hundred feet down on the sea floor. His companion, an ex-U.S. 
Navy commando, reminds Randy that he is very welcome to do so, but first 
he must file a dive plan. Randy believes that this should not take long 
to work out, as any idiot on a cruise tour can strap a couple of SCUBA 
tanks to their back and go look at the pretty fishes.
    What follows is several paragraphs describing the gradual shattering 
of Randys illusions; that in order to come up with even a *bad* dive 
plan that would leave him drowned, suffocated, twisted into interesting 
shapes by the bends and so compressed by pressure that his remains could 
easily fit into even a small styrofoam cup, several hours of hugely 
technical donkey work is required.

    I was reminded of this scene recently when, in an effort to escape 
out of the retro anime binge I've been on and get round to watching 
something made before the year Dawn of Time, B.E. [1], I picked up the 
DVD set of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and told a friend about it. 
His almost immediate response was: "Which order are you watching them 
in?" [2]

    Huh?

    It turns out that, unlike other anime, TMoHS does not follow 
conventional viewing procedure. A glance at the Wikipedia article my 
friend linked to reveals that there are are at least three different 
sequences in which to watch it, the descriptions of which being the kind 
of thing that makes hardened theoretical mathematicians start eating 
chalk and deciding to do something easier, like Fermats last theorem.

    In short, I was going to need a dive plan myself before I could even 
contemplate watching TMoHS.

    Some time later and with a printout from Wikipedia in hand, I 
finally settled down to watch this already incredibly complicated series 
[3]. According to the plan, I should start with episode 11. Or episode 
1. Or possibly episode n, where n is a free curve on the 
Heisenberg-Schroedinger diagram.

    This turned out to be a depiction of a home-made SF film (with a 
TV-control twitching compressed screen ratio) starring some of the shows 
characters, with one important omission. Having recently acquired a 
suitable action figure for a mate, I thought I knew what the titular 
character looked like, and it wasn't like anyone I was watching. I mean, 
unless its that girl in the bunny outfit, very heavily disguised.
    I continued to watch, even though as a general rule, things did not 
make much sense. This apparently was the first episode broadcast in 
Japan, and somehow the series didn't seem to die at birth, so obviously 
there was something in it. There were definite hints that not all might 
be as it first appeared...

    Onto episode 2! Or episode 1! Gawd, mere numerology wasn't designed 
to cope with this.

    This started with a voice-over from Kyon, a student who seemed to be 
a main character. He was confessing to having loved anime, manga, 
sci-fi, fantasy when he was young. Or put another way, he had been a bit 
of an otaku, or at least a bit of a geek. He revealed how, as he grew 
older, the real world became more vital and he gradually lost interest. 
  And remained  that way, until a new student transferred into his class.

    Kyons attention is caught very quickly by the fact that Haruhi 
Suzumiya is beautiful. She is also intelligent, talented and athletic. 
However, his school friends quickly put out warning signals. Some of 
them know her of old. And the message is: Suzumiya is not like other 
girls. For one thing, she proclaims the she is not interested in "normal 
humans". She joins every club in school in a week. The leaves them. All 
of them. And she has a different hairstyle for every day. And shes a 
serial dater, the shortest of which lasted exactly five minutes. And 
shes *very much* into espers and aliens and other mysteries.

    Somehow, Kyon manages to start a conversation with this creature. 
And one day, out of the blue and in the middle of class, Suzumiya 
declares she has a solution - she will form her own school club! And of 
course, Kyon will be in it!

    Their first challenge is to find some premises. They do this by 
staging a coup against the Literature Club. This proves straightforward, 
as the only remaining member is a book-wormish Rei-a-like who reacts to 
this revolution by calmly turning the page and carrying on reading [4]. 
Their next problem is membership, which Suzumiya solves by virtually 
kidnapping another girl (bunny-girl from episode "X, The Unknown")  on 
the grounds she has a large bust and will therefore attract even more 
members.

    And then its onto the previews!

    This is my sum total of TMoHS viewing so far. Its a series to which 
the word "cult" seems suitable; something that has driven people to post 
acoustic versions of anthem "God Only Knows" on YouTube and make 
stop-motion shorts using Gundam figures of the ending credits.  And I 
have a good feeling about  it. I have no idea where it will be going, or 
why Suzumiya is melancholic but its clear from the hints dropped theres 
obviously a lot more to happen. And it uses words like "esper". I didn't 
think any anime made after 1989 used the word "esper" anymore. I think 
I'm going to like this, and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of 
the series.

    Before that, though - if you'll excuse me, I need to consult my dive 
plan...

    [1] Before Evangelion.

    [2] After the usual "You bought something without the word "Gundam" 
in the title?!" shock etc.

    [3] Actually, it was even harder than that. First I had to get into 
the box, which almost uniquely in my box-set experience, opened like a 
pack of cards. Then I had to remove the security packaging without also 
removing some finger joints. Then I decided that the PC DVD drive was 
showing signs of playing up, so I would go downstairs to watch it. After 
making the necessary adjustments to AV settings etc, I finally opened 
the DVD player tray. At which point I remembered that I'd left the 
actual disc in the PC upstairs. There are days when I positively miss 
only having to worry about Dub vs Sub.

    [4] Someone on the creative side is obviously a *true* reader.

-- 
* "Attack!"     * justin@briareos.demon.co.uk *
* "Attack who?" *                             *
* "EVERYONE!"   *                             *
  - Galvatron    *   Decepticon Decoy Target   *

date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:41:42 +0100 author: Justin Palmer