Mentioned I before about the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya artbook received from a friend, from the December 2006 copy of Newtype. While flipping through its hallowed pages, one of the centerfolds (which I am told was originally printed in the Newtype October 2006 copy) was that of the above picture.

The first few times I looked at it, I simply basked in the picture composition, enjoying the picture as a whole. And then I got it in my head that maybe KyoAni put in some sort of reference, perhaps more books that Yuki would read or some such. Haruhi apparently has a fictional copy of her own book series, in a rather meta way, while I cannot quite make out the book Yuki is holding, but am sure that it is significant in some manner. The other books on the ground I don't recognize, but upon reading the title of the book Mikuru is holding, I just about fell out of my chair.

To be precise, the movie is not actually a retelling of the novel (which was published in 1965), but more a continuation or sequel, or so I hear. The movie (which is rather good in its own right) was released in July 15th 2006, which makes it plausible that the reference of the book in Mikuru's hand is based on that. Presumably that title was chosen because of the theme of, well, a time-travelling girl.

I kind of know the feeling of wishing to include random references in stories, just to see who will catch them. Often, the trick is never to make it utterly blatant unless going for complete parody, and definitely never to assume knowledge of the reference; the story should be enjoyable in its own right, divested of any pop culture baggage. But occasionally when writing, I'll toss in a throwaway line about something here, and a sideways glance about something else there, and soon it becomes a game of spot-the-reference, which does require a very canny editor to slice out. The audience wishes to experience a story, rather than a game of trivia, and any reference should be miniscule as to be irrelevant (tossed in just because "we need something there"), or useful to the story anyway. Thankfully, MoHS does this fairly well, and the references almost never detract from the story. (Heck, the original novels were full of references anyway, mostly via Kyon's and Haruhi's analogies.)

Basically, I know how easy it is to fall into the trap of "wouldn't this be cool", and any creators who manage not to let it take over their works gets my respect.

Anyway, a final note on this particular reference, and the reason I noticed it in the first place: another friend of mine was present when I received the artbook, and was raving enthusiastically about The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which won Animation Of The Year at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2007. Quite coincidentally (or rather, not really that surprisingly), another award winner, this time in the Television category, was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 9th, 2007 at 11:59 am and is filed under melancholy of haruhi suzumiya, pretty pics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.