Not only does Miyuki wear glasses, she’s also incredibly smart, and most importantly very nice. It’s actually kind of surprising how few “nice and smart people” there are in anime who have a main character role, rather than side character; the primary one which comes to mind offhand is Belldandy from Ah My Goddess, but her Divine Intellect is not exactly portrayed often in either anime or manga. (In fact, she’s kind of spacey in the earlier manga chapters, played up for comedy.) Also, Yomiko Readman from Read Or Die, one of the sexiest characters I’ve ever seen.

I’m under the impression that after a while, a particularly high intelligence in Real Life tends to result more in cynicism, rather than optimism. On the “nicer” end of the scale, we get the Deadpan Snarker, like (famously) Kyon from Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. As we progress towards less empathy and more RAGE, we end up with the “I hate people because everyone except me is stupid” types, which I’ve always had problems talking to. My worldview is that everyone should be nice to each other, and they believe that they have an inalienable right to be a complete… well, I’ll just leave it at that to prevent myself from descending into a full-blown rant.

I wonder what sort of character archetypes Miyuki would be classified under in the Great Fandom Classification. (Yes, I’m aware that many times, these pigeon-holes are not precisely accurate, or even appropriate.) There’s the obvious meganekko, and as Konata points out, she also has elements of dojikko, a trait which I’ve never seen portrayed as “cute” except in anime, although once again absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I don’t know if there’s a fandom term for “smart girl”, “nice girl”, or “smart and nice girl”. I wonder if “smart and nice”, male or female, really are that rare, in anime or in Real Life.

Yes, I went there.

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.

Mere words cannot describe the unspeakable joy I felt when I held in my hands the Limited Edition Box Set that came with the first Region 1 DVD of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I’m sure that you’re all tired of the hyperbolic religious references by now, so I’ll just assume that you’ve already gone through the mental image of me squeeing like an over-excited and disturbingly hyper fangirl who happens to not actually be female.

I lack an actual method for providing clear and high-quality pictures of my purchase, at least until I get my camera fixed. And so, this entire post will contain merely pictures that are only tangentially related to the box set, inasmuch as they may possibly have something to do with it apart from being of the same series.

Received word from Amazon.com that mine pre-order of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya special edition box set is winging its way to me even as we speak. (Well, as I type and you read, technically.)

This, after a weekend spent at Animania, where a very kind fellow member gifted me with a copy of the Newtype supplement from December 2006 that he had picked up somewhere. This was the Haruhi issue, filled from page to page with gorgeous pictures of the SOS Brigade and annotated in a language I did not understand, ie Japanese. I spent the past few days since then admiring the contents therein with the utmost care of a collector and fan. This was more than a simple magazine with pictures; this was Da Vinci’s original notes, Shakespeare’s First Folio.

My reputation for being a fanatical Haruhiist had apparently become common knowledge among the Animania crew. As this causes them to funnel the blessings of Haruhi onto this unworthy soul, I cannot complain.

I have thus spent the better part of a week hyping myself up for the R1 DVD box set. This is not something that will likely result in any disappointment, since all I really need for the payoff is having the DVD box set in my eager hands, watching the first few episodes in full DVD quality. Since that is the basic raison d’etre of the DVD box set in the first place, I cannot think of any way for the result to be able to actually disappoint me, save for it not arriving at all.

I have, thus far in my life, only been truly evangelical about three fandoms: Card Captor Sakura, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Discworld. Consider all the other fandoms and series which I liked, but not enough to want to spread. Consider all the effort I am willing to go through to obtain the latest Discworld book. Consider the time and money I have spent supporting my Card Captor Sakura collection.

Now imagine how excited I am about the box set of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

An idle thought occurs, that if Haruhi in her Melancholy can result in such conversion and devotion, what more can she accomplish if she ever progresses fully to Anger and Jealousy?

So as was mentioned on the previous post, I was working on something that precluded working on a post for this blog. That “something” was, in fact, a story for the monthly Writer’s Group meeting, which was giving me no end of trouble since I had no idea where the story would go, and I had no idea how to get the story to the place I had no idea it would go to. Or something.

But I hammered away at it (neglecting this blog), presented it at the meeting, and as though in karmic reward, I received a poster, depicting the above picture, as a gift. This is worth a hundred, nay, a thousand such stories written under the burnout of Writer’s Block.

It is awesome. No amount of thanks are enough for such a boon upon this unworthy soul. There is a God, and her name is Haruhi, for what else can explain the serendipity of this presentation of an advertisement for the SOS Brigade?

The scene depicted is, quite obviously, a recruitment drive for the SOS Brigade. I’m guessing that this is sometime after the fateful events of episode 10 (episode 4 chronologically), being that Yuki lacks her glasses. In fact, this probably would be set after the events of the anime, since the events of volume one, and up to chronological episode 6, are set in the Spring of that year, and certainly (mostly) after club enrolment; the rest of the anime takes place through the rest of the year, ending with chronological episode 14 in Winter. Being that there are the very obvious cherry blossoms in the wind, it would be reasonable to assume that this recruitment drive takes place in the early Spring, during Haruhi’s second year in high school and Mikuru’s third.

Presumably, the events of volume 9 are either in progress, or about to be, or even in an alternate universe from this one. But that’s enough about that. (I installed a spoiler-hiding plugin when I started this blog; maybe one day I’ll get around to learning how to use it.)

Here we have the three girls of the SOS Brigade, with the males conspicuously absent. I have to assume that either Kyon and Koizumi found some other thing to be astonishingly busy with, or Haruhi decided that having only the girls around would be better for business, so to speak. I’ve noticed that Haruhi’s schemes tend to focus more on attracting the Horny Young Male demographic, through much use (and abuse) of Mikuru; I don’t think she’s ever hatched a plan (yet) to use Koizumi to attract female attention. (I’ll just leave the whole heterosexual/homosexual debate aside for now, since I want to simplify for the sake of brevity.) This, even though in her first year of high school, she was still treating males as “no different from potatoes” when it came to modesty and interest. Haruhi still had no qualms about exploiting men, I believe, what with the bunnysuit and all.

One possible reason for this would be that after Haruhi introduced Mikuru to the club, Kyon displayed what was, to her, an unhealthy amount of interest that irritated her for some reason. If Mikuru could engender such a reaction in Kyon, what would another female member in the club be able to do? And later Kyon is seen with Yuki, no less! Clearly it would be better to play it safe, and recruit people who, apart from being out of the ordinary (by being ESPers, time-travellers, aliens, or sliders), also had no romantic interest in Kyon.

I would say that Haruhi has possibly not noticed how often Koizumi invades Kyon’s personal space.

In any case, Haruhi is in full Brigade Commander mode, handing out fliers, probably aggressively. Maybe she doesn’t have the time or inclination to change into her bunnygirl costume, but she clearly insists that Mikuru dress as a bunnygirl, despite the cold weather. Now, usually I cannot understand schadenfreude, but after a while, the Mikuru abuse just becomes so silly that I have to chuckle. I think part of it is that it’s just happened so often that by now, everyone, both in the story and here in Real Life, is more or less expecting it. This is all part of the SOS Brigade Normal Activity: Haruhi is Overbearing, Yuki is Silent, and Mikuru is Weeping.

Speaking of Yuki, here she acts as a living signpost. I can just imagine Haruhi dragging Yuki up from whatever book she was reading at the time, handing her the sign, and telling her to stand there and advertise. And so Yuki just… stands there. And advertises. By standing there.

It’s just so Yuki.

This is possibly one of the best at-a-glance representations of the SOS Brigade girls I’ve seen. It displays their individual character traits perfectly, with Haruhi being bossy and enthusiastic, Mikuru cowering in the back but still trying her best, and Yuki standing, watching silently. I imagine honorary member Tsuruya is off to the side somewhere, laughing and taking pictures, while Koizumi is watching from a distance smiling his enigmatic smile, and Kyon just tries to stave off yet another Haruhi-induced headache.

And I have this poster.

Life is good.

I have no prepared post.

I have no ideas on what to blog.

I have less than three hours to write something else, a prior assignment, so to speak, which I am having a stupendous block upon.

All I can offer you is this picture of Vita and Rein from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A’s (or possibly StrikerS), obtained a mere ten minutes ago.

How the mightily garrulous have fallen.

I don’t actually have any posts in reserve for today, so I’ll do the extremely lazy thing and schedule a wallpaper, 1024×768 version. This is Makina Tomoe from the erogame Nursery Rhyme; she’s the happy, genki type, who’s probably going to be the Real Ending or some such. (Well, unless the game throws something out of left field at me.) Source is unknown, but probably 4chan, judging by the filename; I didn’t even know I had a Nursery Rhyme wallpaper until today, when I was browsing through mine wallpaper folder. Apparently I grabbed it some time ago, and only grokked the source recently.

In all honesty, I’ve not actually finished the game, or even progressed much since the last time I played it, largely because I find myself with less faith in my understanding-from-context Japanese skills picked up from over twelve years of watching anime every time I see that torrent of complicated words. I should probably put some time into deciphering the text, but I yet hold out hope that some kind soul out there will release an unofficial English translation patch or some such. That, or a walkthrough.

I don’t really have the spare time in front of my computer to construct an actual post, mostly because this weekend is taken up entirely by (tabletop) gaming. Exchanging one geeky activity for another is probably not that bad of a thing when the end result is more socializing with other (probable) human beings. Still, I’ll probably be looking to pick up another anime that is easy to understand sans subtitles for my blogging, in addition to Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. Current prime candidate is sola, mostly because it seems to have enough things that I can actually talk about at any length, and which I actually like watching.

Of course, I might also be pulling out yet another Card Captor Sakura episode summary. I should probably spread those out; too many “Yukito says he’s just visiting Touya to Study, wink-wink nudge-nudge hur-hur-hur” jokes in rapid succession would probably get a little old.

This is just a test of the AB.net uploading, which may or may not be encountering problems. In the meantime, have a wallpaper.