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ok so one of my new mutuals has been haruhiposting a lot… and it's christmas…

i try to resist, but it is impossible. there is only one option.

i have to properly watch/rewatch haruhi for the first time in thirteen years. the whole thing, in s2 airing order

let's go

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i got to the bit where they're discussing her hairstyles and i'm realising, maybe, why this anime was a big deal for me. i was assaulted by so many concepts at once by watching it…

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i have rewatched episode 1 before, a few years ago. i think, though, right now i'm in the best headspace to be able to fully enjoy it… it's so good. and there's so many little extra things i can pick up on since i remember some of the big spoilers from s1. #光ハルヒHoliday 1

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‪“And I'm concerned about why Nagato-san is here.”‬

‪oh, this is one of the Mikuru quotes i know from my Weiß-Schwarz Haruhi deck, so that's where it's from……… aaah i need local friends i can play Weiß-Schwarz with. New year's resolution… #光ハルヒHoliday 2‬

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this was the first anime i watched, and therefore my first significant exposure to the japanese language. what's so cool, though, is it was also the first time i saw japanese being typed using an IME. it's so cool!! i loved seeing this realistic computer use… #光ハルヒHoliday 2‬

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wait i was already thinking that i should probably read some ratfic about this show but now i got to the Data Integration Thought Entity and it's Extremely… like… a thing that people would project… things onto. ahhh. please give me your haruhi takes!!!!!!! #光ハルヒHoliday 2‬

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“Survey says that a student who transfers in halfway through the year is practically guaranteed to be a mysterious transfer student!”

  • oh my god, “survey says”… that takes me back, people don't say that now
  • she's doing the kyon finger circling thing again

#光ハルヒHoliday 3‬

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honestly one of the most interesting things about watching this thirteen years later is i'm a lot less autistic, i actually realise when characters are meant to be weird and aren't authentic. i don't think the me that originally watched it had this awareness #光ハルヒHoliday 3

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and that scenery is, at the same time, mundane. it resembles the real world. it is everyday. but it is still beautiful.

it feels very unlikely that this anime could have influenced my tastes in that direction, but it does align perfectly with them. huh. #光ハルヒHoliday 5

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ahh, that was satisfying. this episode, the 6th in the 2009 broadcast order (i'm referring to it as s2 order because it's the order s2 aired in) was the last one in the 2006 broadcast. not sure what order i saw it when i watched it on dvd. it's a good climax. #光ハルヒHoliday 6

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oh my god they make THIS EPISODE be the first one where you hear 『止マレ!』, and the lyrics and presentation are Highly Thematically Relevant. fuck, i've really been missing out by never watching this series in 2009 broadcast order before now!!!! banger ED btw #光ハルヒHoliday 8

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gf update: she's watched three episodes now (which establish the premise of the show), about to watch the 4th. she commented that it's interesting how between three different characters you get three different explanations of the “three years ago” events.

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i liked that observation. it kinda ties into how i want to read fanfiction elaborations on this setting, because i think it's unusual for a series to give you this kind of… diversity of thought about its own premise, and leave a lot open?

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i think i need to read more fiction from this kind of era, because there's a lot of similar themes/concepts here that probably felt novel the first time i encountered them, but it's obvious now that lots of works share them, so i want to know their origins #光ハルヒHoliday 9

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like uhh… haruhi, blue reflection, dennou coil, nanoha, and surely a bunch of other series i've consumed that i forgot, have very similar sci-fi elements. i think, hmm, i need to consume more non-anime stuff, i wanna see how vn's handle this for example #光ハルヒHoliday 9

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how did i forget this series? i never like, forgot about it. i never forgot the whole thing. but it's like my memory of it from thirteen years ago is very superficial… so much about it is stuff that i really like now, yet it's that which i don't remember… #光ハルヒHoliday 9

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on the one hand, i don't think i give my past self enough credit for liking this series. i'm glad 13-years-younger me liked it. 13-years-younger me probably liked it for similar reasons to present me. but, maybe the 13-years-younger me lacked the vocabulary…? #光ハルヒHoliday 9

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on the other hand… i don't know, maybe my taste in anime is like this because it all started with haruhi? did all those moments absorb into me, not fully appreciated at the time, but forming those connections in the graph that became what i now call taste? #光ハルヒHoliday 9

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i can't stress how utterly strange it is to rediscover an old series i liked like this and discover that i actually still really, really like it. perhaps like it much more than the first time. you have no idea how much my personality has changed in that time. #光ハルヒHoliday 9

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i can say with complete confidence that me liking this series is not out of nostalgia. there's a bunch of other things i watched similarly long ago that i wouldn't get this experience from rewatching. naruto would be a slog, for example, fun as it is… #光ハルヒHoliday 9

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i… i went into it knowing there was the possibility of this, i mean it's part of why i wanted to do it, but it's still so… idk. “me the first time i saw haruhi” is the oldest version of myself in my memories i can still meaningfully recognise. that's why it's such a big deal…

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this breaks the rule of “do not reveal your age on the internet” but the time i saw haruhi for the first time thirteen years ago is at roughly half-way through my life so far. it will not be very long before i have spent half my life as the version of me that has seen haruhi.

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when i say “oldest version of myself in my memories i can still meaningfully recognise”, i mean emotionally. i do have small memories, interests, childhood traumas persisting from then to now, but haruhi is the start of all the emotional threads that lead to my present self.

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it's the start, in particular, of my relationship to art as i know it. it's not the first piece of art i encountered in my life, obviously, but like… you know, all of my current taste in art has some relationship to anime, right. it all starts with haruhi…

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my life and sense of self went through some drastic changes in my teenage years, and for a long time i was embarrassed by the contrast, not able to admit to myself how much the person on both sides of such changes was fundamentally similar. i knew i was in denial, but still

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by the time i reached maybe five years ago in my life, i was starting to be a bit more chill about it. by the time i reached this year or maybe last year, i think i was almost completely chill with it. i could see that, yes, i was still the same person in many ways.

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stuff like… my current haircut, the result of a long process of evolution, is actually just the one i wanted maybe eleven years ago? i think about it in somewhat different terms, but it's the same haircut. the core of that taste has been there all along.

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still, though, i did feel a bit distant from my past self in terms of taste in art. there are certainly some things from that time i can appreciate, but like… 2010 me seems a lot more boring in some ways.

but now, well, i've used my one-time opportunity to revisit my 2010 self.

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by rewatching haruhi, i think the distance in my mind between 2010 and 2023 me is healed. i can feel a strong connection to the me that watched this back in 2010. i don't know quite what that version of me thought and felt, i only remember small bits, but… they were right.

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they liked this series back then, and they were right to like it… and of course present me would think that, because that may as well have been the moment i started to exist. ahh. i don't need to be embarrassed.

i am very glad that suzumiya haruhi no yuuutsu was my first anime.

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for a while i've not been sure how to feel about the fact haruhi was my first anime… i didn't remember it well enough to know whether it was “good”, only that it was meaningful to me. the fact it's such a “meta” show also made me wonder if it was an appropriate first anime…

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but uh, nine episodes into my rewatch (which incidentally covers not just s1 but s2, which i didn't watch back in 2010 because it wasn't on dvd yet, and i'm not sure if i ever properly finished watching later…), i think i can safely say: no, it's an excellent first anime.

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its premise is playful but it plays it straight, so it's not going to confuse you if you've never seen anything it's referencing before. and its premise allows it to give you a flavour of… so much of what anime can do and can be. it's no wonder it inspired a lifelong love in me.

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also it's just technically excellent in many ways. it's just, actually good, in ways even someone who's never seen an anime before can appreciate. watching haruhi as my first anime didn't fuck me up; it prepared me, i guess. i'm glad that chance played out in this way for me.

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i don't know if i've ever outright said it, but a theme of the things i've celebrated in recent times is that “good art” is not a rare thing, in my opinion, and that popularity doesn't mean something is bad (it doesn't necessarily mean it's good, of course).

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i think i was afraid haruhi was not going to be that good, because… as you may know (younger folks might not), haruhi was absolutely fucking everywhere in anime circles circa 2010. it was an extremely big deal. it was impossible to ignore. it was mainstream within anime at least

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and there are quite a lot of popular things that i don't really care so much for! i'm not a snob about it, i don't have anything against a thing being popular in itself, but it's not uncommon for something to be very popular but kind of average at best so far as my tastes go?

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so, yeah, it's just wonderful to be able to wholeheartedly embrace it neither because of nor in spite of nostalgia, but simply because… it's good. that i'm nostalgic about it only makes it better, but i'd love it either way. that's cool!!!

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‪aha, it's funny that i start watching haruhi not long after switching away from my haruhi profile pic. i'm glad though, it means i don't feel like i'm betraying all those people who followed me thinking i'm a haruhi fan… because i am indeed one, i'm just not, haruhi,‬

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god i'm already struck by the beauty of this concept. since it's the first episode where the characters are aware of the loop, there's some plot changes, but if you ignore those, it's still a very different episode from before… it's like a different “take” #光ハルヒHoliday 13

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i'm glad i'm in this… receptive… state of mind, while watching this. i don't know if me a decade ago could have enjoyed watching this or not (i can't remember if i did, but i do have a feeling i may have skipped it in the past), but present me certainly does #光ハルヒHoliday 15

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it's all about the little things. you're not watching the exact same episode eight times. you're watching eight episodes with almost exactly the same synopsis, but differently directed. so the entire experience is about the little things, and i love those. #光ハルヒHoliday 15

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god. i love endless eight. it's so pretty. i'm glad they did it.

would i have loved it if it was once a week? i think with my current mindset, even that would've been fun, though the fallibility of human memory would make the differences harder to spot… #光ハルヒHoliday 18

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one of the things i keep finding myself remarking on with endless eight is how the directors are constrained by the locations in the world having to stay on-model in all eight versions. and yet, despite this, they can sometimes get them to feel different… #光ハルヒHoliday 19

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the sos brigade is always

haruhi: WE ARE GOING TO THE FUCKING MOON :D
kyon: she is insane. what does she think we are, astronauts? -_-;;
itsuki: Ah, isn't it wonderful that Suzumiya-san has picked a reasonable idea? I am fascinated to see what she plans to do on the moon. ^_^

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i keep looking at kyon's facial expressions and they remind me of other kyoto animation girls… i don't know what any of the other ones are called but they're good face shapes

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