Summary:

Kyon provides the setting for this episode as being after the cultural festival and nearing December. After the opening sequence, we are in the clubroom where it’s a quiet situation without Haruhi present. Kyon looks around the room, which have remnants of past incidences and Kyon identifies that it’s been half a year since the SOS Brigade started. Haruhi barges into the quiet room and says she’s managed to get a heater for the clubroom from the person who had sponsored their movie. The movie which was shown in its entirety on the first episode. Haruhi says the sponsor, the owner of an electronics store, found an old unit and was planning to throw it away, but instead considered offering the heater to Haruhi for free. Kyon suspects that Haruhi tricked the guy into giving it away to her.

Haruhi then quickly tells Kyon to go pick it up. Kyon explains the pains in going out to retrieve it, but Haruhi tells him that he has nothing better to do, so he should go. Kyon concedes and heads out. As Kyon is gone, Haruhi tells Mikuru she wants to take some pictures for their cover image for their DVD release of their movie. As Kyon wonders what kind of mess Haruhi is making in the clubroom, the scene returns to the clubroom where pictures are being taken and Haruhi forcing Mikuru to change outfits. Then more pictures are taken. This repeats a few times with different outfits.

At the electronics store, Kyon finds out the heater is part of a small advance for sponsoring the sequel to the movie. Kyon just shrugs it off. Afterward, Yuki is the only one left inside the clubroom reading a book while one can hear the different activities going about in the surrounding area. A lot of audio, but only the image of Yuki reading quietly in the room. As Kyon heads back to the school, it starts to rain. Tsuruya, Mikuru’s friend who appears in episode 4, makes an appearance. She hangs out with Mikuru for a while, and then bumps into Kyon as he enters the school. She finds out he was out running an errand and she says she gets it now.

Back at the clubroom, only Yuki is there. Kyon plugs in the heater and takes a nap on a seat. He is awoken later by a shocked Haruhi who just stands there for a moment staring at Kyon. It is made clear that Haruhi was shocked because she placed her jacket on Kyon while he slept to keep him warm. As Haruhi explained to Kyon that it was raining outside, Kyon is not so excited about that because he didn’t have an umbrella. Haruhi tells him one’s enough as she shows him an umbrella. They walk home together in the rain as the episode ends.

Review:

The title of the episode is called “Someday in the Rain”. As is with any given “some day”, it’s typically a usual, boring day, as was the case for this episode. When I saw this episode, the first thing that came to my mind was: Damn, this was such a different kind of episode. It was just plain boring in terms of what the series appeared to be about. Most of the episode was pretty much filler-like content, resulting in not much summary content. But that’s alright, I really don’t feel like typing that much.

I’m sure there are plenty of references that I missed in this episode. Some that are obvious and not too obvious are the items inside the room. Kyon looks around and sees a bunch of laptops piled on top of each other. That’s a reference to a future episode. Episode 11 to be exact. Then there are the multiple costumes that Mikuru wears. Some that have appeared in the show, some that haven’t. Since I’m still reading the novels, I can’t say whether or not those costumes are just made up for the episode. The bamboo tree in the room refers to one of the stories in the novel. The same story that sends Kyon back to the past to meet up with a younger Haruhi which in turn brings up Haruhi’s question to Kyon in episode 2 in which she asks if they’ve met before a long time ago. I must say it again, this is such a well made anime. So much backstory involved.

I think the saving grace of this episode is that it showed some of Haruhi’s feelings towards Kyon. She obviously respects his opinions on things up to a certain level. In this episode, she didn’t want to do certain things until Kyon was gone. At the end of the episode, when she offers him the umbrella, she looks away from him while showing him the umbrella. Nothing like her usual self. A slightly shy, kinder Haruhi.

Summary:

The episode continues with the second part of the island adventure. Haruhi tries to check the owner’s body, but the butler pulls her aside and checks the body himself and declaring him dead. Itsuki starts explaining the situation as a closed circle. There are only so many people on the island and the murder was committed inside a locked room. Kyon’s first suspicions point to Haruhi’s abilities to make things happen at her desire. This time resulting in a murder on an isolated island. The other culprit would be the one person who’s missing; the owner’s brother.

The butler insists that the body not be disturbed until the police arrive, which is in a few days after the weather subsides. Haruhi
asked the butler about the relationship between the brothers. The butler says he doesn’t know because he and the maid were only recently employed by the owner. Kyon has a flashback of when the club docked off the ferry to meet the butler and the maid and tells himself that something doesn’t make sense. After some inquiries with the maid, it is explained that the missing brother left late last night and the boat is gone. Haruhi stares into the distance and claims to have seen something and drags Kyon with her.

As they walk on a narrow path, the ground breaks under from Haruhi and the two fall to another ledge. They find cover from the rain in a cave and discuss what they know about what happened and what could have happened. Haruhi explains that during the brief moment she was checking the body, she realized the body was still warm. If the other brother left last night, then the owner could not have been killed. Haruhi suspects that since the knife was stabbed through a notebook into the chest, the younger brother could have been the one who got the knife into the book, but ran off in the night fearing that the knife went through the book. In the disorientation, the owner must have locked the door in fear of the younger brother returning to finish the job. Then he tripped over himself and fell on his chest pushing the knife in. However, the body was found face up. Haruhi suddenly realized something, but held back from telling Kyon what she was thinking.

Back at the mansion, Kyon tells Itsuki the incomplete solution came up by Haruhi. Itsuki explains that most of the story is true except for the ending. The owner did indeed faint from the shock factor and was awoken by everyone checking up on him. He locks the door in the confusion, and while at the door, that is when Kyon, Itsuki, and the butler break through the door and the force of the door impales the knife into his chest killing him. Kyon suddenly gets up and says he must silence the truth from Itsuki. Kyon’s sister runs to the butler and informs him that Itsuki is dead with a knife in his chest. As they run off to investigate, two shadowy figures enter the dead owner’s room. Their voices represent Haruhi and Kyon. They speak about killing Itsuki and going to leave blame on the younger brother. In order to make it more bloody, they proclaim to stab the owner’s body a few more times. As Kyon is ready to begin stabbing, the owner quickly awakens to stop him, even though Kyon had no intention to. Itsuki appears and says their masquerade is up.

Then like all detective endings, the head detective sits in front of everyone and explains the deduction leading to the correct ending. Haruhi explains that the two brothers, the servants, and Itsuki were all in on the act. Haruhi first points out that the door could not have been the culprit because there was no damage to the door. The second inconsistency was the story about the time of employment. The butler said they only started working for this family recently. Back in the flash back, Itsuki greets them saying it’s been a long time. Another point was when running to the owner’s room. Haruhi saw Itsuki run straight to it, despite being his first time ever being at the house. The last point was when Kyon noticed a plate of eaten food. He points out that it was eaten by a fork and knife with only carrots left behind, leading to suspecting the owner of eating that plate of food.

Back on the ferry taking them home, Kyon and Itsuki share another conversation. While Kyon is talking, Itsuki stares at a mole on Kyon’s neck. Kyon asks about the suspicious shadow that Haruhi saw outside. Itsuki said he had no knowledge of it. Kyon then realizes that Haruhi had manifested a dangerous shadowy suspicious shadow on that island and it is still there.

Review:

This whole series was pretty weird from the start. I already had the feeling that all this was staged since this show was more comedy and light-hearted than it was with seriousness and thriller-like themes. It’s just a shame that these types of detective stuff are designed in a way to prevent the audience from realizing the truth until it is explained at the end. When I first saw it, everything flew right past me and I didn’t take any scenes seriously. On a second time around, apparently the show slows down the important scenes with the clues in hopes that the viewer actually does pick up some of the clues.

Overall, there was nothing really special about the episode. It’s very self-explanatory. Just entertaining to watch.

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| Here’s a YouTube friendly version of the video: View at YouTube |
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Oh man, I spent a good two days making this AMV so do enjoy the video. Though it was two days, time flew by so quickly. Here’s a little quick summary of how I got all of this together.

The Song: “The Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani featuring Akon

I was listening to the radio on my way to work, as I do everyday, and this song started playing. I thought it was just some Xmas song at first, but after listening a little longer, I recognized Gwen Stefani’s voice. Radio stations rarely announce song credits these days, so all I knew was that it was a song from Gwen and I knew she had a new album out. The lyrics in the song for some reason reminded me of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya because she mentions escaping and recreating her own world. The lyrics continue describing a personality that resembled Haruhi so much such as having affection for the narrator of the anime and so on. Just trust me on this one. So this was the first thing that pushed me towards making a music video.

The Software: Adobe Premiere

Maybe a month before I heard the song, I came across this program. I didn’t quite have a use for it yet, but I knew its potential. I already told myself that this program is what I will use for a future music video. I was going to use it for Advent Children, but this sudden inspiration for making the Haruhi music video outweighed it.

Preparation: Gathering the media

Clips:
Before I jumped into this giant mess, I had to understand what I was getting myself into. For one thing, I knew Premiere was not going to accept AVI files. I thought about converting all 14 episodes into MPEGs. I quickly threw out that idea because it would be too much useless content to sift through down the road. Instead, I went with going through each episode and cutting out scenes that I wanted to use. After cutting out some 80 clips, I had what I wanted. Anything else that I wanted I could come back to cut.

Music:
There was nothing I needed to do here. Had my mp3 and I was set.

Storyboard:
Like the novice that I am, I just kept the storyboard all in my head since I was the director and producer. I kind of drew out what I wanted in my mind with what I envisioned as I listened to the song. And I went from there.

Editing: Where all the magic is

It was basically my first time using the software, but I must say, it was ridiculously easy to use. I thought I was going to run into a lot of trouble, but it turned out to be as simple as drag and drop. The hard part was trying to figure out what scenes fit into which section of the song. I went through so many revisions. I’m sure I was cutting my clips left and right every 10 seconds. Throughout the whole process, I kept fearing that I might not have enough clips. Then there were times where I feared I had too many clips and not enough room for the really important ones. Miraculously, there were plenty of clips to go around. Unfortunately, I had to leave out a few.

I started everything on a Saturday afternoon and worked late into the night to complete a rough draft. The next day, (which is today that I’m blogging this) was mostly spent reviewing what I did and making minor edits. The biggest time killer was exporting the video. It would literally take up to more than half an hour for four minutes of viewing. I had no choice but to do other stuff while the exporting was happening. And I had to export more than six times because there were some super small blemishes that ultimately ruined the video if I left it in.

The Final Step: Getting it on the Web

As crazy as it would sound, just getting it online was as frustrating as the exporting. I ran into so many setbacks. The exported video came out to be slightly over 100MB in size (..for a 4 minute clip..). YouTube, only accepts 100 MB or LESS! So I first tried exporting at a lower quality. Nothing happened. So I tried exporting at an even lower quality. Still nothing. Then I thought maybe if I converted it into some other format it would help. And it did. 100 MB turned into 30 MB and that was good enough for me. So I went over to YouTube and submitted the file. Worked out just fine. About 30 minutes later, YouTube goes into maintenance mode and I can’t tell if my video actually uploaded. At this very moment as I’m posting, it’s still under maintenance. Good thing I still have my website to host a “better quality” version of the video.

Final Thoughts: Why make it?

There’s always a method to the madness. I made it because this was a new song that just came out. People are going to be looking around online for the song; especially YouTube. I figured I could use it to promote my website along the way. I like making media that people like. I try not to fail in that department. I gave it my all on this amateur video. Sadly enough, I didn’t have the raws for the anime clips, so the subtitles are getting in the way. Hopefully, I can be forgiven for this due to the lack of time to prepare for all of this.

Summary

At the very start of the episode, Kyon makes a reference to the Tanabata, which is a festival on July 7th. Though it has no surface value to this anime series, it is a reference to one of the short stories in the novel series that this show is based on. Anyway, Kyon is complaining how annoying it is that Haruhi always manages to finish her exams with time to spare. A common reference to Haruhi’s ability to do almost anything.

Despite other clubs not meeting due to exams, the SOS Brigade was exempt from such things. While there, Haruhi creates an emblem for the club to be placed on their website. Haruhi said it will make their bland webpage for exciting. She goes on to complain that their webpage would be more popular if Kyon didn’t stop her from posting embarrassing images of Mikuru (As the episodes are out of order, this is just a reference to something that will be explained further down the line).

The next day at the club room, Kyon knocks on the door before entering to prevent accidentally walking into Haruhi making Mikuru change clothes. However, it was only Haruhi and Yuki inside. Haruhi tells Kyon that his knocking made her believe that it was a visitor had come to see the club. What she is referring to is a poster that Kyon put up that said the SOS Brigade was a student counseling club. Kyon, on the other hand, was worried that Haruhi was referring to an incident three years ago during Tanabata (This is another reference to another short story in the original novel series, which I guess I’ll explain in the Review).

Haruhi then points out that there’s something weird with their website. Everything on the page was distorted including the emblem that Haruhi made. Despite Kyon’s efforts to restore the page by deleting the online content and reuploading the backup files, nothing happened. As the sky turned orange, Mikuru shows up to the clubroom with someone else. At that time, she looks at Yuki who is staring at her, and Mikuru’s reaction raises some suspicion between her, Yuki, and her guest. Her guest, Emiri Kimidori, has come to the club seeking counseling, much to the disbelief of Kyon as he never expected anyone to actually show up.

Emiri’s problem is that her boyfriend has gone missing. She explains that she’s tried contacting him to no avail. And his parents are out of the country. Haruhi quickly asks if it was Canada that the parents were located (Again, this is a reference to an earlier incident which is a later episode from this one). Emiri says she believes it’s Honduras, not Canada. She gives out the name of her boyfriend, but the scene cuts to a cat meowing blocking the name from being heard. However, it is revealed that her boyfriend is the president of the Computer club. The one who Haruhi forced into providing the SOS Brigade a free computer.

Haruhi tells Emiri that she’ll solve the case. The SOS Brigade ventures to the club president’s home. While Haruhi is not looking, Yuki uses her powers to unlock the door. Inside, they don’t find the person. As Haruhi raids the refrigerator, Yuki tells Kyon that they should leave immediately. Itsuki drives his face really close to Kyon’s and tells him that he agrees. He explains he feels a presence similar to that of closed space. Outside, Haruhi declares that she is hungry and dismisses the club and dismisses the case of the missing person citing that it’ll work itself out.

After the crew disbands and regroups without Haruhi, they go back to the president’s room. Inside, Yuki raises her hand and starts chanting. They are warped to a desert-like environment. Yuki explains that the area they are in overlaps the normal world and that this area was not created by Haruhi, though Haruhi triggered such a place. After the brief explanation, the source of their surroundings appears in front of them in the form of a giant cave cricket. Itsuki holds out a fireball in his hand and says the place is limiting his powers, but what he has is sufficient enough. Yuki also confirms that the club president is inside the cricket.

Itsuki goes on the attack as he spikes the fireball as if serving for volleyball. As he hits it, he calls out “Fumoffu” (I’ll explain later). The cricket goes after Yuki who repels him away. Then there’s a cut scene with a scarab floating overhead sprinkling some star dust on the cricket, with a caption saying that the scarab has healed the cricket’s wounds. It’s an obvious reference to something, but I don’t know what. Anyway, Itsuki throws another fireball calling out “Second Raid” (I’ll explain that too). The cricket collapses and fades away leaving behind the club president. A moment later, they are back in the apartment with the club president still on the floor.

Yuki explains that about 280 million years ago, an alien life form landed on Earth and realized it lacked the means to exist on Earth. Therefore it went into hybernation until it was awakened by data transmitted from a parallel world, which happened to be the SOS Brigade emblem. The trigger. Yuki explains that the emblem when converted to a terrestrial standard was equal to 436 petabytes of data. Kyon had a feeling that the whole incident and its resolution went too well. Afterword, Yuki made modifications to the emblem to destroy the malicious data. Kyon is led to believe that Yuki planned the whole event out simply out of boredom.

Review

This is what happens when you jam a whole short story into one episode. The content within the episode was so much that the summary appears to me anyway extremely large. Let’s get on with the details. When Kyon mentions Tanabata and what happened three years ago, it turned out to be an incident where Mikuru took Kyon back in time to three years ago on July 7th and an older version of Mikuru told Kyon to go to some school to meet up with someone. Apparently that someone was Haruhi (obviously) and the purpose of Kyon to be there was to lend her a hand in making a large symbol on the grass field at the school. In episode 2, Kyon’s friend mentioned that Haruhi made such a symbol at their junior high. While helping Haruhi make the sign, Haruhi asked if there were anyone at Kyon’s high school that believed in aliens, time travelers, espers, etc. Kyon says there is, secretly referring to the Haruhi of his time. This, I believe, was what Kyon thought Haruhi was talking about when she said the knocking on the door was a visitor. The person Haruhi came to this particular place to meet.

That’s enough of that. There were many other references to later episodes. Like I said many times before, this series’ episodes are aired out of order and I’m going according to the air order. I won’t go into detail explaining the references because they’ll be explained later. However, for the part where they are fighting the giant cricket, Itsuki calls out “Fumoffu” and “Second Raid” which are references to sequel titles to Full Metal Panic. As it turns out, the anime company that produces this show also produced the Full Metal Panic series. Just one of those shameless plugs, eh?

Overall, this episode I guess was to show some of the adventures that these characters have due to Haruhi’s lack of awareness of her own powers.

Here’s an anime music video for Bleach that I found on YouTube. The song is called “Chance” by UVERworld.

There’s really not much more I can say since the video pretty much explains itself. I have no idea as to who made the music video. There are multiple copies of this on YouTube and either all the people posting are taking credit for the video or are like me and have no idea.

As for the anime, if you’re not familiar with the series up to the point of where all the scenes come from, then there’s going to be a sort of disconnected interest. If you’re not interested in the video, the music more than makes up for it. It’s a nice song.

Summary:

The episode starts out with a young lady on a boat shredding up a piece of paper. Most likely a letter. She then pulls out what looks to be some photos, and tears them apart too. All of which is released into the breeze into the ocean. All this time, Kyon and Itsuki are talking to each other about the trip they’re taking to an island. A flashback to the clubroom shows how the trip came about. Itsuki explains his distant, wealthy relatives bought an island and built a house there. Of course, Haruhi believes that something interesting is to await them as she gives herself the title of “Ultra Detective”.

Back on the boat, Kyon and Itsuki discuss the dynamics of fictional detective stories and such over the top scenarios found in those stories don’t exactly exist in the real world, but Itsuki warns that Haruhi intends to bring such scenarios to the real world. As the club plays cards, Kyon’s sister is with the club. A flashback shows his sister trying to tag along by hiding in Kyon’s bag. Kyon finds her, but is forced to take her along anyway.

A good amount of time is used for Some relatively boring conversations between the characters to create the setting for the episode. Most of it included Haruhi fully expecting a mysterious island with trouble abound. Kyon on the other hand is wishing in his thoughts that nothing bad comes out of this trip. The boat, which is a ferry, reaches a dock and the crew get off to meet up with some of Itsuki’s long time acquaintances, a butler and a maid, who will take them to the island. Haruhi even considers the two mysterious to go along with her theme.

As the servants are taking the club to the island, Haruhi asks them a bunch of questions about the house and the owners, such as a room where someone ends up dying, the architect dying of unnatural causes, or the owner wearing a mask. All of which are rejected. At the island they meet up with the owner and his younger brother. After selecting their rooms, Haruhi points out that the lack of anything suspicious makes things suspicious. She immediately points out the owner as the culprit whose first victim will be Mikuru. The camera cuts to a trembling, teary-eyed Mikuru.

The club goes and hangs out at the beach — playing in the water, swimming, relaxing, etc. Then they’re back at the manor eating dinner. Yuki is shown eating the food systematically like a machine. After dinner, they’re back at the beach playing with fireworks. Kyon aws relieved that nothing bad happened that day. The next day, however, started off with a heavy storm. Kyon already fears that someone brewed up the storm to create the mystery setting. Most likely Haruhi.

The day after, the butler informs the crew that the owner has gone missing. They checked everywhere except for the master bedroom, which is locked. Everyone decides to go check. At the door, there is no answer so they agree to knock it down. After several rams at the door, they are finally successful, but they find the owner on the floor with a knife in his chest.

Review:

The fact that they were going to a remote island and the fact that this anime falls in the realm of science fiction, there was no doubt that something was going to happen while they were there. Otherwise, there would be no entertainment value. Overall, this episode didn’t have anything interesting on the surface level. This episode, which is the first of the two-part story arc, sets the stage for a detective story; laying out clues for the viewers to pick up and use later on.

When I first watched the episode, I didn’t know what to expect and so I didn’t take it upon myself to be concerned too much about the details. Though not knowing the details also works too as one is led to amazement as how the mystery is solved. There’s really nothing to go into detail here since everything is better explained when the two-part series is completed.

About a year ago, I stumbled upon this comparison from another site. It would appear the animation director simply took a scene from the Cowboy Bebop movie, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” and applied it to an episode of Naruto. If you look at it, it’s blatantly obvious that it’s a copy. The camera angles, the actions, and even the pace of the scenes match so well. You be the judge.

Another explanation would be that both Cowboy Bebop and Naruto copied this from stock sample footage, because this could just not be all be a chance of coincidence.

By the way, let the GIF image to load completely so that it would display more smoothly.

So I recently got my hands on a Creative Zen Vision M with a 30 GB harddrive. Because I am against purchasing iPod items because of all their copyright protection, I decided to get a thicker variant of the iPod video player which is by Creative.

Some of the functions I’ve stumbled upon so far:
The obvious: Plays music and videos.
Expected: Playlist options and Play Modes (shuffle, repeat, etc.)
What I didn’t expect: Image viewer, song rankings, and being able to choose to play certain songs that haven’t been played much; usually due to the shuffle mode.

It’s been two days since I’ve had time to play with it. Well, actually, I spent those two days fixing up my music collection. I had to rename all my ID tags on my MP3s so that the Zen could better organize my music. I didn’t realize I would have so much music.

Some of the faults I’ve found on this player, and the solutions:
- Really poor documentation. Their instructional manual didn’t even include a troubleshoot section. They just assume you are computer savvy enough to get things done. Luckily I am. But for those who aren’t, you’d best do everything right the first time around. The newer your computer, the better you’re off.

- Playlist construction. I tried making a playlist with just the player itself and it has a steep, and I mean steep, learning curve. I have an easier time navigating through my cell phone and using its features than with trying to create a playlist on the Zen. The way you create a playlist is to go through your songs, select them one by one, and then go to a different window and saving it. If you wanted to add more songs, you had to load the playlist first, get out of the Now Playing mode, go back to your tracks, and add them again. It was a lot of back and forth. And if you made a mistake, it would take time to go delete it off the playlist. Overall, I found it quite frustrating. The saving grace though is that you can create playlists on your computer while the Zen is plugged in.

- Stock earphones. They’re fucking huge. For a not so tall person like me, there was no chance in hell I could stick those things comfortably in my ears. I stuffed them in for a while, but couldn’t stand them stretching out my ears. So I went and got myself some earbuds. Problem solved.

- No AC adaptor. What’s up with that? They did include a USB cable that you can charge with, but it charges slower because power has to be routed through your computer’s power source, which is around 400 Watts and a chunk of that is already being used by your computer. A solution to this was to use my PSP charger, which works out just fine.

- Not enough settings control. I paid $250 +tax and I can’t even have a silent mode on the player. Increasing/decreasing volume and anything related to the navigation pad on the Zen creates a small clicking sound. Sure it sounds cool out in the open, but sometimes people don’t want to be bothered by the sound. Guess I’ll just have to live with it.

After I’ve added all the music I had on my computer, I still have music of years past that need their tags fixed and then uploaded to my Zen. I think I’ll do that slowly over a few weeks. I even bought myself a cover for it because I heard the black color model scratches easier. Although I’m sure they all scratch easy, the black one most likely shows them more prominently in the light. I also got a hold of an FM tuner so I can listen to the music in my car. I hope it works, else I’ll have to return it.

Some of the good stuff I found:
- Drag and drop. Well, more or less anyway. I dragged a few videos into the player and then I was able to play them on the Zen. Awesome. While dropping, if a video was not compatible, I was given the option to converting it into another format. No need to download converters. It converted it for me. Now that’s cool.

- Shortcut button. Though for the most part it can be considered a waste of space on the already limited space for buttons on the player, I think I found a good use for it. I set the shortcut button to quickly jump to a list of songs that haven’t been heard much. So when I’m bored of my playlist or when it feels I’m listening to the same 20 songs out of 500+, I can click on that button and choose from a random 20 less-heard songs a song I want to hear.

- Subtitles in videos are no problem. It’s always a concern when the screen is about 2.5 inches. Surprisingly enough, subtitles show up nice and clear. That alone has opened the floodgate for me when it comes to video entertainment value. And because there are only so many pixels on the screen, the lack of pixels actually make the videos look super crisp.

So would I recommend this player over iPod video? Of course I would. Apple makes it hard to upload anything that hasn’t been paid for. Since I like watching anime, most of what I have are fansubs and really can’t be purchased. Not that I would want to. Then there’s the whole iTunes thing. I have free music as well as foreign music, which I doubt iTunes would even have in their database. Too much trouble in my opinion. I got the Zen Vision because it has less restrictions, which increases its potential for fun and enjoyment instead of being disappointed by compatibility and legal issues.

Summary:

The episode jumps back to where Kyon is at Yuki’s apartment as Yuki explains that she exists to observe the actions of Haruhi and gather data for the Integration Thought Entity. She explains she was born three years ago. And during all these years, there were no anomalies until a recent one appeared near Haruhi. That anomaly, as she points out coldly, is Kyon. Yuki proceeds to explain that the Integration Thought Entity has no physical form and exists only as data across the universe. Earth became a planet of interest to them as humans acquired intelligence. Then one day, they experienced a spike in data coming from Haruhi, leading to the three years of investigation on Haruhi. Yuki finishes off her long speech by concluding that Haruhi is a being that can manipulate data (as in change anything and everything that we know about the world), but just not aware of it herself.

After the long speech, Kyon jumps in protesting everything he heard as a skeptic would. He asks why does he have to be involved. Yuki replies that he was chosen by Haruhi and when things turn for the worse, all the observers of Haruhi are going to funnel back to Kyon for a solution. They all fear that Haruhi might become aware of her powers, which will be catastrophic. Kyon threatens to tell Haruhi everything’s he heard from Yuki, but Yuki explains that Haruhi would not take him seriously.

The next day at school, Haruhi is ecstatic as she tells Kyon that her mysterious transfer student has arrived and runs off to go see him. At the clubroom, while the three members play Othello, Haruhi charges in holding someone’s arm. This person introduces himself as Itsuki Koizumi. Haruhi tells him that the club’s goals are to find aliens, time travelers, espers and the like and have fun with them. Itsuki looks around and agrees to join.

The next day, Kyon walks into the clubroom and finds Haruhi forcing Mikuru to change clothes. Mikuru screams at the sight of Kyon, which Kyon in return runs out of the room as fast as he could. Minutes later, Mikuru is wearing a maid outfit and told to where that in the clubroom when she’s in there. Haruhi then pulls out a camera and starts taking pictures. She then hands the camera over to Kyon to take over taking pictures while Haruhi helps Mikuru look “more sexier” at the resistance of Mikuru. As Itsuki arrives, Haruhi declares a club meeting. Haruhi explains that they will go out and search for the mysteries of the world.

And on the next day, they drew toothpicks to split up into two groups. Kyon ends up with Mikuru while Haruhi angrily tells Kyon to not treat their time as a date. The rest are in the other group. While Kyon walks with Mikuru on their search, Mikuru tells Kyon she has something to tell him. Sitting on a bench, Mikuru explains that she is from the future. Three years ago, a large timequake was detected and for some reason after that, Mikuru and her people were unable to travel further into the past beyond the time of the incident. Recently, they found out that the cause was none other than Haruhi. Kyon asks a bunch of questions, but Mikuru tells him that each one is of classified information and she lacks the authority to tell him. As the club meets up again to draw toothpicks, Haruhi is apparently frustrated that she’s not in the same group as Kyon. Instead Kyon is now paired up with Yuki. To burn time, Kyon takes Yuki to the library.

The next day, Kyon confronts Itsuki about his true identity. They go to a more secluded area where Itsuki explains to Kyon that he is an esper belonging to an Agency of espers that came about three years ago. He considers Haruhi a god because of her powers. Kyon acts skeptical and asks for a demonstration of Itsuki’s powers, but Itsuki explains his powers are unavailable until conditions are met. He guarantees that he’ll show Kyon when the time arrives. He also assured Kyon that despite the alien, time traveler, and esper in the club, that Kyon is nothing more than a regular human.

Review:

There was a lot of content for this episode, which makes the episode a little lacking in action packed fun, but at this stage in the series, there is no choice but to continue watching and enjoy the story unraveling. The transfer student Itsuki Koizumi is the same person that appeared in the baseball episode. Of course the most obvious thing about this episode is the coincidence of the club members being assembled and all of their stories being in conjunction with some kind of incident that has occurred three years ago. If you look carefully, all three members have a different explanation of what Haruhi is and though not explicitly expressed in the anime, each member refuses to agree with each other’s beliefs in what Haruhi is.

overall, this episode was designed to inject background information for the mysterious club members to better advance the story. At this point, when I was first watching this episode, I thought to myself that this anime has now indeed become more interesting. Although the previous episode gave a good dose of science fiction entertainment, this episode made sure that what was shown in the previous episode was truly the real deal.