Summary:

The episode starts out with Mikuru serving tea to Kyon and some new character yet to be introduced, though he was in the first episode. Then we see Yuki without her glasses, which will be explained later. Kyon’s narration describes being involved in a “world-cramping” event that happened in the previous month, but doesn’t quite explain it. Instead the attention is turned to Haruhi’s idea of entering the club into a baseball tournament to promote the existence of the SOS Brigade. While planning out who else to recruit for their baseball team, Mikuru suggested that she had a friend. Kyon wonders to himself what kind of friend this is. As in from where and “when”. Mikuru settles Kyon’s suspicions by telling him that she’s “from this time”. Trust me, I was a little confused too. After they decided the team, they went to the school baseball team and asked them to let them use the field and their equipment. The team caved in at the sight of Mikuru.

Haruhi at that point was at the batter’s position and started sending baseballs at the club members. Mikuru was too scared to attempt to catch any balls, Kyon tried but couldn’t catch any. Our new character could catch them, but with effort. Yuki just stood motionless and caught baseballs that came directly at her. While Haruhi practiced with the school baseball team, Kyon asks Yuki if she could make it rain on the day of the tournament. She warned that it would have aftereffects on the ecosystem centuries down the road.

At the day of the tournament, we are introduced another character that was in the first episode. This was Mikuru’s friend, Tsuruya. For the last recruit for their team, Kyon brought his 11-year-old sister in. Haruhi was somewhat outraged that Kyon would do that, but then she figured it would be a good handicap for them since they didn’t want to slaughter their opponents too badly.

Their first opponent was a college team favored to win the tournament. The SOS Brigade scored nothing most of the way through while the other team gained a massive lead. After more disappointment, Haruhi appears frustrated and the three club members besides Kyon realize that something bad is about to happen, such as Haruhi destroying the world due to her bad mood. As the new guy explains to Kyon about the situation, there is a sudden flashback of a large humanoid figure. Just for a moment. While they managed to hold off their opponents from winning the game for another inning, the new guy asks Kyon how he and Haruhi managed to get out of the “other world” and suggested that maybe Kyon would do the same thing to get out of their current situation. Kyon refuses. The new guy resorts to asking Yuki to save the day. Yuki is shown moving her mouth really fast, which Mikuru points out as an incantation. Kyon has another flashback where he’s with Yuki in a strange setting where she’s chanting really fast with her mouth and she has glasses on.

The flashback ends and we see Yuki hitting a homerun. Yuki tells Kyon that the bat has been modified with a boost in attribute data. Or quite simply, it now has “homing mode”. After several homeruns, Kyon tells Yuki that that’s enough, worrying that anymore would raise a lot of questions. Since victory has yet to be secured, the next strategy was to make Yuki the catcher and Kyon the pitcher. As Kyon pitched, Yuki would control the ball with her powers preventing the batters from being able to hit the ball. At the last batter, the ball fails to fall into Yuki’s glove and the batter takes off running. Yuki slowly walks to the ball and with just a flick of her wrist, she sends the ball flying at Haruhi at second base where the batter is running towards. The ball’s velocity hits Haruhi’s mit and rips it right off Haruhi’s hand and is stopped by the new guy as he catches the mit that has the baseball. The batter has stopped in his tracks, bewildered by what he just saw and the new guy tags him out while he is still in a state of shock. The game ends, but Kyon talks Haruhi into forfeiting their spot to their opponents claiming they’ve had enough fun for the day. Haruhi agrees.

Review:

Sorry if the summary was a bit long. There were a lot of things that could not be left out. Anyway, when I first saw this episode, I thought I missed an episode because there was a lot of content mentioned in this episode that I didn’t see. And the lack of explanation led me to believe that I was supposed to know what’s going on. I quickly went back to the last episode and checked the preview for the next episode. To my surprise, this was supposed to be episode 4. I thought to myself, what the fuck? As I watched the preview to this episode, Haruhi says it’s episode 7 while Kyon says it’s episode 4. At that point, I realized the episodes were out of order, going according to how Haruhi calls it considering whatever she wants to happen, happens. Therefore in this case, she wants episode 7 to be the next episode, and that is the case.

On the topic of too much content, we have this new guy in the club. Yuki doesn’t have her glasses anymore, which obviously makes no difference to her. Mikuru is in a nurse outfit for some reason. Then there were the flashbacks that Kyon has with some scary looking blob giant and where he’s in another dimension with Yuki. As a final tidbit, just because I’ve seen this whole series already, is where Haruhi suggests tying Mikuru’s hair into a ponytail but throws away her suggestion after looking at Kyon. I can’t spoil it now, but that short moment has a lot of meaning behind it. As well as how Kyon and Haruhi got out of the “other world”. All the viewers are left with are that the two are gonna be involved in some kind of situation. Next episode, according to Haruhi is episode 3, though the airing order would make it Episode 5.