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.