Here’s the full dance sequence from the ending credits of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The song in the video is Hare Hare Yukai by Hirano Aya.

It’s also streaming for easy viewing. Enjoy.

Summary:

Leaving off from episode 10, Haruhi and Kyon head off to check out the residence where Ryoko was staying at before she “transferred.” It turns out that she stayed at the same complex as Yuki, which makes sense since Ryoko was Yuki’s assistant for her alien organization. Haruhi and Kyon get to the apartment room, but find it locked. Talking to the manager, he describes Ryoko as having purchased the apartment with cash three years ago with no signs of any parents. This only fuels Haruhi’s curiosity.

As they exit the building, they bump into Yuki. Haruhi notices Yuki’s glasses had disappeared, but shrugs off the anomaly. At some train tracks, Haruhi reveals that one night at a baseball game, she realized how insignificant she was when compared to the entire population of the world. Also, the things in the world interesting and special could be found elsewhere as well. That was when she wanted to be the one person who wasn’t ordinary. Haruhi heads home as Kyon politely waits for Haruhi to head off before he headed home in the same direction.

As Kyon reached his house, Itsuki appears and calls forth a taxi and tells Kyon he wants to have a discussion about Haruhi. While in the taxi, Itsuki tells him they are going to a place where the conditions are right for him to display his esper powers. Along the way, Itsuki describes he came into awareness of his powers three years ago along with a few others. He then goes into a long explanation of why the universe exists and his theory of how Haruhi can potentially change the world and the likeliness that Haruhi changed the world three years ago.

The two get out of the taxi and are in a city environment. Itsuki has Kyon close his eyes and then pulls him into a world called “closed space” that represents the world but is devoid of people. This spaced is created when Haruhi is mentally unstable. Itsuki directs Kyon’s attention to the distance where a giant humanoid figure, which he later refers to as a Celestial, as tall as a skyscraper, reaping destruction on the city. Itsuki generates a field of energy around him and join his esper friends to battle the giant. They quickly dispose of the giant and the closed space breaks apart.

On the car ride home, Itsuki explains that these giants have to be stopped. If left unchecked, their destruction expands the closed space until it covers the entire world, and eventually that world becomes the new world. As the taxi reaches Kyon’s home, Itsuki tells Kyon to observe Haruhi’s behavior before heading off. Kyon foreshadows that trouble awaits him the next day.

Review:

The tone of this episode is completely different from what it was from the previous episodes. In this episode, there were practically no moments of comic relief and everything was completely serious. It does indeed represent the kind of mood that Haruhi is currently in. Plus, the series is coming to an end and this is where all the fun and games end and the showdown begins. Fortunately, since we already know that there are events that happen after this particular junction in the storyline, there’s nothing to worry about. The only interesting thing left is to find out what happens and how it’s resolved.

As for interesting tidbits, after rewatching the episode, I realized that the taxi driver is none other than the butler from the island murder mystery. Obviously, the mustache gave it away.

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Summary:

It’s the day of the school’s cultural festival and Kyon is relieved that everyone’s doing their own thing such as Haruhi busying herself by handing out flyers for their movie. Yuki has been turned into a fortune teller as she is predicting the future, Itsuki is busy doing his play, and Mikuru is serving fried Soba.

Kyon bumps into his two classmates and they head over to Mikuru’s classroom. There they bump into the always-hyper Tsuruya who’s there queueing people up for the food. The three line up just to see Mikuru. Afterward, Kyon visits the auditorium to relieve his sleep-deprived state from editing the movie.

He dozes in and out and then sees Haruhi and Yuki get on stage with two other people. People are flooding into the auditorium as it starts raining outside. After the instruments are set up, they start playing. Yuki is on the guitar while Haruhi starts singing. (The song is God Knows by Hirano Aya, the seiyuu for Haruhi’s character) The crowd starts enjoying the performance. After the song, she explains that two of the original band members could not perform and she and Yuki are substitutes for the day. She introduces everyone on stage and then plays another song (Lost my Music by Hirano Aya as well).

As it turns out, the lead singer developed tonsilitis and was hospitalized while the guitarist sprained her wrist. Haruhi bumped into the band on her way back to the clubroom and after hearing their situation, she volunteered to help sing for them. She then recruited Yuki to help play the guitar. Yuki, with her powers, had no problem with that.

The next day, the band visits Haruhi and thanks her for her help. They tell her people are flooding them with requests for the song recordings. Haruhi is slightly upset as she realizes that those asking for the recordings wanted to hear the real thing, not her performance as a substitute. At lunch, Kyon finds Haruhi lying in the shade of a tree. She explains her current mood, which suddenly picks up as she gets the idea of forming her own band and drags Kyon with her as she plans to head over to the music club to find a guitar.

Review:

In terms of canonical value, this episode could be considered a filler episode considering for the most part, a good chunk of this episode did not take place in the storyline of the novel. Those events include the music band and the performance as well as what happened the next day. Surprisingly enough, Kyon left out the narration of what happened at the cultural festival since the story at the time was about the making of the film, and not a lot about the cultural festival. Later down in the novels, however, Kyon talks about the cultural festival including Haruhi and Yuki going on stage and playing songs.

Interestingly enough, the episode showed tidbits of the band throughout the episode leading to the performance. You can see them running around school, most likely trying to find replacements. Then there is one scene where you see Haruhi and Yuki running across with guitars on their backs.

As you may or may not know, Hirano Aya (or Aya Hirano in America) is the voice talent for Haruhi. She also happens to be a singer and therefore two of her songs are inserted into this episode. She also happens to be the singer for both the OP and ED songs for this anime. Now that’s awesome. That’s what I would consider a successful self-promotion.

And, of course, they had to provide the fan service in regards to Mikuru and Tsuruya, which I’m sure the production studio spent a little more time and effort in drawing out that particular scene.

For character development, Haruhi displays a softer side to her. We usually don’t see her talk too much about her emotions, especially in a depressed state. There’s quite a bit of humility for Haruhi in this episode. More so than the others.

Summary:

A large space fleet combs through space with Haruhi at the command. She orders for all ships to advance full speed ahead. Kyon jumps in and advises that the leader should not charge in ahead of her group. Haruhi makes a reference to defeating the Computer Society. Kyon thinks they should just admit defeat themselves.

A week ago, the Computer Society pays a visit to the SOS Brigade and hands Kyon a computer game called The Day of Sagittarius III that was developed by the club. The president of the club explains that he wants a contest between the two groups. While screaming contest over and over, Haruhi comes in with a flying dropkick to the president sending him flying. Haruhi immediately accepts the challenge without even knowing what’s going on.

The reason behind the contest is that the president wants the computer that Haruhi practically stole from them. Haruhi protests that she actually uses the computer such as using it for the movie and for their webpage. The president fires back claiming the webpage is never updated. Kyon then realizes that it was the president who’s been racking up the page hits, which explains the incident with the giant cricket. Haruhi agrees to the challenge, but wants to know what the computer president will wager on his end. The president promises to provide four computers to the SOS Brigade if Haruhi and company manages to win.

The game is a 5 on 5 space battle simulation game and the day of the fight begins the next week. On their way home, Kyon requests that they not cheat during the game. Itsuki doesn’t want to lose in fear that Haruhi would create closed space as a result of losing. Kyon trusts that she would not do that which leads to Itsuki giving a rather long explanation of the bond that Kyon and Haruhi shares where they trust each other to do the right thing.

As the group sets up the game, Mikuru is completely confused while Yuki is busy examining the mouse. Haruhi wants complete victory and won’t settle for losing. Kyon is worried about the team, but finds confidence in winning because they can count on Yuki. He immediately retracts that confidence as he sees Yuki waving the optical mouse in the air, thus showing her absolute lack of knowledge of the computer system altogether.

Throughout the week, during their training sessions, Haruhi keeps telling them to charge in with all their ships. Each time resulting in defeat. Haruhi tells Kyon that she’s getting frustrated at the game, while Kyon explains that her strategy of charging in over and over is getting them killed each time.

On the day of the actual game, the SOS Brigade finds themselves on the losing end. While things look grim, suddenly their fog of war is reduced enormously as Yuki uses micromanagement to place scouts all over the playing field. Kyon walks over to Yuki who is hammering at her keyboard, typing at a super fast rate. On her screen, though, is not the game, but various DOS windows with programming code flashing through the screen. Kyon reminds Yuki that she is not to cheat. Yuki tells Kyon that she is not cheating, but the Computer Society is and all she is doing is reprogramming the game to level the playing field. The Computer Society has had their fog of war turned off from the start. Yuki finishes her programming and asks Kyon for permission to apply the changes. Kyon realizes that Yuki actually wants to win and gives her permission. The tides turn immediately and the SOS Brigade makes short work of their opponent.

After the game, the president accepts his defeat. He heads over to Yuki, suspecting that it was she who hacked their game, and invites her to join the Computer Society’s activities when she has time. Haruhi immediately objects to it claiming Yuki for herself. Kyon cuts in and tells Yuki to do whatever she likes. Yuki quietly agrees to do so once in a while. A shocked Haruhi gives in to the proposition seeing how Yuki wants to participate. Haruhi then forces the defeated to swear allegiance to the SOS Brigade.

Review:

For some reason, the summary feels pretty long this time, though I tried my best to cut down on the length. It’s just that every scene in the episode had some value to it and I couldn’t just leave it out.

Anyway, the two settings of the club room and of the space simulation switching back and forth was entertaining. At first, I wondered what was going on with the ships and stuff. Right before the opening credits rolled in though, the scene changed back to a low-resolution, 8-bit sound video game, which immediately signaled what was happening.

This episode had quite a number of hilarious moments and intrigues. The first was the kick Haruhi gave to the club president. The first time I was watching the episode, it completely took me off guard by the ridiculousness of it all. Besides that, there were the scenes with Yuki on the computer. If you watch closely, for each advancing day of training sessions, Yuki would slowly work her way into becoming more and more computer literate. The first day she’s spinning the mouse around and pressing keys with one finger. By the fifth day, she was typing at a good rate. And at the time of the actual game, she was pounding on the keys. That’s probably one of the more memorable scenes in this series.

There was also the reference to the incident where the Computer Society president disappeared. His constant checking on the SOS Brigade website led him to see the SOS logo and the rest is history.

And finally, there was a brief reference to Gundam that Haruhi makes during the game. She cries out something to the tune, “That’s it. Send out the Gundam!” Basically, in the Gundam series, sending one out into the battlefield would pretty much ensure victory. In this show, Gundam is partially bleeped out for legal issues I guess.

In terms of temporality, this episode is massively further ahead in comparison to when Haruhi started the club, the school festival (Which is the next episode), and a bunch of other things.

Summary

Kyon walks into homeroom and finds the class president Ryoko Asakura overlooking Haruhi who was slumped over her desk showing a sense of both boredom and defeat. Haruhi’s “melancholic” state makes her wonder if something troublesome would happen. Ryoko tells Kyon to take care of her.

Earlier that day, Kyon received a note in his locker that told him to come to room 1-5 after everyone has left school. This hasn’t been the first time Kyon has received a note, as flashbacks show Yuki’s note from earlier in the series. Kyon assumed it wasn’t Yuki considering the handwriting, and ruled out Mikuru from the circumstances, and completely ruled out Haruhi and Itsuki.

While Haruhi is at the computer, Kyon screams out as he notices what’s on the computer screen, which are rather revealing images of Mikuru. Haruhi claims it will bring in traffic to the site, but Kyon lectures Haruhi about the dangers of putting personal information on the internet. Haruhi gives in to Kyon’s pleas. While no one is looking, Kyon, instead of deleting the images, quickly creates a new folder, names it Mikuru, and moves the files from the recycle bin to that folder. Haruhi gets up and heads home. Afterward, as the day grows late, Kyon heads over to room 1-5 and finds Ryoko in the room.

Ryoko asks Kyon if the world was getting worse by maintaining the status quo, but no one knew what to do, would any change at all be considered the best option. After some more strange theories, suggestions and questions, Ryoko suddenly tells Kyon that she will kill Kyon and see how Haruhi responds. After that, she rushes at Kyon with a knife in her hand, cutting off Kyon’s tie as he barely dodges the attack. Kyon tries to escape, but suddenly finds himself in a windowless room.

As Ryoko stops Kyon from moving, she charges at him but the nearby wall explodes and as the dust clears, Yuki is in front of Kyon, holding the blade of the knife with her hand. It turns out that Ryoko is similar to Yuki, but serves only as a backup for Yuki, but suddenly turned against her orders. They then start battling. Ryoko on the offense while Yuki is on defense blocking attacks from getting to Kyon. Ryoko manages to impale Yuki with metal sticks and then transforms her arms into tentacles and impales Yuki’s chest once again. At that point, Yuki says “finished”. Ryoko’s arms turns to dust along with the rest of the area. Before she is gone, she warns Kyon that one day, those in control might change their views, so he should enjoy his time with Haruhi while it lasts.

Yuki falls to the ground, as the classroom is reconstructed. Kyon helps Yuki off the floor, but Yuki realizes she rematerialed the room but forgot to material a pair of glasses for herself, since they were knocked off during the battle. Yuki tells Kyon that she has made it so that Ryoko’s character has transferred out of the school. The next day, as the teacher announced the news to the class, Haruhi pops out of her melancholic state and tells Kyon that this sudden transfer needs investigating.

That day, Kyon received another letter in his locker. This time it was from Mikuru telling him to meet her at the clubroom at lunch. As he enters the room, there is an older version of Mikuru. She proves to Kyon that she’s Mikuru by showing him a star shaped mole on her chest. Then she realizes Kyon doesn’t know about it yet. She asks Kyon if he knows what Snow White is. She tells him to remember that in times of trouble. She gives him a hug and heads out. As Kyon returns to the classroom, Haruhi pulls him out and tells him that they are going to investigate Ryoko’s residence.

Review

If the episodes were aired in actual order, I would have been blown away by what happened in this episode. As a matter fact, a good chunk of this episode made quite an impression on me. I knew that Yuki had powers, but the fight was pretty badass. As for Ryoko, I was completely surprised when I first saw this episode when she said she was going to kill Kyon and then all the weird sci-fi stuff started happening. At that point, I thought to myself that this comedy of an anime has just turned very dark. Especially during the fighting as there was quite a bit of blood splattering around.

This episode showed where Yuki lost her glasses. In the earlier episodes, she would have glasses, and then starting with the baseball game episode, she didn’t have glasses. Nor did she have any glasses when they went looking for the computer club president. As for other references, the futuristic Mikuru pretty much foreshadows a situation that Kyon is going to be stuck in and Snow White links back to the baseball game episode where Itsuki asks Kyon about how he got out of his previous predicament. The foreshadowed situation and the predicament refer to the same event that is going to happen later in the last episode.

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.

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.