Haruhi continued her invasion of Nagato’s show this week, almost accidentally stealing Kyon as Nagato derped about working on Valentine’s Day chocolate. I didn’t feel like this heightened drama was a great fit for this show, and said as much in the review, but it certainly is an interesting experience to see the assumptions of one show acting as the “villain” in another one. Still, I think cute scenes with Kyon and Nagato are basically this show at its best. We’ll see how this wacky misunderstanding plays out next time.
My full ANN review is available here. Notes below!
Haruhi’s sent the boys off to buy snacks. Nagato’s retreated into her game
Haruhi and Tsuruya are a ridiculous pair, as always
“If you found Mikuru by the vending machine, you’d definitely take her home, right.”
Now they’re having a cuteness contest of who’s more adorable, Mikuru or Nagato
Yep, Tsuruya and Asakura competing over who has the most moe friend
So she went to get valentine chocolate ingredients
Decent animation of Nagato backing up here
So yep, this is the valentine episode
The club isn’t meeting, but Haruhi’s dragging Kyon along behind her like always. Uh oh
Haruhi explaining she wants to be proactive and draw mysteries and scifi stuff out. It’s like she’s competing against Nagato’s show with her own show, and Haruhi is a much more forceful arguer
Haruhi charges forward with blind enthusiasm, Kyon shakes his head and follows behind with snark
Haruhi making Kyon pick up the tab
And yeah, they’re contrasting Nagato’s harmless cooking scenes against Haruhi’s loud ones
Nagato is of course completely useless when it comes to cooking, and manages to do everything wrong, so Asakura takes care of her. More silly Nagato faces
Now Kyon’s babysitting Haruhi as she searches for a water imp in the river. Nice background colors
Shiiit, things are getting insanely romantic over on the Haruhi-Kyon side. They even did the classic slip-catch you
o no they’re laughing together nooo
“Do you think water imps exist?” “Who knows? Maybe they do.” And again, Haruhi inspires Kyon’s own sense of adventure and mystery. Uh ohhhh
Nagato is determined to give him chocolate!
Oh hey, Taniguchi cameo. Go Taniguchi not getting chocolate
Nagato almost talking herself out of giving it. But Tsuruya comes in with the “you should give it for your own sake.” Nagato needs to impose her own will, to pursue her own feelings
Great moment where Nagato feels fine eating without talking, but Mikuru feels pressured to
A few too many joke explanations in this episode
Plotting to get Nagato and Kyon alone together for her to give him the chocolate
And of course it ends with her walking in on Haruhi apparently in the act of giving Kyon chocolate. Noooo
Strange show this one. In one episode it has more “romantic” Haruhi and Kyon moments than the main series ever had, yet it’s supposed to be about Yuki. I wonder how they will keep this show up for 25 episodes (it’s a 2 cour, isn’t it?) without Suzumiya overwhelming everything round Yuki.
I don’t think Haruhi is dominating Nagato’s show because Haruhi is a stronger character. The entire reason this show exists is because people liked Nagato so much in the original series, despite her subdued personality and comparatively minimal lines.
I think the reason this is happening is because Haruhi has the same personality and motivations she did in the previous show, while Nagato has a completely new and different personality and motivations. Haruhi can draw on all of the investment we built up in the previous series, while Nagato is starting over from scratch.
It makes me really wish this show worked a little harder to reestablish our investment in the characters, rather than just assuming we’ll care about them because of the previous series. Nagato and Kyon had real chemistry in the original series, but we don’t get to draw on any of that because /this/ Nagato feels like a completely new and different character.
Rather than being the quiet but curious and endearing bookworm she was in the original series, New Nagato is now basically a female version of the male protagonist from a paint by the numbers romance anime. She is inexplicably bad at everything, has no self confidence, has a paper thin justification for liking the main love interest (which we are expected to just accept and buy into because it is the premise of the show), loves video games, and gets cripplingly flustered when talking to the opposite sex.
This is not to say its impossible to care about the New Nagato – its just hard when her only defining character traits at the moment are liking video games, liking Kyon, and being shy. A little bit of fleshing out would go a long way, but we’ve gotten next to none in the first four episodes.