The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi, by Tanigawa Nagaru

This week I'm finally returning, albeit briefly, to the Suzumiya Haruhi series with the fourth book, The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi. I was actually going to read this book much earlier but I found out its events occurred around Christmastime so I figured it would be appropriate to review it for today. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the series you can read my reviews here, here, and here.

The book starts off normally enough, at least as normal as any of these books in a world with Haruhi can begin, anyway. As I mentioned, we've jumped forward to December, (The series tends to jump around a little bit within its chronology) and Ordinary High School Student Kyon is ready for the year to end. Haruhi, being Haruhi, has decided the SOS Brigade should do something together for Christmas this year. As argument against Haruhi is a largely futile endeavor, this decision is finalized and Kyon heads home on December 17th. When he awakes on December 18th, however, he notices things have changed. There are subtle changes at first, like when he notices a friend is ill with the flu that he certainly didn't have yesterday, but it quickly becomes far more obvious that something's wrong. People who shouldn't be there are, and people who should be aren't. In fact, an entire classroom has vanished overnight. Most distressingly for Kyon, Haruhi and Koizumi appear to have disappeared, and Mikuru and Yuki don't recognize him at all. Only a scarce handful of clues let Kyon know he isn't totally insane and set him on a race against the clock to figure out what the heck happened.

I will say I at least initially enjoyed this book because it was material that hadn't been adapted to the tv series. Well, I've been told that it actually was adapted to a feature-length film at one point, but as DVDs of it are selling on Amazon for a shade under $200 the last time I checked, I haven't actually been able to watch this. As I sort of mentioned in my other reviews, I didn't always enjoy the other books because I was already familiar with the stories and it sort of felt like a repeat. So getting to see some new material with familiar characters was a special treat for me and I look forward to more material that hasn't been adapted.

That being said, I did end up a little disappointed with this book as well. Without going into spoiler territory it very, very briefly touches on subjects that I'm rather fond of and I felt like it truly deserved a lot more development than what it got in this novel. To be fair, the books are light novels and certainly aren't like some of the doorstoppers I've been known to read from time to time with their richly complex plots and characters. Or at least lots of explosions. But I still felt like there were things that could have been developed more in this book and given more space than what they ultimately got. I will say with the new material I kind of wish these books were a bit heftier, but I guess I can't have everything.

Ultimately, the book's okay. There's less of the awkward stuff you kind of see in the earlier books and personally I liked getting to new material, but I found myself wishing for more beyond what I ended up getting. But for the rest of you, Happy Hogswatch, Joyous Solstice, and watch out for Krampus or Krinsblag, they're some nasty fellows.

- Kalpar

The Boredom of Suzumiya Haruhi, by Tanigawa Nagaru

This week I'm reviewing another book in the Haruhi series, The Boredom of Suzumiya Haruhi. This particular novel is a collection of four shorter stories rather than being one long story as in the previous novels. In particular this book contains The Boredom of Suzumiya Haruhi, where the SOS Brigade enters a baseball tournament at Suzumiya's insistence; Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, where Kyon learns a little bit more about the incidents of three years ago; Mysterique Sign, where the SOS Brigade investigates the mysterious disappearance of the Computer Club president; and Remote Island Syndrome, where the SOS Brigade takes a summer vacation trip to a remote island.

Because this is more an anthology of short stories rather than a full-length novel, the book kind of wanders around a bit without purpose. The stories are fairly close together in terms of chronology. (This book is set between the events of Melancholy and Sigh) But each story is fairly self-contained so it feels sort of abrupt jumping from one story to another. As a light novel this book is pretty short and I read all of it in about four hours, which probably made it feel even shorter to me than other books that I've read as well. It just sort of felt like filler until you read the next book in the series to be perfectly honest. On top of that, these are all stories which have also been turned into episodes for the anime adaptation, so having seen that first I'm already familiar with the plot and it's mostly review for me more than anything else. I just don't have a lot to say about this book beyond that.

The stories do expand a little bit on the world and we get a little bit more information about various characters, but at the same time it feels like we're just being made to wait for more important stuff. Like it's a calm before the storm of all hell breaking loose. Granted, I am interested in all hell breaking loose, because that'd result in some conflict, but I feel like we're just waiting for that to happen. Granted, the characters are ostensibly working to keep that exact thing from happening in the first place, but it'd be a little more interesting I think.

Aside from the feeling that this is mostly filler, I do have two issues with this book, which come back to Kyon. The first is the author's choice, and this turns up in the other books as well, to have the other characters respond to Kyon's internal dialog. At least, it looks like he's saying this stuff internally but I have to conclude he's saying these things that are written as if he's thinking them because the other characters respond like it's a normal conversation. If nothing else it's bad editing. The other issue I have is Kyon lusting over Mikuru, which I guess makes sense because he ultimately is a hormone-addled teenager, but it frustrates me at the same time. I realize I'm probably just ranting at this point, but there you are.

Overall I'd say you could probably just skip this one and watch the episodes that adapted this book instead because you're not really going to miss anything by doing that.

- Kalpar

The Sigh of Suzumiya Haruhi, by Tanigawa Nagaru

This week I've continued forward with the second novel in the SOS Brigade story, The Sigh of Suzumiya Haruhi. Having been suckered into watching the second season of the anime adaptation (Curse you, Endless Eight!), I was already rather familiar with the events contained within this novel. Of course this book continues the fine tradition of anachronic storytelling by jumping roughly six months ahead from the end of The Melancholy to tell the story of Haruhi's attempt to create a cinema masterpiece. Kyon, our omnipresent yet plodding narrator, obliquely references several of these events such as the baseball game and trip to the island which viewers of the anime will already be familiar with. Doing a little looking ahead, these events will be told in the next book, The Boredom of Suzumiya Haruhi, but I feel like it may have been a little confusing to first time readers.

Warning: The following is fairly spoilerish. Reader discretion is advised.

Anyway, as I mentioned before The Sigh chronicles Haruhi's attempts to create a cinematic masterpiece for their school's cultural festival, increasing the fame and prestige of the SOS Brigade. Kyon, as usual, is frustrated and confused, but everyone else seems willing to go along with Haruhi's plans because it keeps her distracted and prevents Haruhi from destroying the world. As filming progresses, however, subtle hints that Haruhi is changing reality around them are beginning to appear. Fortunately, Haruhi remains blissfully ignorant of the changes she's causing, but the other SOS Brigade members become increasingly concerned that these changes may become permanent. I will say that I felt the author sort of ran out of steam towards the end of the book. Everything quickly gets tidied up and so the resolution's a little bit of a disappointment. Still, that may be the impression the SOS Brigade's own hastily created movie made on its audience as well.

The series also gets more depth as we start to get hints that the ESPer, Time Traveler, and Alien factions are not perfectly aligned in their goals. Kyon is given multiple hints that the Brigade members he thinks he knows may have ulterior motives and may be far more dangerous than they appear to be. Kyon, of course, doesn't fully understand these implications, (More on that later) but it leads to promising avenues of development for the series and a complicated shadow war over Haruhi's fate. I'm really hoping that the factional strife, including internal quarrels, play more of a role in future books.

I do have two slight complaints about this book. First of all I keep noticing Kyon being a bit of a plodder throughout the book. A constant refrain of Kyon's internal monologue is something along the lines of, "I don't understand what you're talking about." Maybe I'm just genre savvy thanks to an education in far too many pulp sci-fi novels, but Kyon just seems slow on the uptake when Koizumi and Yuki try explaining things to him. I understand that an unknowledgeable everyman character is necessary for audiences to understand complex sci-fi or fantasy worlds. However, when your everyman doesn't seem to learn anything or develop I personally begin to get frustrated. You'd think Kyon'd get a little faster on the uptake but unfortunately this does not seem to be the case quite yet.

The other complaint, and this is a far more justified one, is one of the really dramatic events in the course of the novel. Basically Haruhi decides it's a good idea to drug Mikuru and does so. Kyon, understandably, gets rather upset and yells at Haruhi because, dude, you just drugged someone. This results in everyone else saying that Kyon was wrong to yell at Haruhi because now she's all mopey and we're trying to keep her from being mopey because fate of the world. And while yes, I understand that to an extent it's necessary to humor some of Haruhi's capricious whims, SHE DRUGGED MIKURU! That is totally not okay! I don't know if this is a culture disconnect between the U.S. and Japan, or if I'm just being a total square about it, but I feel like it should have been a bigger deal than it was and the result was Kyon had to apologize for doing the right thing. It just felt wrong to me.

Overall, this book feels kind of weak, but it might just be because it's hard to follow the strong first act of The Melancholy. I'll definitely be moving on to The Boredom at some future point and seeing how the series progresses, so we'll see what happens.

- Kalpar

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, by Tanigawa Nagaru

This may surprise my readers, but I used to be an ardent Haruhist. Shocking, I know. For a number of years everywhere you turned there was just a ton of Haruhi-related stuff. Cosplayers, posters, models. (I even own two!) The reason behind all this hubbub was the release of the anime series titled The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, based upon a series of light novels written by Tanigawa Nagaru. For those of you unfamiliar with the medium, light novels are very much like novellas. Very short, usually not more than about a hundred pages or so, and often have a handful of illustrations. My first exposure to Haruhi had been the animated series which had taken stories of the several light novels to create about half a season of episodes. And for whatever reason I fell in love. Of course time went on and eventually a second season was released which included, in my opinion, an extremely frustrating time loop, and a theatrical film which I've yet to see. However, I think the mania seems to have died down quite a bit, granted I've been out of the anime scene for quite some time after safely retreating to the relative sanity of pulp science-fiction! However I still have a certain fondness for this series and so I've decided to look into the original light novels.

The stories are told from the perspective of Kyon, an average Japanese high school student who is incredibly unremarkable in every way. Kyon tells us as a kid that he really enjoyed sci-fi, fantasy, and adventure stories, desperately hoping that they were real and the world was filled with such wonders. As he got older he realized the world was much more mundane and came to accept it, satisfied with his humdrum life. When in high school it turns out there's a girl in his class named Suzumiya Haruhi who claims she's not interested in ordinary humans, only aliens, time travelers, and espers. Needless to say this labels Haruhi as an oddball, but Kyon is soon dragged into Haruhi's orbit. Things are only made far more complicated as it's revealed that aliens, time travelers, and espers all do exist and they're quite interested in Haruhi!

I think the real appeal about this series for me is it's very much gratuitous wish fulfillment. As someone who spent their childhood fantasizing about space and magic, and then read almost nothing but a steady diet of pulp novels in their teenage years, I too have often wondered what life would be like if we had superheroes, time travelers, and wizards running around. In a way I almost envy Kyon, despite his constant protests about finding himself in such strange situations, because he gets to be in exactly those situations. And it's fun to see time travelers, aliens, and espers all have to keep up the facade of being normal while doing perfectly normal things, like make a bad high school movie. (Which I am also guilty on multiple counts of doing.) Play video games, go on vacation, or play a game of baseball. There's just a certain charm in harmless wish fulfillment that makes it really appealing to me. If you're the same sort of person who's always sort of wished that the world we lived in was just a little more...fantastic...then you'd probably enjoy this series as well.

The first book I will admit, is a little dry because it has to do all the setting up for the later books. We get introduced to Kyon, Haruhi, and the other members of the SOS Brigade, as well as their unconventional secrets. We do get to see at points that Yuki, Mikuru, and Koizumi aren't lying, cementing both Kyon and our own belief that this world is littered with aliens time travelers, and espers. Well, maybe not littered but at least significantly populated. There are also a ton of awkward parts because of the sexual assault/rapey things that Haruhi does to poor Mikuru which perhaps a Japanese audience might find entertaining but I personally find really cringe-worthy. Fortunately I remember that diminishing as the series goes on, but I may have blanked that from my memory.

Personally I highly recommend both the anime series (where you can find it) and the light novels which are fortunately very readily available in e-book form on Amazon. I plan on continuing with the book series and eagerly anticipate the parts that were not included in the anime series.

- Kalpar