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Anime Review: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya – Second Season
In 2006, the anime adaptation of Nagaru Tanigawa’s Haruhi Suzumiya light novel series took the anime scene by storm. By mixing a wide variety of different genres into an original story, the series offered an exciting experience unlike any other at the time. Being only 14 episodes long, it’s needless to say that fans wanted more. In late 2007, a second season was finally announced. And then… we didn’t hear anything about it for a while. It wasn’t until 2009 that we finally started to hear news pop up again about the much anticipated second season of Haruhi.
But fans got their hopes up too soon. Instead of airing the alleged second season, Kyoto Animation (“KyoAni”) later confirmed that they would simply re-air the first season of Haruhi. Fans had been teased, and they weren’t happy. But KyoAni had a surprise up their sleeves. That surprise was called “Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody” and it was a brand new episode that was aired during the re-airing of Haruhi‘s first season. This was the first of what makes up the so-called “second season” of Haruhi (commonly referred to as Haruhi S2 or Haruhi 2009), all of which aired during the re-airing of the first season. A pleasant surprise, indeed. But was all the anticipation and putting up with KyoAni’s teasing worth it? Well, that depends…
In writing this review, I’m going to assume you’re already familiar with the Haruhi series. If you aren’t, then be warned: this review may contain spoilers from the first season.
Haruhi 2009 takes place during the events of the first season, and is divided into three arcs: Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, Endless Eight, and The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya. The arcs are shown out of chronological order, though the episodes within each arc are in order. Two of the three arcs, Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody and The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, focus on giving some backstory and explaining some of the mysteries that were left open. Endless Eight, however, takes a completely different direction, and is by far the most controversial part of the Haruhi anime series.
Anime Review: Blue Drop
Anime loves to experiment with genres, and it’s quite common to see an anime that combines aspects of many different genres. Higurashi (When They Cry) is an example I love to use in this case, as I feel that it creates a perfect balance and blending of both moe and horror. Who would’ve thought that could work? Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out so well. Blue Drop attempts to be a crossover between slice-of-life and sci-fi. It’s an interesting and fairly unique concept that I could see working if executed properly. Blue Drop, however, fails to do so.
Five years ago, the residents of Kamioki Island were mysteriously massacred. Mari Wakatake, the only survivor of this incident, lost her memories, and has been living with her grandmother since. Mari is forced to transfer to a new school by her grandmother, much to Mari’s resentment. In the new school, she gives her classmates a cold attitude, and is even more upset when she meets Hagino Senkouji, who upon meeting Mari, immediately tries to strangle her. It is soon revealed that there is much more to Hagino than meets the eye. Essentially, Blue Drop tells two stories: The slice-of-life story about Mari’s school life and the sci-fi story about the mysteries surrounding both Hagino and the destruction of Mari’s hometown five years ago.
This would work if the two stories were related to each other in some way, but they aren’t. The show is littered with awkward “genre shifts,” where, for example, we’ll go from an epic sci-fi battle to a scene about girls preparing for a school play. Even then, the sci-fi aspect isn’t all that great, as most of the scenes consist of little more than just simple dialogue, where not much really happens. There are some good battle scenes, but they don’t come in until the second half of the series, and even then they are few in number. As for Mari’s school life, the pacing is overall very slow, but it was at least interesting enough to keep me watching the show.
What I liked about this show are the characters. Mari’s got that tsundere-ish personality that I enjoy so very much. Hagino’s a very mysterious girl, and trying to find out what her deal is kept me interested in her. Overall, the story is actually pretty good, I just wish it were presented better. This is another series where I feel that if it were less episodes, it could have been free of pacing issues. However, even at only 13 episodes, the story still seems very stretched-out.
Blue Drop is good if you think you can stand the awkward genre shifts and don’t mind slow pacing. The entire series is available from Sentai Filmworks at an affordable price, so I would say it’s at least worth checking out, as you won’t have much to lose if you don’t enjoy it.
Blue Drop is currently on sale and is licensed and distributed by Sentai Filmworks. Also available at TheAnimeNetwork.com.
ENJOYMENT – Interesting enough
RECOMMENDATION LEVEL – Probably not
REWATCH VALUE – Probably not
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