Haruhi Episode 07 Review

Cave cricket edition.

06Index08

Why I watched it:

It never seems to matter why, does it?

How it works:

It's a bit of a basic plot, an inconsequential one, one which doesn't teach us much at all about the show's setting and what it does teach us is basic stuff that we already knew, or would have already inferred by the previous episodes, bless the nonlinearity of the show allowing us to come to our own conclusions instead of spoonfeeding us. Even though the show likes to spoonfeed us. So I guess I'm a diaper fetishist and my partner has mommy issues.

So Haruhi uses her stolen computer to design the SOS brigade logo, a mystical pattern which man was never meant to see. It's about 4.2 petabytes in galactic standards, so I'm guessing that the compression used by discount Photoshop is fucking otherwordly. Despite having the entire episode focus on it, we still don't learn as to why it's important, except for spawning a giant fucking bug, which came out of nowhere, had no relevance to the overarching plot, and was barely entertaining enough to have its inclusion not be a waste of my time.

The uploaded logo spawns said bug, makes somebody's boyfriend disappear (who ends up not actually having one so why they showed up may be part of an elaborate bamboozle), and The Gang (sans Haruhi) Searches for the Missing Computer Researcher, ending up finding him in closed space in his apartment somewhere. As to what closed space is, is barely explained. I'm guessing its the writers way of pretending they're moving the plot along, but still ending up barely anywhere because the concept of closed space isn't that fascinating if you bring it up every other episode.

So the gang go into closed space and kill a giant fucking bug, because Itsuki and Yuki are Dragon Quest characters and can destroy a space cricket in two turns. I will say the fighting had enough novelty so I didn't end up disliking it, but the lack of coherence to anything grounded in reality (the show's reality, not mine) made me forget about it. Usually I end up thinking about shows after I watch them, even on episodes I don't like. This one didn't even stick in my mind - thinking about it was hard, just because I found it so out-of-place by the show's standards.

They come back, the researcher is alive, the website gets 30,000 views in a day, and they change the logo so it's actually ZOZ instead of SOS. That was a lot of effort to go through for what is a very inconsequential event.

What I felt:

I got bored of this episode during and after its viewing. I felt like my time was wasted, and I want to get it back by watching a more engaging episode of this series, where it doesn't rely on spectacle and science fiction nonsense in order to hold my attention, because at the point where I discovered the show wasn't going to be subtle about its universe (episode 5) I also discovered that I didn't need to look too deep into things, as the show will just spell everything out.

So I'm not going to spell out how I felt, because to do that would be hypocritical of me. I will say that this is perhaps one of the best examples of flash over substance I have seen - a small series of strobe lights, followed immediately by whimpered into nothing, a half-dozen times throughout.

What I learned:

Don't play Space Station 13 while writing a review, or else you'll stay up until 4 AM figuring out how the fuck to screw in a lightbulb. You equip the wrench, drop your lightbulb box, press the lightbulb, switch hands, pick up the smashed lightbulb, drop it, switch hands, drop the wrench, equip your spare lightbulb box to one hand, switch to the other, open up the box, pick up a light bulb, switch hands to the lightbulb, put in the lightbulb, pick up the wrench, and continue. I mean no exaggeration when piloting a jet plane sounds more intuitive than this game's mechanics.

That story was somewhat entertaining, but didn't have anything to do with the review... Oh, wait.

Inconsequential - Froghand.

Today's page was updated on August 25, 2016!

I only then realised that everybody has flashlights.