The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - Episodes 4-5

This is part of a series of reddit posts I made for the 2021 r/anime rewatch.  The index for these can be found on the Other Essays page.

Episode 4 - “There is a limit to ridiculousness.”

After Nagato enchanted the baseball bat and all the members of the team hit home runs, Kyon notes that there is a limit to ridiculousness.

I could say this for almost every episode but… I love this episode.  First, it just makes me laugh.  I’ve been so dour these last few posts, and it really is a worry of mine that I’m giving a wrong impression by being one-sided.  The comedy is central, and while this episode is once again critical of our predictability and slowness on the uptake, it does so through amusing pokes rather than lectures, synthesizing two lines of action into a single commentary: Haruhi tricking us by not tricking us, and then it’s reaction to our failure to notice.

First, the “not-trick.”  Last episode left us on a cliffhanger as to whether Nagato is an alien.  She has been acting really weird and we know Adventures told us she was an alien so maybe this is the truth disguised as a joke… but we’re still thinking this is something like a SoL comedy, and we don’t want to be dupes by falling for the ridiculous.  So with the utmost predictability we’ll hedge, suspending our judgement until we’re given the answer in a “safe” form, thinking that’s the best way to prevent ourselves from being tricked.  Which, of course, is exactly how Haruhi gets us.

Having primed us to expect an explanation at the end of last episode, the series jumps to an unrelated event and we feel like we’ve been pranked.  Random is as random does, we guess.  However, we soon notice that this future-Kyon is giving us subtle indications that something is unusual about his fellow brigade members.  And by subtle I mean extremely obvious.  Haruhi knows what’s on our mind and it practically waves these “clues” in front of our nose… leaving us to think we’re sleuthing them out.  We’re not suspicious at all that the information we wanted is showing up right on cue.  So Haruhi leads us on, first giving small “hints” (this gag sequence never gets old to me), bigger ones, even bigger ones (we trust flashbacks, seeing is believing), and then finally delivers the coup de grâce with Nagato hitting a home run.  Then, just at the moment we’re adjusting our expectations, Haruhi smugly taps us on the shoulder: “There’s a limit to ridiculousness.”  It knew.  It steadily ratcheted up the unbelievability and knew the exact level at which we’d change our mind.  We were played.

Yet here’s the question: we treated this episode as an “interruption”, but if we had just gone immediately to Melancholy III would we have believed what Nagato told us?  No.  As we’ll see next episode, Kyon didn’t trust her with only words.  Haruhi toyed with us, but at no point was it untruthful; if anything, we really had it proven the series was right.  That’s the genius of this series: saying humans are easy to mislead due to their expectations is trite, demonstrating it in real time is a whole ‘nother ball game.  We can really gain from the experience if we pay attention.  Of course, that’s also the joke: the audience typically doesn’t realize it, and this is where the second part comes in.

This entire episode is a running commentary.  The point of what Suzumiya is trying to do and the point of what Haruhi is trying to do is one and the same: push people, perhaps a bit uncomfortably, so they pay attention and engage.  And both sides miss the point.  Figuring out Nagato is an alien isn’t the mystery, it’s figuring out Suzumiya as the central puzzle and by proxy noticing that we’re repeatedly being caught in our own assumptions.  Which in this case is to again take the easy evidence that Suzumiya’s a sore loser, when instead her upset is entirely directed at her team’s apathy.  Notice that the new space doesn’t open gradually as they lose, but flares up at a specific point: when Kyon tells her to just steal home herself.  He’s giving up, he doesn’t care, and worst of all, he’s telling her to go it alone when what she really wants is everybody else to join her.  It is exactly the problem we will see again in Episode 14.

Unfortunately, I just ran out of time today so this is going to end fairly abruptly with few notes, which makes me sad because this episode really is brilliant in many of its details.  Maybe I'll get to chat with people later about them, but for now off to a meeting...

Favorite Details: 

• Right, people who only hear what they want to hear are idiots.

• One of my favorite comment-gags in the entire show is the sequence about only pitching straight.  We’re being mocked so relentlessly.  Doing the same thing over and over again makes you predictable; we can see that in Suzumiya, and fail to notice it in ourselves.  And of course, even a child can catch on at that point.

• Of course we weren’t expecting anything from Taniguchi, he’s a side character.

• We’re given a straight transitions shot from flashback Nagato to present Nagato.  Yet another little joke: how long will it take people to notice her glasses are missing?

Episode 5 - “She won’t take the data you feed her seriously.”

Kyon asks Nagato why she isn’t worried that he’ll tell Suzumiya and she’ll end the universe.  She replies that Suzumiya would not believe Kyon even though he would be telling the truth.

Now we return to our regularly-scheduled timeline.  I don’t have much to say about Melancholy III itself, but I do want to examine its place in the series and hence the overall structure. 

Melancholy III is the closing episode of the first “act” of the series, the whole of which has consistently demonstrated one thing: everything is exactly as it appears, we just don’t realize it.  We were given an introduction, followed by the assembly of the cast, an exposition of the main character, and finally the setting.  Similarly, while we feel like the series is being random and obnoxious, it has actually given us exactly what we wanted: Melancholy II primed us to want an answer about Nagato, Boredom gave us that answer then raised (or rather cemented, since we’re now confident that we’ve cracked the code from Adventures) questions concerning Koizumi and Asahina, and without delay Melancholy III has had both of them explain themselves.  The jump was “confusing” but it was actually a barely-concealed continuation just like any other show would have, and, as I made the case yesterday, this unorthodox approach was better than the regular one to prove the point.  In other words, there is a compelling logic to this thing if we just pay attention instead of judge it for being difficult to comprehend.

Just like Suzumiya.

I am perhaps being a bit repetitious here, but it’s kind of the nature of it that when you feel like the work you’re writing on far surpasses your skills to communicate it you keep wanting to try and capture what is so amazing about it.  This show is holographic.  Its message, its structure, and its main character all reflect each other, and even the smallest piece somehow seems to contain the superstructure.  I mean, just take yesterday’s episode (which rather appropriately I frustrated myself trying to capture).  On the surface it’s a SoL/sports baseball episode… and it is actually that.  You can just watch Boredom and enjoy it for its own sake; Kyon’s witticisms, the goofy antics, the gags with Nagato in particular, and the hella cute look Suzumiya gives us at the end (who is it again that is convinced by easy-on-the-eyes females?  Not me!) don’t require anything more to justify them.  

But then you add in that it’s guessing what we’re thinking; it knows that we’re really pondering this show’s nature, and Nagato in particular, so rather than giving us what we want it gives us what we need; it doesn’t tell us it’s supernatural, it convinces us it is.  But predictably, we complain for being given something genuinely good in an unexpected way, and the episode comments on that too, with Suzumiya having brought her team out to try and enjoy life and they just dick around instead, acting like it’s a burden to be there.  Which to tie it all off, it makes an utterly delightful mockery of.  It is what it is, knows what we think it is, knows it is better than what we think it is, mocks us for not knowing it is better than we think it is, and mocks us mocking it for thinking it knows better than what we think it is.  All this, and it manages to tie it into Suzumiya, where if you grasp the show’s “attitude” you understand exactly how she feels as well.  Haruhi S1 is truly in a league all its own in this genre… whichever one that is… and that is of course the joke.

Melancholy III puts the cap on convincing us that this isn’t a SoL comedy anymore, it’s a supernatural… something.  We’re not quite sure what, because it convinced us it was supernatural during a SoL/sports comedy episode, and that just makes our brain go on the fritz a little.  Nonetheless, here we are after all this now thinking we’ve discovered what this is really all about... demonstrating our own logic of going wrong with confidence, and to prove the point we’re going to be properly introduced to Nagato now.

Between the expectation of a Rei Ayanami clone and Nagato’s general awkwardness, Haruhi has let us build up an understanding that something is deficient with her emotionally - either she doesn’t have them or they’re repressed.  This episode seems to be confirming this; we now know what to expect from a humanoid robot-alien who talks at a million miles a minute and seems incapable of expressing herself in a human way.  But just stop and look at her face - she’s more than a little irritated.  She knows Kyon doesn’t believe her and she knows why; she just explained herself as best she could (which given her vastly greater context, she did a pretty good job) and he tossed it out as, “Well, I don’t get it so it must be wack” (this should recall a certain other female character).  Then Melancholy III goes on to emphasize that she likes novel games that might challenge her, a call forward to Sagittarius, and is a genuine book nerd.  In other words, at just the moment Haruhi has convinced us/let us convince ourselves Nagato is a robot, it turns around and flaunts that she actually has quite an inner life with some rather endearing personality traits.  Ends up, she is a super-smart nerd girl.

And all this just keeps playing into the whole show.  We were already told once: it’s not the setting that matters, it’s the message, and the commentary continues here as well.  Think of what is going on as an animation.  Perhaps this world is being viewed by some higher being.  Identifying these characters’ powers seems like a big reveal, and man do we get excited about it... but it actually really doesn’t matter while also proving the point that our assumptions blinds us to much of who Nagato is as a “person.”  It’s the same trick that camouflages Suzumiya, where we fixate on the trappings of genre rather than examine her first-hand.  Which the joke continues: now that we know the “true” genre we’ll keep our eyes peeled for Suzumiya’s powers, and ignore her, in future episodes…

Favorite Details:

• 
  A holdover from yesterday: I mentioned, “The show in miniature” above, and about how Haruhi has a multi-level reflection.  The introduction to Boredom is pure brilliance on this count.  It begins with a pan over the baseball field, the whole real world, and ends with the toy baseball field, the miniature that is the episode; this will be a small demonstration of the bigger point, set up as a toy for our enjoyment.
  

• The total atmosphere and music shift from Nagato talking to Kyon finally responding is not a subtle thing, but nonetheless I think masterfully breaks the spell and pulls us down to earth to make us feel his dismissiveness.  

• “She won’t take the data you feed her seriously.” / “You have a point.”  This is one of my favorite exchanges of the series and the moment I fell in love with Haruhi.  I’m just going to quote the essay I wrote previously because I can’t say it better:  “I had to pause the video and laugh until my jaw hurt.  I know it’s quixotic to hope to convey comedy, but this was truly one of the most hilarious moments I have ever experienced in anime.  In anything.  Like all the gags in this show, it’s worth at least a chuckle on its own, a small denigration of Suzumiya’s nature that we can smugly agree with.  But that’s the lesser portion.  It’s the moment when this entire build up reflects back on itself holographically.  A character, who is being told the truth but doesn’t accept it, is disparaging another who would do the same, while functioning as our stand-in, the audience who was skeptical about what Haruhi was telling us, in both cases because we “knew” what world we were in, caught in the act of confidently agreeing with his/our assessment of the foolishness of people who don’t listen to what they’re told.  It is in that sudden snag, that snap of dissociation that proves not only that Kyon is an unreliable narrator, but that we are as well, that the waveform collapses in a moment of perfect comedic timing.”

• Nagato is called “glasses girl” by Suzumiya and has her glasses very prominently taken off and returned to emphasize them as part of her design.  Taking bets how many people notice they’re gone again next episode.

• A great piece of commentary: Kyon has completely failed to help Asahina these last couple of episodes, and of course kept taking the pictures, but when Koizumi walks in and looks appalled at what Suzumiya is doing, Kyon responds to this peer pressure and finally intervenes.  Then to top it off, he acts morally superior about it.

• Dutch Angle again as Suzumiya broadcasts her manifesto.  It’s a great little inverse use of the technique - now we’re trusting the visuals after Nagato, and all Haruhi has to do is make Suzumiya look a little off as she explains herself with total clarity for us to overlook it.

• Kyon muses to himself that paying for lunch is a small price for getting to go on a date with Asahina, at which point Suzumiya tells him it’s not a date.  A more obvious fourth-wall break than the last, it’s more fun for its later omission: she doesn’t say the same when he draws Nagato’s toothpick.  Nagato’s not the "rival."
  

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