[Categories: Anime Reviews]
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya episode 11: The Day Of Sagittarius
Ah, the fog of war. Not unlike the fog created by the clash of fandom and the backlash of criticism that results. Write a review on a show like this and you end up sounding like you fall into one of the two camps. I’m trying to stay objective. Please, believe me!
Haruhi Suzumiya always seems to lurch between the mediocre and downright inspired, leaving little in between each time. Episode 11, The Day Of Sagittarius, is one of the good ones, especially if you’re into the genre it’s lampooning. That is, anyone who enjoys a send-up of the sci-fi shows inspired by wartime naval dramas will love this. I was half expecting a Buster Machine to appear in view and wouldn’t have batted an eyelid if it had. The outcome of the episode wasn’t 100% cut-and-dried either so this instalment held some degree of unpredictability, which was a bonus.
In the past I was disappointed with the lack of character interaction beyond the level at which the humourous situations could be set up, but the gaming sim theme showed the SOS Brigade as a club of people working and playing alongside each other. An obvious necessity for a series that’s a comedy about a high school society you would have thought, but only now is that aspect being properly exploited; it works really well too.
There’s no major plot development here but there is a moment of Kyon standing up to Haruhi (if only slightly) and Nagato gets some time in the spotlight. All in all a good episode, then.
Which returns me to my long-running problem I have with reviewing this show. I don’t know about you but to make an accurate assessment of whether its good or bad, I need to have a rough idea of what light it should be judged in: there’s no point in criticising the formulaic nature of a James Bond flick when it’s not intended to be viewed on the same level as a political satire, is there? So, how do I approach Haruhi Suzumiya? Should the underlying sci-fi themes and episode orders be viewed as clever or just silly? Maybe that’s why this series has divided opinion; my own guess is that I’ll see it to the end, watch the episodes in chronological rather than broadcast order and see what I make of it then.
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