Oldtaku: Anime for Grownups

Summary: not as great as advertised, but interesting once over the hump
Based on: 14 episodes (first season)
Series info: at Anime News Network

I probably don’t really need to review this one since you’ve likely already heard of it and seen some of it, but it would be silly to just ignore it since it was such a huge phenomenon and reviewers generally seem to be unable to articulate what makes this show stand out (besides the media oversaturation).

It suffers a bit from school syndrome and harem, but not awfully. The school setting gets less and less important, and there are only three main girls.  It’s also a show where nothing really happens yet contains more plot twists than most shows do in 26 episodes.  It’s fairly formulaic on the surface and overly marketed, but it does three things I found interesting that raise it above the genre:

First, it says that it’s okay not to like the main (female) character. The male lead is your normal unremarkable harem anime nebbish, but Haruhi herself is selfish, rude, and generally unlike normal anime girls who are there to cater to the audience (most ‘bad’ girls are appealingly so). And, calculatedly, this in itself is appealing. In contrast the other two girls are basically complaisant dolls there to receive your deflected affections: so you didn’t like a real girl – how about… this (Mikuru’s breasts here)?

Second, it dares you to not like the show.  The episodes are shown out of chronological order, and it starts with the most (purposely) awkward, stupid, and badly acted and voiced episode of the series. Are you lookin’ at me? Are you lookin’ at me? C’mon, I dare you, turn it off. Then the next eps set up your generic school romance/harem formula. You have to sit through quite a bit to get to any payoff at all. It’s playing hard to get where most anime is pathetically eager to please.

Third, it’s unafraid to lull you into complacency then sucker punch you. I can’t say too much without spoiling it, but it’s willing to take the most base of plot cliches, mix them into that totally vanilla school romance/harem formula, then embrace the outre consequences. This in itself isn’t quite so abnormal (most series are ‘generic setting plus something weird’), but the breadth is unusual.

So yes, this is overhyped and overmarketed, but it’s worth watching if only as an exercise in deconstruction and hating the viewer as a useful tool.  And you might even enjoy it once you get past the first few episodes.