don't you hate it when, three years ago, something happened #光ハルヒHoliday 3

“Perhaps this world is but a dream a certain being is seeing.”

this show is even more my shit than i thought it was #光ハルヒHoliday 3

what is the “Agency” that itsuki works for. i also want a real-world explanation for this. again, it's more fun that way #光ハルヒHoliday 3

oh my god ベター is a real japanese word that itsuki used. the english word 「better」. #光ハルヒHoliday 3

he loves saying wareware. #光ハルヒHoliday 3

ah, so the whole… premise… is set up by the end of the third episode. cool. i'm enjoying this rewatch a lot :3 #光ハルヒHoliday 3

ok episode 4 let's go #光ハルヒHoliday 4

#光ハルヒHoliday 4

wait, this episode skips the full OP? #光ハルヒHoliday 4

A BLOOD-RED SUNSET #光ハルヒHoliday 4

ryouko feels so… early-2000's visual novel character, to me. this scene feels so early-2000's visual novel, to me, in how it looks… hmm… (i haven't read any vn's from this era, this may be superficial) #光ハルヒHoliday 4

OH SHE'S AN ACCELERATIONIST #光ハルヒHoliday 4

[rot13] UNUN LRF V JNF EVTUG JURA V FNVQ ELBHXB VF N YRFOVNA ORPNHFR ABGUVAT VF ZBER YRFOVNA GUNA ZHEQRE (… znlor) #光ハルヒHoliday 4

fuck what a great action sequence. i remembered from thirteen years ago that it happened, i'd heard the music, but i hadn't watched it again in that time, so i couldn't remember any of it. i love this series. #光ハルヒHoliday 4

oh, and now something fun i had completely forgotten about before rewatching. this is great. rewatching something you haven't seen in 13 years but which means a lot to you means you get to rediscover its joy. i recommend it. #光ハルヒHoliday 4

like a visit from an angel… #光ハルヒHoliday 4

great regrets of my life: never learning the hare hare yukai dance. well, there's still time…

(good episode) #光ハルヒHoliday 4

episode 5 now #光ハルヒHoliday 5

BOUKEN DESHO DESHO
HONTO GA USO NI KAWARU SEKAI DE
YUME GA ARU KARA TSUYOKU NARU NO YO
DARE NO TAME JA NAI

#光ハルヒHoliday 5

~three years ago~

i love it when an anime story has an inciting incident a specific distance in time from the current events, and so characters keep speaking dramatically or not-so-dramatically about “three years ago”

#光ハルヒHoliday 5

⚾️ #光ハルヒHoliday 5

oh no #光ハルヒHoliday 5

this is probably a worthless comparison but this series is a lot more like monogatari than i realised. i don't mean they're similar series, but that there are things i like that they have in common that i did not know of, before #光ハルヒHoliday 5

did itsuki's discussion of the anthropic principle make me an atheist. (no, but it's funny to consider because there is a significant overlap with the ideology that did make me an atheist a year later… it's a credible lie) #光ハルヒHoliday 5

this series is good at exposition sequences. i won't say it's as good as monogatari (that's an incredibly high bar), but it's good at them. the fact the scenes feel familiar when rewatching them is a good sign. #光ハルヒHoliday 5

i like them for the same reason i like the ones in monogatari. listening to a character monologue while enjoying pretty, regularly-changing scenery… this is anime #光ハルヒHoliday 5

and that scenery is, at the same time, mundane. it resembles the real world. it is everyday. but it is still beautiful.

it feels very unlikely that this anime could have influenced my tastes in that direction, but it does align perfectly with them. huh. #光ハルヒHoliday 5

need a guy who is exactly like koizumi itsuki in every respect to take me on a cab ride and then ask me to close my eyes for a few seconds #光ハルヒHoliday 5

i finished episode 5. is episode 6 going to be… that episode? there's a concept from a particular episode that's been on my mind a bunch recently… i'll have to see if it's the one i have in mind. don't spoil me! #光ハルヒHoliday 5

ok let's find out what episode 6 is. (btw i'm using the series 2 airing order for all my numbering, i can't be bothered to translate. wikipedia's list uses column D for it at the time of writing afaict) #光ハルヒHoliday 6

“I'm a 100% genuine ordinary high school student.”

uhuh. that's what they all say

#光ハルヒHoliday 6

ohhh when he explains to Taniguchi what happened with Nagato… cool sequence #光ハルヒHoliday 6

as an aside… i'm watching dvd rips for the s1 episodes (apparently, the blu-ray for s1 wasn't so good). and they look beautiful! dvd offers very good picture quality for progressive widescreen standard-definition content, which haruhi is #光ハルヒHoliday 6

windows xp windows explorer hidden folder preferences… #光ハルヒHoliday 6

i probably liked how realistic the computer use is in this series. it isn't usually animated realistically but it's edited together from real screenshots with a realistic flow, and it's obviously windows xp, not some fake operating system. #光ハルヒHoliday 6

oh, when itsuki enters the clubroom and he isn't visible yet, his voice actor is recorded such that he actually sounds distant and behind us. that's a nice detail! i'm not used to it. #光ハルヒHoliday 6

oh, i see how it is. this is another anime with constant narration about what is 「普通」, about being normal. the last time i watched an anime about that, the girl wasn't normal ( = heterosexual). i think kyon might not be normal ( = … uhh) #光ハルヒHoliday 6

YES!!! THIS IS THE EPISODE I WAS REMEMBERING SO FONDLY. IT'S THAT INCIDENT. ahhh i'm so excited, it's been so long since i've watched something with this premise and i barely remember it #光ハルヒHoliday 6

need a girl to [rot13] jnxr hc jvgu zr genccrq ng fpubby vafvqr n Pybfrq Fcnpr [/rot13]. genuinely want this, it's such a cool concept. #光ハルヒHoliday 6

need a girl to [rot13] svanyyl tvir hc ba gur pheerag jbeyq naq qrpvqr gb perngr n arj jbeyq #光ハルヒHoliday 6

🖥 #光ハルヒHoliday 6

fuck, these sequences… while we have to read the text appearing on a computer screen, the background is constantly changing… it's once again an example of making exposition interesting. i did not realise i would find this series so engaging. #光ハルヒHoliday 6

wait, this is the premise of Blue Reflection isn't it. wish i'd consumed these works closer together in time #光ハルヒHoliday 6

ahh, that was satisfying. this episode, the 6th in the 2009 broadcast order (i'm referring to it as s2 order because it's the order s2 aired in) was the last one in the 2006 broadcast. not sure what order i saw it when i watched it on dvd. it's a good climax. #光ハルヒHoliday 6

i think a work has succeeded in some way when i'm actually grinning while watching the conclusion. the ending segment of this episode has that kind of charm. #光ハルヒHoliday 6

seven time #光ハルヒHoliday 7

marvelling at how they've been careful to avoid weird discontinuities when reordering episodes #光ハルヒHoliday 7

BASEBALL EPISODE BASEBALL EPISODE BASEBALL EPISODE

野球
野球
野球

#光ハルヒHoliday 7

#光ハルヒHoliday 7

it's hard to fully appreciate in this dvd rip (why is it always this which suffers…) but there is some lovely background art in this series #光ハルヒHoliday 7

the sweet little girl that kyon knows is called “kyonkun denwa” right? i know my haruhi, #光ハルヒHoliday 7

haruhi is such a girlboss she's not even consciously aware of it #光ハルヒHoliday 7

itsuki x kyon is a good ship. just going to throw that out there, #光ハルヒHoliday 7

dlkfdlkf;ldkf;lkdf ITSUKI KNOWS

HE FUCKING KNOWS ABOUT [rot13] fabj juvgr #光ハルヒHoliday 7

i had forgotten just how much fun this show is. it's a perfect subject for the “explain your favourite anime badly” meme because at a certain level it is just a slice of life, but also it's extremely not that at all, everything has high stakes #光ハルヒHoliday 7

in case it wasn't obvious i'm absolutely loving this. rewatching this was an excellent decision. i don't have enough time today to finish it but i'll probably be able to get like halfway (i.e. halfway through 2009 order) and finish in the new year #光ハルヒHoliday 7

haruhi rewatch update: my gf is watching the first episode now. i'm spreading the good news of our lord and saviour,

while she is introduced to the gospel, i'll continue my rewatch :3

time for episode 8~ #光ハルヒHoliday 8

tanabata! oh, this is the first one i'm watching that originally aired in season 2. #光ハルヒHoliday 8

ah, “that's […], altair, vega”. this is just like monogatari /s #光ハルヒHoliday 8

hd haruhi… #光ハルヒHoliday 8

禁則事項ですから、 #光ハルヒHoliday 8

i love how John Smith [rot13] nyernql xabjf jung ur unf gb qb orsber rira orvat nfxrq gb qb vg. cresrpg gvzr ybbc #光ハルヒHoliday 8

this is exactly like when you knock out an npc in hitman and then they're found by security and woken up,,,

mikuru is so… pliable #光ハルヒHoliday 8

further thoughts about mikuru redacted to avoid sounding like i'm suzumiya haruhi or something #光ハルヒHoliday 8

god i love how he solves the predicament he's in. always have an oomfie who can fix your causality problems #光ハルヒHoliday 8

#光ハルヒHoliday 8

oh my god they make THIS EPISODE be the first one where you hear 『止マレ!』, and the lyrics and presentation are Highly Thematically Relevant. fuck, i've really been missing out by never watching this series in 2009 broadcast order before now!!!! banger ED btw #光ハルヒHoliday 8

such a good episode… i already thought this but the ED was the cherry on top #光ハルヒHoliday 8

time for episode ⑨！！

涼
宮
ハ
ル
ヒ
⑨
憂
鬱

#光ハルヒHoliday 9

mojibake <3 <3 <3 #光ハルヒHoliday 9

look at this shot!! it's so pretty. a home with many computers… #光ハルヒHoliday 9

gf update: she's watched three episodes now (which establish the premise of the show), about to watch the 4th. she commented that it's interesting how between three different characters you get three different explanations of the “three years ago” events.

i liked that observation. it kinda ties into how i want to read fanfiction elaborations on this setting, because i think it's unusual for a series to give you this kind of… diversity of thought about its own premise, and leave a lot open?

i love this type of mystery-of-the-week. i don't think i remember this episode at all, except for the corrupted homepage part… i'm enjoying it like it's new. #光ハルヒHoliday 9

i think i need to read more fiction from this kind of era, because there's a lot of similar themes/concepts here that probably felt novel the first time i encountered them, but it's obvious now that lots of works share them, so i want to know their origins #光ハルヒHoliday 9

like uhh… haruhi, blue reflection, dennou coil, nanoha, and surely a bunch of other series i've consumed that i forgot, have very similar sci-fi elements. i think, hmm, i need to consume more non-anime stuff, i wanna see how vn's handle this for example #光ハルヒHoliday 9

haha, you gotta love it when they decide that the anime episode is just a video game now #光ハルヒHoliday 9

SEO alien (canon concept in haruhi) #光ハルヒHoliday 9

“Mystérique Sign” is an incredible haruhi episode. #光ハルヒHoliday 9

how did i forget this series? i never like, forgot about it. i never forgot the whole thing. but it's like my memory of it from thirteen years ago is very superficial… so much about it is stuff that i really like now, yet it's that which i don't remember… #光ハルヒHoliday 9

on the one hand, i don't think i give my past self enough credit for liking this series. i'm glad 13-years-younger me liked it. 13-years-younger me probably liked it for similar reasons to present me. but, maybe the 13-years-younger me lacked the vocabulary…? #光ハルヒHoliday 9

on the other hand… i don't know, maybe my taste in anime is like this because it all started with haruhi? did all those moments absorb into me, not fully appreciated at the time, but forming those connections in the graph that became what i now call taste? #光ハルヒHoliday 9

i can't stress how utterly strange it is to rediscover an old series i liked like this and discover that i actually still really, really like it. perhaps like it much more than the first time. you have no idea how much my personality has changed in that time. #光ハルヒHoliday 9

i can say with complete confidence that me liking this series is not out of nostalgia. there's a bunch of other things i watched similarly long ago that i wouldn't get this experience from rewatching. naruto would be a slog, for example, fun as it is… #光ハルヒHoliday 9

i… i went into it knowing there was the possibility of this, i mean it's part of why i wanted to do it, but it's still so… idk. “me the first time i saw haruhi” is the oldest version of myself in my memories i can still meaningfully recognise. that's why it's such a big deal…

this breaks the rule of “do not reveal your age on the internet” but the time i saw haruhi for the first time thirteen years ago is at roughly half-way through my life so far. it will not be very long before i have spent half my life as the version of me that has seen haruhi.

when i say “oldest version of myself in my memories i can still meaningfully recognise”, i mean emotionally. i do have small memories, interests, childhood traumas persisting from then to now, but haruhi is the start of all the emotional threads that lead to my present self.

it's the start, in particular, of my relationship to art as i know it. it's not the first piece of art i encountered in my life, obviously, but like… you know, all of my current taste in art has some relationship to anime, right. it all starts with haruhi…

my life and sense of self went through some drastic changes in my teenage years, and for a long time i was embarrassed by the contrast, not able to admit to myself how much the person on both sides of such changes was fundamentally similar. i knew i was in denial, but still

by the time i reached maybe five years ago in my life, i was starting to be a bit more chill about it. by the time i reached this year or maybe last year, i think i was almost completely chill with it. i could see that, yes, i was still the same person in many ways.

stuff like… my current haircut, the result of a long process of evolution, is actually just the one i wanted maybe eleven years ago? i think about it in somewhat different terms, but it's the same haircut. the core of that taste has been there all along.

still, though, i did feel a bit distant from my past self in terms of taste in art. there are certainly some things from that time i can appreciate, but like… 2010 me seems a lot more boring in some ways.

but now, well, i've used my one-time opportunity to revisit my 2010 self.

by rewatching haruhi, i think the distance in my mind between 2010 and 2023 me is healed. i can feel a strong connection to the me that watched this back in 2010. i don't know quite what that version of me thought and felt, i only remember small bits, but… they were right.

they liked this series back then, and they were right to like it… and of course present me would think that, because that may as well have been the moment i started to exist. ahh. i don't need to be embarrassed.

i am very glad that suzumiya haruhi no yuuutsu was my first anime.

for a while i've not been sure how to feel about the fact haruhi was my first anime… i didn't remember it well enough to know whether it was “good”, only that it was meaningful to me. the fact it's such a “meta” show also made me wonder if it was an appropriate first anime…

but uh, nine episodes into my rewatch (which incidentally covers not just s1 but s2, which i didn't watch back in 2010 because it wasn't on dvd yet, and i'm not sure if i ever properly finished watching later…), i think i can safely say: no, it's an excellent first anime.

its premise is playful but it plays it straight, so it's not going to confuse you if you've never seen anything it's referencing before. and its premise allows it to give you a flavour of… so much of what anime can do and can be. it's no wonder it inspired a lifelong love in me.

also it's just technically excellent in many ways. it's just, actually good, in ways even someone who's never seen an anime before can appreciate. watching haruhi as my first anime didn't fuck me up; it prepared me, i guess. i'm glad that chance played out in this way for me.

i don't know if i've ever outright said it, but a theme of the things i've celebrated in recent times is that “good art” is not a rare thing, in my opinion, and that popularity doesn't mean something is bad (it doesn't necessarily mean it's good, of course).

i think i was afraid haruhi was not going to be that good, because… as you may know (younger folks might not), haruhi was absolutely fucking everywhere in anime circles circa 2010. it was an extremely big deal. it was impossible to ignore. it was mainstream within anime at least

and there are quite a lot of popular things that i don't really care so much for! i'm not a snob about it, i don't have anything against a thing being popular in itself, but it's not uncommon for something to be very popular but kind of average at best so far as my tastes go?

so, yeah, it's just wonderful to be able to wholeheartedly embrace it neither because of nor in spite of nostalgia, but simply because… it's good. that i'm nostalgic about it only makes it better, but i'd love it either way. that's cool!!!

‪aha, it's funny that i start watching haruhi not long after switching away from my haruhi profile pic. i'm glad though, it means i don't feel like i'm betraying all those people who followed me thinking i'm a haruhi fan… because i am indeed one, i'm just not, haruhi,‬

ok one more episode before i go to bed. unless this happens to be the beginning of endless eight, in which case No #光ハルヒHoliday 10

oh no this is the deserted island episode, and that's a two-parter!! i remember that much. okay i guess it'll have to wait, tragic. #光ハルヒHoliday 10

haruhi rewatch resumes now, with the deserted island two-parter, part one. :3 #光ハルヒHoliday 10

need a girl to, in recognition of my achievements, specially promote me two ranks and name me sos brigade deputy chief #光ハルヒHoliday 10

need a girl to want me to be trapped me in a closed-circle mystery #光ハルヒHoliday 10

need to walk into a house where it is immediately established what type of architectural style it has and whether the doors to the rooms can be locked #光ハルヒHoliday 10

oh, does this count as s1's beach episode? i think s2 has one also. #光ハルヒHoliday 10

i love nagato yuki #光ハルヒHoliday 10

damn, you'll never guess what happened, #光ハルヒHoliday 10