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