I'm rewatching Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. Just had a thought about it, and I'll probably have more. They'll all be spoilers so they go below the fold.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Haruhi at 06:32 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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I was just going through my DVDs of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi taking frame grabs to use in the top rotation and got to the "giant cricket" episode. Here's a frame from that one:

That poster on the wall of three girls? I just bet it's the three seiyuu who did the voices of Yuki, Haruhi, and Mikuru.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Haruhi at 10:23 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I'm rewatching the six episodes of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. After I'm done, I'm going to go through them to grab some images for the top rotation.

Urd, Skuld, and Beldandy are based (well, a bit) on the Norns, three female demigods who guard the roots of Yggdrasill, the world tree. Urd is associated with the past, Beldandy with the present, and Skuld with the future.

In the SOS Dan, we got Haruhi, Kyon, and three strange people. It occurred to me today that Yuki is associated with the past, Itsuki with the present, and of course Mikuru with the future. More, including some spoilers, below the fold.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Haruhi at 09:42 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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I was looking at this post, and clicked a picture of Hirano Aya holding, well, something flesh colored. From the thumbnail it didn't look like there was any clothes. The larger version proves there is, but not damned much. It's a Haruhi figure, wearing an itty-bitty teenie-weenie red string bikini.

Naturally I was curious to see who was selling it, and how ridiculously expensive it was. I also wanted to know what the deal was with the Santa Claus hat. A bigger picture was called for.

The obvious place to look was J-list. Unfortunately, it ain't there. Maybe it hasn't been released yet; it could have been a pre-prod.

Regardless, there was something on that page which was a bit disturbing. Not the hentai doujins; those are disturbing but not noteworthy. No, I'm talking about a genyouwine Asakura Ryoko figurine, complete with knife.

That's almost as weird as the fact that Hirai Yukari did quite well in this year's Saimoe contest (that Avatar has been blogging about). The reason that's strange is that Yukari dies about 30 seconds into the first episode of Shakugan no Shana.

You know, I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised to learn that someone was going to create a Yukari figurine.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Haruhi at 06:36 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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"Provenance" is a cool word; it's a pleasure to find a use for it. Though it's far from being a perfect series, some of the ideas presented in Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu are intriguing and have led to enormous fan speculation.

One big question is, who is Asahina Mikuru really?

Of course, there's no requirement that she be anyone in particular other than just a random person from the future who was selected as an agent by the time travelers, probably because of how she looks. But in a series like this there can be coincidences -- or things which turn out not to be coincidence. And so fans speculate that she's related to someone-or-other.

I myself thought that the most likely answer was that she was the daughter of Kyon and Haruhi, but some fans speculate that Mikuru is actually Kyon's younger sister.

The hair color is slightly different, but that doesn't prove anything. A lot of people's hair changes color as they grow up, and in any case there is such a thing as hair dye.

The hint that proponents of this theory use is that the older version of Mikuru does a "boy am I dumb" gesture involving winking an eye and knocking a fist on her skull and sticking out her tongue, and shortly thereafter we see Kyon's imouto do exactly the same gesture.

That alone wouldn't be persuasive. However, I noticed that they have the same eyes. Mikuru and Imouto's eyes are different from LOL Fang-tan next to Imouto, but they're the same as each other.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Haruhi at 08:03 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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Given how popular Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu was in its fansub incarnation, it's inevitable that hardcore otaku are going to be comparing the translations from the fansub to the Kadokawa version, and bitching about the latter. So let's get this show on the road, shall we?

I just spotted a common mistake: they translated ichinen ("first year") as "freshman". High school in Japan is 3 years, beginning with sophomore year. They made the same mistake in the translation for "Magic Users Club", but that was a long time ago when the R1 industry was a lot smaller, so it's more forgiveable. It's a strange mistake to make these days, however.

UPDATE: So just why is the series so popular? I've talked about that before, but it's always seemed to me that one reason, a subtle one that many people may not even recognize, is that the background music is brilliant. This is a series for which I'd consider getting the OST if it's released here at something like a reasonable price. I don't own very many of those. (That would be Haibane Renmei, Azumanga Daioh, and Hand Maid May. That's the lot.)

UPDATE: Points for not trying to be too clever in translating the club name.

The name in Japanese is "世界を大いに盛り上げるための涼宮ハルヒの団". Romanized, it's Sekai wo Ooini moriagerutame no Suzumiya Haruhi no dan, or "SOS dan" for short.

The fan subbers desperately wanted to fit the acronym, so they came up with this: "The Save the world by Overloading it with fun Haruhi Suzumiya's brigade". Kadokawa's translator made it: "Spreading excitement all over the world with Haruhi Suzumiya's brigade". Which also preserves the acronym, but seems to be a somewhat more accurate translation. It's certainly less clumsy.

What the Japanese actually means is "Haruhi Suzumiya's group for the purpose of massively shaking up the world."

Kadokawa's translator knew that he'd be judged on the basis of this one phrase, since it's so critical to the series, and clearly really stretched himself on it.

UPDATE: Actually, the translator's name is "Rika Takahashi", which I think is a female name. Apologies for being an MCP.

UPDATE: One thing we lost when Kadokawa reordered the series was the fun voiceovers on the next-ep teasers where Haruhi and Kyon would argue over which episode number was next. Damned shame. The next-ep teaser at the end of ep 2 is just Yuki saying the name of the episode, and "Watch it".

UPDATE:

It must be said: Haruhi does look good dressed up as a baanigaaru.

By the way, there's actually a reason beyond fanservice, and reinforcing that Haruhi is out of control, why this sequence was included in the series.

There's a shot of Mikuru in her bunny girl costume, and it shows her birthmark.

They don't emphasize it, and you can't tell the shape, but it's there.

UPDATE: Waaaaaait a minute. Ep 4, Yuki replaces Kyon and plays Othello against Mikuru. They included some material in there which wasn't in the broadcast version that got fansubbed here. That's interesting.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Haruhi at 07:51 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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There's a magical moment during the awakening process when it seems like anything is possible. I often have strange thoughts during that magical time -- most of which make no sense at all. But sometimes they do, even though they are probably not profound.

Here's one from my most recent nap: I bet you cannot whisper Chinese and be understood. How would you represent "tones"?

UPDATE: Speaking of strange thoughts, I really like this page. It's an attempt at perverse retconning of various series, some of which are anime. One of the most interesting is that the characters on Gilligan's Island represent the 7 Deadly Sins. And Gilligan himself is the Devil; the island is Hell, where he is punishing the others.

One time J mentioned his idea for an alternate retcon for Hand Maid May: that "Cyber X" was a villainous guy attempting a hostile retroactive takeover of Cyberdyne. It'd fit right in on that page.

By the way, some of the theories are not so perverse. The first one for Haibane Renmei agrees with what I think about the series. And it whould be pointed out that the whole page is loaded to the gills with spoilers.

UPDATE: Getting down to the section on Haruhi, the first entry is an old friend: it's really Kyon that's God, and Haruhi is just a physical manifestation of Kyon's power.

But the second speculation is a more interesting one. It has to do with Mikuru; who is she, really? Spoilers, ho:

My wildass speculation on that was that Mikuru is actually the daughter of Kyon and Haruhi. But their speculation is that Mikuru is actually Kyon's younger sister.

If so, she must be using an assumed name. We never hear what Kyon's sister is named, but presumably she's got one. I think it would cause comment.

Of course, if this whole thing is Kyon's solipsistic fantasy, then perhaps his sister doesn't have a name. And maybe he himself doesn't, either. Who says a solipsistic fantasy has to be complete?

Anyway, if Mikuru really is Kyon's younger sister, it adds an entire fetish element to the whole thing, don't it? Siscon, anyone? And it does lead to the question of just how time-travel technology became so common so soon. My idea of Mikuru as Kyon's daughter at least provides a bit longer for that to get developed. (But adds its own fetish which may be even creepier. Eeew.)

If you feel the urge to write spoilers in comments, please remember how to form the spoiler tag: (spoiler)your text(/spoiler) except use square brackets instead of parenthesis. Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Haruhi at 06:12 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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1 You're kidding, right? Tonal shift doesn't require volume.

Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at July 04, 2007 07:11 PM (Ef+b7)

2 Well, I just tried it and it seems to work okay.

Posted by: Aaron at July 04, 2007 07:11 PM (IPZE2)

3

It's not a question of volume, it's a question of voice. Whispering means you don't run your vocal chords; instead you modulate a hiss. That leads to some ambiguity in English, most notably the fact that it becomes impossible to differentiate "s" from "z", but not much and the language contains enough redundancy so it isn't an issue.

But if there's no voice, how do you do tones?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 04, 2007 07:18 PM (+rSRq)

4 After some more experimentation, I think that you can vary the pitch of a hiss through constriction of the windpipe and mouth. Well enough for me to understand myself, and I'm pretty sure other Chinese speakers would understand me too (though I can't be certain without trying).

Posted by: Aaron at July 04, 2007 07:33 PM (IPZE2)

5 Since whispering (can) produce(s) a subset of white noise, you can use your lips and tongue to do act as a band-pass filter, and represent the tone shifts with frequency shifts of the white-noise.  This, with amplitude and/or emphasis substituting for high tones, plus context, will probably suffice to make most whispering intelligible.

Also, fourth tones are generally shorter in duration, so that kind of helps also.

I don't know if I'd try pillow talk with a fluent partner, being a beginner at the language.  Too much room for misunderstanding.  Or hilarity.

The problem is greater with both Cantonese (7 tones, give or take), and Vietnamese (4 or 5? tones, and important slight differences in vowel pronunciation).

---

That half-awak moment has produced many great solutions to engineering problems, which turn out not to work when you get to the office and start putting them to paper.  And for me, it has also produced hilarious topics for blog posts... which turn out not to be nearly as funny after breakfast and a couple of cups of coffee.

Posted by: Kurt Duncan at July 04, 2007 07:38 PM (AdzZZ)

6 Personally, I like the Evangelion entry on that Wild Guessing page.

"Oh, wait that's actually true.  And that.  And I guess that's true too... Huh."

Posted by: Dave at July 04, 2007 07:50 PM (mjr3n)

7 Spoiler for Haruhi: Mikuru doesn't look quite similar enough to imouto-chan to be her adult form, but does look similar enough to be related, so it's possible she's Kyon and Haruhi's daughter - or imouto-chan's daughter, for that matter.
Spoiler for Jungle Guu: It's clear from the series that Guu is some sort of elder god - but not actually evil.  She's just bored.
Spoiler for Calvin and Hobbes: Everything in Calvin and Hobbes is literally true.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 04, 2007 08:25 PM (PiXy!)

8 Good stuff.

I got quite a kick out of the Eva ones.  But the Haibane ones confused me... I thought the first one (who the girls are, why they're there) was generally accepted as canon.

Posted by: Big D at July 04, 2007 09:17 PM (JJ4vV)

9

Regarding Haibane Renmei:

It's beyond dispute that all Haibane have previously lived as humans, and that their cocoon dreams are about how they died. But why they died is less clear. Some fans, including me, think all Haibane are suicides. Others think that it's only the sinbound.

But I don't want to turn this thread into a discussion of that series, OK?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 04, 2007 09:57 PM (+rSRq)

10 Sure.  Switching topics... your first paragraph intrigues me--because I'm a lucid dreamer.  I tend to have most of my dreams toward the morning, and as I start to wake up, I gain control of them, to the extent that I can recognize plotlines, and change things around as I see fit.  I don't dream schematics, alas, just story concepts and ideas, and I'm not a writer any more than I am an engineer.  Still, it never fails to fascinate me.

What's really interesting are the (thankfully rare) nightmares--they always involve loss of control over the dream, preventing me from taking control, even if I'm self-aware.

Posted by: Big D at July 04, 2007 10:25 PM (JJ4vV)

11

I'm Chinese.  As far as I can tell, it's possible to whisper in Chinese.  Are all of the tonals preserved?  Probably not.  But that doesn't mean you can't still understand from context and other non-verbal cues.

But I don't think trying to whisper in Chinese is the same as, say, trying to whisper underwater ...

Posted by: bkw at July 05, 2007 08:03 AM (h/KQ9)

12 Uf da, my bad!  Can't edit the posting....

Posted by: Jonathan Souza at July 06, 2007 03:00 PM (69Thb)

13 Try it again. Use "spoiler" instead of "spoilers".

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 06, 2007 04:12 PM (+rSRq)

14 Okay, let's try again...

Haruhi thoughts-
My theory?  Kyon is a faery/changling (Western tradition) that is trying to get OUT of Fairyland, by trying to find the normal, "real", banal world.  The problem is, Fairyland and the small pocket universe he created(a'la Serial Experiments Lain) isn't willing to let him go just yet...and Haruhi is the thing they created so that Kyon won't leave...she traps him again in his world (which is symbolized by the black and white turning to color).   In the process, they also draw in three other entities-

Yuki Of The Logic-Her story is true, she's a part of a entity of pure logic, who's only mistake is to think that Haruhi is the one in control.

Itsuki The Builder-He's fighting the Shinjin because they're destroying the world that they think Haruhi is creating, and the rest of the Organization is trying to keep the "real world" around, in an effort to anchor the world and hopefully retain a "real world" that would exist beyond Haruhi.  They were dragged in from reality (their "awakening") and think that Haruhi is creating the world.  When it's actually Kyon doing the making...

Mikuru The Eternal-She forever exists out of time, as "frames" in a world that she can never quite completely interact with, because she's like The Doctor-forever not quite in sync and possibly being somewhere before, during, and after...and around.  And, she knows how it all ends...

And, they're all making the assumption (tho Yuki suspects otherwise near the end) that Haruhi is the prime mover, and drawing Kyon into their conspiracies, because Kyon isn't "unique" except that Haruhi chose him.  She respects him-and as long as she likes the world he made, that world will stay.

Remember, it was the last episode (airdate wise) where Kyon accepted the world that Haruhi created, mostly...it stablizes.  Perhaps he knows that he is the maker of this world...or not.

Tho, I wonder what a Kyon/Lain crossover would be like...

Posted by: Jonathan Souza at July 06, 2007 08:28 PM (yWPgT)

15 one <spoiler>two</spoiler>three

Posted by: kumar at July 08, 2007 09:35 PM (L0KHa)

16 Use square brackets, not angle brackets.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 08, 2007 09:51 PM (+rSRq)

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So I'm rewatching a few of the episodes of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu and just got to ep 3 (broadcast order). There are a lot of small peculiarities about this series. Here's one: Kyon's little sister (who is always referred to by everyone in the series as imouto i.e. "little sister") calls her older brother "Kyon-kun".

That is bizarre. No 'nii-chan? That's what I would have expected.

It's not unknown in anime for charaters to use names for older siblings. Megumi calls Keiichi Kei-chan in Ah! My Goddess! But she's only one year younger than he is. Kyon is first year highschool, probably 16, and his sister looks to be 8 if she isn't even younger than that. I wouldn't expect an anime sister that young to be using her older brother's name, even his nickname.

Another peculiarity: we never learn what Kyon's real name is. Neither his given name nor his surname; everyone (including even his little sister) calls him "Kyon". It does make you wonder, doesn't it? Does he actually have a name? Maybe he himself doesn't know what it is, and doesn't realize that.

Haruhi's quest is for space aliens, time travellers, sliders, and espers. The Japanese terms for the first two are uchuujin and miraijin which literally mean "people from space" and "people from the future" respectively. She stops talking about sliders early on, but does keep talking about espers. I've been trying to figure out what word they're using, but it's long and they say it so fast that I can't hear it all, and my guesses haven't been turning up anything in the dictionary. Ah, well...

[No spoilers please.] (I think maybe I'll look into changing the comment entry template to include "No Spoilers" in big bold letters.)

UPDATE: Here's something we hear Mikuru say a lot: 機密事項 kimitsujikou.

UPDATE: Only I'm wrong. That's not what she's saying. I wonder what it is? It sounds like keisotsu jikou desu but that can't be right. It doesn't make any sense.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Haruhi at 02:12 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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Greg Dean shows us an instance from real life as proof of what a wonderful lady he married.

If she really did recommend the Haruhi bunny-girl figurine over a Beldandy figurine, then I gotta say he's right; his wife is pretty special.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Haruhi at 10:44 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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