Chatterbox - Anime & Manga

Rewatching some of the Haruhi episodes and rereading some of the chapters (for some reason, I still have all 11 volumes), I realized:

Holy shit, this series is pretentious as fuck. Like, the Wachowskis pretentious. Man, I can't believe that I used to like this.

I'm not sure I'd call it pretentious so much as Seinfeld Is Unfunny. All the trends it started have become kind of ubiquitous and annoying in the following years.

When I read the books I remember increasingly getting the impression that the author was making it up as he went along, but made the whole thing seem planned out by having the characters notice the inconsistencies this approach caused, making it seem like there's some deeper truth. Then he got writer's block right around the time that he was going to need to start providing answers

If we're gonna talk pretentiousness in anime, can we talk about that one arc in Little Busters with the girl who may or may not exist?

Its a Light Novel its pretentious by definition, I mean seriously if it's not a screwball comedy its a pretentious book with a 'loser' MC that one ups everyone he comes across but potentially the haremettes.

I've noticed the pattern.

Haruhi is the one that popularized it but it certainly was not the first.

Discussion of philosophy ≠ pretentious.

Discussion of philosophy that focuses on sounding profound rather than actually being profound = Pretentious

^^^^^^ Midori? I remember really liking that route the first time I read it, now I can barely stand it.

I dunno if I'd call Haruhi pretentious or not. Sure, it takes itself super seriously and tries to act all deep, but then they have an episode where a guy has to impress a girl with his nonexistent baseball skills or goo monsters will destroy the world. How can I take that seriously?

And I guess the effect is mitigated by most of the toodeep crap coming from Itsuki and he's supposed to be full of shit.

edited 9th May '16 9:00:15 PM by Arha

Personally, I thought Kyon's narration becomes more and more pretentious by the volumes progress.

In fact, I actually foud Itsuki less pretentious because his philosophical tangents have this feel of "Or not, whatever floats your boats ^^." behind them.

Kyon is what the average japanese high schooler wishes they could be, except he's a bit less bland than most of the average mc's, even if you might call him pretentious.

I find his narration in the anime just well balanced of being witty and snarky.

The novel, though, blows it out of proportion.

I was pretty much talking about the anime. Haven't read the light novels.

I read the novels once and then never looked back. They're just kind of boring, so I actually have no idea if Kyon grew more insufferable with time.

Although I suppose the last novel did seem like it was taking itself too seriously and seemed overall too obtuse.

I think now Itsuki is my favorite character in Haruhi.

Because, man, he's the only one who's genuinely having fun with the whole Haruhi shenanigans without being a jerk.

The main difference I recall between the books and the anime was that Haruhi was kind of an awful person in the books and that the anime writers went out of their way to get rid of anything that would make Mikuru interesting

I've never found Mikuru that interesting in the novels anyway. That's just me though. Because whenever her adult self comes in, it just annoyed me with complicated yet oh so convenient time wimey bullshit.

Oh, and I've never found her "moe". Feels so damn forced that I found her irritating as hell instead.

Hylarn: They didn't have to try very hard.

After watching Haruhi, it made me decide:

If any show directly mentions the word "moe", drop it like it's hot.

The thing with Mikuru wasn't huge, but there was a consistent cutting of little moments that suggested that there was more to her than being a moeblob that stuck out with how faithful the anime tended to be. And the first season creating an episode from whole cloth rather than adapting "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody"

I usually don't post here; but there's a news funny news to ignore.

The winning entry of the most prestigious youth writing competition in China is suspected of plagiarizing an Axis Powers Hetalia fanfic. Organizers (Peking University, the Chinese equivalent of Tokyo University), while haven't made a conclusion on the investigation yet, admitted the 150-odd panelists of academic faculty and MFA's probably don't know what fanfiction is.

That's honestly kind of hilarious if it turns out to be legit plagiarism.

Related to the Haruhi discussion: has Haruhi aged well with the blogger coming to the conclusion that it probably hasn't.

edited 11th May '16 1:41:46 AM by mwisse

No?