Anime in Focus: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2 episode 13

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Hey, this episode managed to recapture a bit of the former season’s glory! If only I didn’t have to drudge through about 10 of the series worst episodes to get to it, I might have had a bit more faith in the series at this point.

This episode continues the arc about making the movie from the first episode of the first season, but rather than focus on the actual filming, (which is kinda boring, like episodes 10 and 11) it instead focuses on the behind the scenes drama, developing the cast a bit.

In this episode, we start by seeing the filming of the scene where Yuki sends a bunch of side characters to attack Mikuru. This is going well until Mikuru starts shooting lasers out of her eyes again, and we get a lovely image of Yuki taking measures to stop it. See above picture for details…. You done? Got that as ingrained in your memory as I do? Ahh yeah. ANYWAY, things get a bit awkward as Haruhi demands that the evil zombie whatever henchmen need to throw Mikuru in the lake. This looks fine on film, but the cast then realizes that this lake is probably polluted as hell. Nobody seems to mention the damage it could do to the battle waitress outfit, but nobody seems to care about that sort of thing.

The second part of the episode takes place at Tsuruya’s house, where they finish filming for the day. This is the part where Koizumi’s character takes Mikuru’s character to his house for some reason. While they are at the house, Haruhi has Tsuruya lace Mikuru’s drink with liquor, in order to enhance Mikuru’s acting skills. Unfortunately, Mikuru can’t hold her alcohol very good at all, which leads to her almost passing out. Haruhi gets pissed about this, and starts yelling at Mikuru.

Then finally, we see the moment I’ve been waiting for since about 3 episodes into the first season. Kyon gets fed up with Haruhi treating Mikuru like her plaything, gets his fist ready, tells Haruhi she’s an annoying jerk, and gets ready to whack her… But then Koizumi intervenes, and stops Kyon from smacking Haruhi. If this was back in my days of Kyon x Mikuru shipping, I’d be so exited about this. However, the movie converted me to Kyon x Yuki. Still, I was quite exited to see Kyon finally stick up for Mikuru.

Oh yeah, for the rest of the episode, things are a bit awkward between the brigade members, for obvious reasons. Koizumi gives out a speech about the nature of the universe to Kyon, and discusses his opinions on opposing Haruhi with Kyon, and we get a bit on the plot.

Episode manages to be very solid. I wish more of the second season was like this. While I thought the music felt a bit off in some scenes (Do they only have one dramatic track?) for in some parts, the music didn’t seem to suit the gravity of the situation, particularly in a segment at the lake. Thankfully, the fleshing out of the characters made up for this flaw. Believe it or not, I’m actually EXITED about the next episode, which hasn’t happened since the first episode of this season.

Coming soon! Episode 14

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