Cinnamon Ass

ED - Hare Hare Yukai (a bunch of the seiyuu) - generic peppy anime tune and nicely animated (and choreographed) sequence.

…words fail me.

This isn’t the first episode of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. Most of the episode is an amateur tokusatsu-esque show called “Asahina Mikuru no Bouken” filmed by the “SOS Club” which will be the centrepiece of the series, directed, written and everything-elsed by Haruhi, a rather terrifying girl who seems to lead the club.

Unsurprisingly, Asahina Mikuru no Bouken is absolutely terrible, but to fairly hilarious effect (and I’m sure I didn’t get the half of it). It starts off with Mikuru singing some kind of horrible synthesised opening song badly out of tune, and goes on from there; Mikuru works as a bunny girl promoting stuff (complete with hilarious costume and the funniest fanservice shots I’ve seen in a while) except when she fights evil by transforming; evil in the form of Yuki, the cloak-and-hat wearing witch, who enrols secretly in Mikuru’s school to try and win the heart of Isami, Mikuru’s true love. Bad special effects, rubbish cuts, people forgetting their lines, uproarious laughter at the whole stupidity of the thing - it’s basically a complete mess, and the other club members reveal just how horrified they are at the end of the episode.

However, the most important thing is that there’s weeeeird shit going on - I had to look up information on the show to check this, so watch out for spoilers beyond this episode (stop reading now if you care), but apparently Haruhi unknowingly has the ability to alter reality at random; this manifests itself by a talking cat (until Yuki hits it over the head to make it shut up) and Isami actually manifesting magical powers to blow Yuki away. What the hell is going on I don’t really know, but it bears mention.

…what the HELL? I’m so checking out the next episode of this just to find out what on earth the ACTUAL show is about (the next episode is called “Episode 1″); I doubt it’ll be my kind of show in the long run, but this first episode was utterly insane in a genuinely funny way, in my opinion. The animation is top notch, as to be expected from Kyoto Animation, and it sounds like they’ve put a lot of effort into the show. This doesn’t alter the fact that it’s utterly batshit insane, though…

And yes, most of the episode is in 4:3 until the actual “episode” kicks in, when it’s in 16:9.

I’m off to try and make my brain work properly again…

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 at 8:01 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.