Waxing and waning before an upcoming storm

That phrase means absolutely nothing.

No, don't try to figure it out, I know you are, but stop.

That phrase, really, really meant nothing. Well, maybe there's some subconscious... no I'm not going to entertain any speculation here.

But if I were, I would say it has to do with the off-feeling I'm having thinking about my upcoming move. After delaying even looking for quite a while, suddenly everything's come together and... well, and now things are happening.

That's a bit different than how things have been for the last say 5-6 months, where my life was dominated by my job but otherwise didn't really change. And now it is.

Which raises many questions about to what degree I ought weight my job in my life now, and what of the people at my job, and what of the people outside of my job, and what of all the thoughts and plans I had based on skirting the weight of my job + commute now that the latter is gone...

Yet while previously, the impact of my wondering, to prompt the start of my motions toward actions, which might fizzle out before anything solid materialized, was rather large compared to the average eventful-ness of me just living my life, now compared to the almost auto-unfolding events, my wonderings seem almost idle.

I suppose there's a little fright here. And then there are matters unsettled from the last few months. And then there's a little sadness.

Leaving home, where everyone knew my name and I was always needed, to go to...

Jersey City...

but then again, Jersey City does seem to rule.

And so, despite pings of nostalgia I now move forward and face my ch-ch-changes (and here are the lyrics for that song as well)

And just so you don't suspect that I've become any less awesome... let's dance!

Ah, for breath of fire

So as I said before I'm a fan of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzuyama. Now the show, even though it's chaotic chronology-wise (although as I pointed out in my review, there's a method to that madness), roughly fit a full story arc. However, there was enough left over and enough left open, and simply enough immensity of fun to invite a second season and so I am eagarly awaiting for that second season to come to translation.

I'm also interested in checking out some of the Haruhi extra features scattered all over the net due to the immense cultiveness of the Haruhi-fandom (which as this post shows I can only claim peripheral involvement in). So when I found on DC++, that there was a new item belonging to the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise on the file sharing hub (the item being called Suzumiya Haruhi no Gekisou, which I'm not going to even pretend to know), I jumped on it despite the 2GB download.

But then I found it was all Japanese. As I found out from a review of the product (found here), it is essentially a recording of a concert/fan convention centering on the voice actors for the series. Even though I generally shy away from such things my passion for Haruhi is enough that I might have watched it end to end... if it were in English. Here's where the line is drawn between me and hardcore anime fans. Hardcore anime fans will watch anime even if it's not in English. They will learn Japanese solely for the purpose of understanding Japanese. Heck some learn Japanese only from animes (giving them a action/sex-pun centered vocabulary, as Geniksen, a manga (which I have not read) and anime (which I have seen much of and which sould be findable on youTube) about Otaku (the truly hard-core anime/manga/cosplay/sci-fi-fantasy model building/etc. fans), scewers in one of it's characters). Basically they love the media so much, and the culture associated with it, that they're willing to sit through incomprehensible yammering just to get the taste of it.

I have to admire that devotion. Me, I dunno. I could see myself watching something in pure Japanese if it showed a plot point I missed before, but I'd have to fast forward it so I could watch it in as little time possible. Even if an anime was especially pretty, it would be hard for me to imagine just watching it with no dubs or subtitles. You loose so much nuance that way, and some anime I watch would be complete cliches without that nuance (probably His and Her Circumstances, which is why I haven't watched the Japanese episodes on the web, despite being desperate to watch the rest of the series, having only watched half (although given the reputation of the second half, that might be a good thing, but that's another story for another day)). But to wade through another language that is several thousand miles from anything you understand, just to get a little more about a story you love. That's beautiful.

For the most part, at least. There are those who obsess to the point of idol-worship. It's a terrible approach to what might be a fantastic piece of media but in the end is not the center of life. But that happens in most subcultures as well as mainstream culture (more commonly with the idol that seems to top the historical list, money!). I find myself often enchanted though by the straight-forward passion of true otaku. It's amazing how worked up they can get talking about a series, and how much effort they put into celebrating it. Me, I like a lot of anime, I love a few, but that passion... oh well. At least I can watch it as a friendly observer of the subculture. That seems to be my place for most subcultures, but it's not too bad of a place to be, even if it does get a little lonely at times, but once again that is a story for another day.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart, and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!

We love big dreams, right? or my review of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

I'm Rand the great and glorious, so come on, of course I love big dreams! But I got to say I love the Haruhi Suzumiya's SOS Brigade as well. Even if they don't match the biggest dreams of all.

Kyon is an ordinary high schooler who has just overcome his middle school obsession with the supernatural. Unfortunately he happens to be placed in the same class as Haruhi, who's obsession is still alive and well to the point of her scorning all activities outside the supernatural. Haruhi also unfortunately sits behind Kyon and Kyon has the unfortunate habit of talking to her. This eventually leads him to attempting to talk Haruhi out of her fixation in one of the stupidest let's be normal speeches I've ever heard. His main point is the majority of people learn to be satisfied in the world, and only a small minority stay dissatisfied and they change the world. Of course this backfires and prompts her to change her world by forming a club to seek out aliens, time-travelers and esper (ESP-ers). Of course, she makes Kyon her first member.

She steals the room of the Literary club as well as its sole member. She "voluntarily arrests" a beautiful second year student, because all good supernatural stories have some sex appeal. And she invites in a mysterious transfer student. Of course, these are in order, an alien, a time-traveler and an esper. If this all seems a bit too convenient, well, that's because Haruhi's real power is that she can alter reality to suit her whims. As well as to suit sometimes her terrible melancholy.

I can sympathize with Haruhi, I always wanted to start a club to find the extraordinary, I came close to it in high school with John Corp (a name that sounds awfully close to Spreading Excitement All Over the World with the Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade). And I was also infected by that most terrible of melancholies, the melancholy of having extraordinary desires in an ordinary world.

Perhaps that's why I can relate to Haruhi, even if she is sometimes a cruel character (an amazon reviewer was quite disturbed by this). But her cruelty makes sense in a way, it does not stem from a cruel personality, even if she treats people poorly at times she doesn't actually purposefully mean any harm, but rather it comes from an infinite sense of energy and purpose (even if that purpose is perpetually scatterbrained (a charming feature, although sometimes it goes a bit too far and creates some akward transitions in the middle of episodes). And the energy is in the end infectious. It calls to the audience and it's hard not to respond. It also serves to bend the fabric of the show, creating a bizarre episode order (although the general idea, which is to spit up the central arc of exposition over the entire season without using the traditional bit by bit along side event of the week method is pretty ingenious). The extremeness of the characters personalities also seem to fit with this. In the end the entire series projects an intense excitement, as well as the titular melancholy.

In its quieter moments, the show conveys the desperate longing for something extraordinary in the ordinary world. This too is conveyed in the fabric of the show, as the bursts of intense supernatural activities are interspliced with scenes of the characters facing intense boredom (although the viewer is rarely shown this long enough to actually provoke boredom in himself). The fact that Haruhi is always cheated out of the real strangeness of her life by the determined efforts of those around her, adds to a certain pity for her, as her life is defined by that tension between being surrounded by the mundane and wishing passionately for the supernatural. The central arc approaches this tension with the necessary seriousness, but without ever losing its sense of humor. That made me however, sympathize with Haruhi even more, and it almost made me wish that she (unconsciously) destroyed the world to get a taste of her extraordinary.

I can't say I haven't had similar desires, a bit not that extreme. A wish for something disastrous to happen so that I might have a chance to become a hero. A wish for the entire world to be revealed as a fraud. A wish that I could stumble through the looking glass into a world of magic and never look back. I think we all feel that way sometimes, although it is usually manifested in simply a desire to run away to some different place where something so strange that it's almost supernatural might happen. But in the end we rarely run away, because there are too many people we care about, and too many people they care about, and too little solid out there to be worth risking all those relationships. And in the end, we never really want to destroy the world, because all the people we love are here.

At times it reaches slow spots, at times it jumps from topic to topic too fast even for an avid viewer, at times it is too bizarre even for me (the elaboration of the identities of the aliens, time-travelers, and ESP-ers are completely and utterly insane and make my head hurt), but there is so much energy to this anime, so much sincere effort, and characters that while at times cruel, are immensely charming in their exaggerated insanity. And it conveys so much love for supernatural mysteries that seem just right around the corner that it's hard not to become infected by it. And then it's hard not to be struck by the lack of supernatural mysteries, and then it's easy to relate to the melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

All told, this anime gets an 8/10. So far at least, I hear they're coming out with a new season, which it's hard to imagine will be anything other than awesome.

So take it to your head, take it to your heart and remember Rand rocks. Goodnight Folks!