Why I hated Haruhi Suzumiya and everything that show stands for

[feuervogel]

Pursuant to a discussion on another, locked journal, I was reminded how violently I hated "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya." At the time I watched it, I couldn't really put into words why I hated it, other than I wanted to stab Haruhi in the eye, kick her in the teeth, rip her head off, and shit down her throat. I also thought the bullshit pretentious wankery of "we're gonna show the episodes out of order!" was a bunch of bullshit pretentious wankery for the sake of being Experimental and Pretentious Wankers.

There was also an extreme discomfort at the way they treated Mikuru (aka tits-girl). Yay, reducing a woman to a sexual object (and never a subject, Mikuru... she was literally incapable of saying no or even giving consent. Seriously fucking gross.)

But eisen, who writes amazingly thinky things about cartoons and society and culture and whose brain I fangirl mightily, put into words her own loathing of TMHS, and in her words, I found the expression of what I found so disgusting.

It is intellectually and emotionally dishonest, its characters never rise above cardboard cutouts in temperament, personality, or character designs - and it chooses the most tawdry and tautological justifications why - its most popular and beloved running gag involves the nonconsensual molestation and sexual abuse of a girl who's repeatedly demonstrated to be psychologically incapable of saying "no" and even if she were THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNIVERSE HINGES ON HER ALLOWING HARUHI TO DENY HER RIGHT TO CONTROL HER OWN BODY because otherwise Haruhi might get fucking bored, the number of "funny molestation" gags don't end with just Mikuru, Kyon is supposed to come off like a beleaguered Everyman but instead he comes off as an insufferable, cynical, selfish, egotistical boor (and a bore!) who's deluded himself into thinking he and he alone really understands the situations they're all stuck in - and the series wants you to believe he's right, not to mention that for all Haruhi's vaunted control over the fucking cosmos DID YOU PERHAPS NOTICE THAT HARUHI WASN'T IN CONTROL OF THE FIRST TIME SHE USED HER ABILITIES? No, that was Kyon, aka "I am John Smith", thanks for playing "I might be impotent and a loser but I bet if I just knew a reality warper she'd listen to me and it would be my will that shaped the world after all, haha".

[...]

The entire premise of the show is that the main characters can and will have their own identities, their bodies, nonconsensually violated at any time, without permission, and that they should just shut the fuck up and deal because Haruhi's just too awesome to be denied, and really, it's okay, because Haruhi just wants to have fun! And Kyon can control her, don't you know? Don't you trust Kyon? You should! Because he's a jackass, but he's a jackass Haruhi will listen to!

In summary: Consent? Who needs that?

If you like the show, I'm not judging you. Just recognize and acknowledge the vile misogynist shit that TMHS (and a lot of anime full of fanservice, moe-blobs, and otherwise directed at the male gaze) are perpetuating. Be aware. There's some sketchy shit out there that I like, but I still acknowledge it's sketchy.

eisen again: The most execrable part of HARUHI and its fandom is not that the show itself contains cynically misogynistic elements - but that the show itself, and its fandom by extension, often sees nothing wrong with the way these elements are presented, and in fact considers them exemplary of their worldview, glorifies them as wish fulfillment.... I just can't accept a show that treats learned sociopathy as a desirable characteristic in everyday life.

If you think I'm overreacting, being too sensitive, and ought to just let it go or ignore it? Kindly go fuck yourself. I don't need to enjoy yet another piece of popular culture that perpetuates vile, heteronormative, patriarchal crap while reducing me to a sexual object.

Comments

[eisen]

RIDEBACK and TORADORA!. I love both of them so much it's ridiculous. ;_;

(The manga version of RIDEBACK is so much better, though - it's basically Gundam, with transforming motorbike robots and a female version of Amuro and and and. Oh, just go read my reaction post to the whole thing, why don't you, I am bad at words.)

[feuervogel]

I need to download the rest of Rideback, because there was NO INTEREST in the club to watch more. Booooo. (Add that to the litany for why I quit...)

I mean, really: transforming motorbike robots. How can this not appeal? Oh, well, maybe it's the girl main character and girl BFF. *grumble*

There's still no scanslation of the manga, is there? My Japanese reading ability is practically non-existent now, and I remember there being a complex political thing in the background, in the anime anyway.

[eisen]

Bah! If they can watch a bazillion slice of life moeblob shows (hell, IDK if they watched K-ON!, but especially if so), then they can shut the fuck up and deal with giant robots. I will be the first to admit RIDEBACK is paced veeeery sedately, by giant robot standards, but really, a lot happens each episode!

HAHA AND SEE, THAT'S ONE OF ITS MAJOR DRAWS FOR ME. (In fact, the deafening silence with which anime fandom greeted RIDEBACK's female giant robot pilot was one of the major motivations behind the creation of the FEMALE GIANT ROBOT PILOT LIST, so.)

Yeah, no translations at all, IIRC. Which ... haha, let me try not to read any bias into that, either. Yeah, not working! :|

I don't know, my Japanese comprehension is pretty poor and I had no trouble. It's fairly complex in the backstory-to-explain-how-we-got-here-from-there, but if you've read any semi-dystopian narrative ever, you pretty much can fill in the blanks to get to where the story wants you to go. I mean, there is more to it, but I'm not kidding when I say that the manga isn't very subtle in its imagery - if you've paid even the slightest bit of attention to world news in the past ten years, it's, uhm. Not difficult to decipher. I mean, Rin was born on 9/11, for starters, and even if you couldn't read the very clear "9/11" in the text, the visual cue of the two burning towers would probably give it away. And likewise nearly every other major political parallel in the narrative - "subtle" is not the name of the game, in other words. (I wasn't kidding about "basically Gundam", you know?) The anime plays it more complicated conspiracy-theorist than the manga - the manga is just ... very much an old-school Real Robot story, with all the lack of subtlety and violence and honorable ideals that implies - it just happens to have female characters in the roles usually assigned to men, doing all the things hot-blooded boy protags would usually do It's worth hunting down, IMHO, just for that.

[feuervogel]

I don't think they've watched K-ON, at least not during the club. Individuals may have watched it, though. (Here are all the schedules from the last 10 years; earlier ones are sort of reconstructed based on memory. Anything remotely romancey (RoV, Nodame, BDB) had a mass exodus. FUCK THEM.)

I love the 08th MS Team like burning. It's almost as good as 0083/Stardust Memory (I'm biased, though, because GATO). AND PATLABOR. CLANCY AND NOA. <3 ALSO MIRIA FALLYNA JENIUS.

Where can I find scans of Rideback manga? I need to read it. (I have a soft spot, as I mentioned, for dystopias and police states. Adding kickass heroines and giant robots makes it better.)

[kirin]

There was *some* interest in Rideback, which is why we got a few more episodes thrown on the schedule, just not enough to bump it to a regular slot. But you're right, we should totally dl the rest and I'll watch it with you alongside GK.

[feuervogel]

People still left, though, or were like "this is boring."

MORE RIDEBACK! We need more mecha shows with female leads.