Behind The Nihon Review

In all honesty the years of speculation and wrangling and rampant fanboyism and cynical publicity from Kadokawa made me pretty despondent about the prospect of a sequel to KyoAni’s smash hit, Suzumiya Haruhi. Add in my natural apprehension towards sequels and it became pretty difficult by the end of it all to even feign an enthusiasm for the prospect of more goddess goodness. I take the philosophy that a disappointing sequel can sully the reputation of a good original, and I wish animation companies would take this idea on board, since it’d mean they’d have to consider sequel-making as a risk which needs to be carefully considered and requires a creative response, rather than the money spinning operation that it is in reality. KyoAni is also a different company than the one it was three years ago, when it had the Midas touch (yes, I know, a controversial statement… some will say they never had the Midas touch, while their most fervent fans will tell you they never lost it), and my major concern was that the loss of Yamamoto Yutaka in particular would be a significant one if a second Suzumiya Haruhi series is to have the sparkle of the first. Fortunately the sneak peek we got this week, packed with the familiar combination of wit and charm and a rather well written plot for a filler ep, has allayed a lot of those fears, and I can’t see any obvious reason why the upcoming sequel can’t be every bit as excellent as the first.

It still makes it pretty difficult to forgive the disenchanting marketing campaign from Kadokawa, but seeing the new episode reminded me that the anime itself is independent from the marketing behind it. I think at this stage it’s worth pointing out an article by sdshamshel from OGIUE MANIAX, who wrote about the unique relationship between the creators of Suzumiya Haruhi and the fans.

They are so aware of their fanbase that they might as well be standing on a pedestal dangling Haruhi merchandise and offering goods in exchange for your undying love and devotion and fan-generated content.

The thing that really concerns me about the Suzumiya Haruhi sequel marketing campaign is that it goes right to the heart of one of the worst things about otaku groupthink: the idea that, if you love an anime (or a franchise or, in some cases, even studio) enough, there is absolutely nothing that an associated company can do to perturb your undying loyalty to said anime/franchise/studio. Kadokawa exploited this with their frequent teasing, igniting hope and hype and then dashing these in an instant, but ensuring that Suzumiya Haruhi was never too far from the combined otaku conscience. It took the idea that no publicity is bad publicity to its logical conclusions and the fans lapped it up with loyal masochism, each time on the look-out for the next obscure rumour from Moonphase or printout in NewType that would get their hopes up without pausing, in their excitement, to consider the chance that they would be disappointed soon again. And each time, they were played like fools. It’s the type of troll that would get a 9/10 on /a/, a 10/10 being reserved for Kadokawa if a sequel was never made. But was there ever really an outcry, a threat that this was the final straw and that if the Haruhi anime wasn’t made this time, they wouldn’t watch it or buy the merchandise? If there was, it was never sustained or terribly vocal. Maybe it was just drowned out by the buzz of the die-hard fans, or maybe these threats were never taken seriously. Why would they, otaku have always voted with their wallets. A few fans bawwwing about a cynical marketing campaign don’t hold much power when the vast majority are willing to put up with the lengthy company run troll blitz for the sake of thirteen or fourteen new episodes of their favourite anime. Anime fans, it appears, have the mindset that the companies can do whatever they want, because at the end of the day, they’re the ones that provide the anime, and in otaku culture, not biting the hand that feeds it isn’t enough, one must also put their cash in it.

I’m currently wondering if Suzumiya Haruhi has been good for anime as a whole. Is anime big enough to sustain a hit like Suzumiya Haruhi? Hollywood, it goes without saying, is huge, and we probably get at least two The Dark Knight sized blockbusters each year (although most of them aren’t as good). It’s been three years since Suzumiya Haruhi, but it’s still been the biggest event in anime for the last five by a considerable margin. And, since then there have been so many anime which have drawn from it in some way, imitating the style, wit, meta-humour, and/or completely unabashed use of moe. Some have been decent (Hayate no Gotoku!, Kannagi), some have been mediocre, failing to capture the same “magic” (Manabi Straight, Lucky Star) while some have just been cynical and insultingly pandering (Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, K-On!, although I guess the last few episodes haven’t been too bad). There’s been an implicit assumption on the parts of studios, KyoAni in particular, that the next “hit” will be somewhat similar to Suzumiya Haruhi, and so far neither Lucky Star nor K-On!, both of which have been markedly popular but second-rate in comparison, have proven this idea wrong. Even slice-of-life moe, the dominion of J.C.Staff for so long and picked up more recently by the likes of Hal Film Maker and SHAFT, has become less about charm, experience and healing and more about KyoAni’s subtle style of covert fanservice, where a well timed cosplay scene or a striped bowl of rice is infinitely more exciting and arousing to the target audience than the bombardment of naked T&A from a single episode of Queen’s Blade. The point is that both KyoAni and Kadokawa know their audience, they know what gets them excited, what gets them on internet forums and blogs, what carefully chosen scenes and screenshots will get posted, talked about and analyzed to death, until the next episode comes along. And Kadokawa in particularly certainly isn’t above manipulating this for the sake of generating hype and attention, and, in the long run, selling DVDs and merchandise.

There’s a certain predictability of otaku culture and behaviour that comes with the understanding that companies like Kadokawa have evidently developed over the years, and my fear is what this will do to the variety of series that (I’d say) modern anime has enjoyed. The GFC kinda demands that there’s going to be less anime being made (some people have been brandying around figures that support this, warning: link NSFW), and while I’m basically going on “gut”, it certainly feels like that a few of the more recent seasons simply haven’t provided the same amount of variety that we, as fans, have enjoyed in recent times, throughout the years 2005-07 in particular. To generalize (as I’ve been doing for much of this article), otaku are complacent and tend to approach experimentation and novelty with skepticism (eg, the initial 2ch reaction to the Kimikiss anime). The wide reach and fervent admiration of Suzumiya Haruhi have given companies an insight into what it is otaku want like no other modern anime; the ironic thing is that, when it first came out, it was an experimental and innovative anime itself. But, to be pessimistic, I can’t really see much evidence that the trends it has inspired in anime are anything more than attempts by companies to exploit their newfound understanding of the otaku mind.