Is it Comiket yet?

Well, I decided, several weeks ago, to blog every episode of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, if for no other reason than to force myself to keep up with this blog, even once school starts back — which will be in a week and a half, by the way. Sometimes I like the “year-round” system Japan uses, that we in America sometimes consider, and promptly discard, for our public schools — the return to school seems like it would be less shocking and horrible if you just got more breaks that weren’t as long.

Anyway, Episode five of Haruka delves into a dark world; it shows the landscape of a veritable Lovecraft Country of terror and abysmal fright: high school shenanigans. Nerdery gets two passing mentions in this episode: the first when Nobunaga talks up the summer Comiket at the beginning, and the second when Haruka does the same at the end. In between is the kind of fluff that made me stop watching Tokimeki Memorial: Only Love. I will remind you, if you’ve forgotten, that I have a strange streak in me that forces me to finish shows, even if it’s years after I begin. I enjoyed To Heart well enough, though it wasn’t the force of glory and bliss for me that it was for some. I despised To Heart: Remember my Memories, seriously. I knew I despised it after the first episode, and could sense a future of agony after the second. However, I viewed the two series as one, and forced myself to sit through the horror. I even went so far as to watch the first episode of To Heart 2, and finally ducked out before I pulled my intestines out through my face in an effort to throttle myself with the bleeding length.

Anyway, back to Haruka. Episode five summary: everyone is cute, everyone loves everyone, and more than one woman is falling in love with our gormless protagonist. This could have been covered in the intro. It is covered in the intro, but with more interesting visuals. Fanservice amuses me, by the way. I have not sworn myself as an enemy of pany shots, though a series constructed wholly to deliver these to the viewer generally loses me if it’s not funny enough. This episode wasn’t very funny, and the fanservice went up. How? Pool time.

I’ve made it clear previously that I don’t expect this show to be constantly up in my face about the plight of the otaku in Japan. I had hoped it would have a little more to do with otaku. I may be jaded, bitter, or insane, but generally nerds are driven by their interests. Years ago The Ferrett wrote an essay about the difference, as he perceived it, between nerds and not-nerds, or “normies” as I sometimes call them. Fill in your term of choice. Specifically, I think he talked about jocks. It used the typical high school breakdown, which I become less and less comfortable with as time goes on. However, a lot of what he said stuck with me. Specifically, many of the interests of people like jocks are only attainable during a certain age range, while nerds, devoted to more cerebral pursuits, can do what they like until they die. This is basically a tangent, sorry. The pertinent part has to do with “pursuit.” In this episode, Haruka does nothing pertaining to her interests. She talks a bit about piano, and we can only assume, at this point, that she enjoys playing piano. It could, conceivably, be something her father forces her to do. So far as I’ve seen, the series length hasn’t been announced — correct me if I’m wrong there. This would, then, be the classic “filler” episode, and as such, probably doesn’t even bear blogging about.

Basically, as my title line implies, I just really want to see the Comiket episode. Hopefully I’ll be settled enough from moving to watch (and blog!) it next week.