I’ve never really done the fansub thing, for whatever reason. That, however, hasn’t prevented me from keeping track of what others are saying about the series of the new season. Most hilarious to me has been the reaction to The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi: after the first episode (especially for those who couldn’t make it through the entire thing), the response was something along the lines of zOMG WTF yo! WORST. SHOW. EVER.

After the second episode, people were hailing the arrival of the animessiah.

(For those of you who haven’t been keeping track of Haruhi: the first episode, although presented in widescreen, had vertical bars on the sides of the picture—effectively returning the show’s picture to standard 4:3 dimensions. It featured a theme song sung horribly off-key, and—from what I can gather—a horribly conceived plot with terrible acting and extremely shoddy special effects. In the last minutes of the episode, the show removes the black bars on the sides of the screen and reveals that the entire episode was actually a home movie filmed by Haruhi & co. The second episode unveiled the show’s actual opening and ending—the latter featuring an extraordinarily well-animated dance sequence [virtually unheard-of in anime: the end sequence is usually a series of pans over static images]—that sandwiched an extraordinarily well-animated episode. Memento can hook you up with the home video opening, as well as the actual opening and ending; watch them in that order to get the full effect.)

The whiplash that Haruhi has given the anime community has made me an instant fan—despite the fact that all I’ve seen of the show is contained in the three videos linked above, and various screencaps floating around the web. Haruhi’s video looks simultaneously horrifying and hilarious; it appeals to me in the same way that B-grade horror movies hosted by Joe Bob Briggs appealed to me back in the day. (Which is, almost undoubtedly, the same way that a car accident attracts rubberneckers.)