[quigonkenny]

Originally Posted by wtflux

were there any other colored illustrations?

there are no vol9 spoilers in this post.

get ready for a whale of a post =/ maybe i shouldn't post this. anyways, it's so big that i decided to split up the parts that were taking up the most space so as not to create an eyesore. heh, i've probably written a lot of things i don't even believe.

"I'm not trying to look down on you right now"

well, your first sentence struck of condescension(the part i quoted in my previous post), when really thinking about things like this is just a way of having fun for me--as contradictory as it may seem, since i'm criticizing his writing. i don't take any offense now, though. anyways...

as a disclaimer, while you're reading this please try to remember that i am judging Haruhi as a series of novels, not as a collection of short stories. if I was judging tanigawa's writing as a collection of short stories, and not from an overall view(although they are written as short stories, since they all clearly connect together this is not inappropriate), things would be very different.

some of your questions can be answered by reading the long post where i posted a spoiler of the last page of vol9.

clarification of plot and the issue i take with tani's writing

Spoiler:

first, i'll clarify what i mean when i say the "two main plots"(i did this in the aforementioned post, but i'll do it here anyways):
1. the nature of haruhi's relation to kyon(ie why is he essential to haruhi? presumably romance; in other words, the romance plot.)
2. the who/what/when/why/how of haruhi's powers and what she will do with them(if she ever finds out), if that's clear

the fact that it is not all resolved is not my complaint. my complaint is that it(those two main plot points) have barely changed from when it started. yes, there is a great deal of character development--but it is not a character driven story, because those developments have no relevance or impact(thus far, as far as i can tell) on the main plotlines. they are side stories. it's great that yuki can feel emotions, but if that doesn't have any meaning in terms of Haruhi as a story(vs a collection of short stories) until it actually has an effect on the plot. the ratio of haruhi's plot advancement(virtually 0) vs the number of side stories and length of the novels, for how often tanigawa refers back to the main plot, is far too high to be considered a great story. no plot advancement+frequent reference to main plot+tons of short stories which do not contribute=bad overall.

various points on the haruhi plot

Spoiler:

throughout the novels, not just recently, tanigawa drops hints that kyon cares for haruhi, and vice versa, but he's really just beating around the bush with it. and he has been doing so since the first novel, even the first chapter(in any story, when people introduce the possibility of a romantic relationship and it is not utterly crushed, it becomes a conflict--it happens to be one of haruhi's main conflicts--i'd argue it started with people suggesting a "special relationship" between the two and saying things like "kyon always did like weird girls").

examples: haruhi tying mikuru's ponytail in the baseball chapter. kyon freaking out when he discovers haruhi may not exist. haruhi's suspicion and anger at kyon during snow mountain syndrome regarding yuki. etc, etc, etc.
This constant display of jealousy/affection hasn't gone anywhere for 8 novels(the kiss and the scenes leading up to it, in the first novel, are both arguably the best part of the series and the last development of this conflict) and yet it's so prevalent in the novels. hinthinthinthinthinthinthinthint is all tanigawa is doing. even the valentine's story ended up as nothing. (un?)fortunately, we can't actually say "nothing" until the end since we don't know what he will use to evoke the plot movement, but tanigawa has nevertheless had many points at which he could have levered major change(and chose not to, sometimes in the face of realism).

the story behind tanabata, how haruhi got her powers, why she has them, and pretty much everything about kyon is all a mystery. it's been so long since the thing was touched other than volume 4's "Oh, Haruhi's powers can be transferred." that it seems like they're just a plot device to get action started now. and even so, tanigawa constantly hints that kyon is somehow linked to haruhi's powers(both through Koizumi's observations and time travelling), but doesn't tell us why. this plot line has better development than the romance one, however; while minor and not actually revealing any truths besides "kyon was john smith, who helped haruhi trace a symbol"(to which i say, "what of it? if you think about it, the only thing that tells us is that haruhi is closely tied to kyon, which we SORT OF got wind of from the fact that kyon is the only one who can stop her from destroying fucking reality itself"), the time travelling events were developments in this area.

my ideas on plot and why i am disappointed with haruhi's plot dragging out

Spoiler:

if there's a reason i want him to wrap it up it's because i feel it's already gone on long enough. volume 9 is 300 pages. i imagine the other volumes are of similar length. I am of the opinion that both character AND plot dynamism are necessary for a novel's story to be good. after 9 volumes of that length something other than "kyon is john smith" should happen.

As to why something major should happen soon(or should have happened already...), I'll try to make an analogy. A good plot functions as a rollercoaster; you go up, you go down, you go up, you go down, and you go UP AND DOWN REALLY FAST at the end, both emotionally and in your feeling of understanding of what's going on. A good plot should change often and leave you guessing all the time; the more actively engaged your brain is in thinking about the plot, the better. I'm sure you've heard this analogy before, but if I have to explain it more that's fine. Anyhow, with every novel that nothing actually happens Tanigawa makes his overall roller coaster longer without really adding more bumps--therefore instead of "up, down, up, down, updownupdownUPDOWN," it becomes "upppppp... downnnnnnnnnnnnn... uppppppp... etc.". In other words, the mind's sense of the overall plot is dulled the longer the story is dragged out. The plot is actually fairly static since volume 1, so it's more like it went up(or up and down several times in that one volume, it was great) and hasn't moved much.

Having said that(i hope it made sense... doubt it though), if i offered you two stories:
1. a story with an explosive plot where things that matter HAPPEN(i.e. both plot and characters are very dynamic)
2. a story with a plot where a bunch of pointless, unrelated to plot side-stories happen, intermittent with empty chapters and hints that focus on the main plot but don't actually have anything to do with it, right?
wouldn't you agree 1 is more interesting? 2. is, of course, haruhi, and while the side stories are definitely interesting they are just that: side stories. so it's really like a collection of stories. if i were to judge haruhi as a collection of stories rather than a novel series, i might be saying something very different right now.

that pretty much sums up the reasons for my dissatisfaction, i believe. i hope i'm not repeating myself too much here. don't get me wrong(after all that i hope you dont =p), i don't desire a swift ending to everything because it's dragged on too long. that wouldn't be good. if he were to start a chain of events that ended up ending things, even if it took 2-3 novels, that would be fine. but the long space of nothingness would leave a sour taste in my mouth in terms of plot analysis(although the side/short/character specific stories are nice). the novel name "the shock of suzumiya haruhi" has me hoping.

You go on about how you don't like the lack of development in what you consider "the main plot," but you ignore what I (and I'm sure others) feel are the best things about the Haruhi series, and that's the development of the peripheral characters and the fleshing out of the Haruhiverse. Why else would volumes 4 and 7 be so popular when there was literally no development between Kyon and Haruhi, and little exploration into Haruhi's powers (besides their "borrowing" in volume 4)? While those things may not necessarily make up "the main plot," there's no denying they're central to the main storyline, and also very enjoyable.

And from what I've heard of volume 9, we're getting even more of that kind of development, which I for one am happy about. See, the great thing about centering the story around the development of the characters and the universe, instead of the plot, is that in this case the resolution of the plot will mean the resolution of the series, but you can develop the characters and the universe until the cows come home. I mean, after you hook up Kyon and Haruhi, and after she finds out about her powers (or we find out that Kyon's the one with the powers, if you subscribe to that school of thought), then that's it. I mean, what could be next after that?