2010-09-21, 02:37 | Link #3021 |
Anime Cynic
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: USA
Age: 35
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Heh, putting me on the spot. Alright then. It's been months since I've seen the series or touched the novels, so my memory is pretty hazy. It's one thing to remember thinking, "Hey! No! You can't do that! That doesn't make sense!" and a completely different thing to remember what the exact situations were that prompted that reaction. But, I'll try to come up with a quick list now and think about it more at work tomorrow.
Probably the most crucial thing is that the series couldn't have happened at all if not for Kyon's maddening complacency and unwavering compliance. Throughout the novels, you constantly read things like "I don't know what came over me, but..." and "I don't know what I was thinking, but..." You know what came over Kyon? Plot convenience. Normal people don't talk with the clearly crazy person (see: the rest of Kyon's class), normal people don't immediately obey someone commanding them, "Help me make a club," and so on. The other brigade members have an excuse for following Haruhi like puppets. Kyon doesn't. Spoiler for Disappearance:
And while we're on the subject of Disappearance, it can't hurt to bring up the nonsensical time travel that I argued about over the course of three pages in the movie thread. The debate quieted once I had accepted the fact that Haruhi was more powerful than logic, but now I'm not so sure. After all, I'm pretty sure the Event that happened "three years ago" that screwed up everything and introduced aliens, time travelers, and espers only came AFTER a certain party had been time travelling. It's one thing to have closed loops after Haruhi becomes a god, but to have time travel BEFORE that? It just can't happen. My last issue for now happens to be the abrupt personality turnaround in Live a Live that we've just talked about. That was there solely to make Haruhi look darn good (and it worked); from what I know, she never once shows an ounce of care for people outside of the SOS Brigade ever again. Well, would you look at that? I guess I could think of some objections after all.
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2010-09-21, 03:38 | Link #3022 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2009
Age: 34
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Kyon is Kyon. Him showing an absurd amount of complacency is a part of his character. As long as its somewhat consist, its fine. Sure, if it was only one in awhile, I'd see what you mean, but you can't just decry it as wrong because the character that is Kyon is super complient. To you its weird, to me, who is a bit of a push over, its believeable.
I think in volume 8 there was a girl who went into the club and Haruhi was rather kind to her. I'll admit, outside the club, it is rare to see her show compassion. Still, there is a noticable difference in her attitude inside the club. Spoiler for dissapearance:
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2010-09-21, 10:15 | Link #3023 | |
Anime Cynic
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: USA
Age: 35
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Quote:
And Haruhi is Asuka, and Yuki is Rei, and Itsuki is Kaworu, and Tanaguchi is Toji, and Kunikida is Kensuke (the last two mainly in the roles they play), and Asakura is Hikari (with a knife)... Well heck, with an all-star cast like that, it's no wonder the show took off.
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2010-09-21, 17:28 | Link #3024 |
High Saint of Asakuraism
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Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: The Great White North
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Very interesting points, and although I'm offering some partial explanations from my point of view on it, I can completely see where you're coming from and agree, but let me explain just where and why I agree with you.
Regarding Kyon: I can agree with you here, in that he's shown inhuman levels of complacency on the whole, but there is somewhat of a method to the madness:
Now, to me, there's already one huge, glaring problem with this: it's been subtly implied that Sasaki is the one who caused Kyon to abandon his love of the supernatural, which might factor in to why he's interested in Haruhi. But that's rather contradictory, because if any other "weird girls" expressed interest in him after what Sasaki did to him, I don't see a rational reason why he wouldn't run away as far and fast as he possibly could, or do everything in his power to avoid contact with such people. Spoiler for Re: Your Spoilered Section and Disappearance In General:
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2010-09-21, 21:15 | Link #3025 |
Senior Member
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Gamer_2k4 - You raise some good and interesting points. To save space (and make room for novel spoilers), I'm going to make a very belated response to you here:
Spoiler for Haruhi discussion, including many novel spoilers, beyond Disappearance:
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Last edited by Triple_R; 2010-09-21 at 22:47. |
2010-09-21, 23:48 | Link #3026 | |
Sav'aaq!
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Hyrule
Age: 51
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Quote:
And "clearly crazy people" tend to attract and deflect attention with equal alacrity. Look at Charles Manson. That guy was clearly several bubbles off of plumb, but he had people hanging off his every action. Haruhi isn't quite as psychotic, but she's still got the charisma, not to mention she's unquestionably hot, and an instant ringer for any school club that could win her. Spoiler for spoiler:
And the "event" three years ago (four, now) didn't happen as a result of Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody. The time travelers can't travel to before the "event", so it had to have occurred before the time to which the Mikurus traveled to. Everyone who misses that bit of time travel logic brings up the same suggestion you just did, so this is hardly the first time I've had this discussion on this forum or others. And I'm hardly the only person to have argued it. Kyon's necessity in the past is not to "awaken" Haruhi, but to get her to come to North High and have a fixation on "John Smith". Most likely the baseball game her father took her to is when she "awakened". Anticlimactic, I know, but Archimedes' "eureka" moment happened while he was washing his hoo-hoo, so what can you do? As for Live Alive, don't forget that this happened right after Kyon nearly messed up Haruhi's pretty face for her inconsiderate actions toward Mikuru. If nothing else, this should shine a light on why Haruhi keeps Kyon around while her subconscious self is certainly well aware of his normalcy. She listens to him. She allows him to affect her decisions. She even does things for him (Volume 7). Maybe you should concentrate more on why that might be than whether that might not make sense...
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2010-09-22, 02:27 | Link #3027 |
High Saint of Asakuraism
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Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: The Great White North
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Oh, I forgot to mention a slightly darker interpretation of Kyon's apathy, that being that Haruhi has subconsciously on some level made him willing to stick around and deal with all the stuff that she does, while still allowing him a certain level of dissent.
That's just a theory, and a rather dark one at that. There's no real evidence to argue for or against it either way, but it's something that's popped into my mind now and then.
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2010-09-22, 12:13 | Link #3028 |
Anime Cynic
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: USA
Age: 35
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Or, if you care to go even deeper, this whole thing MIGHT be explained best as a dream of Kyon's. Think about it: despite being an introverted (yes, he is, even if he's not at the Alt!Yuki extreme), nerdy (he doesn't play sports and has a pretty broad pool of historical knowledge) pushover, he's accepted, liked, and relied upon. Kyon can't convince his own subconscious that he should be the lead character in the dream, so instead he makes that person the villain, granting himself the power to keep her in check.
The whole thing really does play out like a nerd fantasy. You've got two really attractive girls and one cute one, and there's all sorts of (sometimes very) suggestive cosplaying going on. Everyone has special powers, and yet, somehow, Kyon is still the center of attention. One god, Haruhi, does whatever she wants (relieving him of the burden of initiative or accountability), but she'll stop for him if he thinks things are getting out of hand. The other god, Yuki, does nothing but protect him and obey his rare commands. Mikuru's just the eye candy: the primary focus of Kyon's fantasies. She's powerless, and sometimes it seems like the only point of her time travelling abilities is to make Big Mikuru show up. Any other time we see Mikuru time travelling, it's so that Kyon can steal the show. Of course, we have Itsuki for the sake of balance (read: to keep this from being a harem story). Naturally, he seems to be...attracted to Kyon as well. He's not a threat to Kyon's "power" in any way, and he relies on Kyon just as much as the rest of the brigade. Kyon's two friends are pretty much what you'd expect in this sort of fantasy, too. Kunikida is forgettable, and Tanaguchi is a bigger tool than Kyon is. Heck, if the latter is a dream construction, it might just be Kyon saying, "Sure, I may be infatuated with Mikuru, but I'll never be as bad as people like that." Again, it's what you'd expect a dream to be. Any time the world is in danger, Kyon's the only one that can save it, and he's also the one that has an immunity to the change. He's surrounded by good looking, powerful people that still somehow defer to him, a relative nobody. Despite danger not being entirely absent, no one ever dies or has any lasting injuries. (Yes, I know. It's not lasting. For all we know, that person was better the next day.) It's just one big utopia, tailor-made for Kyon. It'd be interesting to analyze what role of Kyon's subconscious each character plays, should this actually be a dream, but unfortunately I don't have time for that right now.
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2010-09-22, 15:26 | Link #3029 | |
Sav'aaq!
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Hyrule
Age: 51
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Quote:
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2010-09-23, 11:14 | Link #3032 |
One PUNCH!
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Join Date: Dec 2005
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TVTropes gives a few: Unreliable Narrator
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2010-09-23, 12:07 | Link #3033 |
Anime Cynic
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: USA
Age: 35
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Right, I consulted that. However, the description for Kyon says the following things:
TV Tropes only has two categories that unreliable narrators fall into: liars and lunatics. Kyon is neither. I can understand anyone saying, "This is from his perspective, so of course it's going to have bias or guesswork." But the same could be said for any narrated story, and I have to believe that "unreliable narrator" isn't redundant. So besides that, is there any reason to doubt Kyon's narration?
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Last edited by Gamer_2k4; 2010-09-23 at 12:30. |
2010-09-23, 13:15 | Link #3034 |
High Saint of Asakuraism
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Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: The Great White North
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I think that his narrative unreliability in the eyes of most stems from the fact that he goes out of his way to never willingly acknowledge the fact that Haruhi likes him, despite the fact that there's been a fair amount of evidence to the contrary.
To maintain such a stance, he either has to be wilfully ignorant about the entire thing, or really freaking dense. Given his nature, a lot of people think it's the former rather than the latter.
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2010-09-23, 14:37 | Link #3035 | |
ねぇ、知ってる?
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: florida
Age: 39
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Quote:
I know there were a few other things in Melancholy (which I've read most recently) that tipped me off to him not being entirely forthcoming, but the main one is the way he arranges the conversations in the retelling so that people seem to respond to unvoiced thoughts/narration, and names get left off. (I started to reread Sighs the other day, and a few things at the very beginning fit, too, but I've already forgotten what they were, exactly.) Unreliable narrators don't have to be completely or obviously lying or insane. It's more interesting when the unreliability is subtle and is more in how the story is told and which biases show, in my opinion. Also, about "any narrator can be unreliable" - it's true, but there are things about the narrations that will make it obvious that what we're getting isn't the ... shit, I'm forgetting the word that contrasts with "unreliable narrator", but there is one that applies to first-person pov where that narrator is meant to be trusted as giving a complete picture. And there's also the impersonal third person omniscient which can be used for unreliable narratives, but usually isn't. Also, just because the narrator is unreliable doesn't mean we can never trust him as being truthful - it just means that we can't take everything he says at face value. And, honestly, do you take everything Kyon says at face value? I don't, and that's why I decided that he's an unreliable narrator. |
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2010-09-23, 15:43 | Link #3036 | |||
Anime Cynic
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: USA
Age: 35
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2010-09-24, 01:11 | Link #3037 | |||
ねぇ、知ってる?
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: florida
Age: 39
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Quote:
To be frank, someone naturally telling a story over dinner about what they did that day? is an unreliable narrative, because we have imperfect memories and our biases cloud our experiences. Quote:
Also, I do take a wider view of unreliability than those definitions, apparently. Though not entirely...I guess "seriously compromised" just makes it seem a lot more dire than it really is. I'd put it more like "is less than 100% credible". Quote:
Like I said, there's a specific term used for the opposite of unreliable narrators, but I'm completely failing at remembering what it is. It's been a couple years since I wrote my senior paper on the subject (it was about the reliability of the narrative of Dracula, because of course that's an epistolary novel, and furthermore, several of the characters have agendas regarding why or what they record). I would love to thumb through Melancholy and Sighs to point out specific instances (other than the names thing, or responses to unvoiced lines) that make me think Kyon is not entirely to be trusted in what he says, but I really don't have time these days to do research that isn't for school. :/ (Kinda annoyed, actually, that I didn't have time to finish my reread of Sighs and get started rereading Boredom before the semester began.) |
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2010-09-29, 12:54 | Link #3038 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2008
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I'm just trying to wrap my arms around Haruhi's world, but one of the things I found interesting with Yuki Nagato/The Data Entities is the remark she made about her/their reluctance to alter the weather during the baseball game episode. One must wonder just why do they really care how her slight weather modifications (which really would've helped things out in that episode) would affect someplace in a few hundred years? Even if it's mere "altruism", why bother mind the welfare of us relative amoebas? Does this imply that they believe Haurhi's "God reign" is pretty much a permanent status quo so they try not to mess with her creations (which says much about how much they'll ever glean of her reality generating power to create their own universe) or that there's even a greater "reality" beyond her that must be respected and cared for? If the latter is true then to me (and I don't really know much about this girl-God counterpart of Haruhi's) it makes this other girl-God just as legit a player on the universal stage as Haruhi and so pulls the plug on Haruhi's uniqueness as all-powerful god.
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2010-10-05, 17:01 | Link #3040 |
ねぇ、知ってる?
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: florida
Age: 39
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I'm almost positive that some of these things, if not all, will be addressed in book 10, or maybe even 11. We really don't know that much about her yet, and the problem is compounded by the split narrative, I'm sure.
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comedy, kadokawa, school life, science fiction, shounen |
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