I find myself looking back at the “Suzumiya Haruhi” series as I watched this episode. And I probably will do so all along the series. Now I’m not saying these two series are similar, but to me they bring out the same king of feel. It’s that feeling of a character driven interaction, the clashing of personalities and seeing how each character reacts to the other.
This weeks (or last weeks?) episode we see Chitanta raise three flags saying she has some ulterior motives to dragging Oreki around. As I try to forget the spoiler info I got, I’d say I’m just really intrigued to know what it is Chitanda wants Oreki to do for her or free from her, as she discretely implies.
With Oreki on the other hand, we see more of his character and how much he dislikes activity, loves to keep to himself and just wants to laze around. The way the director chooses to depict and express his personality throughout the episode was very clear and understandable, even from my perspective since there were times when I too thought to myself “this isn’t me” as I realized the way I interacted with others.
So we gotz a new character, Ibara Mayaka, I was quite attracted to the way she looked at some scenes (like the picture above) but at others I felt the same side-character-ish vibe as I got from Fukube. Other than that I don’t really have much to say for her aside from wondering if she or Fukube will have their own story. Thinking things again, this is a 21 episode series so it’s likely that they will get their time but until then Oreki and Chitanda seem to be the main focus of the current arc.
Going back to Oreki and Chitanda, I’m once again impressed by the way the director shows their interaction and relationship. The way Chitanda tries to pull in Oreki while Oreki thinks his way out of the situation, and all the while each character has their own clear reason for doing so. Sometimes from watching their interactions I can’t help but silently wish for romance flag to pop out.
Other few things that got my attention were the visual representation of Orekis explanation of the mystery. This really goes to show how much the director puts his efforts to not only tell through words but show through action or anything visual, and its works really well. Granted I can't understand what was written, never the less an excellent addition.
It’s just episode two and I’m quite impressed at how the series excels at a simple theme and genre. I say this cause upon watching the trailer I just found myself interested but without expectation. At first I thought this was a slice-of-life, mystery series but not so. This 2nd episode has made me think that the series is more about the characters with the mystery genre at the side as a way to complement the main story of the characters. Overall another perfectly executed episode.
OkamiSan~
