Light Novels

The American release of Tanigawa Nagaru’s Haruhi Suzumiya novels are in the home stretch, with the recent release of The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya. It’s the first of a two-part story, to be concluded in the next and last novel, so I’ll hold off on a full review. There were, however, a few things I found interesting with this one.

The most obvious feature of this novel is that the narrative splits halfway through, and what occurs over the next few days differs significantly between the two versions. Though there is some overlap between the two, the differences aren’t subtle like, say, the “Endless Eight” story arc from a few volumes back. I don’t see any hint as to how these two parallel timelines may relate to each other, except that Kyon, our intrepid narrator, does mention not having encountered a slider yet near the beginning of the book. Is it time for one to finally appear?

Spice & Wolf is a series that I’ve wanted to write about for a long time, but I’ve struggled with actually putting pen to paper for it. It’s like the Haruhi series in that it’s charming and competently written, but lacks the subtlety and complexity that make for a great, re-readable novel series.

Spice & Wolf’s basic premise is that Lawrence, a traveling merchant in a world loosely based on late Medieval or Renaissance Europe, meets Holo, a wolf-spirit and harvest goddess in a village he does business in, and agrees to help her return to her homeland of Yoitsu, far in the north. The overall plot is a promising one, but author Hasekura Isuna has also set up a potentially major story-writing problem, because one of our protagonists is an almost literal deus ex machina.

Much like my experience with moe my interest in the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise has suddenly waned to the point that I just don’t much care about it anymore, despite enjoying the series, both the anime versions and Tanigawa Nagaru’s original novel series, for the first time since I first encountered it in my college anime club six years ago.

[]Part of this may stem from my general fatigue with high school settings in anime and its related media, but since I still enjoy several other ongoing series with such settings, that doesn’t seem to be the reason. Neither does the possibility that even after seven novels, two television seasons, and one film, I’ve just burned out. After all, I’m still following Oh, My Goddess!, which is far longer and less interesting, especially in recent volumes. I just finished The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya, the seventh novel, and it wasn’t any better or worse than previous volumes. So, these two are, at most, minor factors.