And so it begins, just as the prophecies predicted (somewhat ambiguously). The thundering cries of male ecstasy shake the ground as hordes of frenzied fanboys awake from their winter slumber and descend upon the unsuspecting intarweb. As onslaught and carnage devastate 4chan, no one notices any difference. The absolutist doctrine of the Great One sweeps across the land, engulfing it in a chaotic whirlwind of moé and unleashing upon its innocent a renewed crusade. Throughout history, it has been called many names — ragnarok, apocalypse, rapture — but they are all one and the same. The end of time is finally upon us. The Second Coming of Haruhi.

One day in the distant future, after humanity recovers from a global cataclysm and historians attempt to piece together the past from fragmented chunks of centuries-old hard disk drives, the above paragraph will be so epic. But until then, let’s talk about this new Haruhi thingamogie.

Let’s see… The brand new episode aired on the 22nd. It is now the night of the 24th. We can therefore safely assume that every single person on Earth with a pair of working eyeballs has already watched the episode thrice and written two blog entries on it, except me. As a result, there is little point for me to talk about the episode itself, which by the way is awesome.

How about we talk about relativity instead. Now, as the theory of relativity as put forth by Einstein — and no doubt originally conceptualized by Haruhi before she assumed her present human form — predicts, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. The phrasing of this statement is however somewhat misleading, as the equation doesn’t necessarily prove that nothing travels faster than the speed of light. It merely shows that it takes an infinite amount of energy to accelerate any mass to a speed infinitesimally close to the speed of light, which logically means that we cannot accelerate a mass to light speed and beyond due to the lack of sufficient energy in the universe. Also, a mass travelling at light speed gives a divide by zero error which crashes the universe’s operating system, Mac OS Ω.

However, something travelling faster than the speed of light is within the realms of theoretical imagination; the entity merely has to do so without having had to accelerate pass the light barrier. This means that either it has always been in the state of faster-than-light speed travel, or it had its kinetic reference frame instantly changed via some kind of apparent violation of the laws of energy conservation (e.g. when you jump through the portal in that awesome game with the psychopathic feminine robotic jailer). The exact state of any “entity” doing so and its subsequent interaction with the flow of time as perceived by ordinary matter such as us will forever remain a mystery except to the subconscious of the Haruhi overmind. It also probably can’t have any “mass” (as we know the term) unless it wants to deal with imaginary numbers.

This brings us to Haruhi’s wish for the Earth to reverse its direction of rotation. Though theoratically her message is being sent out at the speed of light in the form of the light reflecting off her handwritten note, the message itself does not need to be bounded by its medium. A wish is but information, and although electromagnetic radiation is the fastest information carrier known to mere mortals, there is a high likelihood that a more fundamental medium, which Haruhi’s true form operates in, exists. Also, it is safe to say that due to attenuation the electromagnetic information radiating from her tanabata paper will never reach Altair and Vega in any readable form, even by higher beings wielding godly powers.

Therefore, since we do know that the information representing her wish will in fact reach Altair and Vega (due to the fact that she is the supreme creator) but at the same time this information cannot be conveyed by light, we can conclusively say that some kind of unknown cosmic force is at work in transmitting this information and this force is probably not bounded by the limited equations as put forth by the divinely-inspired Einstein. Also, isn’t Mikuru cute? She’s never been my favourite character, but oh isn’t she so cute?

So cute

Anyway, back to the mortal world. It appears that Kyo-ani has outdone itself again this time. I’m not talking about the show itself, but rather the fact that these geniuses have managed to conceive a cunning plan to force people to essentially rewatch the first season, effectively doubling the number of episodes in the second run without incurring any additional cost. Kyo-ani has rejected the boring old concept of “second season” and replaced it with the new-age hipness that is a remixed hodgepodge of new episodes and old episodes sorted by chronological order.

Since some of the new episodes actually take place before some of the old ones, this brilliant tactical move has completely screwed up our concept of the space-time continuum grouping episodes by seasons and numbers. It’s kind of like relativity: depending on the reference frame of the observer, this is either episode 1 or episode 8. I’m going with the former because I reject Kyo-ani’s fancy smancy liberal elitist broadcasting order.

Of course this also means that we can’t tell when the next new episode will be out. It’s kind of like Schrödinger’s Cat: until the next episode airs and gets fansubbed by ten dozen groups, thus collapsing the quantum wave equation, we won’t know for sure whether it will be a new or old episode. How exciting. Although, I suppose one could just collapse the wave equation before that by reading Newtype episode summaries or something, but where’s the fun in that?

On a final closing note, here’s a shocking confession: unlike everyone else, I took the initiative NOT to read the original novels beyond the third book. My experiences with the “first season” (damn you Kyo-ani!) led me to believe that this will result in a much more enjoyable viewing experience. Nagaru Tanigawa may be a genius for coming up with Haruhi (or rather, being influenced by Haruhi’s subconscious to write a book about her), but the story only truly comes to life as animated by Kyo-ani. Reading the novels just feels too much like cheating.

It is therefore in this open spirit of ignorance that I shall blog the rest of the “season” (damn you Kyo-ani!), so please keep that in mind when you post any comments. If you want to discuss unaired plot development from the novel, this is not the place to do it. Instead, you can talk about how adorable Mikuru is in this episode and how the theory of relativity is awesome.

P.S. If I were Kyon, I’d screw up the past just for the lulz.