Know thyself.
Creative Staff
Story: Nagaru Tanigawa
Art: Gaku Tsugano
Character Design: Noizi Ito
Translation/Adaptation: Paul Starr
What They Say
After Haruhi’s rigorous selection process, a new member has been selected for the SOS Brigade! But Kyon feels uneasy around Yasumi Watahashi, not only because of the girl’s odd behavior, but also because he knows the peculiar-and sometimes threatening-types that tend to congregate around Haruhi Suzumiya…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Yasumi Watahashi has been accepted as the SOS brigades newest member, but she’s making Kyon uneasy. Clearly she can’t be a normal girl, because for the club that would be entirely abnormal. The cheerful freshman passes all of Haruhi’s tests with ease, and then begins to wiggly her way into the lives of the members. When she shows up unexpectedly at Kyon’s house it only weirds him out more. (And the artist still can’t draw a cat without making it look like a dog.)
Kyon of the beta universe has problems of his own to deal with. The opposite group trying to turn Sasaki into a god are still lurking and demanding an answer from Kyon. Once again, I’m not sure what they expect him to do about anything. Kyon has his usual circular discussion with Koizumi about things… which I fell asleep about halfway through and lost two hours of my day. (I wish I was joking about that.) Basically the first half of this volume proceeds like the previous, and then something happens!
Yasumi, the singular one, shows up in the beta universe. Which confirms something that should have been obvious from the start of this arc with it’s split universes. Yasumi is the last thing on the laundry list Haruhi is always going on about, she’s a slider that can jump between dimensions. She accidentally shows up in the beta universe to deliver a flower she meant to drop off in the alpha universe.
Shortly after the Yasumi confusion the anti-brigade makes it’s move. Luring Kyon out with yet another meeting it quickly turns into a kidnapping as Fujiwara locks them down in a closed space at the school. Kyon accurately tosses out a guess that Fujiwara is trying to change the future and we find out the reason for it soon after. In his future his sister doesn’t exist, and that sister just happens to be Asahina.
Before that truth comes out Fujiwara drags Kyon off to the brigade meeting room. Of course when he opens the door he comes face to face with himself, but because this isn’t time travel the universe doesn’t implode. Yasumi grabs the hands of the shocked Kyons and forces them to touch, instantly combining the two into one. Dazed by overlapping memories Koizumi arrives and informs Kyon the same thing just happened to him. That’s when elder Asahina appears to sternly admonish the wayward time traveler trying to tinker with history.
All the while a storm is brewing outside with two universes duking it out for superiority.
In Summary
An extremely dense volume of Haruhi finally gets to the point of this story arc. Both dimensions finally collide, but the mastermind of the Sasaki operation isn’t who I expected it to be. The consequences of meeting oneself are also not as apocalyptic as I expected. It’s unfortunate that it took three volumes to reach this point of the story, and we haven’t even hit the end of the story arc yet! The preview is promising me the surprise arc will conclude next volume, let’s see if it will surprise me.
Content Grade: B –
Art Grade: C +
Packaging Grade: B +
Text/Translation Grade: A –
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: August 26th, 2014
MSRP: $13.00
