Sometime within the past two weeks or so, I’ve got the sudden urge to re-watch The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I think it started with this video on YouTube. At about one minute into the video, the music starts suspiciously sounding like that infamous dance video (Hare Hare Yukai). When I first saw it, the song at seven minutes in sounded vaguely familiar, and that’s because it turned out to be another song from Haruhi. I think that would make sense.
The first time watching, it was interesting. The second time however, well… since at least last week, I have the opening theme stuck in my head. Now, the ending theme is starting to get stuck in my head as well. Of particular note was the “first” episode. It’s the one that’s a movie within an anime, “The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina.” When I first watched it, it raised some chuckles, but for the most part, there was this feeling of “is this ever going to end?” This episode was in the old 4:3 screen ratio, film quality was pretty poor, and its mockery of all cliche anime plot elements and themes was evident. I finally got around to watching that episode again, and I found it very funny this time around (much like the rest of Haruhi).
While watching that episode, it reminded me of another debut episode of another anime (yes, I watch too much anime nowadays). This one is based off a video game, and is being streamed for free to people outside Japan. It’s called The Tower of Druaga -The Aegis of URUK-. The first episode was not in 4:3, but widescreen. Most of the episode was someone’s dream, and that dream had every video game and anime cliche in it. Like the Adventures of Mikuru Asahina, it was really painful to watch the first time. “I got the jokes! Can we just move on already?” And then the second time I watched this episode, I also found it very funny.
Speaking of other things I do too much, I seem to rely on the Seattle Times as a source of news too much. Anyway, they have this article about a record number of rejected applicants to the University of Washington. One of the poor saps… I mean, one of the prospective students they mention did far better than I ever did at any point in my grade school career. His application includes boy scouts, swim team, AP Physics, and climbing Mt. Rainier; an application that got at best, wait-listed. My 3.5 GPA, AP U.S. History, Key Club got wait-listed as well.
All of that said, it makes me feel better at the fact that I never got accepted to UW the two times I applied there. UW isn’t the only one though, Western is experiencing this trend as well. This sort of trend really does reaffirm my belief that I got really lucky in being accepted as a transfer student here. In the end, I’m overall happt to be here at Western. Despite the supposedly high amount of people from my graduating class in high school that go here, I have only made rare contact with three of them. I’m also just adequately far enough away from my family so that I can visit them easily, and still not have to live with them.
