the best female characters are the ones that online discourse calls annoying and cannot stand. this is a fact sorry. the more hated she is by the online sphere the better her character is sorry
New Ito's illustration created for the 20th-anniversary campaign of the anime in collaboration with JR Central (Japan Railways). And also, there is a new audio story from Tanigawa sensei for the ride.
Many fans spend more time hearing Haruhi talk rather than listening to what she says. If they did, perhaps they'd understand that her passion and deep empathy for the human condition can go from destructive to productive at the drop of a dime, with just a little bit of healthy support from her local environment. This sounds like the normal directional polarity of any teenage girl learning to find her place in the world, not an evil overlord. Her percieved inherent selfish tyranny is in actuality a direct result of her surrounding company being incentivized to not interfere with her energy, no matter what. Ironically, in their attempts to not rock the boat, they give the boat the freedom to rock itself.
I think my biggest ongoing fear with the Haruhi series is that the story Tanigawa wants to write and finish may die with him. I hope chooses to write down a synopsis of what happens and entrust at least one person to finish the story if he never gets around to it.
i love how much the rest of the brigade is absolutely annoyed by kyon’s embarrasingly obvious crush on mikuru (including mikuru herself id argue)
its different from koizumi constantly bugging kyon about his relationship with haruhi (honestly i think that has more to do with envy, not for haruhis romantic affection, but for kyons freedom to pursue a tumultuous connection with her in a way that koizumi himself believes he’ll never be able to)
even KYON himself has to kind of beat himself up when he lets his… objectifying crush get in the way of his common sense (see snowy mountain)
it makes it difficult for kyon to build a steady defense for her when she gets treated poorly in sigh cause its like, you’ve been complicit too?? You have a folder of her tits on the computer?
Regarding Disappearance, I feel like there tends to be a hard line drawn between two beliefs: the first being that "Nagato is not in love with Kyon and did not create the alternate world for him," and the second being that "Nagato could have had romantic intentions for herself and Kyon when she recreated the world."
I personally strongly believe in the former, but I also don't dismiss the latter. I think they can (and maybe even should) coexist. And I'd like to write out my thoughts on why :)
Some important disclaimers:
This is not something I believe is definitely true, only something I think could be true. i.e., this post isn't an analysis of the text to be read as "proof," only a suggestion, a possibility, an elaboration on my thoughts, an attempt to explain why I think the way I do, and why this is meaningful to me.
I am not going to talk about or attempt to prove or disprove whether Nagato actually does or does not have romantic feelings for Kyon. That is beyond the scope of this post. I only want to discuss how it's possible to believe, as I do, that she is not in love with Kyon while also still accepting/believing the possibility that she may have had some desire to "set up" her alternate self with Kyon.
Furthermore, this is definitely, definitely not intended as, like, an anti-YuKyon post. I don't personally see their relationship as romantic, but that doesn't and shouldn't have any bearing on how other people read and enjoy this series. More than that, I don't even think it's a bad ship or dislike it, nor do I want to discourage anyone from shipping it!
When I say "could have had romantic intentions," I do not mean "romantic motivations." As in, I am not saying (nor would I ever say, unless Tanigawa himself said it was canon) that she recreated the world specifically to set up a romantic situation with Kyon, or that this was a motivator for her theft of Haruhi's powers at all, even. I'm content, once again, to defer to Kyon's judgment of the situation - she's tired and overwhelmed, etc. (my previous post on Disappearance and how it could be read as suicidal on Nagato's part should speak to my personal feelings on the subject). It's not that she wants to get with a boy. I more mean...she recreated the world for those aforementioned separate reasons, but while she was at it, she might have also decided to do this. Some kind of romantic intention could have influenced the form that the world that she had already decided to make took.
I guess the best thing to start with is the justification for seeing anything romantic in Disappearance at all. Perhaps this will seem obvious to many people. Maybe even most of the fanbase, but, for me, and possibly other like-minded people, I had already long ago dismissed the idea that "she did this for Kyon." But, going back to square one, to the credit of those who interpret her actions as romantically motivated, I do see where they're coming from!
The situation, in many ways, feels like it has been "set up" for Kyon to pursue the alternate Nagato:
his main love interest has been transferred to another school (and no, I don't mean Koizumi, but, yes, he also has been booted out, ItsuKyon shippers rejoice)
his other potential love interest has no memory of him
Nagato gave her human self the library card memory, an apparently special memory to her which possibly allows for the following point
the human Nagato has an...almost inhuman level of trust in Kyon, given the way he treats her. Seriously, he comes in, calls her an alien, shoves her into a wall, shares that he knows she lives alone, and she...invites him to her apartment?
it's difficult to read human Nagato as anything other than having a crush on Kyon. She wants him in her apartment, she doesn't want Asakura crashing in on them ("[Nagato] was talking softly into the speaker with phrases like 'But...' and 'Now's not...' in what was likely an attempt at a refusal.")
She is of course devastated when he says he is not going to join her club.
It could, admittedly, feel very much like romance was the intention (an opinion apparently shared by the staff that worked on the film - director Noriko Takao saying it was all "for the sake of a man," and quoting fellow director, Hiroko Utsumi, as saying "Nagato sure is crafty!" in setting up this "convenient" scenario for Kyon to choose her).
Was it the intention, though? Was it on purpose? If it was, would that not lead to the obvious conclusion that she is in love with Kyon?
My answer, to the last question at least, is, obviously, no. Not necessarily. I have three possible scenarios in mind that can simultaneously hold "her alternate world seems like a romantic set up" and "Nagato is not in love with Kyon." These are not mutually exclusive, they could all be true (or not to true) to some extent:
Scenario A: She is not in love with Kyon, but could herself have mistaken her own feelings for that.
My friend, Ruby (@letyukisayfuck), explained this idea best when I was discussing this post with her: "she's very fond of kyon, knows that he is also fond of her, and that's the kind of feeling that can easily be mistaken for romance...particularly if you don't have anything compare it to."
A "first crush," if you will. At this point in the timeline, he's the only one that's really reached out to her, possibly the only one she feels is a "friend." She likes him.
She already labels her own feelings as being "error data." As Kyon says, she "doesn't understand." Not completely. She wasn't expected to develop in this way, and hasn't learned or been given any guidance on how to interpret and manage her own feelings. It's feasible to say that she could be struggling to identify all of what she's feeling and why she's feeling it (the stress from this could itself be a potential contributor to her actions in Disappearance).
This confusion is something that humans, too, experience. I didn't say "first crush" for no reason - I remember being very young and very inexperienced and believing that warm feelings towards my friends = "I'm in love," when this wasn't true at all.
Hence, I can see it being something that Nagato, also still in a "development" portion of her emotional growth, could go through.
Scenario B: She did not have romantic feelings for him, but she wanted to.
From "Untitled 2" by Yuki Nagato in "Editor in Chief" (official translation):
"Light, darkness, inconsistency, sense. I met each, intersected with each. I did not have their capabilities, but I might have liked to have them. If I were permitted to, I would have them." (emphasis mine)
I would also point to her stated frustration with her lack of "social capabilities" in Surprise.
The idea behind this scenario being, that, while I don't know if romantic love in particular is something Nagato wants to experience, it does seem that she wants to experience "more." If it were something she wanted to experience, Kyon would simply make the most sense as the one to experience it with as the person she is closest to.
Scenario C: She is not in love with Kyon, but wanted him to be in love with her.
I'll say nothing for the validity of the rest of this post, but the next thing I'm about to say is something I feel actually has canonical support:
Nagato wants to be liked.
In Melancholy, when Kyon says that she looks cuter without glasses, she stops wearing them. I find it difficult to find an explanation for this other than "because she wanted to be cute." And what is it to be cute other than to be appealing, adorable, adored. I think some might say that she did it because Kyon told her to, but even at this early point in time, she won't do things simply and only because he tells her to. See: refusing to leave the library until she can take her book with her. (Also, per the official translation, he actually doesn't explicitly tell her not to recreate the glasses: "I'd say you look cuter without them. And I'm not really a glasses man." I'd be curious to see if the framing is different at all in the fan translation).
She joins the computer club ("every now and then"). Yes, obviously, as is clear from "Day of Sagittarius," she enjoys computers, but I would argue that a hobby itself is not the only reason to join or stay in a club. You also go for the company, for the possibility of making friends. I know it's the early 2000s and at-home computers aren't as common yet, but...Nagato is loaded, right? Her apartment is huge. And we know she can buy things, we've seen her on at least one shopping trip with Asahina and Haruhi wherein she bought herself some books (though it escapes me exactly where in the novels this occurred, apologies). And in Haruhi's words in "Snowy Mountain Syndrome": "...I ran into some of the computer society underlings saluting her. And she didn't seem to mind..."
And the strongest piece of evidence: "Love At First Sight." Nakagawa, a boy she has never met, writes her an extremely over-the-top love letter, in it asking her to wait ten years for him and proposing marriage at that time. She doesn't promise this but says she is interested and wants to meet him (girl. that is so scary do not do that omg). In the end, it turns out his feelings for her were not real. And Nagato states that she is "A bit" disappointed in this.
She's not disappointed because she wanted Nakagawa specifically to be in love with her. She doesn't know him! At the end of the story, the only interaction they've really had is him meeting her and being visibly disappointed. No, she didn't want him, but she wanted the love letter to be real.
I would also again say that if she wanted anyone in specific to care about her, it would again make sense for it to be Kyon, who she has already expressed her own fondness for: "I also individually feel that I want you to return...Another visit to the library would..."
Wanting to be liked, wanting companionship, affection, attention, etc. are not necessarily romantic desires. But I think there is still a tendency in humans to see romantic love as the "pinnacle." Your partner is the one you "really love" and friends are "just" friends.
Nagato isn't human, and maybe doesn't believe this herself. But she might see that this is how humans think. If she wanted to be "chosen" or "wanted," she could have believed that it would need to be romantically. People will only choose the one they're "in love with," right?
(Even setting aside the "wanting to be liked" angle, this could also make sense simply from a practical standpoint. If she wanted him to choose the alternate world, falling in love with her human self could be a compelling reason to do so. She does set up roadblocks - once again, shoving some of the SOS Brigade members in a different school, making all of the students that remember Haruhi come down with a bad cold - this could be another one of those.)
On that note, it's interesting to me how conflicted she seems to be about the alternate world. She makes an escape program…but its conditions are esoteric, it's on a time limit, and, if rejected, it can't be called up again. She leaves Kyon his memories, but gives him barely any hints as to what's going on and, again, limited time to figure it out. She hands him the gun with the correction program, but also brings back Asakura to protect her human self.
Personally, I think it's because she wants Kyon to have a free choice, which I do feel is a very loving act, especially in the context of her having not been able to freely choose what she wants to do for so much of her life. She left him with a choice, even if he ended up choosing other than what she might have wanted, and even knowing that if he chose to return to the world to its original state, she would be "punished" by the Data Overmind. "Let it be with me according to your will," it says, to me.
(of course, the evidence, i.e. the stabbing incident, points to her not being able to completely feel this way, but really, who can be, to their core, completely free of selfishness? Isn't that just a symptom of being a person? With wants and needs? And isn't it all the more admirable to act in a "selfless" way when it isn't what one really wants to do? I tend to agree with Kyon that this manifestation of a murderous Asakura was unintentional, a "shadow" created by Nagato's "errors." As stated, she's already indicated that she likes Kyon, and she continues to value his safety after Disappearance, expressing concern for him before herself when she's ill in Surprise. She probably didn't have perfect control over Haruhi's powers, which, as @letyukisayfuck has put it, seem to exhibit two traits: realization of subconscious desires and unexpected consequences).
Another thing that I think betrays internal conflict (and also that I don't think I've seen anyone mention as such) is the glasses. The ones the newly "reborn" human Nagato wears.
If she wants Kyon to choose the alternate world and her alternate self, then why give her glasses? He's "not a glasses man."
This could simply be a piece of evidence that she really had no romantic motivations after all. She doesn't care whether Kyon finds her cute or not.
I would like to offer another interpretation - this could be her own version of Asahina's star-shaped mole, haha. She takes off her glasses in "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody" after she syncs with herself from the future, seemingly as a way to help Kyon understand that she has now "become" the Nagato he knows from his own time. She also immediately takes them off in Intrigues, after the world has been set back to normal, and she is not human anymore. Kyon notes: "She stood there, ramrod-straight, very much like the Nagato I knew so well…as if to confirm my thoughts, that Nagato smoothly removed her glasses…" (emphasis mine).
It's as if she's saying…"I am right here." This is me. The real Nagato.
Taking that into account, maybe some part of her didn't want him to choose the alternate Nagato. "I will no longer be myself," she said in her message with the escape program. She altered the world, she changed herself into a new person, she set up a situation where Kyon could fall in love with that girl…but, if she, the interface Nagato, wanted him to love her (for whatever reason that might be), that wouldn't happen if he loved the "new" Nagato, would it?
Enter the rooftop scene.
"If anything happens to you or if they make you disappear…I'll snap, I'll go crazy, you understand? I'll do whatever it takes to bring you back, I mean it. …Even if we have to flip the universe over on its side, I promise we'll get you back."
Kyon didn't choose Nagato's world. He didn't fall in love with the human version of herself that she made. He chose to return the world to its original state.
Many people say that he chose Haruhi. But…was that promise of protection not a declaration of love?
Humans tend to see romantic love as the pinnacle. The one you choose will be the one you're in love with. But I think Disappearance rejects this reality. Kyon loves Nagato. He chose her, the Nagato he knows, and they're not together (and of course, not only her, but Haruhi and Asahina and Koizumi. He chose the friends and the world that he knows.) He would tear the world apart for her. And she's "just" a friend.
His love for her and relationship with her is treated as no less meaningful or important than his relationship with Haruhi. And that's something I just adore about this story, and the movie especially. It gives an absolutely beautiful display of deep love. And it's platonic.
And, if Nagato wanted to be loved, then she got exactly what she wanted.
CLEAAAAAAAAARED. Your words bubbled up feelings of why that rooftop scene hit me so hard the first time i watched it. For me, the series is one big love story between all members of the brigade. They’re all learning to rely on eachother while grappling with their budding identities and deep insecurities.
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