Haruchika Episode 3: Exit Game

Chika is cute! CUTE! 

Impression

Look at this QUALITY frame. It’s like something Studio DEEN would produce on a good day. This is what P.A. Works have become.

So last week we moved from mysteries to puzzles, and now Haruchika features some sort of weird improv stage play with a really flimsy story line and virtually no screen-time for the semen demon twins. Basically, it hasn’t particularly improved. I do admit that the concept behind the ‘exit game’ sounds quite interesting, but the way it was executed and the reason it was even there in the first place was so shitty that it somehow ended up making less sense than the episode about the Rubik’s Cube. While we’re on that topic, Narushima has become extremely moe for some strange reason. I liked her better when she was a standoffish girl who glared coldly at everyone, but I guess the current her is fine too.

I’m at least glad that they don’t seem to be adding one member to the brass band each episode, although I’m not fond of the way they’ve done it – because they’ve instead magically swelled the number of club members to ten through the use of faceless background characters. It still feels like ‘member of the week’ though, which is a total contrast to Hibike! Euphonium which had a full band from the outset, then developed various characters in the band in a non-linear way. Not that I even want to compare the two any more, it’d be an insult to Hibikek. Kumiko would have been disgusted at Chika’s attempt to get closer to Sensei through asking for private flute lessons. Apologize to flute players everywhere.

Anyway. Maren Sei was the featured recruit of the week, once again with a terrible trauma that prevents him from playing music. I won’t even talk about how he never actually agreed to join the band after Haruta stepped all over his privacy like an insensitive faggot and solved his personal issues like any stranger should, because I think they just ran out of time in the episode. By faggot I don’t mean gay, by the way. By faggot I mean faggot. He’s acting like a faggot. This week they didn’t even explain how he worked his wonderful perfect magic. Maren Sei is Chinese by birth, but was adopted by his current parents and now lives in Japan. He’s also half American somehow, probably because of his adoptive parents but hey, it’s not like this show has been particularly big on details. He was an excellent saxophonist, but… something happened, and then… something something, he stopped playing the sax. I honestly didn’t understand. He’s gotten this letter from his blood-related sibling, and learned that he played the sax too. Ever since then he’s for some reason been questioning his identity and wondering whether his birth parents abandoned him. I… questioning his identity, okay fine. But what does that have to do with him playing the sax? And why only now? Surely the issue of whether his parents abandoned him should have been a question mark ever since he knew he was adopted – so since he was little.

He doesn’t play the saxophone any more, and Haruta in his elegant sensitivity hatches a plan to get him playing again by solving his issues. Somehow. Because the two are apparently linked, I think. I’m actually quite liking the drama club president Nagoe, because he’s been doing everything a normal, non-faggot person would do – which is to leave the guy the fuck alone. Haruta asks him why he hasn’t done anything, and Nagoe replies, “I’m not his counsellor.” Exactly! That’s exactly it! Nagoe is Maren’s best friend, and even he’s decided its best to give him some space for him to come to terms with his own problems. You know, I don’t even know how Haruta solved all this. Why does he know about the suitcase from his birth family which Maren kept in private, in his closet at home? Is he a really really good stalker? Nagoe doesn’t know, because he couldn’t explain it to Haruta and Chika in that cafe. Even if we assume Nagoe told him, then an issue still remains: how did Haruta know the fucking code to the suitcase? That’s just too much. Because it means something in Chinese? Well fuck that. I happen to speak Chinese, and I can tell you that I’ve never seen those numbers become those Chinese characters like that in my entire life.

Not only that – Haruta made specific references to Maren’s sibling and all that, all throughout the play. Things like how he lived in Suzhou, China, and stuff. How did he know that? Has he actually snooped through his things and been reading someone else’s letters? That’s the only way – remember, Nagoe doesn’t know. How else would he know some random guy’s detailed, private past out of nowhere? This is so ridiculous. Haruta now holds degrees in music, flower language, cryptography, botany, sleuthing, play-writing, acting, cube-solving, mind-reading, stalking, burglary, Chinese domestic policy and foreign languages. I don’t even care now, I’m just going to accept it. None of this makes any sense. Nothing matters any more.