The Dissociation and The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya

[Muphrid]

From time to time, the topic comes up in IRC about these books, particularly how they've proved a disappointing arc to what was an entertaining series. Having the chance to reread some parts during a recent work trip, I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit this arc and try to understand what Tanigawa was trying to do and why it didn't work.

Theme and Message

For all this arc's issues, I think Tanigawa had some clear messages in mind.  How many times does it come up that Kyon has to make decisions about his future, about his university education and the like?  In essence, I think this may be what the whole arc is all about.  There are people with clear senses of purpose all around Kyon.  Haruhi moves through life boldly, seldom hesitating.  Yasumi gives the impression that there's nothing she wants more than to be a member of the SOS Brigade and that she'd do whatever Haruhi asked of her to accomplish that.  In a broader sense, I think this may explain the introduction of Sasaki, who represents Kyon's past and contrasts against Haruhi, who represents Kyon's future.  Even the end of the last book, which shows Kyon a vision of his future, makes clear that Kyon has a path ahead of him to live up to.

Tanigawa also seems to want to explore how Earth has become a playground for supernatural beings.  Kyon makes a very pointed remark to Kimidori, trying to say that Earth is not just a play they can come to and mess around with, which spurs her to call that a "joke".  Fujiwara comes back in time, willing to sacrifice the present and the future up until what's important to him because he has zero regard for the Earth of "today".  It is a great resistance against forces larger than himself that characterizes Kyon and pits him against his enemies, and the Brigade is largely united against such cosmic foes, even when that sets the Brigade members against their own factions.  I think this is a valid issue to explore, and I commend Tanigawa for doing so.

Plot and Structure

Alas, there are nevertheless serious issues with the structure and plot of the story.  The first is the most glaring and most obvious:  Kyon does almost nothing of consequence.  He is our passive view into the story, baffled at times by what happens around him yet totally without the tools or the understanding to proactively make a difference.  What's most egregious about this passivity is that Kyon has shown himself capable of being an active force.  See, for example, Disappearance--he was left mostly to his own wits to solve a mystery, and he attacked that problem as logically as he could.  While even that story has issues (for instance, Kyon finds out about Haruhi's whereabouts a day late merely because Tanigawa needed to space things out), Kyon is more than capable of setting a course on his own.

But that's not what he does here.  In one timeline, Kyon is merely puzzled by the mystery of Yasumi, and he questions Koizumi and Nagato about her, to little end.  Nagato tells him Yasumi is not a threat, and that's literally the end of that.  In the other timeline, Kyon is merrily taken along to meetings with Sasaki's bizarro brigade, knowing something vaguely ominous (tm) is coming yet largely passive throughout.  The most major exception to this is Kyon's strong reaction to Nagato's illness, which prompts him to seek out Kuyou.  After that, however, Kyon is literally cast aside as Haruhi and Asahina tend to Nagato, and he entertains visits and calls from Sasaki, who tries to counsel him for an ill-defined confrontation and conflict.

That brings me to the next major issue with the arc--the conflict has little shape to it.  We know Tachibana wants to transfer Haruhi's powers to Sasaki, but Tachibana is not the instigator here.  Fujiwara is, and we have no idea what he wants to do until the Final Chapter.  Hence, we spend most of around what, 180000 words waiting for something bad (tm)?  The lack of structure to this conflict up until the very end is part of what makes Kyon's inaction possible.  We spend most of the three books waiting for something to happen, something Kyon can really react to, and it's only at the very end of the story.  There is almost no room for a back and forth of actions and reactions.

Furthermore, the overall structure of the arc contributes to a significant amount of pointless padding.  We're told Haruhi splits the timeline to protect Kyon and Nagato, leading to the timeline with Yasumi and a Brigade that is unburdened, at peace.  Yet what is this timeline supposed to do?  It sits around with nothing of consequence happening, and only Yasumi's existence is necessary to avert disaster.  Nothing from this timeline contributes to Kyon being prepared for the final confrontation with Fujiwara.  The split timeline serves no purpose; it merely draws out a story that would've fit in two volumes, maybe even one.

Character Development

Character development is a bit of a mixed bag here.  In one timeline, Haruhi spends most of her time worrying about Nagato, and Kyon remarks that Haruhi is significantly changed from the girl he met just a year before.  In the other timeline, Haruhi contents herself with stringing along a bunch of first-years with no intention whatsoever to invite any of them to join the Brigade.  Overall, however, Haruhi's reaction to Kyon unexpectedly dropping in on her, as well as her efforts to tutor him, reflect positively on her in my opinion.  She is generally considerate (though not perfect in that respect), and she cares genuinely for Kyon and Nagato's welfare.

Sasaki is similarly well-defined.  We're given the picture of a rather isolated, lonely person, who would content herself with people who don't really care about her (Fujiwara and Kuyou in particular; there may be hope that she and Tachibana will get along well and on a more sincere level).  Her philosophical streak gives her distinctiveness, and of course, her loyalty is, above all else, to Kyon.  Haruhi may see her as a rival for Kyon in some way, but Sasaki has none of that.  Her friendship with Kyon is something different than that.  Sasaki is a nuanced character, and getting to know her is one of the good things about the story.

Ironically, Kyon's attitude here is the one I find most inexplicable.  It's as if the idea of being more proactive simply escapes him.  Even considering the structural deficiencies of the story, Kyon seems content to hide out and see what happens.  While it's not in Kyon's nature to be the instigator, he knows there is a threat, yet he is utterly at peace with letting that threat come to him and the Brigade.  In truth, I find Kyon's characterization here bewildering.  Aside from that, Kyon has some distinct moments where he seems very, very close to admitting to himself that he is attracted to Haruhi, including one in particular in 11 where he has to all but halt his entire line of thinking to avoid contemplating the notion.  It is interesting to see these thoughts grow more and more overt over time.

Koizumi begins to cement himself more as someone actually deserving of trust as Kyon's ally, and his advice seems to be received with more interest and appreciation than before, but he too needlessly keeps the secret of Yasumi from Kyon, and for no real reason.  Asahina is eye candy, merely there to fawn over Yasumi.  Her older self makes a short appearance at the end of the story merely to make Fujiwara's goals concrete.  Nagato faces stark repurcussions from the IDSE for her behavior, but once she has been punished in this way, we see little of her in that timeline, and in the other, we only get one moment to see that she is being restrained.

Fujiwara proves himself to be the main antagonist, but his motivation literally comes out of nowhere, and is thrown at the audience like it explains everything just in time for the final confrontation to take place.  Kuyou is nigh-on incomprehensible but decently frightening as a representation of something truly alien.  Tachibana is the most sympathetic of the group, and her utter confusion at the goings-on in Final Chapter are understandable.

Verdict

Overall, I think I admire Tanigawa for the themes he wanted to explore, but the execution of a story based on those themes is, sadly, quite poor.  Dissociation and Surprise are far too padded out for the story Tanigawa wants to tell, with far too little actually happening that has consequences.  It almost seems as if Tanigawa grew bored with Kyon, and as a result, Kyon does nothing while everyone else moves things around.  I also felt a great sense of finality on rereading the Final Chapter and Epilogue.  It really does give the feeling that a lot of things are wrapped up.  We know Kyon's future lies with Haruhi, and there's the possibility that Haruhi's powers might eventually wane.  Where before I had been hopeful there might be more books, I now feel that it is more likely than not the end for Haruhi Suzumiya.  There is simply nothing left to say, at least in Tanigawa's mind.  It was nice getting to know Sasaki, but I feel this was the only really interesting thing about this three-book arc, alas.

[sarsaparilla]

I agree with all these observations and interpretations.

However, none of the apparent issues is unique to this particular story arc; they are only conspicuous because of the length of the story and their immediate relevance to the plot. Thus, the story does not just undermine its own consistency but also highlights weaknesses in other works of the series. As an example, Kyon's inactivity in Dissociation/Astonishment pales in comparison -- by several orders of magnitude even -- to his procrastination in Endless Eight. In EE it is achingly obvious that the situation could be figured out by passing information through Nagato's reset-proof memory even if it took a couple of rounds to find a solution through a process of elimination; brigade members are acutely aware of this possibility and still decide to do ... exactly nothing, for hundreds of years of rote repetition. However, this can be overlooked in the novels because we only see the final round. Also, the issue and implications of prescience is skirted again; where in Melancholy it only made one particular scene embarrassing to watch, here it spoils the whole premise.

Furthermore, the plot of the story fails logic, coming and going. I got the impression that the timeline split was meant to serve some particular purpose; however, this purpose was never worked out in detail and thus the device appears as a genuine non sequitur. Even more egregiously, all characters seem to take for granted that Haruhi's power can be transferred to Sasaki, and only Sasaki, if Kyon just gives his permission for that, but it is never stated why it would be that way -- but after much repetition this proposition is simply dropped during the climax when Fujiwara suggests that killing Haruhi is a sufficient requirement for the transfer. Not only does it make the story feel like a three books long bait-and-switch con, but it also raises a question about Disappearance: did Nagato seek out Kyon's permission before appropriating Haruhi's power, and then erased Kyon's memory of him agreeing with her proposition?

When examined more closely, the whole existence of Fujiwara is absurd. Allegedly, he is a remnant from a non-supernatural universe overwritten by Haruhi, and his objective is to revert the universe to its original state through returning the reality-warping power to Sasaki. This does not make sense either way. If the original 'Sasaki' universe was not supernatural in obvious ways, it would be impossible for Fujiwara to get from there to Haruhiverse (and if it _were_ supernatural to begin with, Fujiwara's actions would fail logic even harder than they already do). There is no guarantee that transferring the power back to Sasaki would restore the original universe, either; on the contrary, there is an obvious reason to believe that it would _not_ be restored because in the process Sasaki has learned to acknowledge that aliens, espers and time travelers can indeed exist, and her supernatural aspect is that of stasis and preservation instead of change.

The only in-universe explanation is that Fujiwara is a cardboard villain put in place by warper!Haruhi, or Yasumi, herself just so that she could show Kyon some things while single-handedly orchestrating the whole spectacle. That has some disturbing implications -- if the presence of a separate, self-aware avatar of the reality warping entity is not disturbing enough as such.

Of course, on the meta level it is rather apparent that the author himself was aware of these self-imposed problems. My suspicion before the publication of the two last books was that the long delay was caused by the author painting himself in a corner, and the books essentially confirmed this. As suggested, the author seemed to have a clear vision on what he wanted to accomplish on the level of motifs but failed to work out the technical details of the story, especially the issue that some of the plot points rely heavily on background meta facts that cannot possibly be written out in the story itself. The author has a consistent history of leaving threads hanging and things unexplained, but Dissociation/Astonishment is the first case where that tendency defeats the whole premise of the story.

So, in the end we get to know Sasaki as a person, and learn that Kyon and Haruhi will be together at college, with Haruhi aware of the presence of supernatural phenomena. This could have been accomplished with one or two short stories.

[Muphrid]

However, none of the apparent issues is unique to this particular story arc; they are only conspicuous because of the length of the story and their immediate relevance to the plot. Thus, the story does not just undermine its own consistency but also highlights weaknesses in other works of the series. As an example, Kyon's inactivity in Dissociation/Astonishment pales in comparison -- by several orders of magnitude even -- to his procrastination in Endless Eight. In EE it is achingly obvious that the situation could be figured out by passing information through Nagato's reset-proof memory even if it took a couple of rounds to find a solution through a process of elimination; brigade members are acutely aware of this possibility and still decide to do ... exactly nothing, for hundreds of years of rote repetition. However, this can be overlooked in the novels because we only see the final round. Also, the issue and implications of prescience is skirted again; where in Melancholy it only made one particular scene embarrassing to watch, here it spoils the whole premise.

True. It is stunning to me that, despite having discovered the loop thousands of times, Kyon et. al. fail to attack the problem with any sort of logical, systematic approach. You're right; Nagato could easily have been used to relay what they've tried and what hasn't worked. Kyon glosses over several days with just the vague idea that he knows he needs to do something, but he has no idea what...and that's it.

Furthermore, the plot of the story fails logic, coming and going. I got the impression that the timeline split was meant to serve some particular purpose; however, this purpose was never worked out in detail and thus the device appears as a genuine non sequitur. Even more egregiously, all characters seem to take for granted that Haruhi's power can be transferred to Sasaki, and only Sasaki, if Kyon just gives his permission for that, but it is never stated why it would be that way -- but after much repetition this proposition is simply dropped during the climax when Fujiwara suggests that killing Haruhi is a sufficient requirement for the transfer. Not only does it make the story feel like a three books long bait-and-switch con, but it also raises a question about Disappearance: did Nagato seek out Kyon's permission before appropriating Haruhi's power, and then erased Kyon's memory of him agreeing with her proposition?

It strikes me that Tanigawa either doesn't have an eye for such details or purposefully chooses to gloss over them.  I'm not sure which.  On the one hand, I like that, for the most part, the stories avoid getting bogged down in the fine details of how all this exotic stuff works--it keeps the focus squarely on the characters.  The downside to that approach, however, is that there is no clearly-defined set of rules.  New concepts--like Haruhi's powers being stolen or transferred--can come in without adequate explanation or forewarning.  I think it worked for Disappearance because the mechanism was not important, but here, knowing that it happened before, we have to ask ourselves why this is different, if it is different.  As you say, either Nagato somehow gained permission to take Haruhi's powers and what would happen with Sasaki is the same, or there are two different mechanisms that we can't clearly distinguish between.  Very nebulous.

So I guess, at the risk of stating the obvious, sometimes you can get away with glossing over these details, but not all the time.  Eventually, those plot details may need to be explained, at least to the point where they no longer raise these distracting questions.

When examined more closely, the whole existence of Fujiwara is absurd. Allegedly, he is a remnant from a non-supernatural universe overwritten by Haruhi, and his objective is to revert the universe to its original state through returning the reality-warping power to Sasaki. This does not make sense either way. If the original 'Sasaki' universe was not supernatural in obvious ways, it would be impossible for Fujiwara to get from there to Haruhiverse (and if it _were_ supernatural to begin with, Fujiwara's actions would fail logic even harder than they already do). There is no guarantee that transferring the power back to Sasaki would restore the original universe, either; on the contrary, there is an obvious reason to believe that it would _not_ be restored because in the process Sasaki has learned to acknowledge that aliens, espers and time travelers can indeed exist, and her supernatural aspect is that of stasis and preservation instead of change.

I don't quite recall.  What in particular indicated that Fujiwara's home timeline was so ordinary?  I didn't get the impression (but I may have missed something).  Let's pick out some key passages here and try to make sense of Fujiwara's goals and methods for attaining them (which are, admittedly, quite difficult for me to wade through).

Excepts quoted and analyzed below.

Spoiler: ShowHide

"You...will you still get in my way like this? Until the world gets ripped into two, won't you at least let me try to fix that future?"

"Even if you alter the fixed time plane, our future will not change. No, it cannot change." Asahina-san said this with an expression of bitter
maturity.

"It will change! It's useless for you, for me, or anyone here. But the power that Haruhi Suzumiya holds can do it. If I use that girl's power, I can make the space-time continuum anew for everything that I've lived for."

Fujiwara told us this. "To make the space-time continuum from this time point until the future perfect, I need to completely rewrite it. Not amend the time plane bit by bit, but make an infinitely continuing time plane with every part corrected."

Haruhi's power is needed because it can be used to rewrite history in a way that the TPDD cannot.

"For the sake of this time, right now: this moment of this time period.  As we accumulate the instances in time, we can construct time itself. By doing that, the components of the 'present' will give our future permanence and we'll be able to continue changing it. We'll be able to keep modifying all the faults in the time plane."

"It's impossible. If you want to do away with the prohibitations, what kind of energy to you think you'll need?"

"I can do it. I'll say it again. I'll use Haruhi Suzumiya's power. That will be able to do it."

Was Kyouko Tachibana unable to follow this development? "Uhh...eh...just what are you...?" She couldn't remove the dazed look from her face.

Fujiwara completely ignored the pitiful girl and kept speaking. "From this time plane to the future, I'll rewrite the space-time-continuum all at once. It doesn't matter what happens to history along the way. If space and time can be settled in our future, then we'll have the flexibility to look back at the past."

Fujiwara's face got a bit pale as he gulped down some saliva. "Haruhi Suzumiya has been doing 'that' for a long time, long before we came here..."

What Fujiwara wants to do is something Haruhi has already been doing--perhaps in creating epsers, summoning aliens and time-travelers, or perhaps something else.

His grumbling murmur made it obvious that he was giving off a bitter self-response. "I'm...an idiot. I should have done this from the beginning. Heh, heh, no matter how many words I waste, those who don't understand will not understand. Kuyou, do it!"

Everyone present stood on guard. Kuyou didn't even blink.

"What's wrong, Kuyou? Carry out our agreement." Fujiwara's overbearing order, "Go kill Haruhi Suzumiya!"

What words do I employ in such a situation? I shouldn't really have to say that I digested that shocking line calmly, should I? A vessel.  That's right. It's possible to steal Haruhi's abilities. Nagato was able to do it once.

A vessel. If that's the case, then Haruhi's abilities would be fine for anyone to have. But still, it would depend on the person.

A vessel. Right now, who is the one closest to Haruhi? That goes without saying. The most straightforward way to make Haruhi lose her powers would be her death. A corpse wouldn't hold any will. This long-awaited paranormal power...if she was made to lose it in such way, I wonder if all the aliens, time travelers, and espers would also find it regretful?

And there's a perfect person for a vessel. Someone not as capricious nor as eccentric as Haruhi. Someone whose thoughts aren't as difficult to figure out as Haruhi's. Someone who's not the brigade chief of the SOS Brigade. Someone who, compared to Haruhi, is an ordinary and somewhat aloof pacifist...my former classmate.

Sasaki.

I just had a fleeting thought. What if Haruhi's god-like powers actually did sprout from Sasaki first?

That's what Fujiwara's trying to do: kill Haruhi and make Sasaki the new god. She wouldn't lay waste as much as Haruhi. Of course, Sasaki wouldn't be manipulated by Fujiwara and the others into going along with what they say either. But Fujiwara and Kuyou just might have the confidence that they can do it. They might use brainwashing, personality modifying, or even...threaten to take someone hostage. That hostage might even be everything in the world.

If that happens then would I...would I become one of the pawns?

Fujiwara doesn't explain what he's trying to do here; we only get Kyon's conclusion. It seems pretty safe, but paradoxically, I dislike that Kyon just accepts it rather than questioning why this could be, why killing Haruhi would work if all along they've been practically asking his permission. Was it to try to achieve a "nonviolent" solution before resorting to this?  Who knows.  We certainly don't, and Kyon never asks.

Of course, why Fujiwara wants to do it is to restore Asahina to his timeline as his elder sister; it's possible this would also have the effect of making the world more normal (in the sense that Haruhi would not have messed with it so much), but I don't know if I see this as a driving motivation.  But on the whole, it's clear Fujiwara wants to harness Haruhi's power for this end; it's just a mite unclear how he expects to get his hands on it by killing her (and why he even bothered trying to go through Sasaki in the first place instead).

The best I can make sense of the timelines is that somehow Fujiwara is part of the direct timeline descending from the present, a timeline Haruhi has indeed changed.  But that just turns the problem you observe on its head: if that is the case, how could Asahina get to the present?  So in the end, even that viewpoint doesn't really help matters.  Are we to interpret the future as different branches connected to the present?

How to reconcile any of that with Asahina saying that "people can't return to a past that is lost" is monumentally unclear to me. If anything, it would make more sense if Fujiwara came to the past and, by doing so and interacting with Haruhi, made it so his future no longer existed.

At this point I sincerely wonder how much of my confusion with this stems not from Tanigawa's original text but the translators' attempts to render it.

The only in-universe explanation is that Fujiwara is a cardboard villain put in place by warper!Haruhi, or Yasumi, herself just so that she could show Kyon some things while single-handedly orchestrating the whole spectacle. That has some disturbing implications -- if the presence of a separate, self-aware avatar of the reality warping entity is not disturbing enough as such.

Hm, I think that's a bit strong.  I do agree that from a Watsonian perspective we have precious little material to actually understand the character with; he is an antagonist almost for the sake of providing an antagonist.  To conclude Haruhi (either directly or through Yasumi) put him there to be a villain isn't implausible to me, but is there any direct evidence of it?  I can't think of any.  At best, it seems plausible enough to include in a story but it's not something I would feel comfortable defending the Truth (trademark pending).

All that said, I do find there's an uncomfortable amount of wiggle room for Haruhi to do things for reasons beyond our comprehension thanks to Yasumi and the structure of this arc.  Why split the timelines?  We don't know, but presumably Haruhi (on some level, or maybe only through Yasumi) does, and without knowledge of that reasoning, it puts us as readers in a very difficult position to judge her faithfully.  Instead, we can only judge the author for making it so muddled and unclear.  Of course, you've come to more or less the same conclusion: the problems are much clearer to examine by scrutinizing the author himself.

Of course, on the meta level it is rather apparent that the author himself was aware of these self-imposed problems. My suspicion before the publication of the two last books was that the long delay was caused by the author painting himself in a corner, and the books essentially confirmed this. As suggested, the author seemed to have a clear vision on what he wanted to accomplish on the level of motifs but failed to work out the technical details of the story, especially the issue that some of the plot points rely heavily on background meta facts that cannot possibly be written out in the story itself. The author has a consistent history of leaving threads hanging and things unexplained, but Dissociation/Astonishment is the first case where that tendency defeats the whole premise of the story.

So, in the end we get to know Sasaki as a person, and learn that Kyon and Haruhi will be together at college, with Haruhi aware of the presence of supernatural phenomena. This could have been accomplished with one or two short stories.

Right, right.  From a Doylist perspective, I've felt for a while that Tanigawa may have succumbed to the pressure of helming a popular franchise.  This three-novel arc is the longest continuous single story of the series.  Did he want to do something bigger and better than all that had come before?  Possibly.  Did he realize after 9 that he had precious little real room to do it in?  Quite probably.  Of course, without real author's statements and such, this is all speculation, lacking in concrete evidence to back up the opinion.

In the end, though, I can't help but feel that Tanigawa is at his best when he's not directly probing at the nature of the world he's built.  Disappearance is often seen as a great story, but more for what it says about Nagato and her personal struggle than the revelations it makes on Haruhi's power and the relationships between timelines/universes.  How does this compare with the other novel-length stories?  In Melancholy, we learn a lot about all the characters and the nature of the world, which is necessary as an introductory piece.  Details are sparse, which is again acceptable for a first installment.  In Sigh, Haruhi's role as a reality warper helps create some tension (laser contacts and nanofilament cutters), but that conflict is only part of the story, as the clash between Kyon's and Haruhi's personalities plays a part, too.  Intrigues, on the other hand, forces us to look deeper at the background of Tanigawa's world, at Asahina (big) for instance to try to evaluate her priorities and values.  The conflict is not spurred on by one of our central characters but by an outside force, one we can't really understand or engage yet because Tanigawa saves that payoff for 9, 10, and 11.

In particular with Intrigues, I realize now that one of the things that bothers me is how persistently Kyon is left in the dark both in 7 and 9-11.  Because Kyon often does not understand the nature of the conflict he's engaged in, he merely does what he's told to do (deviating only when he chooses to for some side benefit, like giving the turtle to the boy instead of leaving it in the pond).  He doesn't have the knowledge to make an educated decision about a course of action.  I feel this is Tanigawa's fault, that he relies on this construction too much, for what Kyon doesn't know or understand, the audience can be kept from understanding too.  It's almost as if this structure allows him to be lazy, to not have to fill in the important details because Kyon has no knowledge of them, therefore we can't either.  Kyon doesn't know anything about why Asahina was sent into the past until Mori clues him in, way late in the book.  The same applies here.  Kyon has almost no knowledge of what Fujiwara & co. are planning (other than that those plans should go toward taking Haruhi's powers), so he can't effectively act to block them. The possibility just isn't there.

On the whole, I agree with your final sentiment: both meeting Sasaki and seeing Haruhi and Kyon in the future could've been accomplished with short stories, and knowing that, it makes me question Tanigawa's skills for novel-length stories in total. Perhaps it's time for a closer look at all three of the others, too.