Kyon Falls from Heaven
Episode 23 of Haruhi Suzumiya was ugly. Boy, was it ugly. I haven’t cringed like that since a few years back when I was reading lots of Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge). I mean “ugly” in a good way, almost like how some people love pickled plums but still make the ugly faces while they are, in their words, enjoying the fruit.
This episode was absolutely naked: it bared the nasty situation that underlies the whole show. Haruhi loves Kyon, period. This is a love that has no bounds. The problem is Kyon doesn’t love her back. Many people might claim the contrary, but I still believe that “finding her cute” is not enough. And the only reason Kyon won’t love Haruhi is because she’s god.
I’m not making this up. Way back at the beginning Kyon confessed to us that it was a pity that Haruhi was “demented” because she was cute and nice in other ways. And of course when it comes to Haruhi, her dementia = her Divinity. Therefore Kyon doesn’t love her because she’s a god. Q.E.D.
What a mess for Mikuru. Kyon likes Mikuru lots, and she isn’t a god. In an ideal world (a world without god) Kyon and Mikuru would get shipped and that’d be that. Kyon could play tsukkomi to Mikuru’s boke, it would work. But Kyon can only approach Mikuru at his peril (nay, at the whole world’s) and Haruhi, as this episode showed, can be a mean Juno to Kyon’s chosen girl(s).
So Mikuru gets beaten up by Haruhi with very little consolation from Kyon, who’s already accepted his impotence in this situation. He could never truly strike her, could he?
One of the those commenting on my last Haruhi post, vendredi, asked doubtingly whether Kyon was Lucifer. To the extent that Lucifer rejects God for no other reason than that he “will not serve” (i.e. because He is God) I think you could actually make some claim for Kyon’s Will being Luciferian. The battlefield of this dispute becomes Mikuru, who is humanity as such, or Adam (and Eve).
I know that I claimed before that Mikuru was a “Jesus” figure but I think this new statement is not at all contradictory. Jesus is the Second Adam, after all, and his life is as much a battlefield between God and Lucifer as Adam and Eve’s Eden was. The only difference was that Lucifer won the first battle whereas he lost the second. [But he did fight for it, as the Temptations in the Desert demonstrate. If you belive in the Trinity then the fight might have been fixed against him from the start but that’s a whole other issue…]
Kyon does finally patch things up with Haruhi, so the Satanic streak is not exactly strong. The overwhelming impulse to go over and apologize is odd enough to make one wonder if larger forces aren’t at work.
I don’t know how it’s all going to end, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Tanigawa ends up having Haruhi “renounce” her divinity somehow, thus making her acceptable to Kyon. It’d be a nice ending, I think.
Kritik der Animationskraft 
You’ve done it again, flawlessly adding a philosophical edge to things that, even if not intentional, makes sense and enhances the experience. Great work.
Great work. Instead of commenting I think I am provoke to make a response post. I love what you did here.
So if Haruhi is God, Kyon is Lucifer, Mikuru is Adam/Jesus, then would Itsuki be Michael the Archangel? How about Yuki? 😛
Well, at least we have yet to have a “My Haruhi, my Haruhi, why dost thou forsaketh me?” scene with Mikuru.
@schneider: I would posit Itsuki as the Holy Spirit, interceding between the mortal and the divine “with smirks (groans, by the original text) that words cannot express.”
Nagato I draw a blank on, however.
The other thing I’m curious about: does that mean I get canonized as a saint for my contributions to the theology of Haruhiism?
@schneider
Itsuki as Michael is ewww.
@vendredi
Get in line, buddy. Get in line.
@digiboy
Thanx!
@ghost
I’ll look forward to it.
@schneider
Michael does sound like a great name for Itsuki. Michaels do tend to give off ambiguous vibes 😀 There’s no correspondence for Yuki, if there is I don’t see one.
@vendredi
Holy Spirit, or maybe the voice of god Metatron, as I really don’t see Itsuki as an actual part of a Haruhi trinity.
You to have to be dead to start the path to sainthood. Do you have your two miracles?? Don’t forget that either!
You can always have three if you have Command Seals.
Also, like I pointed out in the other responses and posts that I gave out, Kyon IS NOT anybody else you may think of, be it the Devil, the Messiah, or an equivalent of God. He’s simply someone normal, and he prefers to think that way. This may lead to the fact that Kyon dislikes Haruhi due to the sole reason that Haruhi is God, and someone normal like Kyon wouldn’t easily pass as good to someone as crazy and powerful as Haruhi.
@Shance
I totally get where you’re coming from. I do see Kyon as Everyman, but then again, everyone does have a little bit of the Lucifer in them, no?
More like Kyon is the only thing Haruhi can’t have, and Kyon’s happy about it.
[…] you. You damn bitch. On the plus side, we had plenty of good reactions from the otaku community: Calawain realizes the brilliance of Tsurua’s plan, animekritik compares Kyon to satan, sort of, Assessing the Anime had a particularly eloquent […]
The Epicness of Haruhi Suzumiya (Season 2) | Rabbit Poets: Blogging about Anime said this on September 26, 2009 at 10:52 am |
[…] as the Antiharuhi, or at least Lucifer to Haruhi’s JDC (animekritik 2009/09/07; a […]
Of course Kyon would feel sympathy for Mikuru, the one who descended from the heaven of the future, suffered and was humilated for our sins and the sins of present day otakumanity, and is sometimes hated or even encouraged to suffer more and further for it, than Haruhi, in the same way as Atheists like Richard Dawkins would despise the God of the bible for being “jealous and proud of it; a sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
And concerning that Kyon has some Messianic moments himself, I think that everyone in the world of Suzumiya Haruhi is Jesus, and was sent to suffer for the sins of Haruhi and themselves.
Now, who wants to watch “The Passion of Mikuru Asahina”?
At this point, I’d be happy with any Haruhi-related show, but yes, Mikuru’s passion might be a particularly interesting one 🙂
That’s interesting… Never heard of the Lucifer thingy till now. Haruhi is God, Kyon is Lucifer. I’m just imagining, what it would be like, if the two of them got into some kind of agreement.. God and Lucifer xD
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Well, that’d be shipping Kyon and Haruhi, which is a popular thing to do 🙂
[…] Regina Otacorum (metaphor: Mikuru is Christ), K-On! 2: There is a God (metaphor: Tsumugi is God), Kyon Falls from Heaven (metaphor: Kyon is Lucifer) and so forth. The Haruhi franchise seems to bring out the best (or […]