I will admit to having more than a little affinity for the pretentious.

I watch ADHD artistic cry-fests like ef ~a tale of melodies~, write blogposts that are longer than a standard-issue humanities essay, and adore nearly anything incomprehensible and mindscrewy.

And shonen action anime tend to fall afoul of my taste? Naruto? Bleach? Not my deal. It’s not to the point where I sit in a Starbucks with a beret and a Mac laptop, scoffing down on the mainstream, but definitely I find myself the odd man out in many groupings of anime fans.

But unlike your standard pretentious person, I hope to still remain a bit in touch with the more ‘basic’ anime. To prove to myself that anime doesn’t have to be fancy, have to be deep, to be good.

Perhaps that ‘good’ is a different ‘good’ than that of shows like ef, but nevertheless a unifying force that makes me really feel that being an anime fan is worth it.

And I had quite an enjoyably nostalgia trip this year, returning to my roots in shonen romance, arguably one of the simplest (and quite often, most pandering) genres out there.

It was doubly enjoyable, because I found out, I can still love these simple stories about love.

12 Moments of Anime 2008
#11: Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu – 07

Haruka’s Secret is somewhat of a personal enigma.

It’s a very simple show. So simple, it should be insulting. It’s a storyline out of a million shonen romances: rich (or otherwise exciting) girl and normal guy fall in love.

It’s not a bad premise by any means, but when you see it done three times in a season, you start to feel a bit tired. Not to mention that production studios tend to add little extras to the mix, in order to ’spice it up’ or make it otherwise interesting to the standard fanboy.

Such extras include breasts, panties, fogged-out breasts and panties, and concepts like ‘hey let’s make kissing an integral part of the storyline by making the girls survive on carbon dioxide’.

At the best, it’s blatant pandering, at the worst, it’s outright voyeurism and perversion. And it sells. Maybe it’s not the greatest fact, not the face of anime that you want to show to your friends, but it pays the bills and paves the way for greater things.

I can’t hate on it for that reason. But I can safely say most rational people will be outside of the target audience for these kinds of shows.

Haruka’s Secret … feels different to me.

The easy explanation for it, is that it doesn’t resort to physical pandering, but rather, emotional pandering.

Maybe it’s the fact that emotional pandering is more friendly to both genders, but it’s generally always been more widely accepted than its breast-baring, panty-flashing counterpart.

And so while the characters of Haruka’s Secret are every bit as wildly implausible as those from similar shows in the genre, the fact that they spent a larger amount of time blushing than bouncing endeared them to quite a wide audience.

Or maybe I’m making this up. Maybe the subset of anibloggers who enjoyed Haruka’s Secret and participated in coining the meme “F*** YES HAND HOLDING” is smaller than I thought.

But I can safely say, I found Haruka’s Secret adorable and absolutely heart-melting.

At least during the course of the beginning half of the show – if you are familiar with my review, you may remember that by the end of it, I was heartbroken like a teenager experiencing his first love.

Such a metaphor is fitting, not just for the two characters doing just the same in this anime, but for my reminiscence of this show.

It started well – too well – almost like a dream. I was absolutely smitten. Haruka’s Secret could do no wrong.

Haruka was to die for, Yuuto was dashingly elegant and refined (well, at least, relative to the typical shonen romance lead), and the side cast was strong. The pace was brisk and the content nonstandard.

Of course, the facade, the perfect image, breaks down after a while, whether you embrace your love or not, and eventually Haruka’s Secret sort of … fell on its face.

But still, I feel that I can look back on it fondly with the warmth of a first crush, those fond memories, that ‘ah, those were the days’ feeling. Except, I don’t think I have that regret (you know what I mean) regarding Haruka’s Secret. Even if it ended poorly, there will always be F***ING HAND HOLDING.

At this point I realize I’m coming dangerously close to tl;dr status and haven’t yet reached the moment in question. This might be one of many moments this year, where it’s not really a moment, but more of an overall experience with an anime in general. A long-term relationship instead of a short, passionate burst.

My notes for this episode were extremely helpful, labeled only “MOE MOE HARUKA”, which like most of the first few episodes probably meant I was falling head over heels for the sweet Haruka x Yuuto interactions.

This episode featured Haruka at Yuuto’s house (amidst some less cool ‘drama’) for the first time, and since everyone in Japan is really awkward regarding personal space, lots of ye’ olde Teenage Awkwardness ensues.

Only, somehow, it feels … real. Yuuto fantastizes like the man he is, but also is respectful and gentlemanly when it gets down to it. Haruka is adorable in almost a childlike-way in this episode, touching but not breaching the walls of moeblobbery.

It’s probably not the standout moment among the many episodes of Haruka’s Secret, but rather, one of the more exemplary instances of how Haruka and Yuuto, together, in their own little back-to-basics, sweet-as-all-hell way, can melt the heart of even the most pandering-proof person.

I’ll ship this couple all the way to the Moon and back.

-CCY

What we haven’t heard as much from, though, is the fact that other, less pizza-induced shows still exist, and still ended around the same time frame.

Perhaps Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu (Haruka Nogizaka’s Secret) doesn’t have the benefit of being wildly popular or in-depth, and perhaps the ending did not leave us wondering whether Yuuto bit the dust or not, but still I can find there’s a lot for an anime fan to emote about, for I’ve gone through the aforementioned emotion spectrum with regard to Haruka’s Secret.

For those who dismissed Haruka’s Secret as a generic guys’ moe-moe-romance show, you’re … pretty much right. But there’s one part in where you are wrong – Haruka’s Secret is a heart-stealing guys’ moe-moe-romance show.

It’s torn through the community and left more than its share of anibloggers dazed, confused, and lovestruck, something that this crude genre often fails to achieve. It’s tough to describe the almost base level on which Haruka seems the same, yet so much different, as any other show, almost like it is to accurately identify the reason for one’s deep affection for any person, 2D or 3D.

At least, that’s what I really want to think about Haruka’s Secret. It’s cute, sweet, great for cuddling with at night, will never put a step wrong, and just has that little bit more … until that one fateful day where all of a sudden my rating of it plunged 700 points in 25 minutes.

Now what to believe?

(I reveal Haruka’s Secret within. Beware of spoilers.)

As you may have noticed, over the last few days I’ve been slowly drawn into the dark, mind-rending world of Higurashi. As such, it seems rather fitting that I open with the messy, stomach-churning conclusion of this show, as described above, before snapping back towards a more linear descent into hell.

Therefore, I will start with the better points – and what good points they are! – of Haruka’s Secret … but do note that it will end with me bashing my head against a knife while the anime laughs maniacally in the background.

Equally fitting, Haruka Nogizaka and the anime as a whole are hiding a secret – albeit not deep and dark – that makes them not quite what they seem. Haruka Nogizaka is, deep down, an anime otaku and moe powerhouse extrodinare, and Haruka Nogizaka’s Secret is actually quite the well-balanced lighthearted romance.

What perhaps endears Haruka’s Secret the most to my heart is that it’s got all the warm, fuzzy, and fluffy cotton-candy appeal of a simple romance story, with minimal guilt from pandering. Unlike most guys’ romance anime, Haruka’s Secret seems to give a nod either to women or to the second-lowest-denominator in, for the most part, not resorting to hacked, cheesy cliches, nor fanservice abuse.

This is evident most in our protagonist Yuuto, who seems to have learned a bit from his harem-style brethren of the past. True, he comes from the same roots, being a plain looking glasses guy who happens to stumble upon two and a half women…but somehow, his sanity and his conscience seems better placed. Maybe that’s why the collective female otakusphere (and by that I mean a sample population of two bloggers) seems so approving of him.

Especially when dealing with matters involving his beloved, Yuuto is remarkably strong and sound of mind, standing up for himself, and, admittedly, striving a bit too hard to be the knight in shining armor. But isn’t that preferably to the standard sack of flesh, too often driven by hormones or lost by indecision?

Accolades extend down to the rest of the cast too, in various degrees. Haruka, the female lead and moe girl extrodinaire, falls a bit on the pandering side, being essentially a Konata / Kotomi / Sayuri crossbreed, but somehow, it feels like it works here. Maybe because she doesn’t go out of her way to praise Otaku Reference Here, or because she has a few moments where she stands on her own as well – or maybe it’s just because her situation as an isolated idol feels natural, as she learns to take her own steps.

Haruka’s little sister Mika fills the token loli mode, replete with the dirtiest mind in the show, but it’s not too bad. She does have a redeeming episode which fills out her character a bit, so she’s not too dislikable. The dual maids of Hazuki and Nanami are mostly on the lighthearted side, but I can at least say that they’re lock candidates for SaiMoe next year (and for megane power rankings rev. II if I ever get to that). Yuuto’s annoying relatives are … annoying, and a bit amusing … but they know not to appear for more than 30 seconds an episode.

Shiina, however, is where the utopia starts falling apart.

It’s tough to say whether Haruka’s Secret had too much ambition or too little time, but the overloaded aspect of its story nature is pretty apparent through how the endgame played out … namely, with the near-entire lack of the third wheel in the love triangle.

After a few moments which hinted at her defeat in episode 10 – although never mentioned explicitly – Shiina, who enjoyed a pretty lofty status in the show, pretty much dissappears. Now, this is naturally preferred to creating false drama by having Shiina cling to Yuuto – in fact, she does almost the opposite, letting go of her own accord – and, if we were going to just focus on Haruka and Yuuto’s relationship in the last few episodes, it would be a great move.

However, this is all thrown out the window for a sharp flight away from reality and into bizarro world, where one-shot gaijin Romeos suddenly become credible competition for Haruka’s heart … without even laying a hand on her.

It’s clear to see that Haruka’s Secret shouldn’t be judged in any frame that is considered realistic; there’s a patent insanity to the show with all the chainsaw-wielding maids and yakuza mothers and all, but for most of the show there was at least a link to reality, the sense that an ordinary, confident boy and a shy, upper-class girl could fall for each other … that was almost Hollywood-like in nature.

But then we package the show up and ship it off to Haruka’s private island, with people lining up to give Haruka 500-carat diamond dresses and garages of Ferraris and more land than probably half the states in the U.S., and then where is our “realism” as defined? In what world does ignoring the main romantic contenderm to make way for a weaker one of the opposite gender, make for a more compelling finish?

Perhaps a sign of the unavoidable shonen roots of Haruka’s Secret is that it takes on more than it can handle, flipping from one storyline to another in a method that hardly resolves any of them, not even the one most vital to the show.

We start with the aforementioned shameful otaku secret of Haruka Nogizaka, whose concern about being discovered leads her to befriend Yuuto. After the first episode, it was possible this anime could evolve into a lighthearted Welcome to the NHK spin on otaku life, but after a few episodes, the otaku element is reduced to just something that makes Haruka happy without any repercussion.

Fine, maybe she accepted her otaku roots and maybe the entire school did, too. We still have the sweet story of the her and Yuuto falling in love. Only in this case, it’s like an old 2D platformer or something because they fall and fall and never hit the bottom of the pit.

There’s a finite level of enjoyment – albeit a very large finite level – one can derive from watching two people stumble over words and over each other at the slightest implication of a relationship. Yes, for the most part, down to the last minute, I was standing on my chair abusing JP’s quote of “F*** YES (SLIGHTLY ROMANTIC ACTION HERE)”.

When I lost faith in the last arc and its unnaturalness, I was still reaching out for one last shot at redemption. Maybe Yuuto, instead of falling to the cliche of getting hopelessly demoralized by a trash talker (to only gain faith through an otherwise irrelevant side character), would suddenly show his knightly side. Maybe Haruka would break through and declare that all the solid-gold Ferraris in the world were worthless compared to her Dojikko Aki-chan doll or Yuuto himself. Maybe it would all just come together, in one wonderful moment, that kiss hinted at in the OP, a confession, anything, something.

This was the kind of desperation you would feel if you were a pointy-nosed character in a Madhouse show, hoping for a miraculous draw to avoid losing your life.

And sure enough, it wouldn’t come.

One word, one action, nothing, as we get shot down by the combination of a fish-block and a Typical Shonen Romance Moment where all the eavesdroppers stumble in and ruin the moment. It’s nearly unforgivable.

I say nearly because there is, admittedly, another way to read this show. Sure, there was nothing ever shown or ever said between Haruka and Yuuto, but in reality, what sort of relationship is judged only by the explicit actions? Sometimes, it’s easier to fall in love without the official constraints of a relationship, and certainly Haruka and Yuuto were doing things as a couple already … any words at the end would just be the icing on the cake.

But for a more simple-minded viewer like me, who is sitting on the edge of his seat waiting for the final results to become official, who saw a kiss obscured in the OP for ELEVEN episodes, there’s just something … missing … like the animators wanted to leave content open for a second season. Certainly, if merchandise has been anything, Haruka’s Secret has been popular enough to have such an option.

I just get that feeling though, that Haruka’s Secret could have done better, not as a longer anime, nor as something extended to two seasons, but something that had focused better on a single point, on providing a fully encapsulated experience, something that is hard for an adaptation to do, especially one with potential for cash-cow abuse, or for one with a lot of content, which seven light novels might attest to.

Is Haruka’s Secret still a good show? For the most part, yes. It is above average, the first nine-odd episodes for sure. Either way it’s still good cotton candy, but you get the feeling it could have been more than that.

It had the characters, the songs, the potential to bring something memorable out of a weary genre.

I don’t understand!

It could’ve had class!

It could’ve been a contender.

It could have been somebody, instead of just another fluffy, sweet yet forgettable shonen romance…

…which is what it is, let’s face it.

-CCY