(Part of a 12-day series fondly remembering some of the best moments in anime this year. Participants include: lolikitsune, lelangir, Owen S, FuyuMaiden, IKnight, Zeroblade, Nazarielle, ghostlightning, TheBigN, ETERNAL, Mike, A Day Without Me, digitalboy, Josh, otou-san, Culchann and Pontifus, IcyStorm, Cokematic,
koneko-chan, and miz, and you’re welcome to join too!)

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