Hot on the heels of their previous Haruhi season 2 troll, famed publisher Kadokawa has, once again, decisively trolled the entire anime world. In addition to their “work” on Haruhi season 2, Kadokawa had announced the release of 涼宮ハルヒちゃんの憂鬱 (The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan), a parody of the original Haruhi anime, based on a wildly popular series of 4-koma (4 panel) manga drawn by Puyo. Sadly, it was only slated for YouTube distribution (Kadokawa is one of the first Japanese media companies with its own official YouTube channel), but at least we had a release date - Friday, February 13!

And, wouldn’t you know it, just as the previous announcement was curiously devoid of the words “Haruhi Season Two”, the supposed air date for Haruhi-chan was the all-too-convenient Friday the 13th. Well, it seems like misfortune has struck us once again, as instead of an actual episode of Haruhi-chan, no less than 200,000 viewers (as of 1pm PST) were treated to a 46-second video of a nice yacht, accompanied by soothing violin music and the soft sounds of rippling water, no doubt a reference to the original “Nice Boat” video that substituted the last episode of epic schoolgirl teenage angst clusterf*ck axemurder anime School Days.

At least School Days had a legitimate excuse - it was pushed back a week because a girl had killed her father with an axe the day before - what’s Haruhi-chan’s excuse? They too busy dealing with the angry mobs from their Haruhi season 2 rerun announcement? Whatever the reason, suffice to say that nobody is too high on Kadokawa right now, and while it may just be a delay in production, they better be a bit more respectful to their audiences from now on…
 

 
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UPDATE: It’s out now… there’s even a version with English subs!