You thought that this meme was confined to anime? No way! The above image is from the movie Linda Linda Linda, in which a few such things actually appear.

Linda Linda Linda is a movie in which, three days prior to a performance at their schools cultural festival, find themselves with an injured member and without a lead vocalist. Cue one of their members retasking and the addition of a new member, a korean exchange student who spends an awful lot of time friendless or reading manga with young girls.

Coincidently, the name comes from the fact that the group ends up doing Blue Hearts covers, and is taken from the song Linda Linda. Those who have played the Ouendan games on the DS will probably be familiar with the song, as it was used in first game.

If you can spot familiarities between this movies plot and that of a well known episode of a certain popular TV anime of recent years, you wouldn’t be the only one. It’s clear that KyoAni were aware of the similarities between the two as well. The set-up for the concerts at the end of both are pretty much the same – pouring rain forces pretty much all those attending the festival to decamp to the gym where the band happen to be about to perform, and eventually go out with a series of shots of the rain-soaked school grounds. There are a number of very obvious visual references, too.

Haruhi wields the same axe as the guitarist in Linda Linda Linda, for example, and whilst the majority of the concert sequence in Haruhi is original, there’s a few cuts which are clearly intended to mimic the movie – the way the elated Haruhi turns to her bandmembers after God Knows is remarkably similar to the what Son does in Linda Linda Linda after their first song.




Before anyone cries “rip-off” or anything, Linda Linda Linda came first, and there’s way, way too much unique content in Haruhi (like, most of the scene in question) for it, like the Phoenix Wright stuff in Lone Island Syndrome, to be counted as anything other than a loving tribute. It’s simply the kind of thing that’s amusing to note.

The movie is out on R1 from Viz if anyone particularly wants to see it. It is pretty much just a two-hour movie where nothing really happens, but it is relatively entertaining, and there are a few particularly amusing scenes. It’s probably worth watching for Haruhi nerds just for the sake of it, though I’d imagine at least part of the concert scene will be up on Youtube if you really want to look for it.