Mystérique Sign


 * This article is about the anime episode. For the short story, see Mystérique Sign (story).

Key Events

 * Haruhi discovers that their website is skewed.
 * Emiri Kimidori asks the SOS Brigade to help look for her "boyfriend", the Computer Research Society President. (In reality, Emiri is not the CRS President's girlfriend, but instead she's a humanoid interface like Nagato. This is not revealed at this point in the storyline.)
 * The Brigade searches in the President's apartment and finds a data life form presenting itself as the fear of the Computer Society's president: a camel cricket in an overlapping closed space.

Summary
Haruhi makes a new logo for the SOS Brigade website and the SOS Brigade receives its first client, a girl named Emiri Kimidori. She asks them to investigate the disappearance of her boyfriend, the Computer Study Group's president. When they get to his apartment, they find no one there, and Haruhi quickly gets bored and leaves. However, Yuki tells the rest of them to stay as she detects a strange presence. She takes Kyon, Mikuru and Itsuki to an alternate dimension where a data lifeform shaped like a giant cave cricket appears. Yuki and Itsuki defeat it, the latter using a small amount of his power, and thus rescues the president of the Computer Club. Yuki tells them that the lifeform had existed some billion years ago and had been in hibernation until Haruhi's logo had appeared on the internet. It had also kidnapped eight other people. After the SOS Brigade has saved them, Yuki modifies Haruhi's logo to remove the danger. It is revealed the Computer Club president never had a girlfriend and Emiri was just a pretend client set up by Yuki.

Characters

 * Haruhi Suzumiya
 * Kyon
 * Mikuru Asahina
 * Yuki Nagato
 * Itsuki Koizumi
 * Emiri Kimidori

Trivia

 * This episode was broadcast as episode 7 of Season 1, and episode 9 of Season 2.
 * The official Haruhi Suzumiya website is based off the glitched web site in this episode, showing exactly 0029881 visitors.
 * As Itsuki is fighting, he shouts out "Fumoffu!" and "Second Raid!", both of which are a side story and sequel to Full Metal Panic!, another anime produced by Kyoto Animation.
 * In this version the cricket is translated as "a camel cricket". However, in the other versions it is translated as "a cave cricket", another common name for the same animal.
 * Yuki says, "Displaying statistics and current TCP/IP connections using NBT." in order to enter the cricket's space.
 * In order to freeze the giant cricket, Yuki says, "Pausing interval seconds between display."
 * The green drone beetle seen replenishing the cricket's HP (Health Points) is a parody of SEGA's arcade TCG (Trading Card Game), Mushi King.
 * The Computer Club's President's name possibly starts with "Ya", but this maybe just because as Emiri says his name in the anime, the scene cuts to a cat meowing. This is not represented in the novels.
 * A poster of Aya Hirano, Minori Chihara and Yuko Goto, who voice Haruhi, Yuki and Mikuru in the original Japanese version, can be seen behind Kyon in the computer president's room.