Review of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Spoilers for the basic overview of the plot are ahead, so you've been warned The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a comedy-drama from the perspective of Kyon, a lazy and sardonic teenager, whose narration is often filled with sarcastic and mocking remarks, and Kyon, like all lazy teenagers wants nothing more than to just take it easy and not get involved with anything. Naturally, if he got what he wanted, there wouldn't be much of a story, and so after a seating re-arrangement, he finds himself in front of the titular Haruhi Suzumiya, whom he is initially perplexed by, as she claims she has no interestin anyone other than "aliens, time travellers or espers", 3 groups of people which Kyon is not any of. After a bit of unenthusiastic talking, she drags Kyon along to found the SOS (Saving The World By Overloading It With Fun Haruhi Suzumiya) Brigade, whose mission statement is to look for supernatural activity, and drags Kyon along to the club as well. As it turns out, there are in fact aliens, time travellers and espers within Haruhi's very school, named Yuki Nagato, Asahina Mikuru and Koizumi Itsuki respectively. In fact, it also turns out Haruhi has supernatural abilities of her own, and isn't just a girl with a fascination for the supernatural and in possible need of an autism diagnosis, but rather she is an omniscient being, capable of changing or even destroying the world, should she get too upset with it, but she is unaware of this fact herself. And so, the SOS Brigade are on a mission to keep Haruhi content and go along with what she says, so as to prevent the apocalypse.

It's worth noting that I watched this show in chronological, not broadcast order, and even after watching and knowing what's going to happen at the end of each episode, I still would strongly advise anyone to watch it in chronological order, most certainly on a first viewing. While I can somewhat understand the rationale behind watching in broadcast order, I personally would only ever bother doing so after so many rewatches that it lost all its flavour.
Unlike most SOLs that seem to have come after it, the show does seem to have a continual movement of time (barring the Endless Eight but I'll talk about that later), and it feels like things are progressing, rather than as seems to be standard with most titles, with just 26 episodes of jokes and, well, a slice of a character's life, and then it just kind of ends, with ending episodes of such shows being of greatly variable quality. The premise of the show may not be great, and perhaps a bit reminiscent of an obscure sub-par sitcom from the 80's, but it all lies in the execution, and it's executed very well.
Perhaps the focal point of the show is in its characters, or at least, I believe the characters Haruhi, Kyon and Yuki. Though Asahina and Koizumi are still important to the story, they are ones I generally did not care much for the presence, or well, character of. I wouldn't go so far as to say I actively dislike them, nor that I think the show would be better off without them, but Koizumi just felt like someone for Kyon to talk to to give the viewer an idea of the situation, and Asahina was half what I described Koizumi to be, and half fanservice. I personally am not big on the shy girl with big tits who gets pushed around a lot trope. Regardless, I'd say Haruhi's a strongly written character, the Genki Girl, with enunciation on the word the. And while Kyon isn't anything special in his role in the show as a straight man, a very common one which he performs just as well as any other, his writing is only a minor step up from the standard anime MC we're all too used to. Still, in the ending episodes of the Endless Eight, last few episodes of the show, and just about the entirety of the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, he certainly takes on a much more active role, ditching his apathy and just slagging off Haruhi's idiocy in his mind, and stepping in and doing things, which I think is where he does redeem himself. It's a very nice sight to see, and I think that in the Endless Eight (that list I gave was in chronological order, for the record, at least so long as you watched the show in the same way) it is the most satisfying moment and development of his character overall.
Yuki Nagato is perhaps the last character I really liked the presence of, and to summarise, she gives off the appearance as just a very quiet and unemotional girl who just likes reading, she is an alien, far more intelligent and powerful than any of the other characters, often having to save Kyon. She does start out as a doormat for Haruhi, but does develop greatly, more so than any of the other characters, and to avoid spoiling things (and I do mean this properly, not just revealing information in the story but information that would completely spoil it) much more so in the Disappearance.
Now, there is no denying Haruhi Suzumiya's influence on anime, the internet, and so much more - just think of how many Haruhi reaction images, dakimakura covers (and other merch), MADs and other fan videos (The Hare Hare Yukai dance seen in the first ED being the biggest example) you've seen without even searching for them, and of course there's Haruhism and people on /a/ using the show's unconventional broadcasting order to solve a maths problem involving superpermutations (I don't know what a superpermutation is but neither does the spellchecker), which was reported on by several mainstream news sources, and I could go on, so I'll just also mention the successful online viral marketing campaigns, which were in their infancy. It was 2006, and probably KyoAni's biggest hit by then without a doubt, and the number of similar SOL shows that followed does not seem to me like a coincidence. Additionally, I think it also is largely responsible for the seemingly omnipresent moe phenomenon in anime these days, which back then was far less common, and interestingly enough, the subtitles I had translated the word 'moe' into 'turn-ons', but these days you'd never see it translated as such, it would always be 'moe'.
I've rambled on too much, so time to talk about the Endless Eight. The Endless Eight is an arc of 8 episodes, wherein, to spoil it (sorry) the SOS Brigade find that they keep repeating the same 2 weeks of summer holidays until the end of August, which they concluded was due to Haruhi not wanting summer to end, having done so for a total of over 500 years. Now, if you ask me, the ideal way to watch it is E8 episodes 1, 2 and 8, maybe 3 if you really want. Each episode from 2-7 is almost identical in every way, the only commendable part about it is that it was animated differently each time, and the voice actors re-recorded their lines so it sounds slightly different, but that's nothing. Terrible decision, I'm not sure what was going on in the director's mind, and I can't imagine anyone would think this would be a good idea. To make matters worse, this takes place in most of the second season, which was highly, highly anticipated after the first became critically acclaimed. Imagine waiting over a year for a second season, and most of it is just the same damn episode 8 times.
Naturally, I should proceed to mention the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, a film release for the show. To avoid spoiling the show, Kyon wakes up to find that Haruhi and Koizumi have disappeared from his school, and though Asahina and Yuki are still there, none of them have any recounting of Haruhi, the SOS Brigade, or otherworldly powers. I won't reveal any more because the intrigue and enjoyment lies in the mystery, but it's a solid film, and definitely a very strong bit of character development for Kyon and Yuki, and overall fascinating piece, and I think near the end I even caught a couple of allusions to episode 25 of Evangelion. To touch briefly on it, because it's not my area of expertise, the music in the show and film is first-rate. Some of the best I've seen in any piece of anime, or perhaps any film/show at all. The Disappearance's is far superior, with the Melancholy still falling victim to some of those classic jumpy and casual background music you find in KyoAni SOLs, but this is a minor setback. Of course, there is always the fact that OSTs always do borrow heavily from other musicians, and many of the piano pieces certainly had an Austrian Romantic feel to them, but, all in all, absolutely top quality.
The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-Chan, a spinoff with a name too similar to the original for my liking, consists of minisodes no more than 5 minutes, animated in chibi style, all focused entirely on comedy. Can't complain about it, the jokes are good and all, but even the comedy in the original seems far better constructed, but it's still a good spinoff, so I shouldn't be too unsavoury towards it. My opinion of the second spinoff, Nyoron Churuya-San, focusing on side character Tsuruya, who loves smoked cheese, and says "Nyoron~" many times throughout, which seems to be not unlike "Uguu", just a noise that doesn't mean much. What I can most certainly be unsavoury towards, however, is The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki. Absolutely piss poor. Animated in 2015, but looks at least 5 times worse than the 2006 original (also not animated by KyoAni for some reason), has Yuki turn into a generic and boring shoujo MC who I couldn't care less for. Being in the Haruhi franchise it had a big expectation to meet, but even on its own merits, it falls apart. Music is as generic as can be, the animation is probably on par with Welcome to the NHK (a show which had very poor animation, but that was excused by quality characters and story, which this does not), boring characters, and all in all, a very poor show, which I could not recommend to anyone.

I think I've explained myself well, and it's not an easy task to try and review something of this size, both in terms of the amount of content for it as well as all that surrounds it indirectly, but I suppose it's a good idea to end here, I could probably publish an essay on this if I really wanted, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone out there has already. A stellar show that is entirely deserving of its reputation, and a worthy addition to anyone's collection.