Review of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

The written review of a Video Review of Haruhi Suzumiya. Story - 9/10 The story of Haruhi Suzumiya, how I say it rather out there, sort of. It’s about a guy name Kyon, who is living a rather ordinary life, and he accepts the fact that nothing interesting happens to him, until he met Haruhi Suzumiya. Now Haruhi, is not your average person, she is trying to find fun in life, and since none of the clubs at the school suit her peculiar personality, and with Kyon springing the idea unintentionally to her unintentionally, she goes on to form a club with Kyon and a few otherpeople. Known as the ‘Spreading Excitement all Over the World with Suzumiya Haruhi Brigade’ or the SOS Brigade for short.

Now even the club members don’t know what the club does, but Haruhi states that their goal is to find Aliens, Time Travellers and Espers, how to do that one does not know, but they are closer than you think.

Characters - 8/10

Haruhi Suzumiya is the beautiful, smart, athletic high school student, but behind that she is rather eccentric. She believes in Aliens, Time travellers and Espers, and because of her weird beliefs many people tend to avoid her, leaving her be, except Kyon for whatever reason. She is the God of world able to bring it to an end, if she gets bored. Twist is, she doesn’t know she’s a god, because if she was to find out, she could bring the world to a reset, if she wanted to.

Our Alien/Cyborg no personality character is Yuki Nagato. Despite looking like a regular girl, and a quiet and monotone one at that, the reason behind this is she actually an Alien/Cyborg created by the ‘Data Integration Thought Entity.’ An organization outer space who observes different parts of the Galaxy, and Yuki’s job by them is to observe Haruhi. Yuki is actually the only member of the SOS Brigade who can use her power willingly when she wants to, to mostly to save the other characters from certain situations.

The fan service and moe club member Mikuru Asahina. Mikuru is actually from the future, hence she is the Time Traveller. Despite being from the future, she is really vulnerable, her character is often sexually harassed by Haruhi because she is just there for eye candy, and used as jail bait. She is sent from the future to observe Haruhi as something happened in the future because of the past, what that is classified.

The esper of the group is Itsuki Koizumi, your good looking male character of the series. He’s a transfer student, who Haruhi abducts to join the group because it’s Mysterious being a transfer student. He works for organization known as ‘The Organization’ basically a group of espers trained to fight these beings in what they call a closed space, which is the only place where he can use he’s powers. He’s job is to prevent Haruhi from destroying the world, and therefor trying to keep her happy.

And I think we had enough of supernatural characters, so we have our ordinary and main character Kyon. The only thing weird about him is that he is never given a real name throughout the series, he's just known as Kyon which is a nickname. He really has no motivation as to why he’s in the group, he just got himself into that situation and starts to get use to his whacky adventures. Kyon gets full control of this series as he does the narration, usually something relating outside of the series, which relates to the storyline.

Now all the characters kind of disagree with each other, other than Kyon, who sort of agrees with everyone, except Haruhi. However all their goals are the same, it’s just the method they choose they disagree on, because they’re all from different organizations. But their main goal is to keep Haruhi in the dark on who she really is, to prevent her from destroying the entire world, and Kyon is key to all their plans.

Animation - 8/10

Now the animation is really good, originally being released in 2006 and a 2nd season released in 2009. You can see the change in art style, even though it’s not that much difference you can still see the difference. It has a rather clean art style, as in everything is animated very well, even the background, everything new is animated. And the lighting is very good as well, it really fits each character individually when they are focused, and the scenes when a lot things are happening is well animated, it doesn’t feel like anything is repeating. However I’m not a huge fan, when the supernatural beings they’re facing becomes an obvious 3D rendering, in such a beautiful 2D world.

Enjoyment - 10/10

It’s hard to describe Haruhi, because it fulfils so many different genres. But because it covers so many genres, I think that’s what makes its enjoyable, it has a little be of something for everyone. There is no definitive storyline, it’s because of the way the characters are set out, there is room for many different kind of adventures.

One part of the show which I didn’t really enjoy about the show was the Endless Eight Arc, which was the same story happening for each episode. Each episode is animated differently, but it was the same thing all the time, which was a chore to watch over again. If you watch, Endless Eight and don’t want to sit through all 8 Episodes of the same just watch Part 1,4,8. For a start, middle and end.

The music is pretty good as well. Most notably season 1 ending theme, which you can learn to dance to. Also sometime in the series where Haruhi is playing in a band, that scene was beautifully animated and the song was well done as well.

I recommend watching it in chronological order and finishing off with the movie, because it’s a pretty damn good movie. Because the last episode ‘Someday in the Rain’ was pretty meh.

Verdict

Haruhi is a great series for fans of anime. It pretty much has a little bit of every genre for everyone. It’s mostly a Slice of Life, but because of how the characters are made and developed, the story can go to a variety of places.

9/10