The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Overview

I just finally finished The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya yesterday (it only took me about 3 months) so that’s what we’re reviewing today. This review will not be covering the movie The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

The general plot for this anime is that there is a club known as the SOS Brigade, of which Haruhi Suzumiya is the captain. The point of this club is to discover supernatural things such as aliens, people from the future, and people with psychic powers. Unbeknownst to Haruhi, three of the five members of her club fall into these categories.

Haruhi also seemingly has godlike powers that she doesn’t notice which allow her to create things just by wishing they were real, such as the aliens, people from the future, and people with psychic powers. The anime follows the misadventures that Haruhi leads the SOS Brigade on in her search for something to cure her boredom with the world.

Characters

Haruhi is the titular character, but not the protagonist. Instead, she is simply the one who gets the rest of the SOS Brigade into troubling situations through her crazy ideas. She’s a jack-of-all-trades, but not a master-of-none. In fact, she seems to be able to master anything she tries on a whim, but quickly gets bored and moves on to the next thing.

Because of her tendency to overtly show her boredom with any and all activities and people, she became an outcast of sorts, but that suits her just fine because normal people bore her anyway. One way in which her uniqueness was shown at the start of the anime is that she would wear her hair in a different style depending on the day of the week, but this quickly changes and she seems to stick with one hairstyle.

Kyon is the protagonist of the anime. He made the mistake of talking to Haruhi in class one day and has been stuck with her ever since. He is often the voice of reason within the group as the only really normal member of the SOS Brigade. Despite this, he tends to go along with Haruhi’s plans anyway even though he knows they aren’t going to end well for him.

Mikuru is from the future. She was sent back in time to observe Haruhi and make sure she doesn’t do anything that could drastically alter the future, although she has no real way of stopping this if it were to happen. Haruhi views Mikuru as her pet and often dresses her up in various outfits while in the club room.

Koizumi has psychic powers and is part of another organization for which his task is to observe Haruhi. His organization of espers believes that Haruhi is essentially a god with the ability to destroy and recreate the universe. He also occasionally needs to fix spaces of warped reality left behind when Haruhi gets emotional.

Finally, Yuki is the alien of the group. She is part of a hive mind alien being and so has knowledge of most things in the universe. She also has magic-like powers and is actually able to stop things from getting out of hand with Haruhi. Despite her ability to effectively stop Haruhi’s changes to the universe, her primary job, like with the other two, is to observe.

Endless Eight

While I think Haruhi Suzumiya is considered a classic at this point, it’s also infamous for a group of episodes known as the Endless Eight. As the name suggests, there are eight of these episodes, and they do in fact feel endless.

The Endless Eight is really just one episode, but it’s been animated and voiced eight different times so each one is slightly different. The main thing you’ll notice is that the outfits of the characters change in each episode, but there are also slight differences in the dialogue and the story appears to progress in each one although it doesn’t really.

The plot of these episodes is that the SOS Brigade is stuck in an endless loop of a two-week period at the end of Summer because Haruhi has regrets about not doing something during Summer break. But the plot of these episodes isn’t really that important, the important thing here is that they made the same episode eight times in a row and got away with it.

This was when anime evolved from something that is watched to something that is experienced.

Luckily for you, I experienced the Endless Eight so you don’t have to. If you’re watching Haruhi and want to skip this torture, then just watch either episodes 1 and 8 or 1, 2, and 8. However, I do suggest watching all of them for the full experience.

Conclusion

Even with the Endless Eight, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya was a good anime. I give it a 7/10 even though it wasn’t something I could binge which is why it took me so long to finish it even though it’s only 28 episodes long.

I should note that I watched it in chronological order which mixes the 2009 episodes in with the originals from 2006. It may be a bit confusing if you watch it in the original release order. Even when the 2009 episodes were broadcast they were mixed in with the 2006 episodes in chronological order so I believe this is the way they were meant to be watched.