Suzumiya Haruhi Series

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Melancholy of haruhi Suzumiya is a masterpiece from the early 2000s.

Well written science fiction with an emphasis of slice of life story of a high school boy with no willingness to explore the joy in the world as he is coping with the reality, and a girl who is willing to take an action on every opportunity for fun things like aliens, time-travelers or espers.

Only thing people may not enjoy is the overabundance of monologues, where every thoughts of the main character is being described.
Many of the characters' emotion are being described with unconventional similes and metaphors or detailed gestures, which may slow pacing down. ... For me it helps my mind to settle the emotions of the characters, but some may find this frustrating.

INFO: In order not to become a confusing and incoherent writing, I will use "Suzumiya" to refer to the series, "Haruhi" for the character and "Suzumiya Haruhi" for the two consecutively



First, I will be making a prediction based on my own selfishness, since the aesthetic terms would only hypocritically camouflage my intentions..... if you are a crazy fan of literature and its philosophies that work in conjunction with the harmonious musical writing that is poetry , you are in the wrong place and you will probably be very disappointed in this regard.... However, if you just want a creative and innovative work, I feel you ... can raise your arms as a new fan to the slightly deconstructed pop culture
As a middle ground between the two, I just felt lukewarm about it, but I still felt like it's a lot closer to good than bad.


At first hand, I always saw people talking about how Suzumiya was a deep philosophical work of art, a well of creativity or something like a parody full of metalanguages, but I think these people are not sure what they are talking about, and allowing my arrogance flow, the cloud in my head explodes and allows me to shed a few bolts of irritation

Let's go... I'm not going to use the constructed community itself as an argument and that all these opinions that diverge to some extent actually prove an inconsistency on the part of the author. In fact, as these people praise, ironically I will make my protest
For me, Suzumiya is not a parody or a profound work... Yes, for me it's not as if the work had a lot of subjects to address and did so with symbolic subtlety. These moments definitely exist, but among the 11 volumes, I can only catch 3 of those that are almost crushed by the majority. If the ending of this series (volume 9-11) wasn't so good, it would probably forget its qualities

That said, as a matter of disappointment, reading Suzumiya was like losing your virginity... You think it's going to be a sea ​​of ​​roses, but you're disappointed at first, so disappointed that even your cock hangs its head and you flinch. Later, after countless anti-romantic encounters, if you notice that your girlfriend is visiting the bakery around the corner a lot, although she always comes back with an empty bag, you realize that she has gained weight. Naive, he decides to trust the female fungus, until one day, you observe your wife playing "fight" with the baker next to the oven on the counter, thus realizing that another type of fermentation was taking place inside your wife. It follows that the empty bag and the swelling belly were nothing more than a metaphor for unwanted pregnancy........... Take this as personally as you like, little blackpill (I can't believe I used that term. ..)


Okay, I like metalanguage and metaphors, but I like even more someone making fun of the whole chunny tropic, and well... Suzumiya arrived early in this regard and seems to be doing a stand up show with all the cliché scenario that LNs have taken nowadays.

To support this scenario, we have writing... There are a considerable number of comparisons and some metaphors, and for what I believed to be a consequence, figures of speech always end up embellishing his writing more, but I felt that the vast majority were everyday and too simple to understand. accompany any poetic and profound direction

At first, I could really correlate that this almost unhealthy and unnecessary use of repetitions was just a way of highlighting the everyday in a simple and direct way, indirectly amplifying the bond between Kyon and Haruhi, but it wasn't anything that profound... It was just the result of uninteresting stories that take too long to link to the main one, giving predictability enough time to kick in.

Seriously, I'm fine with hearing theoretical repetitions and obvious pleonasms, as long as they make some narrative sense or don't take up a lot of the writing, not to mention the exaggerated amount of very shallow comparisons that for the most part didn't even make sense, unfortunately, no in a comical way like in a shitpost.
This unbridled repetition of parts that don't fit just shows the lack of polish, or rather, a basic care coming from its manufacturer.

As a result, Suzumiya loves to fill her writing with empty content, and believe me, the reaction of this is HARDLY something fun like an air balloon or the surprise of this popping ball when combined with her script. It is simply something used to inflate, nothing more and nothing less, without any use, be it fun, comic, depth or faithfully linked to the story itself.
I'm willing to accept that this happens in every book, but specifically, Suzumiya is like a balloon-blowing machine, a boredom so deadly that with every breath it feels like the propane pervades and spreads like a brain epidemic that corrupts all my little ones cells that remained.


Of course, to keep the reader entertained in a boring everyday life until its seriousness comes to light, comedy is definitely a necessary part. In this way, I can say that Suzumiya worked decently with this genre, but still left something to be desired... Based on a simple average, the amount of uninteresting parts is too great for a comedy that can't fill everything

Suzumiya Haruhi's comical point is her inconvenience... As everything revolves around Haruhi, this eccentric girl works with conveniences that need an opponent who suffers from this idiotic dictatorship. This is the repetitive joke in the series that suffers from some minor settings to not highlight the sameness.
This point converges between the characters, which often doesn't even have to be Haruhi to do it, it can just be a conspiratorial satire between the most varied organizations that seem to make light of the situation, but not enough to become a disregard for the road map

It might sound really fun, but I feel like it lacked scope or some larger settings to make it move more from its repetition. What I mean here are not regional jokes which it would be unfair of me to sentence them, but belonging to certain selective groups that don't know much about, which even if researched about, doesn't work like that unforeseen that hides its comic, but just a pointless comment

Overall, I hardly had a big laugh, which only occurred to me 2 times here, but it's good enough for some light chuckles thrown in at random.


For the script, we have an interesting kind of tension created when it comes to the initial position of the "villain" who doesn't realize his own malice and that's why he can fight so strongly on the side of the "heroes".
The setup for these problematics usually comes with some extrasensory feeling from Kiyon, a self-insertion by the author to give his advance warning when seriousness is about to arise, automatically generating feelings of mystery.

The fun of a mystery building is walking on a foggy road that seems to laugh at what you think is logical, but at the end of the day, rational is always the answer, it just needs such complexity to be compressed enough to fit into your small space. intellectual, and this is what they call induced epiphany.
Of course, it's a fact that some authors leave some slips or just certain readers are too attentive, which ends up causing this epiphany to come before its time, almost like a mistake in the "timing", you know? And, even considering this, mystery construction doesn't always have to be something unpredictable, because let's face it, it's much more interesting to study the formula behind a reaction than its final result without construction! I mean, maybe that's not why when we scroll down the comments tab of some mysterious book, we see so many people praising the outcome even though they already predicted it!? Don't be fooled, this is not an illusion created by legions of fans who deny logical reasoning, but a clear vivid construction of mystery in a more sloppy and fun way!

In a way you could say that while a well-constructed mystery should be like a pure substance boiling where the whole process of informative heating is worked out gradually until all the epiphanic steam starts coming to you, Suzumiya's is like taking a mix of high quality paints and throwing them on a wall, causing a real artistic disaster. The way the colors come together still leaves its creative charm, but doesn't camouflage its incongruity.

What I mean here is that the mystery is mostly predictable, and even so, it manages to impress you with creative extensions, apart from just the time travel volumes.... I feel that for these arcs, it would be much better for the script to understand. his drunkenness as post hangover thoughts and so, playing with his own cheesy past in a circle of friends SOS!!! Unfortunately, these satirical arcs leaned much more towards Koizumi's side.


Talking more about her characters, I'd like to start with Haruhi.... Her eccentricity decreases a lot, but her development is really good, as this reduction doesn't create an approximation to a cliché mentally retarded virgin girl personality or a static balance between the volume 1 and the final volume with no emotional friction. The script continues to create problems so that such gaps are filled and Haruhi can give a direct flying bulldozer that sinks all criticism while promoting the dictatorship of the SOS brigade (not amongus)
This girl is the self-explanation of the "great semen rush", but this is not only due to her frenetic personality... It's not just an initially irritating girl who achieves her charisma, but also the sentimental complexity she represents. to oppose everyday life without really recognizing what you really want (in this way, the name of the arc of each volume makes a rather interesting literary role)

To educate such a contradictory idiot, we have Kiyon,..... He is a passive opponent who will counter eccentricities with his basic irony, which although he proves incapable of fighting an extremist on twitter, is enough to amuse the reader with some light laughs
When the issue involves your name and the screams of Haruhi pinscher, your disagreements will always be notorious. while Haruhi has his generalized development around all volumes, Kiyon has very good developments in volumes 1 and 4, while the others are just repetitions that take away the philosophical potential of the previous volumes, once again proving the helium gas balloon theory. .
To finish off the Kiyon route, something interesting is your "passive opposer" who initially brings up thoughts like "You idiot, why don't you stop her?" "Why don't you divert this crazy girl's attention!?" that look just like lazy script settings, when later on they turn into a "tsun tsun" mode in relation to the problems faced. It serves as a kind of character deconstruction, which also goes for Kiyon's suspicions of people around him and how he complains about it, but it's nothing that complex or anything like that, so it's still insufficient to fill in the gaps left by volume 1. and 4.

To sum up the others, Nagato has his own philosophy which for the time was a brilliant reinterpretation of a certain social problem. Koizumi is a herald of current problems, a natural and suspicious explainer who brings good mysteries and incitements to the script, after all, he is great at bringing his conspiracies and logical ramblings to the script. Asahina is an ecchi poster girl, and for spoiler reasons, I'm lukewarm towards her, but I like how Koizumi incites his theories about her.
About the other characters... Well, I just find Sasaki very interesting and got some great poetry for the script (unfortunately it took too long for that), I like Kiyon's sister and the student club president satire, but other than that, no I don't care at all about the rest


Moving towards the final stretch, we have the philosophy of Suzumiya Haruhi..... After all, why even though every day is different from each other, everyday life still exists? Or should we say that it is precisely through these small daily changes that we can establish a parameter? It really doesn't matter, because people don't complain about everyday life because it doesn't change, they complain about repeating the same feelings and not being able to overcome them. This is living a boring life and that's why we dream so much, trying to detach from reality and seek an inconsistent but welcoming image... Maybe that's why fairy tales have been gaining happy endings instead of continuing to portray dark tales? Like a kind of obscurity that fades with time?

But, thinking about all these illusions that face the truth, one comes to a conclusion... Do people really want a chunny type of super power or a pre-mapped path like a heroic isekai? This seems super complicated to handle, so people don't want it, they just want a reason to be able to truly smile, a reason to fight uselessly for something worth protecting and consequently, they want to seek the eternal in this sea of ​​constant change. . Yes, it's just a matter of what's boring and what's fun. When you find meaning in fighting, that inorganic everyday becomes a life to protect.

After all, it was no wonder that the final conflict was so poetic...
The messenger of equilibrium(Sasaki) and the messenger of fun (Haruhi). The one that organizes the disaster and the one that colors the world, just like the SOS brigade made its promise



So, to summarize....

STORY: 6 (Problem with inconsistency... The first volume is very good and the second one is a disaster, following a similar quality formula, at least before the last arc. For more information that is easier to represent in images, in case you're interested, here's my tier list about the volumes................... https://tiermaker.com/list/anime-and-manga/haruhi-suzumiya-light-novels-and-extras-66600/2859388 )

CHARACTERS: 7 (I've spent enough time explaining this, then take that...! https://tiermaker.com/list/anime-and-manga/the-melancholy-of-haruhi-suzumiya-tierlist-218133/3266995)

ART: 5 (The most basic you could think of at the time... Null symbolism aside, in terms of visuals, we have a decent job to compete with clannad and his ocular elephantiasis. Seriously, what kind of anti-biological thoughts passed by the mind of the Japanese chunny industry at the time to allow eyes to get pregnant!? Is that what they call a biohacker? Anyway, stopping with jokes, it's a very variable art, superficial and with its incongruities. The generic look that hardly changed probably helped a lot in this kind of settings, which not ironically, didn't change either. In terms of storytelling, this should be a big concern for those thirsty to stretch their imaginations, but it still remains a creative work, just not going a certain way)

FUN: 6 (I received volumes that amused me A LOT, but others that inversely caused me a powerful boredom. Even considering the final arc, I can't forget how traumatic it was to read volume 2)



Finally, I get on my knees thanking the work..... Thank you, SOS brigade, your fame is remarkable, so you certainly fulfilled your duty to spread the pandemic of smiles around the world (yes, the pleonasm was on purpose).... I mean, if mother nature can oppose us humans by creating a virus, why couldn't we do the same to oppose world sadness?
If yes, your work is done

Read volumes 1-11. Review is spoiler-free.

The Haruhi Suzumiya light novel series can be summed up by one word: compelling.

First, what it isn't. Haruhi isn't packed with explosive action - but it does have it.
Haruhi isn't focused on asking the reader to solve impossible mysteries - or a confusing narrative - but it does have those.
Haruhi isn't a science fiction epic - but it can be when it wants to.
Haruhi isn't focused on just time travel - or galactic battles between aliens - or intense fights between powerful opponents. But it has all of those.
If you somehow haven't watched the anime, glanced at the manga, heard ... about the various spinoffs - let alone read these novels, then you might be confused about the point I am trying to make. You may, in fact, think that this is a clusterf*ck of stupid themes and tropes - and by all accounts, it should be. Any lesser work would crack under the weight of its own ideas and become yet another boring, aloof arthouse flick. Haruhi, however, is not a lesser work. Nagaru Tanigawa's fantastic writing and Noizo Ito's iconic illustrations come together in an unbelievable, brilliant way that left me with a profound impression. Readers at the time thought so too - and if anything, it's worth watching the anime or reading the novels just to experience something considered such an important slice of Japanese pop culture's history that continues to influence works today, both in written and television media.

On to the novels themselves, though: Like most people, I saw the anime show first, so the first few novels will probably feel quite familiar - albeit a bit less scrambled than the broadcast order of the show. It was no less compelling, though, and I was delighted by being able to see new scenes not shown in Kyoani's adaptation. Seeing The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya film adaptation for the first time is one thing, but reading the source material was equally impressive and one of the highlights of the novels. One of the notable things about the anime is that there aren't particularly any villains in the story so to speak; Haruhi's greatest demon to conquer may just be Haruhi herself. However, in later novels new foil characters are introduced who play an important role. I was skeptical at their inclusion at first, but these characters are fleshed out quickly and become entangled in thought-provoking plot after plot - and the payoffs are consistently fantastic. Another highlight was The Intruiges of Haruhi Suzumiya - I'm avoiding spoilers here, but just know this: It's 250 pages of fascinating time-travel mayhem and buildup for a wind-cuttingly breathtaking payoff. I'd also like to briefly touch on one other thing that I don't see discussion on - the time period it's set in. Haruhi adopts this wonderful early-2000s setting, before the age of mobile devices and instant messaging and I have to say I find this time period wonderful. It's an era that's slowly becoming retro and carries this strangely calm, analogue vibe. I love it!

Much like the show though, Haruhi does have it's weaker parts. The second novel - The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya - was a weaker arc in the series (not helped by Kyoani's controversial Endless Eight adaptation, which is actually one of the best chapters in the novels!) - and Sigh is definitely the weakest of the books here, opting for more exposition and character building. By no means did it sour my experience, but I imagine it might put some people off from continuing to read after a fantastic book #1. I'll also say this - it's not going to be for everyone. Your enjoyment will hinge on if you enjoy the "air system" of slice of life character-focused works - particularly when the characters here have such contrasting and interesting personalities.

In a day and age of fast-moving online media, I don't take the time to sit down and read a novel these days. But Haruhi is worth your time - and there's really no better opportunity to do so given the recent Yen Press reprint, return of the author at the end of 2019 for the fantastic Intuition of Haruhi Suzumiya and recent uptick in promotional events and crossovers from the series.

I mentioned before about it being worthwhile just to experience something that was such a hit in the mid-2000s, but I think Haruhi is worthy of more than just being recommendable as a museum piece, but as a truly fantastic read that has withstood the weight of 18 years of works that have stood upon its shoulders. Read it - or watch it.