60 were impressed.
25 were lost in a horrible time-based anomaly
10 found little engagement from the plot
5 didn’t care for characters or had other gripes
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is certainly a dividing catalyst among otaku, and I can certainly understand why. It’s first season airing in 2006 I feel was very representative of the direction the industry would go in the coming years. I found the first season to be fairly typical with a few quirks and some intrigue to distinguish itself from the crowd of bland slice of life anime. The second season however, made what I can only describe as extremely bold moves. After finishing this series, I felt not that my time was wasted, but rather that my time was not respected by the director of the series.
***Spoilers past here for explanatory purposes***
Perhaps my expectations were elevated too high from the reputation this series held, but I was rather disappointed with the blandness of the whole affair. In the words of Michael Bluth “I don’t know what I expected” coming from a show with melancholy in its title. Indeed, this series revolves around the titular and excitable Haruhi Suzumiya. In a haze of ennui at realizing her own irrelevance in the universe, Haruhi has obtained divine powers to will the paranormal into existence with the only catch being that she has no awareness that the world is not mundane. In short, Haruhi wants the world to be less boring and without knowing it causes the paranormal to happen. We’re introduced to a cast of characters including a quiet monotone alien girl Yuki, a clumsy high-pitched time traveling girl Asahina, and your smiley cordial line eyes character who is a psychic, Koizumi. The show is anchored from the perspective of Kyon, who is your typical brown hair nonplused anime protagonist. Kyon is dragged around by Haruhi in her desire to alleviate the boredom of her typical high school life while all the supernatural happenings fall onto Kyon to take care of. This dynamic is the core of the show and the lack of payoff from these characters interactions I feel is where a lot of my dissatisfaction with the series comes from.
Art direction was undeniably high quality, KyoAni delivers an excellent product in this regard no matter what project they’re working on. Generally, anything they touch will look good. Good looks will only get you so far though. I don’t care how technically impressive something is if the story isn’t engaging then the end product can only be enjoyed on the most superficial of levels.
Sound design was pretty good overall with some exceptions. The show checks boxes with it’s legendary first OP and generally all the other scores were good earworms as well. Voicework was overall average or better save for one example. There’s a common fallacy filled argument that people prefer subs over dubs because they can’t tell when there’s bad voice acting in Japanese because they can’t understand the language. Haruhi does a great job of blowing that bs out of the water. Now I have a rudimentary understanding of Japanese so maybe my ears are Papa-blessed, but Yuuko Gouto’s voice work for the time traveler Asahina was absolutely atrocious. It was that 2000’s era specific annoying high-pitched voice you’d hear everywhere with some of the worst delivery and fakest emotions I’ve ever heard in a performance. It legitimately felt like Asahina’s terrible line delivery was on purpose, but that doesn’t really change the fact that it was grating to the ears, annoying to listen to, and all around unpleasant especially when you are subjected to some of that same crappy voicework six or more times.
There’s not much more I can say on the matter that wasn’t said over 10 years ago, but the second season of the show made some absolutely madlad decisions that likely contributed to Haruhi’s infamy. The studio having been renewed for a second 14-episode course opted in their infinite wisdom to use 8 episodes of the run time to present a Groundhog Day plot. Oh, but that wouldn’t have been enough to turn talking about Haruhi Suzumiya on online forums into a polarized shitfest no no no. The arc covers the main casts activities living out the last 2 weeks of a normal high schoolers summer vacation. Except every episode does it in the same way… every time. The initial loop is established in episode 1 and 2 of the arc and we are subjected to a loop of the main casts summer events until the last 2 minutes of the 8th episode where the loop is broken. There’s a huge box of wtf to unpack here, but first some numbers. This arc was eight episodes long so out of the fourteen episode long season, the Endless Eight comprised a whopping 57% of season two, and a still staggering 28.5% of the entire series’ run time. For even more context that’s over THREE HOURS of runtime spent on functionally the same 24 minutes playing on loop. The initial response from critics would be to suggest that there was money or development issues in the production of the show, but those claims are quickly dismissed by the content of the episodes. Despite covering the same events and dialogue, every episode was animated in different angles, with different line delivery, and with different outfits, designs, and color palettes. A little research at the airing of the season would suggest the arc ran in conjunction with Japan’s real-world summer vacation. Whether this could be considered cheeky, clever, or cruel the fact remains that this was the most poorly executed time shenanigans plot I’d ever seen in any piece of media. Doing something unique or a little clever doesn’t make it good entertainment.
Haruhi works as such a great poster child for what not to do with your slice of life story and characters. Just because the material of your story is mundane does not mean the actual product you are presenting to the viewer has to be. This is ultimately why I hate most slice of life and four girl style shows. They fall into this trap all the time, but excellent recent examples like Yuru Camp and Sora Yori show that this is a failing on the material and not the genre. Haruhi as a character is held up as some sort of prime Tsundere, but I couldn’t relate to that at all. I found her almost intolerable and I rather like the trope. Haruhi Suzumiya is a petulant child who throws temper tantrums when those around her will not satisfy her narcissistic and hedonistic desires. The cast of characters live in fear of angering Haruhi for the risk of her unintentionally changing reality to suite her desires, and this is almost pushed in a really good direction. Towards the end of the series things come to a head, boring generic protagonist-kun stands up to Haruhi when she is being just blatantly an ass. She throws a tantrum referring to the cast of characters as her playthings to do with as she pleases and protagonist-kun has enough of it and bails. Wow! Will protagonist-kun look inside himself and realize being tugged around by a toxic person like that isn’t good for him? Will Haruhi take this chance to reflect on her actions and stop being an emotionally stunted child? Nope! Protagonist-kun bursts in the room to apologize and it’s back to square one. We catch just the smallest glimpse of Haruhi doing her hair in a way Kyon likes before he bursts in the room suggesting she knew she was in the wrong and working on coming to him to communicate in her own way, but we are completely robbed of this potential character development.
I’ve now spent over a thousand words completely ragging on this show, but honestly there were some bits I liked. I didn’t care for the overarching plot of Haruhi Suzumiya’s divinity, but the strange happenings and characters were the hook that gave the series a boost of engagement. The long plot-based exposition was pretty much meaningless all things considered but the quirks of the alien character Yuki were unique and fun. She’s an alien computer entity in a human body who has a unique perspective on the events of the story. Her vacant expression and unique reactions to events were funny and enjoyable. Long haired side character Tsuruya and Kyon’s little sister were also notable characters with some personality that added flavor to an otherwise bland dish, however overall, there just wasn’t enough characterization in the cast and it didn’t set itself apart in a meaningful way. The home movie episode, and the computer science club battle that had genuinely fun bits were lost in the desert sands of the rest of this show.
I am not sorry that I watched this series if only for the reputation that Haruhi Suzumiya holds among the community, but that is indicative of the actual value of this show. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya should be watched solely on the basis that it is the paramount example of an anime given a divine status among the anime community solely on the merit of its existing. It is the pinnacle of extremely well-crafted mediocrity. The perfect potato chip anime; made to be consumed mindlessly as another junk food in the pile around your filthy NEET den.
Afterthoughts: A quick ramble on the last scene of the series. Kyon spends a majority of his inner dialogue talking about how much he is lusting after ditsy time traveler Asahina. The final scene of the second season ends with Haruhi showing Kyon a bit of tsundere affection where she walks home with him in the rain. It falls a little flat though when not 2 minutes ago Kyon was thinking about how bummed he was he didn’t get to see Asahina naked. Like, what’s the point?
