released 01 apr 08 / last mod 01 apr 08 / greg goebel / public domain
* At the beginning of THE MELANCHOLY OF HARUHI SUZUMIYA, an anime series consisting of 14 episodes on 4 DVDs, we meet Kyon, a fairly ordinary, slightly unkempt Japanese high-school lad, who strikes up an acquaintance -- not entirely of his choosing -- with a cute, energetic, egotistical, and eccentric classmate named Haruhi Suzumiya. Kyon doesn't know what to make of Haruhi, and he knows even less of what to make of her when she loudly announces to the class that if they're not either an alien, time-traveler, or esper -- she's not interested in them.
So great is Haruhi's fascination with these subjects that she forms a school club, called the "SOS Brigade" -- never mind what "SOS" stands for, there's various reads on it, "Suzumiya's Official Slaves" might fit -- to hunt for aliens, time-travelers, and espers. She drags Kyon in, and quickly rounds up three more members: a completely expressionless girl named Yuki Nagato, a sexy but awkward and shy girl named Miroku Asahina, and an ever-smiling lad named Itsuki Koizumi. The premise of the club is bizarre enough to Kyon, but matters become much more bizarre when he finds out that his clubmates are an alien, time-traveler, and esper respectively ... and they prove it to him.
As it turns out, Haruhi Suzumiya is a kind of cosmic locus that has attracted the attention of various entities and organizations. They're not quite sure what to make of her, but the suspicion is that the world is actually a manifestation of Haruhi's will, and if she gets bored with it, the world will end. The end result is that the club does everything they can to keep Haruhi amused by going along with her various crazy schemes ... except for Kyon, who has deep misgivings about the whole mad arrangement.
* HARUHI SUZUMIYA is a very popular series, and on watching the set I can see why. While it operates as a parody of various other anime series -- more than I know about myself, I don't come close to catching half the references -- it features a dry, oblique, highly imaginative humor very unlike any other anime series I've ever seen. In fact it comes across as resembling some sorts of British humor, with overtones of Douglas Adams ... it's not really dry British humor or Adams, but it appears to have been written by a Japanese person who likes such things.
In addition, although the usual fate of anime parodies is to pile on slapstick in a haphazard fashion, HARUHI SUZUMIYA actually has a real story -- not in terms of a tight plot, the story line wanders all over the landscape, but in terms of presenting convincing characters and their relationships. The story is fed through the viewpoint of Kyon, who comes across a bit like Adams' Arthur Dent, an ordinary person thrown into cosmic lunacies. However, while Dent reacted by becoming confused and hysterical, Kyon merely gets annoyed and cynical. He ends up as sort of a conscience for the SOS Brigade, trying with mixed success to restrain Haruhi's inclination to act like a petty and ruthless tyrant. Incidentally, Haruhi has no idea that the aliens, time-travelers, and espers she's hunting for are actually right under her nose -- they don't tell her and she's too full of herself to notice.
The real sleeper character of the series is Yuki Nagato. She's not precisely an alien, she's a construct implemented by a higher-dimensional entity. Since our Universe is something like a software environment as far as said entity is concerned, Nagato is less an android than something like a software avatar. She can manipulate the environment to an extent, performing what Kyon calls "creepy magic". Nagato's body language is bizarre and she can pull off stunts like recoding software while it's running, in memory.
HARUHI SUZUMIYA is a nicely produced, very imaginative series. It may be too oblique for some anime fans -- any anime series that runs a joke about ROSENKRANZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD is oblique, in fact sometimes it gets downright eerie -- and it doesn't do much to tie up the scenario in the end. Kyon and Haruhi seem to be drifting towards a relationship that neither of them wants, while Nagato seems to take a particular interest in Kyon. That relates to the central mystery of the series, which is why an ordinary guy like Kyon is at the center of all this lunacy. Why should Haruhi, with her outspoken contempt for the ordinary, care about Kyon? Is there more to him than he knows?
Further series are obviously planned down the road. I will pick them up. I was sorry that the first series only had 14 episodes. Incidentally, the very first episode may throw the viewer somewhat, since it's in the format of "the worst amateur video production ever made". A perceptive viewer will suspect that there's a story behind it, and the story is provided in the following episodes.
