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
Here it is, the genuine tale of what sparked it all. Haruhism has swept through the anime world, and it's all thanks to this light novel series. But, you might wonder, how did such a remarkable movement stem from this? To be honest, that's something I'd like to discover myself.
Now, I know my statement above could lead anyone to think that I'm dissatisfied with the origins of Haruhi, and in a way, I am, but not as severely as it may initially seem. What I mean is that the anime took just a snippet of the story and expanded it into a full course meal. The snippet being the only sweet part of the series.
The anime comprises parts of this light novel series; the first novel which forms the core of the anime and six short stories taken from three different novels. That's a tiny fraction compared to the total content
(nine novels so far). So, what was left behind? Well, to put it simply, the main character, in my opinion. Yes, I realize you're puzzled about what I mean, but give me a moment to explain. The main character of a story is typically the central focus, which one would assume is Haruhi Suzumiya, but as I read through Kyon's (the narrator) various reflections, the story seemed to shift its attention. Haruhi seemed absent in most scenes, and when she did appear, it was mostly Kyon criticizing her character.
So, who filled the gap left by the missing main character? None other than the least interesting character in the series, Mikuru Asahina. Yes, the constant admiration of her beauty and the angst it caused Kyon filled page after page in this novel series. Occasionally, Yuki Nagato and Itsuki Koizumi pop up and make the stories more engaging, but not enough to save some of them.
And that's where the two points missing from the score lie. Asahina, whom I dislike so much, takes center stage with constant idiocy, which is great for those who enjoy that sort of thing. But, I don't find her entertaining, especially when written, at least fan service keeps me engaged. While Yuki is practically a demi-god (though she seemed to be the Deus Ex Machina in most of the stories) and Koizumi has an intriguingly mysterious aura and agency backing him, the author chooses a ditzy time traveler and her older self to focus on. I shouldn't even have to mention that the character the title comes from doesn't even seem to be mentioned in many parts of the stories.
I wanted to adore this series, I truly did. That's why it saddens me to write about it this way. It still retains the unique charm of the anime, and when the great characters are included, it shines. But, I found myself wanting to skip over entire chapters (which, as an avid reader, goes against my nature) that were just boring me with repetition. It was filled with great initial concepts that faltered by the time the conclusion was revealed.
It isn't a terrible read. The writing isn't complex but is solid, and there are many humorous jokes. Kyon maintains his sarcastic charm, and all the other characters keep the reasons why we love this franchise in the first place. But, I just couldn't get into it. It seems as though the author wanted to discard all of his good ideas and keep the story as simple as possible midway through each story. I guess Mikuru fans would be pleased with this work, but for everyone else, I leave you with this one question: WHERE IS HARUHI?
Popular Reviews
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
Now, I know my statement above could lead anyone to think that I'm dissatisfied with the origins of Haruhi, and in a way, I am, but not as severely as it may initially seem. What I mean is that the anime took just a snippet of the story and expanded it into a full course meal. The snippet being the only sweet part of the series.
The anime comprises parts of this light novel series; the first novel which forms the core of the anime and six short stories taken from three different novels. That's a tiny fraction compared to the total content
(nine novels so far). So, what was left behind? Well, to put it simply, the main character, in my opinion. Yes, I realize you're puzzled about what I mean, but give me a moment to explain. The main character of a story is typically the central focus, which one would assume is Haruhi Suzumiya, but as I read through Kyon's (the narrator) various reflections, the story seemed to shift its attention. Haruhi seemed absent in most scenes, and when she did appear, it was mostly Kyon criticizing her character.
So, who filled the gap left by the missing main character? None other than the least interesting character in the series, Mikuru Asahina. Yes, the constant admiration of her beauty and the angst it caused Kyon filled page after page in this novel series. Occasionally, Yuki Nagato and Itsuki Koizumi pop up and make the stories more engaging, but not enough to save some of them.
And that's where the two points missing from the score lie. Asahina, whom I dislike so much, takes center stage with constant idiocy, which is great for those who enjoy that sort of thing. But, I don't find her entertaining, especially when written, at least fan service keeps me engaged. While Yuki is practically a demi-god (though she seemed to be the Deus Ex Machina in most of the stories) and Koizumi has an intriguingly mysterious aura and agency backing him, the author chooses a ditzy time traveler and her older self to focus on. I shouldn't even have to mention that the character the title comes from doesn't even seem to be mentioned in many parts of the stories.
I wanted to adore this series, I truly did. That's why it saddens me to write about it this way. It still retains the unique charm of the anime, and when the great characters are included, it shines. But, I found myself wanting to skip over entire chapters (which, as an avid reader, goes against my nature) that were just boring me with repetition. It was filled with great initial concepts that faltered by the time the conclusion was revealed.
It isn't a terrible read. The writing isn't complex but is solid, and there are many humorous jokes. Kyon maintains his sarcastic charm, and all the other characters keep the reasons why we love this franchise in the first place. But, I just couldn't get into it. It seems as though the author wanted to discard all of his good ideas and keep the story as simple as possible midway through each story. I guess Mikuru fans would be pleased with this work, but for everyone else, I leave you with this one question: WHERE IS HARUHI?
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