Im Haruhi Suzumiya from East Junior High. First off Im not interested in ordinary people. But if any of you are aliens timetravelers or espers please come see me. That is all Has any anime character ever introduced themselves so simply and so effectively as Haruhi Suzumiya? Right off the bat right out the gate before we know a single other thing about the character for certain we get this: if youre normal she doesnt care about you if youre some kind of supernatural entity youre worth her time. Maybe. If youre of a certain age and were interested in anime in even a minor way in 2006 or for several years afterward there is a good chance you heard that opening proclamation and not a small one that it electrified you. Ive never met anyone who identified with KyonHaruhis coolheaded snarky downtoearth foilover Haruhi herself at least not at first. Haruhis introduction to her class is both inuniverse and out a thrown gauntlet. Really its almost a sneer a vocalized disdain for the willfully conformant. You are either on the side of people who have outgrown psychic powers and UFO sightings or you areif not an actual alien yourselfseeking those very things 24/7. There is no room in this worldview for fencesitting for splitting your time for compromise. It ultimately doesnt matter that this was first penned by light novelist Nagaru Tanigawa that it was originally a few words longer the anime adaptation and most subsequent quotings leave out a bit about sliders and that it would launch a media empire Haruhis class introduction is snappy and antiauthoritarian enough to serve as the otaku Fuck The Police. Before that Haruhi media empire there was this a bratty maybegoddess blind to her own powers demanding that the world either hand itself over to her and be grateful for the opportunity or to simply not bother. The older you get the less appealing this kind of drunk charisma becomes. Haruhi is very much a doer not a thinker and the genuinely crazy shit she pulls in the first few episodes alonehijacking another school clubs meeting room strongarming not one but three people into her personal Mystery Inc. dressing up in a playboy bunny outfit to pass out fliers for recruitmentwouldnt fly in a real high school much less anywhere else in the real world. Honestly some of it using Mikuru as her own personal dressup doll chiefly is pretty deplorable That Haruhi manages to be so damnably charming on rewatches a decade later is a testament to the sheer skill the character was written with and the overflowing force of personality that Aya Hirano and yes: dub actress Wendee Lee too bring to the role. Its enough to make the viewer feel like theyre the one being inducted into the SOS Brigade. Haruhi will either bring you back to your gleeful highschool otaku phase where the biggest cares in the world were whether Light or Lelouch was the bigger mastermind or if you never had one will conjure it out of thin air for you. Haruhi herself may be fictional but the pure id part of our minds that she appeals tothe desire to rip up the mundane and dreary everyday and expose something shining and weird and wonderful underneathis very real. To this day Haruhi Suzumiya remains enticing for this very reason slip in an episodeany episode in broadcast or chronological order as you pleaseand the church bells that open Boken Desho Desho? will transport you if you let them to a simpler time. Of course the question with these things is always but does it hold up? I have always been of the opinion that that is the wrong question to ask and in this particular case I think thats doubly true. A more interesting question is that of does Haruhi Suzumiya have anything to offer a new viewer in 2017 who did not grow up with it in 2006? Which is both a bit of a harder question the answer to does it hold up is an emphatic yes and a more relevant one. The issue of what this anime even is has not gotten easier to answer over the years especially as as times gone on its constituent genres you could probably give someone a very rough idea of what Haruhi was by describing it as a slice of life mixed with a supernatural mystery have drifted even further apart than they were in 2006. Haruhi freely mixes comedy both character humor and brazen slapstick supernatural elements the occasional action sequence romantic undertones and more. All of this with a middecade anime style that despite being very much of its time still looks pretty nice today especially when compared to some of its contemporaries. Haruhi wouldnt be much if it were just the title character of course. The full ensemble cast work together like the cogs of a welloiled machine. Kyon is nothing without Haruhi to bounce off of Yukis Reipastische would be meaningless without not one but two other girlsboth quite emotional in their own waysfor contrast Mikurus whining and general moeness would be annoying without Kyons grounded levelheaded sensibility and so on. Each member of the SOS Brigade contrasts and highlights the others as a side note this is why discussions of who the best character is have always struck me as rather meaningless. This is highlighted best in my opinion by the series original season 1 finale though its only the sixth chronological episode the sixth and final part of the titular Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya subarc. Haruhi unconsciously transports herself and Kyon just herself and Kyon to a closed alternatedimension version of their school. This is painted by the other characters who briefly show up Itsuki and via text Yuki as being plainly apocalyptic. If Haruhi uses her powers to create a new world the logic goes it will quite likely destroy the old one where the rest of the SOS Brigade still resides. This is the sort of thing that its very easy to oversell but Haruhi has enough restraint that despite the stakes it doesnt fully go off the rails. Haruhi goes from terrified a rarity for her to ecstatic as she realizes that something genuinely supernatural is happening. Kyon pulls her back to reality by reminding herto a masterful soundtrack of wailing warbling choral voicesof their friends and more or less confesses to her. All of the literal events are effectively undone by the episodes end but the character development remains and sees Haruhi further come out of her shell. The first season has other highlights as well the genuinely suspensful Remote Island Syndrome arc Ryokos reveal as an alien like Yuki in the fourth part of the Melancholy arc and her subsequent confrontation with Yuki undeniably: the series best pure action scene the pseudoiyashikei of Someday In The Rain and the climax of Haruhis emotional development in Live Alive where she fronts the fictional band ENOZ played by members of the very real ZONE as part of the schools cultural festival it must here be noted that God Knows and Lost My Music are two of the best songs to ever make it into an anime. Season 2 as an aside is its own beast and deserves a more finetoothed comb discussion than this very broad review can give it. So the show holds up and still has things to offer to anime viewers today but what of its influence? Indeed for a show that was so hugely popular it seems strange that there werent more knockoffs. The truth of course is that there were plenty of them its just that most never made it out of the light novel format and as such their influence on wider anime fandom is much diminished both domestically and in the west. Even today something like Zeroth Maria has more than one strand of Haruhis DNA laced into it. There Is No Haruhi In My Classroom a series of allegedly rather cynical response novels should be mentioned here as well though theyve never been made available in English and thus remain obscure in the west. There is of course too the Monogatari franchise which has always seemed to me not unlike Haruhi squared. Made even stranger and more stylized with almost all of the grounding elements removed this is not to say that either is superior but at the end of the day they are very different experiences. There is of course the Haruhi light novels themselves which continue at a snails pace and have gotten strange and arcane in their own way as subsequent books sidelined the title character and introduced a muchexpanded cast of characters who have never seen the TV screen the antiSOS Brigade in particular come to mind here alternate timelines and other general esoterica. There is The Vanishing of Nagato Yukichan a spinoff manga and later anime that removed the supernatural elements in favor of a still charming but undeniably much more normal romantic comedy with Haruhi herself again pushed to the sidelines. There is Haruhiism the fauxreligion that sometimes nears real religion in the fanaticism of some practitioners. There is the lingering hope now so rote to express that its become a punchline of a season 3 of a reboot of something. There is so much so much more that could be discussed about The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya a show that grew out of the bounds of its medium altogether and became a popcultural phenomenon. But I would like if I may to break the fourth wall a bit and pose a thought experiment to youthe reader. Haruhi fanfiction is practically a medium in its own right at this point and this then surely is a question many have pondered but if we assume that Haruhi herself is 16 at the series beginning in 2006 as would be the norm for a Japanese senior high student and we pretend that time were to pass within the shows universe at the same rate it does in ours she would be 27 now. What do you think is a 27 year old Haruhi up to? I ask the question not just as an excuse for headcanonning though thats always a bit of fun but because I think the answer reflects a bit on the person giving it Haruhi comes from a time before recombining popcultural influences into something new was the norm and despite the walking wink and nudge that is the character of Kyon it really is the title character the gives the show its heart. Haruhi isnt quite one of a kind but shes close. And where in this strange mixedup world we live in is there a place for Haruhi Suzumiya? Maybe nowhere but as I alluded to near this now far too long reviews beginning I think Haruhi and Haruhi appeal to a sort of inner adventure geek. The conspiracy theorist the young adult novel bingereader the teenager in all of us so maybe not nowhere but in some small way everywhere.