SUZUMIYA HARUHI NO YUUTSU
~EDITED VERSION [Thanks to Axiom for pointing out the mistakes]
Should you choose to read and/or critique this little thing of a review of mine, all forms of opinion (on my work) will be greatly appreciated. Hell, I'll return the favor some time... maybe.
My style of writing may be confusing to some (or most), but please bear with it.
Animation / Sound ~ 10 each
A ten in any category (in this case animation) means that something or everything in said category is the best among the best, or at least top notch. To say the least about it, SHnY’s animation quality was on par with Full Metal Panic and Death Note (when it’s looking great). To say the most… is going to take a few lines worth of typing. Colors are sharp, characters drawn with great detail (or at least consistency), and all the scenes that needed to look good looked great. Asahina Mikuru no Bouken, the first episode, was (intentionally) made to look like (to put it nicely), an amateur’s work. It looks like crap, but at the end, we (the viewers) are blessed with what Haruhi and her Brigade should look like. Being able to make a series look great is one thing, but having the skills to actually make it look bad on purpose takes even more.
Recently, an omake of sorts was released based on the ending theme, Hare Hare Yukai, a song sung by the seiyuu for Haruhi, Yuki, and Mikuru. It played at about 30 frames per second and showed a full version of the dance routine that the aforementioned trio performed. It was, to say the least, a feat of animation (for me, anyway).
In the episode Live A Live (#12), which in itself is a reference to something else (thanks be to Wikipedia’s trivia section), Haruhi joins a band in trouble and soon after a concert with them on stage. Unlike other anime, this concert didn’t have random pictures of the band members flitting across the screen; the performances were animated like a real concert with people moving and actually playing what they were supposed to be playing.
Imagine the amount of work something like that must have taken for a moment. First, receive a strain of video of a band playing and the music to go with them. Second, start drawing the band playing and make sure to synchronize everyone and everything. Third, make it look good. Accomplishing that, in itself, is a dazzling feat, so I’d like to make a shout-out to the people at Kyoto Animation for making the concert a concert (=P).
There are, of course, a few frames that look below the par (bogies, I guess they would be called), but that goes without saying. Why take a castle apart when you can just live in it?
~ That was an attempt at analogies or something of the sort…
The Opening and Ending themes to Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu were both very well done. Bouken Desho Deshou? and Hare Hare Yukai, respectively the OP and ED, were both sung by Haruhi’s own seiyuu, Hirano Aya. Her tones of voice in these two songs are totally different from both her acting voice and the voice she used to sing the insert songs God Knows… and [Lost My Music] for episode 12.
The voice acting is nothing like what can be found by turning your TV onto a series released in America. Hirano Aya, Chihara Minori, and Goto Yuuko (the seiyuu for Haruhi, Asahina Mikuru, and Nagato Yuki respectively) bring their own distinct talents to the front. Not only were the seiyuu themselves talented, but their voices matched their characters well. Yuki, for example, is the cool and silent, and her voice goes more towards Bleach’s Kuchiki Byakuya instead of say, Orihime.
Story ~ 10
We’ve seen the plotline for this series before, but not so much that it gets old or boring or unoriginal or etc. A general formula for the story would be: Person A lives in world => A gets bored with world => A drags B, C, D, and E in to her world and it gets better (for all of them) as they go.
Suzumiya Haruhi, East Junior High’s famous girl of ambiguous intentions, comes onto the stage of her namesake show as a mildly depressed and bored… person. Enter Kyon, the sarcastic protagonist to stand alongside Haruhi on her many dubious quests to find abnormal creatures. Following him will be a trio, to be saved for the “Characters” section of this thing of a review. Anyway, she (Haruhi) hopes and wants desperately for the existence of aliens, time travelers, espers, and dimensional sliders to put her world on the edge of its seat.
There are hints, or hardly even traces, of drama and romance in Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. Kyon holds in his heart feelings for the female trio, but they’re all different and unique (his feelings are).
As for the episode order, there are those out there who didn’t like it (probably because it made them confused and feel bad), but I loved it. It somewhat emphasized on the queerness of the main characters Haruhi and Kyon.
Season two’s coming out in the fall… wonder what story’ll be used for that.
Characters ~ 10… no wait, 9
Strange how things turned out, but Haruhi got called on to be the main character to her own show, and she’s not an average every day main character. Haruhi is openly selfish, has convenient bouts of deafness (or just refuses to listen to others while she’s in monologue), and is also (considered by her peers) to be a superfreak. Many series before have used such a character, but, what, you ask, makes Haruhi different from all others? The people standing by to support her (though are main characters themselves) bring her eccentricities to light and life better than they could have been without them.
Kyon is, without a doubt, the voice of reason. He grew up glued to such thing as UFO specials on TV, and even secretly hopes that such extraterrestrial things exist. Sadly, however, as he puts it, the laws of physics were too well written.
Nagato Yuki, the super silent bookworm rooted to the SOS Brigade’s headquarters, is (without a doubt) an homage to Ayanami Rei from Shin Seiki Evangelion (for proof, look to Google). She will change as the series goes on, as evidenced in the book version of SHnY, but enjoyment of such knowledge as Nagato’s development I leave to your own discovery.
Next up is Koizumi Itsuki. Haruhi has a talent for “kissing her own ass,” as Kyon phrased it, and Koizumi just happens to be the one in the SOS Brigade stuck to wipe it beforehand. He is, as described in one of the other reviews, the Yes Man, who goes along with anything and everything that his leader whims.
Last, and definitely not least, would be Kyon’s lust interest Asahina Mikuru. As the big “moe” factor and mascot girl in SHnY, this submissive redhead is doomed to face Haruhi’s wrath… or at least, to jump into any getup Haruhi presents her with.
The supporting characters are unique as well. These people aren’t like the supporting characters in other series… not very much alike, at least. What makes them different? Who they are. Gracing the stage for the first time in Haruhi's mockery of a film were the Taniguchi and Kunikida duo, a social joke and lineless nice guy respectively, and Tsuruya-san, one of Asahina's friends whose energy is matched only by Haruhi. If they aren’t being laughed at, they’re the ones laughing, and even as supporting characters have their own roles to play.
~ Tsuruya happens to be my favorite character by the way…
Green hair + contagious laughter = greatness.
Value / Enjoyment ~ 8 and 9 respectively
When I first started watching Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, it was already on episode 10. That episode, which definitely is NOT the best point to start at, was strange for a clueless newb such as myself. After waiting a week to watch episode 11's first scene, I thought "Ah, finally we get to what the series is about." Soon after, I watched the series in as strange an order as it was already released in (meaning I watched the broadcast releases in the order I downloaded them, which was also abnormal).
After getting the whole series (alongside a few episodes of Ouran High School Host Club), my family and I took a vacation to the Philippines, where I had 0 home access to the internet whatsoever. Luckily, I had a laptop, a portable hard drive, and all 14 episodes of SHnY to keep me company. I watched and rewatched the episodes every day that I could, simply because I couldn't find anything else to do. Between Ouran and SHnY, I chose SHnY day in and day out simply because it was what I enjoyed more.
Because of all the small things done in such large manners (fully animating the concert performances, making people in the background move, the abnormal episode order), this quickly and suddenly became a series worth the time to watch and rewatch, no matter how many times you've watched it. In my case, with each new viewing, something got clearer and pulled more questions up with it.
After watching this series, I fell in love with Hirano Aya's music. She's very talented, as were those working both behind and in front of the scenes in "Haruhi".
