Review | Anime| The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

THE MELANCHOLY OF HARUHI SUZUMIYA : Kyon begins his first year at a new school, and meets an oddball girl named Haruhi Suzumiya, who is dissatisfied with
anything considered "normal", and wants only to experience the unnatural. This
inspires her to begin a new club called the SOS Brigade, which Kyon is roped
into. Kyon is soon told by the SOS Brigade's new members that Haruhi, unbeknowst to her, can manipulate reality merely by wishing for it.

I was very impressed with the ratings this series got, which were all nines and tens from review sites. I decided to try my luck, and 14 episodes later, I am no closer to understanding the series, and overall extremely disappointed.

Where do I begin? The show had potential, it truly did, but it had more holes than an archaeological dig. We start out with a bored girl who makes a new friend and starts a club dedicated to the paranormal. Then said girl gets three more members, one by force, one by will and one who couldn't care less, and the club is launched. Then, finally, we discover said girl can manipulate reality, but doesn't know it yet. Hey, look, it's about to get interesting.

Maybe so, but the audience never gets any explanations for important details. By the time the series ends, Haruhi still doesn't know about her ability, we don't know how Haruhi's ability came to be or how it ties into everything, we never find out about Mikuru Asahina's "classified" information or her visit from the future. The series' ending was just awful. It was as if another episode was meant to come after it. We don't learn anything new, no revelations are made, absolutely nothing is available for the finale to call itself a finale.

There have been rumors of a second season, and I hope to the gods there is, because I am not impressed in the slightest with how sloppily this anime was put together. It stopped abruptly on enough cliffhangers to put a Rescue Team out of their minds, and I still don't understand how this information was so great that it had to be fit into 14 episodes. Just what exactly were we doing for 14 episodes besides watching Haruhi Suzumiya attack Mikuru Asahina with moe clothing she purchased on the Internet? Did I waste valuable hours of my life to watch that?

This series could have been saved, provided the creators had actually ended the series properly and maybe cut out a couple of Asahina attack sequences to make room for details that are greatly needed. It really is a shame, because I knew for sure we were about to get somewhere, until I finished the series saying merely, "That's it??"

I really don't know where exactly all those high ratings came from because I sure haven't found a source. You definitely won't get any high ratings out of us for this Swiss cheese anime. Let it serve as a cautionary tale to aspiring anime creators: If you don't end your show, if you don't provide details, if you spend too much time on the useless stuff, there is no point at all wasting your time or others' time.

Overall Rating:
/ 5