Sometimes it's the little things that spark off a grand and lengthy mental journey that ends up taking several hundred words' worth of space to fully ramble out. The culprit for this one was the full ending dance of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of the happiest songs I've heard.

MoHS is, shall I say, a controversial fandom. I won't say it's a controversial series, since it's not that complicated to figure out, but it's already gotten the popularity surge and backlash that has taken over a great many discussions. One cannot have the latter before the former, since it may well be that some people genuinely dislike the series, but it's only after seeing all the people who do like it that they feel the need to speak out about their dislike. That, more than the "I'm rebelling against popular trends" sorts, is what I believe to be the source of a popularity backlash. Nobody's going to really know if you think a series is overhyped if a) the series is not hyped to a great amount in the first place, and b) you don't actually mention your opinions about said series.

I'm not going to try to change anyone's opinions about the series. If you think it's awesome, great. If you think it sucks, also great. I really don't care if you like it or not; I don't evangelize shows or interests. What I get irritated about is if I get shows or opinions evangelized onto me (hence why I don't do it to other people), and this seems to happen a lot with MoHS, as opposed to other series like, say, Read or Die. The sad part is that this often works, to some extent; when I read all the bashing of MoHS that goes on, I can feel my enthusiasm for the series, and indeed anime in general, waning greatly. I just can't really understand being defined by hate instead of love for something, which to me is what being a fan is all about.

But that's probably just a character failing of mine.

One of the things that irritate me when people bash MoHS is when they do so and give no real reason that tells me why they, personally, don't like it. "It's overhyped" doesn't really cut it for me; does that mean that they would like it if it weren't hyped at all? If so, why the furious bashing of the show, instead of the hyping? So on and so forth.

And so, I'll use this space (MY BLOG, MINE MINE MINE) to give, in a typically disjointed rambling fashion, the reasons why I absolutely love The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I'll be putting aside judgements on plot and story and style, since while I think that they are great, it's all been discussed to death before and boiled down to "because I like them".

Read the rest of this entry »