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".

First, let's try to summarize MoHS. I've never been very good at summaries, really, so I'll probably be going about this in a highly inefficient manner; we have this girl, Haruhi Suzumiya, who believes in the existence of the fantastic. She also has special world-changing powers, even though she doesn't know this and won't believe it when told, and she manages to gather a group of exactly the sort of fantastic beings she believes in, without realizing their true natures (and not believing it when told). With this new group, which she calls the SOS Brigade on a whim, she goes on various high school life adventures that inevitably get a special spin due to her powers. All this is narrated by a cynical, sarcastic classmate and member of the SOS Brigade known only as Kyon.

Fair enough? Now, how would you distill all that into one point, and only one? Basically, the core of the show, the one main and most important message that we're supposed to take from it?

Personally, to me, that would be this: "A girl named Haruhi Suzumiya and her friends have fun together."

To me, Haruhi's powers are part plot device to make the fun more interesting, and part excuse, so that the other members of the SOS Brigade have an incentive to keep her happy. Putting aside the question of whether it was Haruhi's powers in the first place which resulted in the existence of ESPers, time-travellers, and aliens, Haruhi has a ready-made group of people who have to go along with her schemes. And if they have to go along with it, well, they may as well enjoy it; for all that Kyon complains about the trouble that Haruhi makes him and the rest of the SOS Brigage go through, he does prefer this interesting world to another one without Haruhi and the SOS Brigade. (This may be extrapolated on if KyoAni ever gets around to animating volume 4 of the novels.) Koizumi's true feelings are hard to discern, but he does mention enjoyment of several of the SOS Brigade's outings in private to Kyon, when he doesn't have to be Haruhi's yes-man. Mikuru suffers a great deal under Haruhi, but her future self looks back on her days in the SOS Brigade with nostalgia. And Yuki, based on the events of the Giant Cave Cricket ("Mysterique Sign") and the Computer Club's challenge ("Day of Sagittarius"), has at least some small incentive to stay in the SOS Brigade apart from observing Haruhi, and possibly her very rudimentary feelings for Kyon.

The series, including the novels, are pretty much describing the SOS Brigade going through all sorts of adventures together, but with the exception of a few incidents (say, the Ryouko Asakura one), they're mostly the sort to be undertaken by a particularly active and outgoing group of friends, but with that certain twist to make things more interesting. The irony is that events usually turn out to have some aspect that would fit better in science fiction than currently-accepted reality, and thus would be exactly the things Haruhi would be looking for, but since she is being kept from realizing it, she remains blissfully unaware that what she seeks is all around her.

Yet, through all of it, Haruhi probably believes that she's living a full, fun-filled life. And really, I believe that she is: she's doing what she wants to do, and she's doing it whole-heartedly. Haruhi isn't my favourite character in the series (that goes jointly to Yuki and Koizumi), but I have to respect that she keeps to her beliefs in the existence of amazing and incredible beings and events, even though she isn't aware of a single example of it. Her ignorance coupled with her powers seem like a sort of tragic curse from the days of the Greek gods: to have exactly the things one purports to desire, but be forever unaware of them. But Haruhi is perfectly content with that, always striving for her goals, and she may have even made just such a bargain during that incident Three Years Ago. It wouldn't surprise me.

Kyon, as the viewpoint character of the series, does represent the Everyman, particularly in one way: when we were little, I'm sure many of us believed in the existence of superheroes and special powers, things that would allow us to defy the laws of normality and do what we want to do, not really for personal material gain or some such, but simply because it would be cool and awesome. Sadly, as Kyon comments, physics is a great deal stricter than that, and the existence of ESPers, time-travellers, and aliens seem to be extremely improbable.

But not, as Kyon discovered, completely impossible.

That's why I love The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Every episode, for twenty-five minutes or so, I can put aside logic and probability, and imagine that there are, in fact, fantastic beings existing right alongside us, and that they're benevolent enough to want to go on fun-filled adventures with us. And if the fun doesn't come to us, well, why not follow Haruhi's example, and go look for fun?

It may be hectic. It may be exhausting. It may, as Kyon realized several times, even be dangerous.

But it will never, ever be boring.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 5:50 pm and is filed under melancholy of haruhi suzumiya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.