As I may have mentioned a few times, my philosophy towards anime is one of inconsistency and shallowness, but intended to protect myself against those very things. Basically, I like to say that I don’t watch anime and hope it’s good, I watch good things and if it’s anime, so be it. In other words, I basically only save my anime-watching for things I’ve heard from numerous sources are good.You see, I’ve been burned by shite anime before. Back when I first discovered it in 2000, I watched Evangelion and enjoyed the fuck out of it. And then, assuming everything else would be just as good, I went on a binge. And the unfortunate reality hit me. For every Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop, there’s about 20 Sorceress Hunters or Green Legend Rans waiting in the bargain bin, shouting at you “HAY! I’M JAPANIMATION TOO! WATCH ME!”. And if you aren’t careful, you get burned.
So since then, I’ve been careful about what anime I watch. Most mainstream animes have passed me by, like Fullmetal Alchemist and Naruto and Inuyasha. I don’t necessarily think they suck; I’ve just never seen them, and I don’t have much of a desire to see them, because it’s too much of an investment of my time. And to be honest, I can’t imagine most of them are anything more than a quick thrill for 20 minutes a day. This is where the shallowness comes in.
But every once in a while, I’ll catch a wave of something getting a lot of press. Four years ago, it was Excel Saga. Last year, it was Azumanga Daioh. And while I enjoyed both those shows, they just couldn’t reach that highest tier that only Eva and Bebop sat on. Good shows, but not legendary. And while I’ve heard recommendations for other shows (one person I know swears by Elfen Lied, but I’ll be damned if that show doesn’t look like the most fucked up program ever), usually my legs stay crossed until it’s the right time for me.
I am happy to say, however, that the top tier of anime television has a new member. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is, without hesitation, the best anime show I’ve seen since Bebop took over my life six years ago. And as is common among these top-tier shows, it transcends the “anime” label, and is plain and simply great television.
A basic description follows: Haruhi Suzumiya is a high school student who very well just may be God. But I don’t want to spoil anything. So all I’ll say is that Haruhu Suzumiya is a high school student who is interested in wizards, aliens and time travellers. So she creates a school club which seeks to discover such oddities. And it just so happens that, even though she doesn’t know it, she just may be God.
Of course, the plot goes much deeper than that. But you’re going to have to watch it first, before I can delve much more into it. And if you watch The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, you will be rewarded with one of the best damn shows I’ve ever seen.
But you have to give it a chance, first.
The strangest thing about TMHS is its release schedule. Rather than starting with Episode 1 and ending with Episode 14, like you would expect most shows to do, TMHS starts with episode 11. It then plays episode 1, then 2, then jumps to episode 6. So, once again, the order of the first four episodes is 11, 1, 2, and 6.
Now, one might credit this to shoddy production values perhaps, or some sort of monumental network screwup. But, as one should realistically expect, this is intentional. By the time you are halfway done with the series, you have already seen the last episode. Is your mind blown yet? Is it? IS IT?
Anyway, going back to my Scoop Jackson-like single sentence paragraph. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya will be one of the most entertaining shows you will ever watch. But you have to give it a chance, first. And the reason I say this is because of the aforementioned out-of-order storyline. The first episode, to be frank, isn’t very good. It’s not terrible, and it actually makes a lot more sense once you’ve seen the entire series, but all things considered, it is certainly a strange way to open the show.
No, unlike Bebop, where the first episode was enough to get you hooked and every episode since then was a separate, self-contained bundle of radness, TMHS follows the rolling boulder-format that was so good with Eva. As it goes on, it just gets better and better and better until it hits the wall and explodes. Now, this is where the disjointed airing order works in its advantage. If the show were in it’s chronological order, it would blow its load early, and the last half of the series would be generally a let-down, because it couldn’t live up to the standards of the first half. And yet, the exact same episodes, now in this new order, each mean so much to the final product, that the whole series is just a collective masterpiece. Even the first episode, which appears to be useless at first, upon second viewing after watching the entire series makes a LOT more sense.
But now I’m rambling. Basically, the show’s got it all. Solid voice acting, great script (judging from the fansub, anyway), smooth animation, great art direction, good music selection (most of the time), a wonderful atmosphere, the right timing of both Epic moments and Awesome moments, likeable characters, and perhaps most importantly, the greatest ending credits video and song of all time. Also, without giving anything away, the second-to-last scene of episode 8 is probably the greatest scene in the history of our great sport.
The problem is, it’s too hard to have intelligent discussion about the show when no one you know has seen it. So watch it. Look for it on veoh.com or torrent it somewhere. Don’t bother with Youtube; the quality is too shitty to read the subtitles.
But seriously. Watch it. It’s one of the best damn shows I’ve ever seen.
