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Introduction

The Melancholy of Haruhi is an anime that is best defined with “wacky slice of life sci-fi fantasy shounen action comedy adventure” genre. It’s got everything from most all genres fit inside twelve episodes, along with even more stuff. It’s become the next Azumanga Daioh in terms of anime superiority, which is surprising considering it doesn’t contain nearly enough high school girls.

Review

The story is about a girl, who goes to school. There are other people at this school. See here is the problem, you really can’t say that one of the dudes there is this or a girl is that without spoiling it. I mean, I had it spoiled to me and it wasn’t that cool. So I can’t really go into any details of the anime itself. I mean, in a review of Bleach you could probably go on and on about the guys sword and how cool (or lame, depending on your point of view) it is, but saying anything about Haruhi (including mentioning swords) would probably ruin a large portion of the “WTF” factor this anime provides.

Instead, I’ll ramble on about the order the anime is filmed in. The first episode is a poorly animated home made movie made by some high school kids (not spoiling nothing! You find that out at the end!) The film itself it pretty hilarious, but you’ll notice a few weird things as it runs on. You then watch the rest of the series and return to the first episode, realizing what a few of those weird things are. That’s some good writing right there.

The anime is played “out of order”, or basically it alternates randomly between episodes from two arcs. The first arc is the “true story” or basically the serious events while the second arc is random slice of life let’s have fun at school stuff. These episodes are randomly mixed around so that you watch the last episode in the middle and the last episode of the first arc as the last episode. It’s kind of confusing, but it works. You get a little confused, but it truly helps make the anime a lot better.

Now, the question here is, is it truly as good as most of the Internet makes it out to be? To be honest, I don’t think so. I think the main reason with the obsession of the anime on the Internet is the fluid art and animation, as opposed to the raw story. The story is lacking in terms of epicness, not that it isn’t a good story it’s just not up there with the super classics. The fluid animation though, one of the sources of Azumanga Daiohs internet superstardom, is top notch.

That probably makes no sense, but I guess you have to watch it to find out!

Rating

Score: 7/10 (Good)

Pros:

• A good enjoyable anime series.
• Fluid animation, great music, wonderful opening and ending animations.
• Did I mention good music?

Cons:

• Many will find the first episode boring
• The Internet’s obession with the anime series.
• People on the Internet who are not Japanese nor girls doing the ending animation dance.
• People on the Internet who are not Japanese nor girls doing the ending animation dance while injecting themselves into the ending animation.
• People on the Internet who are not Japanese nor girls doing the ending animation dance then uploading it to YouTube.
• People on the Internet who are not Japanese nor girls doing the ending animation dance then uploading it to YouTube and telling people about it.