Somebody tell me what’s going on. Please?
I usually hate this sort of series, but two minutes into the first episode, my jaw was hanging open in awe. It’s not every day someone throws such a disparate hodgepodge of ideas together and has it actually work. What’s more, it’s incredibly dense and entertaining, with a wonderful sense of humor.
Think Monty Python doing classic space opera, with musings on quantum physics, artificial intelligence, time travel and the nature of God. Set it up with wonderful animation, and you’ve got the Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi.
I have no idea where the “melancholy” part comes from, as this series has one of the sharpest senses of humor I’ve seen in a long time.
People kept recommending this to me, and at first glance, it looked like typical Japanese High-School anime to me. No thanks. I passed on it, and my friends got more insistent, swearing that it wasn’t what it appeared to be.
I downloaded the first episode, which is actually “Episode 0,” and falls outside the show’s continuity, so I had no idea what was going on. The episode is actually a student film made by the cast. It’s intentionally technically inept, and very self-aware on that front. Yeah, I know…it’s very confusing, but this is one of those things where it doesn’t really matter if you know where you’re going; the ride alone is worth it.
I mention that I did, in fact, download this series. Reason being that it’s not available outside Japan yet. The shots above are from a fansub that’s available via torrent. The show has been licensed by ADV (which is cause for trepidation and dread…we’ll see), so it should be hitting stateside at some point, at which point, I do plan on buying it.
Fansubs are something of a grey area in the anime community: on one hand, they bring material over that wouldn’t usually be available, and in many cases (this being one), the exposure they grant is enough to convince a stateside distributor to pick up a show. On the other hand, many people are willing to settle for low-quality versions, since, well, they’re free.
The quality of fansubs is usually quite good, sometimes surpassing the commercial releases (as is the case with the wonderful Kino no Tabi). Of course, the video and sound quality ranges from mediocre to downright shoddy, due to the fact that fansubs are built on whatever source material is available, and this often means dubs from television.
Naturally, commercial DVD releases (and yes, the DVD format opened the floodgates to American and European audiences) have better packaging, better audio and picture, and often excellent English voice acting. This differs from one company to the next, though, and ADV has been known to do some dreadful localization in the past. Here’s hoping they give this one the treatment it deserves.
One thought on “Suzumiya Haruhi no YÅ«utsu”
Yep, you pretty much got a handle on it, Episode 0 is the result of a high school club project. The bossy girl at the end of the episode is the title character, Haruhi Suzumiya. As for why it’s called “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya,” it is an appropriate title, and to explain it would give away too much of the story.
Hang in there, the story is told out of chronological order, but this is done for a reason; if you knew what Kyon does when he does, a fair amount of the plotline wouldn’t be as interesting.