This Review Will Feature Spoilers

While I was watching the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya I got struck by how much I got reminded by what Ethan Hawke said in an interview for Before Sunset in how he was invited by director Richard Linklater to join the project. Below I linked the interview and the timestamp of the part I had in mind is at 5:42, but I will quote the relevant passage below it:

"My life feels very exciting to me and I've never been involved in a gunfight or a helicopter chase [...] but my life is still really interesting. And I thought about what is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me, really. It is connecting with another human being. I want a make a movie about connection."

Now, Haruhi Suzumiya isn't like Before Sunset (or at least what I gather what the movie is about from friends talking about it as I've never sad down to see it) but that same theme about what is the most interesting part in your life and figuring that out is to me at the core of this first season of the show.

The first season of Haruhi is strange adaptation of a book series. From what I gather by looking at chapter titles on Wikipedia, it's an adaption of the entire book 1, most of book 3 and a couple of chapters from books 5 and 6. On top of that they don't do order of the episodes chronologically but in non-chronoligical manner that also does not match the book order. So, you start with a chapter from book 6 before seeing one third of book 1, then it around time a few more times before settling down to finish book 1 as the ending of the season (and quite possible could have been the end of the series). But even though it's strange, you can tell with how our lead character's, Haruhi, developing relations with her club and most specifically with Kyon and her own growth as a person.

The story is itself almost as strange as the order of the episodes. Our unnamed protagonist, who everyone calls Kyon, meets Haruhi Suzumiya, who wants to spent her high school life to find aliens, time travellers and espers. To do so she creates her club the SOS Brigade with Kyon, much to his annoyance, being her first recruit. By sheer coincidence, or not depending if to believe she is the God of this world, the 3 other members end up being an alien, a time traveler and an esper. But they don't tell Haruhi due to one big problem in that she can't get bored. If she continuously searches for paranormal activity then she will always have something to excite her and so if she learns about them so soon she might get bored and as believed her boredom could destroy the universe unconsciously. A great example of how that can happen is with Kyon, who quickly gets used to the paranormal stuff and even wishes it doesn't happen as he a normal teenage boy finds out that it's not fun for your life to be in danger so often.

So then what do the episodes devolve into? We get to see them making a film for a school festival, playing video games, do a murder mystery investigation, etc. Anything that you would expect teenagers to do. And there are paranormal activities that plague the story from a sexy time traveler to an alien robot attacking Kyon, but Haruhi's experience in high school is spared that due to actions by her club members, and yet she is not bored but in fact she finds joy and fulfillment in them having what is quintessentially a normal high school life for an anime protagonist.

Part of the reason why the non chronological way to tell the story is important is because we end on the episode that reveals to us why Haruhi wanted to look for extraordinary things like aliens, time travellers and espers. She wants to not feel like her life is boring for being normal. She is living with an existential dread that her life is just a small pebble in the ocean and she hates the feeling and so she vowed to always look for excitement. It really hits you that moment as it's set at the very beginning of our story chronologically speaking and you have now see all the stuff she has been through. How she bonded with her club-mates through the various things they did. How she happily helped a group of people she barely knows in a time of need and was happy to do so. How while never fully open about them is developing romantic feelings for Kyon even though he is just a regular human. She never did find out that she has always been an arms length to the three things she is searching for but she found happiness elsewhere.

Like with the quote above, Haruhi's story is about the most exciting part of her life, which is her bond with the SOS Brigade and everyone associated with it. It's easy to fall into melancholy like Haruhi when you realise that your life will have nothing spectacular happen in it. That you are just one person in a sea of people all living a normal life. It's easy to see that a normal life is boring and not exciting when you put TV on or open a book and the stories there are filled with crazy sci-fi adventures or drama. It's easy to want those stories to happen in your life, which is a thing I've wanted to happen. So, it's easy for Haruhi to be blinded by her goal for paranormal activities and miss out that her exciting life can just be finding love with someone like Kyon or performing music live on a stage just as a kind gesture to help someone and not because you want to be a rockstar.

It could read as cope that the story is telling you that your normal boring life can be exciting, but I don't believe that. There is sincerity in the message in the message in the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya that your life can be exciting even it's not a movie where we discover aliens or travel in time or have epic anime fights.