I REALLY dislike Haruhi
And it has little to do with the anime's quality itself. At worst this series is just kind of mediocre and goes nowhere. But I could never help but feel like the core of Haruhi is just... terrible. It's a series that feels like it's at a constant battle with itself, a battle it made up, it has no reason to fight and that it's losing. A series that feels incredibly self-defeating, that constantly teases interesting stuff but never builds up on it or forgets it, that ruins any chance it could get at being something better. Let me talk about it
For starters I have to say this, I've read some of the Haruhi light novels and I LOVED the first one, for a while it was one of my favorite things ever. Haruhi was this strange and unpredictable characters, all of the supernatural people surrounding her were so full of mystery, it felt like the series had an extremely good idea that any moderately good author could take to the moon and back, just put all these guys in increasingly wilder and wilder situations and you have a great series at hand. The next few LNs were kinda meh and by that time I was starting to get this strange feeling that the reason why I loved Volume 1 was because I completely misinterpreted it, or what Haruhi meant, or what the author wanted to say, so I stopped. I was gonna watch the Haruhi anime with some friends anyways, maybe that would change my mind, but all it did was reaffirm all my worries. And I think the best way I can go about explaining why this anime just constantly made me feel like shit the best I can do is a list
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What do I mean by "self defeating"? I mean that the show constantly looks for ways to solve problems in the most boring way possible. We can't let Haruhi have too much fun because we don't want her summoning Demonbane, but we also don't want her having too little fun because negative spaces etc. In the end this means that the entire show is about keeping Haruhi at bay, in a perfect balance. This is NOT something easy, this is something only really good authors can make work and make entertaining, and Haruhi's author, from the LNs I read, is not built for this, as such every short story or ever arc ends in the most boring, uninteresting, back to square 1 way possible. Haruhi stressed over baseball? Just hack the baseball, Haruhi's imagination running wild with the movie? Have her say "it's fiction tho". These aren't fun solutions, these are things any character could have pulled off on the first second, there isn't anything fun about a story ending with "And then the bad thing stopped", but it's the only thing this show is willing to do because...
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Haruhi (series) doesn't want to change, ever, Haruhi wants to constantly stay at the same exact spot with no character arcs or any sort of new stuff or anything and I don't know why. Is it because Haruhi is kinda episodic? Is it because the author just wants to play around with his characters without worrying about a plot?. If it is either of those (and i'll develop on this on a later point) then the author just fucking blows at getting this through. Maybe I'm just viewing it in the worst light possible but I can't blame myself for thinking the author is constantly teasing the audience, blue balling them with a promise of a change, a promise of an interesting arc, a promise of consequence, just to immediately take it away and go "better luck next time!". It feels incredibly cynical and I can only think that this happens because Haruhi grew so successful everyone involved wanted to make it last forever, which would be hard if idk Haruhi started having doubts of her friends, or something changed in the world, or she started having feelings for Kyon or if Asahina revealed her top secret stuff. Hey speaking of Asahina...
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Haruhi in the first light novel is an extremely interesting character, she feels like if you made her choose between thing A and thing B she's find a way to call both of them boring and choose thing 鍵. Her everchanging hairstyle to differentiate the days, her dropping in and out of clubs and relationships to try out everything, that monologue about wanting to find something special in this world. It's genuinely beautiful_ (And something I really, really liked)_... And it lasts one volume, because for the rest of the story Haruhi gets boiled down to a just pushy and demanding girl, nothing more nothing less, all those strange behaviors and complexities of Vol1 are lost forever. The other characters don't get ruined as hard but they aren't likeable either
Asahina is just whiny and constantly teases "top secret" info which, let's be honest, we'll never know what the fuck it is
Nagato just exists there, she doesn't talk much, and the few times she does something instead of a funny joke it falls flat and makes you wonder what was even the point
Koizumi is the most redeemable one, he's just charming
But the real problem is Kyon and his constant, predictable, repeated monologues. "There's Asahina, her boobs are awesome" "Koizumi talks to me and I hate his face" "Nagato is just sitting there" (haruhi says X thing) "Ugh not X thing (he'll do it anyways)". Kyon has exactly 1 opinion on anybody at any time and, due to the constant blue balling, won't ever move past that. And I want to develop more on Haruhi...
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...Which is why the author did everything in his power to make sure Haruhi went from interesting character in desperate need for something fun to pushy bitch in every following story
And this might be my main reason for my hatred for Haruhi and also the most personal and subjective one. But I also struggled a lot with finding somewhere I belong, some place fun, something unlike anything else, something to hold onto and give me joy. Growing up, trying to beat that alienation was a huge struggle of mine and seeing Haruhi explain exactly what I felt nearly brought me to tears, this character was me, she's struggling with what I'm struggling, and I hope to God she finds what she's looking for... Which if you remember what I wrong so far, the exact opposite happens. I can't help but feel personally insulted when Haruhi becomes the antagonist, I can't help but feel like the author is a gigantic hack when he simplified Haruhi so much in future stories, it's a direct slap to the face to see the character that names the series, the character whose pain reminded me so much of myself, constantly get written as this overlypushy brat instead of the person in pursuit of happiness. It feels like Haruhi's core message is "Being special is bad and you should feel bad for it, mediocrity is the way to go". And that brings me to my last point
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Let's just say for a second that I misinterpreted Haruhi, let's just say the author actually wanted to say something like "there's fun in mundanity too", which is a perfectly sensible statement. Well, I'm not someone who lies to himself in order to consider something I found pretty whatever "peak", I can only have the opinions I can have, I can only write out of my heart and I won't lie to it, what you see is exactly what I feel
With this in mind, even IF the author or the anime just didn't get across the message right, that doesn't change the fact of, well, everything I wrote so far. Even if I could gaze directly at the author's heart that won't change how I feel about the boring balancing of Haruhi's boredom, or the stagnation of all characters, or the one-dimensional and repetitiveness or their personalities. Haruhi, to me, is either incredible terrible at getting its own message across, a show with a message I absolutely despise, or a cynical piece of shit that had a good idea at the start but when popularity struck the author completely gave up any dignity and started writing whatever the fuck to pay rent
And about Endless Eight? I think 5 episodes of the fucking movie arc is way more insufferable. At least Endless 8 had a gimmick to it, Sigh of Haruhi is boring as shit and ends boring as shit
In Conclusion, I don't like Haruhi whatsoever, whatever the truth might be about this monument of early 2000s otaku culture I couldn't care less, watching it felt like a personal insult to one of my teenage years' biggest struggles and nothing will change that
Apparently the movie (which I'll watch in like, 2 weeks from writing this review) fixes ALL my issues with this anime, and I'm open to have my mouth shut, but we'll see
For now, thanks for reading. I didn't proofread shit. Fuck you. Goodbye
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