I was looking for the right time to talk about my thoughts on Haruhi. I finished the anime in the controversial chronological order and JUST watched the film, so I guess it’s time to give my unfiltered (uneducated AND unorganized) feelings on the series thus far.
Haruhi is a classic anime, so classic that it can be cited in texts about Japanese popular culture. Something that important has to be pretty interesting, and… I think it’s kind of neat.
The plot is basically about this one girl who controls the universe without knowing she controls the universe. The main cast stays around her and deals with her hijinks so that the universe won’t end. It’s an intriguing premise, to say the least.
However, what’s intriguing in concept doesn’t always translate to execution. Most of the anime is just them in various wacky situations that prop up because Haruhi is being Haruhi, and then they solve the problem through weird and wacky powers.
Kyon convinces Haruhi about reality or makes her slightly happy. Nagato shows off that she can BASICALLY warp the world on the same level as Haruhi. …and Koizumi and Mikuru don’t really do anything at all.
Nothing really feels impressive and has very little impact on the characters overall, most of the time. It could be me looking into this series for the wrong thing, but I guess the plot isn’t really where the magic lies, and that’s okay. The magic lies in the show’s ‘soul’.
The term ‘soul’ has very little place in a review, but in this case, soul is the amount of minute details that come together to make up something meaningful. Haruhi is a really weirdly pretentious anime, and with that comes weirdly specific details. Details that, on the surface, don’t matter at all. (they matter a little bit)
The film shows this off so fucking well. There are many callbacks to moments within the show in the movie, and the way they’re incorporated is by giving you a mystery and having you solve it alongside the main character. Things like Hyperion being a novel that Nagato read in the first chronological episode or showcasing how different the world is by showing off areas that become common sights in the 24 episodes of the anime. Some scenes scream iconic to me, and I JUST watched it.
The production and music stay of top quality because KyoAni is KyoAni. There are some amazing-looking shots and scenery in the film. Haruhi loves using abstract animation segments while a character is having a crucial moment or a really fucking boring exposition. which, by the way, is really annoying. For something that loves adding sci-fi stuff, it’s not deep or interesting enough to warrant that amount of dialogue, but I guess I am watching this almost 20 years after it came out.
Aside from the obviously insane production value (which is something I value a LOT), this film is one of the first cases of major character growth in the film. The incidents from the past hold a surprising amount of value in this film and it amounts to an incredibly climatic scene at the end. No spoilers, but Nagato is obviously the best girl in the series and I will be hunting down another character that shares her moe points just to get my hit.
On that note, the first episode of the series is also really cool and showcases Haruhi’s weirdness and magic a lot. An amateur film with equally amateur camerawork. The music, the ambienece, and the humourously bad acting sets the tone for the series very well. It’s like watching an old “movie” you and your friends made when you were left with your dad’s camera, with more special effects (real and fake). I seriously think the animators actually reenacted some of these with the level of detail they have.
All in all, Haruhi is fun. There are some real highs and some really mid-lows. I do see how it can stand the test of time in the anime subconscious, but it’s really just okay. For quality alone, I would rate it pretty high. Overall, it’s above average. If I had watched it when I was younger, it would undoubtedly earn a perfect 10/10.
Leave a Reply