Patreon Pin Up 2/18/19 (Patreon)

Is Haruhi Suzumiya still a popular character? Is she one of those anime icons that endures to this day, or has her show been largely forgotten? I'd have likely still chosen to draw her this morning either way, it's just that I try to do a balance of obscure characters and mega-popular ones in these pin ups, and I honestly have no idea which category I went with today. :P

I first watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya back when it was new, and it confused the hell out of me. Not in the traditional sense, such as the prominent mind-bending anime of the time such as Ghost in the Shell and Serial Experiments Lain, but in the sense that the story seemed to have zero continuity from one episode to the next.

To clarify, I'm not saying the show was episodic and each episode was self-contained. I'm saying there obviously was an ongoing story meant to be followed, the episodes were simply played out of order on purpose in what, I believe, was an attempt on the part of the show's writers to prove what clueless bumbling dopes they were. And they succeeded spectacularly in their goal.

I kid. The bizarre story structure really didn't hurt the show too badly. The American DVD release even played the episodes in actual chronological order. (Which left you with this weird structure where you get this epic story climax in the middle of the series, which was then followed with like five episodes of fluff with no real conclusion.) I liked the show for what it was though. The basic premise was that Haruhi here is the living center of the universe, able to bend space, time and reality to her will. The catch was that she's somehow unaware of her god-like status and it's up to the cast of zany characters to keep her from getting bored and unwittingly rewriting the world.

I hadn't really thought about the show in ages until about this time last year, when I saw there was a movie made based on the series, called The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya,  and decided to check it out.

Hooooly shit. Only in Japan. If you jump between the show and movie you'll get the most acute case of tonal whiplash in the history of fiction. While the show is pretty standard anime comedy fare, (boob-grabs, panty shots, and guys being punched for no reason all the time,) the movie is a dark and depressing thriller that revolves around subjecting the familiar cast of goofballs to psychological misery. It would be like if they made a movie based on the old sitcom, Friends, except instead of being a romantic comedy like the show, the movie was an intense crime drama where Rachel was held at knife-point in the coffee shop. Can't imagine what universe this type of jarring thematic contrast would be approved in, but this does lend credence to my theory that Japanese film directors are granted far more creative liberty than American ones are. It can be exciting in a way: if you sit down to watch a piece of Japanese animation that has a run time of longer than thirty minutes, you're officially in "anything goes" territory. I guess whether that's a pro or a con is up to you. 

Whew! This was a long one even for me. As always if you have anything to add I'd love to hear it. :)