When looking back on the role that anime
has played in my life, it is difficult to define my interaction with anime as
one specific relationship. I have been anime watching from when I was five years
old up through my present time in college, so I have found that it has played
many different roles for me throughout my life. Starting from the beginning of my history with
anime, I would assume that it is not that different from many other people in
the United States who are the same age as me and like anime. After coming home
from Kindergarten each day I would turn on the television, eat a cookie and
watch Pokémon and Sailor Moon.
Sailor Moon
While almost everyone I know who is the same age
as me was a fan of Pokémon when they were in Kindergarten, the series which I
really think contributed into my getting into anime was Sailor Moon. I remember
in second grade running around with my friend on the playground pretending to
be the different sailor scouts. I think the aspects that really drew the show
to me as a child were the magical transformations and the art style which was
different from American style cartoons. Due to the similar art style I also
found myself watching Cardcaptor Sakura when I was younger. During this time
period, I would go to the bookstore with my parents every weekend and one day
my mother pointed out to me that there was a book version of the Cardcaptor
series. However, as I was only in second grade the right to left nature of the
manga was confusing to me, so I didn’t really give it that much attention. During this time period I didn’t know that
this art style was something which fit under the genre of anime but this changed
in third grade when I saw a girl in my class looking at a Sailor Moon book. She
introduced me to a manga called Tokyo Mew Mew which is another mahou shoujoseries similar to Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura. It was at this point when I discovered that these comics and cartoons were of
Japanese origin and that there were many other shows like these that had more
detailed art and a continuous story. As someone who didn’t really watch any
shows that weren’t cartoons when I was younger, stories with more detailed and
continuous plot were an improvement when all of the other cartoons on were
mostly comedies that didn’t really follow an ongoing story.
Tokyo Mew Mew
The discovery of
anime and manga also brought a social aspect with it. My friends and I created
a Tokyo Mew Mew club amongst ourselves in 5th grade and traded the comic around. Around this time period the main focus of my friends and I
seemed to be manga rather than anime because we could bring it to school to
exchange with each other. It was also a lot easier to find manga at this time
period when anime DVDs were expensive and companies had not yet realized that
putting anime up online legally with good quality was a good endeavor. Nevertheless,
I mostly remember watching anime series which were based off of the manga I
read with my friends, at my friend’s birthday parties with series such as
Fruits Basket, D.N.Angel, and Full Moon o Sagashite.
(There was an anime version of Tokyo Mew
Mew released on U.S. television as Mew Mew Power; however, many content changes
were made which did not exactly fit into how I thought the series should be.)
Lovely Complex
In middle school, I
spent a large amount of time online and reading forums with recommendations of anime
to watch, and I found two of my favorite series, Lucky☆Star
and Lovely Complex. As someone who is pretty shy I didn’t really talk about my
interests in anime and manga to other people in my class except for my friends
so I didn’t get looked at strangely, however my friends who liked to draw in an
anime style and talk about it in class were talked about by some of my
classmates in a negative way. I distinctly remember a kid in one of my classes
talking about my friends who were in another class at the time saying “All they
talk about is Bleach, Bleach, Bleach. They are so crazy, they must drink
bleach.”My friends were looked down
upon for simply liking and talking about anime during the school day, which in
retrospect was quite tame compared to some underclassmen at my High school who
came to school for picture day wearing cosplay wigs and tails. My family on the
other hand was quite supportive of my interest in manga and anime, buying and
suggesting to my grandparents to buy me these things for birthdays and
holidays.
My mildly excessive collection of manga
It was probably in high school when my interest in anime was at
its highest. Anime was on Cartoon Network dubbed with a loyal translation every
Friday night after midnight. I remember straining to keep myself awake through each episode of Fullmetal
Alchemist after a week of schoolwork and little sleep. In 10th grade
I would invite my friends over to watch the shows with me. One thing we used to
do, which is a bit embarrassing looking back on it, was film ourselves acting
out what was happening on shows where we didn’t know what was going on and then
laugh about how badly we were able to act out the scenes as they happened. I
watched the series Code Geass and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in High
school with my friends when they came over to visit as well. In looking up the
voice actor for the series Code Geass, my friends and I discovered that there
was an anime convention which was only a half hour away from where we lived. We
went to the convention without buying tickets ahead of time and were lucky
enough to get the final four tickets that didn’t break the fire code for the
building. While at this convention we mostly spent our time in the dealer’s
room looking at products to buy. We went a second year as well and spent most
of that year watching panels on different subjects. However, we did not spend really
any time talking to our fellow fans at the convention.
Code Geass
My senior year of high school was quite busy and I did not get to
spend a large amount of time on anime, however, my interest in anime helped me
to make friends in my first week of college. I do not have time to go to
bookstores as much as I did in high school so I do not really read any new manga these
days, however whenever I am on break from school I usually watch a 12 episode long
anime. Looking back on the series of anime that I tend to watch, I have found
that the anime I watch by myself tend to fall under the shoujo genre, however
the series that I watch with my friends tend to have more action or fall under
the shonen genre. I think this is
because I really like the character development which occurs in the shoujo genre
and can pay attention to it when I am by myself. When watching other genres
with my friends I don’t have to pay much attention and have time to joke
around. I don’t know if it would be accurate to call myself an otaku because I have
many other interests as well. Anime and manga do not completely control my
life, although they have played a big role in it. In addition, my friend just
recently told me that she wants to watch the entirety of Naruto with her, so it
seems that whether I want it to or not, anime will continue to play a role in
my life for a long while.
Of all of the anime I could have chosen
to write about for this first journal entry, I decided upon Suzumiya Haruhi
no Yūutsu or The Melancholy of
Haruhi Suzumiya because it is a series that I have consistently been
enjoying since the time that I first saw it in middle school. My reason for starting to watch this series
was basically a spur of the moment decision I made while hanging out with
friends. In middle school before the internet was basically dominated by a few main
social media websites, I used to visit various random websites which had
information on subjects which I enjoyed, mainly anime and manga. Around this
time period many anime related websites were talking about the Suzumiya Haruhi
series, but that was basically all I knew. One day while I was hanging out with
two of my friends, who were also fans of anime, we all agreed that we did not
know anything about the show but we had seen various things about it online so
we decided to watch it because we had time. After watching the first episode,
my friends and I were both amused and confused, and after being pulled in by
the first episode, the rest is basically history.
In a brief summary, The
Melancholy of Haurhi Suzumiya is a series about an average high school boy,
referred to the audience only as Kyon, whose life drastically changes when he
meets an eccentric and extremely bored girl named Suzumiya Haruhi. He then gets
dragged into joining her club in search of extraterrestrials and supernatural
beings. Although Haruhi does not end up with a more interesting life as a
result of the club, Kyon’s life gets turned upside down when the beings that
Suzumiya is searching for end up becoming a growing problem in Kyon's life.
Although the name Suzumiya
Haruhi no Yūutsu is the title of the first anime series which was released
in 2006, the anime series is actually based on a series of light novels written
by the Japanese novelist Tanigawa Nagaru. The first novel, Suzumiya Haruhi
no Yūutsu which shares the same title as the 2006 anime series, was written
in 2003, and the series is currently still ongoing with 11 novels, although the
last novel was released in 2011. The 2006 anime, which I will be focusing on, is
based around parts of the first, third, fifth and sixth novels of the series. For
his work on these novels, Tanigawa Nagaru won an award from the magazine in
which the series was initially serialized. The anime based upon this popular
novel series was created by Kyoto Animation and was directed by Ishihara
Tatsuya. After the release of the 2006 anime series, the franchise grew even
bigger and more adaptations of the series were made. In 2009, a second series
of the anime was made which covered some of the other volumes of the novels. In
addition to these two anime series, a movie version of the forth Haurhi novel
was released in theaters in Japan in 2011. According to wikipeia page of the
series, other adaptions of the series
involve six separate manga series, a series of video games, and various anime
based off of spin-off or parody manga that are
still being created.
A large reason why I believe the series to be successful as a whole is
due to the strength of the characters in the series. The 2006 anime adaption of
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yūutsu revolves around five main characters: Kyon,
Suzumiya Haruhi, Nagato Yuki, Asahina Mikuru, and Koizumi Itsuki. The series is
told from the perspective of Kyon,a
sarcastic and ordinary high school student who ends up getting dragged into the
eccentricities of Suzumiya when he ends up sitting in front of her in class. After
talking to her about her strange interests, Suzumiya ends up forcing him to
create a club with her based upon extraterrestrial beings. As the story
progresses, Kyon ends up living the life that Suzumiya has always dreamed of,
full of strange characters and danger, although he is not allowed to tell her
of his adventures. The entire story is shown from the sarcastic perspective of
Kyon, who narrates his adventures as if he were speaking to an audience. At
some points it is indistinguishable whether the commentary being spoken by Kyon
is simply narration or being spoken allowed by him as a character.
Suzumiya Haruhi is the name of the eccentric high school girl which the
whole series is based around. Suzumiya is a highly intelligent woman who seems
to excel at any sport or activity that she tries. At a young age, Suzumiya comes
to the realization that human beings all lead disturbingly similar lives and
vows to make her life as different and interesting as possible. Due to this wish,
Suzumiya is extremely interested in searching for things others have never seen
before such as aliens, time travelers, and espers and she creates a club called
the SOS brigade, in which the goal is to find creatures like these and “hang
out with them”. Although Suzumiya is bored by how ordinary the world seems to
be, she is actually far from an average human. In addition to being seemingly
able to excel at anything she tries, Suzumiya also has the ability to alter
aspects of reality to her will, although she is not consciously aware of her dangerous
powers. Due to these strange powers, Suzumiya’s boredom can often cause
problems for both the people around her and the universe. As a result, Kyon and
the other members of the SOS brigade have to work in secret to make sure that
Suzumiya is happy enough to not accidentally destroy the universe.
Nagato Yuki, is the name of the first member of the SOS brigade besides
Kyon and Suzumiya. Nagato is an extremely quiet girl who is always seen sitting
in the club room reading a book. She was originally the only member of the
literature club before Suzumiya usurped the clubroom for the SOS brigade and made
her an unofficial member. Nagato is depicted as quiet and emotionless almost as
if she were a robot. As the story goes on, she begins to speak to Kyon a little
bit, however, she is not really shown speaking to anyone else. Nagato confesses
to Kyon that she is not an ordinary human being and that she is actually a representative
of the “Data Overmind” from outer space that was sent to the earth to observe
Suzumiya. Throughout the series Kyon depends on her alien powers to get through
many of the situations that Suzumiya unknowingly places the club into.
Asahina Mikuru is the name of the upperclassman Suzumiya basically kidnaps
and forces to join the SOS brigade. Suzumiya decides that because Asahina is so
adorable she should be the mascot of the brigade and forces her to wear strange
costumes during the meetings for the club. Asahina is a very shy and timid
character and gives into Suzumiya’s whims although it seems as if she is often embarrassed
by the things that Suzumiya makes her do. As the series is told from the perspective
of Kyon, it is clear that he has a crush on her because he often describes her in
an endearing manner and spends a good portion of the story staring at her and feeling sorry for her. Later
in the series Asahina, like Nagato, also reveals that she is not what she seems
and tells Kyon that she is a time traveler from the future who has been sent to
watch over Suzumiya.
The final member of the SOS brigade is a young man named Koizumi Itsuki
who is asked to join the SOS brigade after Suzumiya decides that he should be
in the club because he is a "mysterious transfer student". Koizumi is shown to be
extremely polite and seems to be constantly smiling; however, Kyon seems to be
suspicious of him and thinks that he is faking his happiness. As the series
goes on, Koizumi, like Asahina and Nagato, reveals himself to be a person with
strange super powers. He claims that he
was turned into an esper by Suzumiya and that he now has the power to destroy
dangrous beings called Celestials which are created by Suzumiya unknowingly
when she is angry. Like the other two powerful members of the SOS brigade,
Koizumi was sent by the organization of espers to watch over Suzumiya.
In terms of the series as an anime, I personally found the plot and the
characters to be quite well developed, and I think this is due to the fact that
the series is already based upon a novel. My personal favorite element of this series is
the characters, because every single one has a distinct and different
personality type, and all five members of the club seem to have an equal
importance to the story. A particular strength of the story, is that because
Suzumiya gets bored quite easily by things, the story covers a variety of
different topics. For example, in one episode Kyon almost gets killed by an
alien who is going against the orders of the data overmind, and in another
episode the club simply plays a game of baseball. However, something which
could cause confusion for the viewer is the order in which the episodes occur. When
the series was initially aired on television in Japan, the episodes were shown
in a manner which does not follow the story in a chronological manner. The very
first episode which is typically shown in “chronological order” deals shows a
movie the SOS brigade has made in which the characters are acting and none of
the characters are formally introduced for who they actually are. For a first time
viewer, this can be quite confusing. Another issue involved with having the
episodes out of sequence is the fact that the anime series has its climatic
ending in the middle part of the series and in the actual last episode which is
shown, not much happens in terms of story or plot. An aspect of
the series which makes it strong, however, is that because Kyon is so normal
compared to the other characters, it is quite easy to sympathize and place
yourself in the position of the character, regardless of gender.
That being said the series is listed
on Wikipedia as being a part of the Shonen genre and this is quite obvious when
it comes to how the female characters are looked at in certain situations. For
example, because Asahina often dresses in costumes there is often a lot of
focus on her body. Another aspect of the story which was a tad unrealistic in
terms of women is the fact that one of Suzumiya’s quirks is that she had no
qualms changing her clothes in front of the entire class when it was time to
get ready for gym class. Besides the fanservice which is directed towards the
male demographic, I think the rest of the story is applicable to many different
people because there are many different types of episodes.
Personally, I believe that people
should watch this show not only because it is funny and covers many different
episode types, but also because it can also be seen as an anti-pessimistic
outlook on life. When the story begins Kyon does not really believe in anything
and has basically given up on miracles and has a super realistic outlook on how
the world works. However as the story progresses, Kyon is introduced to
impossible events and is forced to have a more open minded outlook on the
world. In a way, the story kind of takes the viewer back to the mindset that a
child has when they are younger and still believe in miracles. Another reason
why it is worth watching is because of the way the characters slowly begin to
change for the better as they begin to interact with each other as a group. Overall,
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yūutsu has interesting characters and many different
types of episodes which provide something for everyone. Although the series may
be confusing at first due to the disordered sequence of the episodes, I
encourage viewers to watch at least two episodes before making any judgments about
the series.
Suzumiya Haruhi no Yūutsu used
to be available legally to watch on Crunchyroll.com, however it seems to have
been taken down for some reason. However I did find a fan-made trailer which
seems to do a good job of showing some of the scenes from the anime. The original series is 14 episodes long.
