The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya was good but nothing really beyond that. Haruhi herself was a plot moving mechanism that I never felt attached to at all. Kyon was the start of the show with Yuki being the most interesting.
Most of the hype for this series came from when it aired. It was televised out of order, which was awesome and a lot of fun. The "movie filming" episode aired first and I loved it. It was one of the most memorable first episodes I've ever seen. Because of this, people talked about it a lot, trying to figure out what was going on and what everything meant. It made each episode something to look forward to.
The second reason it got a lot of hype was that ED. It went over huge. People were dancing all over the place and it took on a life of its own. It was probably a bigger deal than the anime itself.
People seeing it now might not see anything special but at the time it was something different and everyone and their dog filmed themselves doing it.
Though, honestly, Lucky Star's OP dance was better.
