I just finished watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya. Yeah...that one. Relatively old now, but never got around to watching it until a few weeks ago.
Overall...my impression was more positive than negative. Interesting premise, basically the main girl controlled reality but wasn't aware of it, and creates a random club with a normal guy and a bunch of weird characters that are basically out of a child's imagination. The animation was mostly great (though largely wasted on a needless story arc in season 2), and it kept me interested enough to keep watching. Also great OPs and EDs, the OST was nice, and had some clever moments here and there. The episode that played their very amateur film was hilarious, especially the MC narrating every plot hole or filming error.
I wouldn't say it was perfect though. My main issue was probably the characters. It'll sound like an obvious idea, but I'm a big fan of the "Tea Test" method of determining how much I like the cast of an anime. Basically...would I be interested in watching the characters just sit around doing nothing but drink tea, with no conflict or anything of plot-relevance happening?
With Haruhi, the answer is a big fat...No.
Of the five main characters, three of them only really existed to move the plot forward. No real backstory, independent goals or motivations, and were basically all one-note characters outside of a scene here or there. You could have removed any one of them from the story and I honestly wouldn't have cared. Sure, maybe this is the point, since all were basically brought into the story for the same reason, but it's not exactly engaging as a viewer to constantly be bombarded with these extremely boring characters just to reinforce Haruhi's impact on the universe.
With Haruhi herself, I'm a bit torn. She has some pretty bad moments, gets caught up in her own ideas and comes across as extremely selfish. She does show signs of selflessness every now and again, but generally goes back to being the same as before by the beginning of the next story arc. Looking at the anime as a whole, any character development she got was minimal at best, and while her worst moments were technically at the start of the timeline...I'm not convinced she completely developed past those faults either. And worse...while the plot occasionally puts the brake on it, it feels like the overall premise services this negative attitude rather than punishes it.
Interestingly enough, Kyon, the male MC, was probably my favorite character in the show. His reactions were generally amusing, and would usually involve putting a funny spin on the narration, or just breaking the 4th wall. Still...having your viewer insert be the best character in the anime probably isn't a great sign either...nor that I only really cared about 1.5/5 characters in the first place.
Well...that probably sounded more negative than I intended, but that's mostly because I'm someone who's drawn into anime based on characters first, story second, so there was a lot to complain about here. It's still worth a watch, even if I don't feel it really lived up the hype I've been hearing all this time. Also...I haven't seen the movie yet, which seems to be viewed more favorably than the anime, so that might change my overall impression somewhat. Still...it's like 3 hours long, so we'll see when I get around to watching it.
That's all for now. Next anime in Boom's Bizarre Backlog Adventure is Your Lie in April. People tell me I'll cry. Heh. We'll see about that.
