Anime: Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu

Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu (Haruhi for short) really bugged me for some time. Some of my friends who watched it promptly starting revering the show like some kind of god, many internet sites were dominated by artwork in their background, etc. I'm not fond of hyped shows, and when someone tries to sell me something as the best of the best I usually avoid it or watch it with some suspicion. That's exactly what happened when I first watched the show a few months after its release.

Haruhi certainly has the best production value of its time and that was relatively strong enough to lift the whole show, but besides that it lacks more interesting stuff. I've watched it a second time a few years later and finally could grasp what happened back there. Haruhi is guilty for changing the artwork style of more than 90% of the shows, planting the strongest seed of what later became the very standard of japanese animation from 2008 onward.

Art & Animation
There isn't much to say here besides that it's superb. Haruhi features a quality that most shows today are short of reaching. The moe style by its time was likely to be different, focusing on clean design, sharp drawing, strong colors and a sort of "shine" in the elements of the scenario that was good enough to give a sense of japanese animation without looking cheesy as previous shows. I'm not sure if Haruhi was the only show with such a style back in 2006, but it was certainly the strongest one, creating a change in the overall art style that we can see in almost 90% of the recent shows. Haruhi benefits little from animation because of the genre, but it's quality is also top notch.

Sound
While I can't say Haruhi's music lasted in my mind, the show has a pretty decent sound direction. By the time of its release there wasn't an abundance of voice-acting with its style, so it was refreshing despite sometimes being a bit annoying with yellings and voices with bad pitch. Music-wise the show is average, with perhaps too many silent scenes that would be better if they had some kind of background. Overall there's nothing to detract from the experience, but also nothing awesome here.

Story
Haruhi's concept is not surprising or new. It's comedy/pardody about a crazy school girl who is completely absorbed by fantastic elements like aliens, espers, and others of the kind. Kyon, the other half-protagonist, is a common student until Haruhi pops up and bring some chaos and insanity. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

1. Narrative fail trick
   The narrative, however, tries to be different. It shows the episodes in a random order, making you wonder the true chronological order of them and faking a bit of mystery. This uncommon pace is different and may keep things interesting in your first watch, but then it just proves to be some kind of mask to a very standard school-life show.
   
   Not so funny for a parody
   There are no twists or great events that enhances the overall experience, but at least it has a better idea to create some funny moments. Despite being a parody and comedy, however, Haruhi won't make you laught all the while, and some of its jokes are simply too childish to entertain a wide audience.
   

Character
Archetypes are all that you'll find here. Haruhi is the typical hyper-energic girl ready to do all kinds of stupid things without second thought. Kyon is is average japanese school student. Besides them you'll have the silent girl with serious look, the dumb big-breasted girl and other less important characters. These stereotypes can be really annoying to those who already dislike them, and while Haruhi tries to make them more charismatic, it fails most of the time and you won't have much to like from their personalities. To further compromise the show, there is a general lack of development in the characters, probably on purpose due to the random episode sequence that somehow killed all ways to create a good development. Haruhi, however, is not exactly in need of development, and Haruhi herself can be very amusing from time to time, saving the show when it gets too generic.

Value
Haruhi was perhaps the main responsible to bringing the moe to the spotlight and allowing hundreds of other moe-like shows to pop around us and plague japanese animation from 2008 onward. The fact that it was new and different back in 2006 makes it a great show, so I think it wouln't be fare to judge it because all the shows that came later. What made Haruhi even more especial, is that it gave a superb production value to a genre that was always lacking this, proving that a great animation and sharp artwork can indeed lift a show to a very high audience number.

Enjoyment
It's a tough call to say Haruhi is really fun. Those who follow Haruhi's "religion" may certainly find anything they can to say the show is enjoyable, but critically looking at it proves different. The erratic pace is a plus at the beginning, but masks most of the cliffhangers and adds more to a fake mystery than to quality sequences of episodes. The characters are too bound to their stereotypes, only giving a type of comedy that was already shown in dozens of parodies before. More importantly, the comedy scenes of the show are somehow weak, too focused on very specific themes and usually far too exagerated to enhance the fun moments. Those who like a parody will find better stuff, especially if they've watched most shows of the early 2000's. If you're looking for a more natural comedy that relies more on good characters than forced moments, Haruhi's certainly bound to disappoint.

Comments
I'm not into moe shows, but back when Haruhi released I wasn't even aware of what the word "moe" meant. Still, I wasn't amused the first time I've watched and even in my second time. I tried hard to find why people praised this show so high and I'm pretty sure it's mostly because of the great production value and the introduction of the moe style. Shy and cute girls never were so beautifully portraited to anime before Haruhi, and that was sure to grab the attention of most of the audience.

Haruhi is not a bad show, it's just not good enough to live up to its hype. The randomness of episodes is not "artistic" in any way, only helping to create a fake sense of mystery that completely vanishes after you watch it. The character's are below average, with only their artwork being great back in 2006. If you watch any other anime today, however, you'll find hundreds of similar styled characters and see just how weak Haruhi's cast is.

Haruhi only truly succeeds in bringing parody to the stage. It's some kind of Excel Saga with a more school-like approach and without the never-stopping Excel. The parody is good, you'll find many fun references to other shows, especially shounens and mahou shoujos, and that may grant you a good experience overall. But unlike most think, the show is not a masterpiece, it was just a well-time show that changed the art style of anime and, in my opinion, was one of the responsible of plaguing japanese shows with moe-like girls, lolis, and hundreds of tsunderes.

Notice: This review covers both seasons, and the movie, and the spin-off series.

Whoever tries to ask around why Haruhi was such a huge phenomenon in the anime community to the point it was treated as a religion, he will encounter a mountain of different opinions, usually contradicting ones, and lots of deep analysis concerning psychology and existentialism. As usual, most of whatever is said is overthinking nonsense, so I will now reveal the truth about what this show is really about.

MOE

First and foremost, Haruhi is a school comedy about cute girls doing cute things. It wasn’t the first show doing that, but it was one of the first ones that took advantage of the fidelity offered by the brand new storing technology of Blu Ray. Earlier moe shows were nowhere near its attention to animation, directing, and music composition, because they couldn’t be. As a production, it didn’t simply have a big budget; it was also given a tremendous amount of attention. Compared to everything else around that time, it was moe overdose. The dancing skit in the end credits, the music concert scene, and the constant praising references it was getting in Lucky Star, mesmerized countless of people who, in the typical fashion of casuals, considered the anime the best series of all times, because the colors were prettier than anything else they had seen in their lives. And if that somehow reminds you of Attack on Titan, it’s because the exact same thing happened again with that show.

I too found the animation gorgeous when I first watched it but I didn’t feel anything about that because I freaking hate moe. By today’s standards all that fidelity doesn’t even mean much anymore, since Blu Rays are commonplace and most of everything that comes out looks awesome. And that is why liking something for the pretty colors makes you a tasteless pleb.

SUPERNATURAL ELEMENTS

Of course looking nice is far from enough to excuse why so many people liked the show. If it was just typical cute girls, doing typical cute things, in a typical school, it would get old very fast and it wouldn’t be so popular for all these years. In fact, the show wasn’t popular during its first half because most of the audience thought it was one of the same stuff they had already seen in Azumanga Daio or Kanon. It was during the second half when people found out there were crazy stuff going on in it. The loved the supernatural elements it had; espers, and time travelers, and aliens, and gods, and reality warping, and lots of other cool ideas. And to top all that, they were thrown in a school setting, which is the laziest idea to use, but also the most successful one because everybody can relate to something they were part of for at least a dozen years of their lives.

I too liked them as ideas but I was never made to love the show because of them, since they were nothing more than gimmicks. They weren’t semi-independent side stories taking place at the same time, they were figments of someone’s imagination, thrown there just for flavoring the moe. The done to death school setting wasn’t helping me give two shits about whatever is going on, and by now it’s obvious how moe has taken over the industry and sapped dry its creativity, since all they are doing is throwing in cute girls and random ideas that go nowhere.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS

At least the show attempts to excuse all these random supernatural ideas as a result of boredom. Haruhi made all that happen because she was fed up with her normal life. Which is something that resonated with a lot of young people. Boredom is a huge first world problem, and if you are a person who feels his life has no color, a show with crazy stuff, and dancing and singing, becomes a major attraction. You will sympathize with how the heroine feels, and cheer for her quest to fill life with excitement. No wonder they considered this show to be amazing.

Unfortunately this illusion breaks very easily, once you realize that in her quest to have fun, Haruhi is manipulating people for her amusement. As much as they try to tell us the world is her creation, and she can do anything she likes with it, it eventually comes down to treating people as nothing but toys. This essentially makes her a bitch who cares only about herself. She is like a spoiled kid who thinks it is the center of the universe and everything happens for its amusement. And since that happens to be exactly what a huge portion of anime fans are like, it is something they considered to be positive instead of negative because it became empowerment fantasy.

NON-LINEAR PLOT

The show does its best to distract the audience from realizing what a bitch Haruhi really is, by having a non-linear plot in the first season. The events were told in a scrambled manner, thus making it feel like the whole thing was a mystery that needed to be solved by the viewer. Everybody was so obsessed with finding hints or how everything was foreshadowed ten episodes ago, to the point they completely overlooked the simple fact that they were cheering for an awful person who was playing with peoples’ very existence for her amusement. This was one of the biggest revelations the second season offered when it told the same events in chronological order. Since by then the mystery was solved, rewatching the events in a linear fashion just couldn’t hide the truth anymore.

INTERNAL MONOLOGUES

Another trick the show used, which was still new at that time and felt very innovating because of that, was to have the whole thing being told in first person narration, from someone who is not Haruhi. Despite her being the iconic character of the anime, the protagonist is actually Kyon, a male teenager who is narrating most of everything through internal monologues. It’s so easy to excuse anything that happens this way since they are simply thoughts. Nobody can question them because nobody is hearing them in-series. Kyon becomes a foil for the viewer, saying anything he likes and feeling supreme and mighty for acting like a teenager who thinks he can explain everything without knowing much. He is also not far away from a harem lead for being surrounded by cute girls with superpowers, who like him even when there is nothing special about him. He even gets to solve the conflict of the whole series by essentially kissing Haruhi, further making it feel like she is a typical datesim girl who needs a man to fix her psychological issues with his D. Just like Haruhi, Kyon is also a very sympathetic character, because he is someone all males wished they were.

MOTIVATION

A positive side of the show is how it motivated many people to become part of something. Whether it was cosplaying, music bands, dancing, travelling to the places the show was based on, or even becoming complete idiots who treat Haruhi as the one true god, it can’t be denied that this show drove away the boredom from the lives of thousands of anime fans, and led to the creation of numerous social groups that brought together thousands of people with similar tastes.

On the negative side, the show helped to spread the plague of moeshit, where people are watching anime for escapism and really cancerous themes. Its success was one of the reasons light novel adaptations became commonplace and keep bombarding us with good ideas that are treated in completely lazy ways and are eventually nothing but harems that promote incest and immoral messages.

LEGACY

The legacy of the franchise itself is also full of bumps, making it a shadow of what it used to be. The infamous Endless Eight arc, where it repeats the exact same events for eight episodes in a row, is seen as a very lazy excuse to prolong the series. The sex scandal with the voice actress of Haruhi also tarnished the image of the show because otakus lose interest if they don’t think their favorite waifu is still virgin. The author not writing any more novels for several years is also seen as him having no idea of how to end a story such as this, further proving how the plot was random ideas with no planning. The movie sequel felt great only because Haruhi was absent to the most part. And the recent spin-off comedy is nothing but low effort milking of a dying fandom.

So as you see, there is nothing actually thought-provoking in this show; it is style over substance like pretty much everything Kyoani makes. Despite the seemingly complex themes, the characters remain pretty archetypical in behavior. They are defined by a generic school uniform, and some minor accessory like yellow ribbons in their hair. It uses smokes and mirrors to make it seem like it is far more than a typical school comedy with cute girls and random cool ideas, and then lets the audience to be fooled into thinking these illusions are art or depth, when in reality they are elaborate trolling.

I know how many will say that the purpose of any fictional story is to immerse the audience into its imaginary world, but there is a line which separates creative brainstorming from sickening autism, and Haruhi crosses that line way too many times. It is so heavy on empowerment fantasy that it doesn’t simply excite those who are bored, it also makes them do really stupid things in their real lives. Down to it, this show is a pretentious moe comedy that fools people with pretty colors, and superficial ideas.

SUGGESTION LIST
Urusei Yatsura 2nd movie (Beautiful Dreamer)
Noein
SE Lain
Higurashi
Tatami Galaxy
Madoka Magica
Steins;Gate

I am gonna be 1000% totally honest with you, folks: I DON'T LIKE THIS ANIME!!!!!!!!

This shit must be one of the most over hyped, over advertised animes I have ever witnessed before. I have seen this on Internet, on other animes (mostly in Lucky Star, but if I am not mistaken, both were made by the same studio), fuck, it was everywhere. And after getting bombarded so much, I was like "OK, you fuckers! I'm gonna download it and see it!!" Before I watched it, I was expecting something fucking cool, and was waiting to get my balls and brains exploded from awesomeness. So, I watched like 4 to 6 episodes, and I was like "And?", meaning "All this hype for THIS SHIT?!".

The story for me was kinda weird and stupid... to say the least (again, my thoughts). I mean, c'mon! A girl that has God-powers and doesn't she know that, and lives her life mostly in boredom for ordinary things and looking for aliens, time travelers and ESPers? Yeah, right...

Some good things i can say is that it has very beautiful animation (perhaps one of the best I've seen 'round :mymaster: ) and good voice acting and music. BUT... (yeah, there was gonna be a fucking "but") what's the deal with the ED?! Most random thing it's dance. And yet it's popular. In you tube, I've seen people doing the dance, anime characters dancing, even Transformers Masterpieces figures doing the fucking dance! And now, the characters themselves. Reading on Internet before watching it, I really was expecting some characters that I would like. Instead, I got the opposite (not the kind of "I hate you, so I'm gonna kill ya!", but the kind of "Bite me!"). And I am not gonna talk about enjoyment... So far, wasn't it obvious that i didn't enjoy it.

If you want me to measure my disappointment and frustration with something, I'll give you a good example: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. I was waiting so much for it when it came out back then, that I spammed my parents to go to the cinema (we were going to the cinema anyway, since my father is a Star Wars fan). After that, I was so dissapointed, angry and frustrated with all that unnecessary bullshit :brickwall: :cry: .

What saved my sanity though was the "Angry Video Game Nerd" show. A friend of mine showed me that show and boy, i LOVED it :D
Till today, I watch it, downloaded most of the episodes to my laptop and I watch it in my free time (you can see some influences here in this review =P ). But for this anime, here's what i give: the MIDDLE FINGER OF DOOM!!!

Please remember: this is my personal feelings for this anime. I was bitching a lot, that's true, but that's how I felt when I watched. For me it's the same like Lady Gaga, Twilight, Gas: it's kinda unpleasant, smells like shit, looks bad, but it will eventually pass. But I really loved the SD spin-off, since this is what I was expecting. So adios now, and if you don't like this, and frankly, I don't care that much.

Introduction
This is my first review guys, so please rate it to help me improve!

Animation
The animation is by Kyoto Animation, and is on par with what I expect from them. Nothing short of excellent. My only complaint here is the sometimes horrible lipsynching - the characters don't look like they're even trying to say what's in the script. This is incredibly common though, so a nine seems reasonable.

Sound
Most events have a sound for them - even Reversi pieces being flipped. Most sounds are well-matched as well. However, I'm missing outdoor footsteps too often to overlook it, and the soundtrack is usually just unobtrusive background music.
Seven for this.

Story
There isn't really much story to be had in Haruhi, which is why airing the episodes "out of order" worked at all. Haruhi revolves around the main characters, and pretty much nothing else. In a way, each episode is its own story arc, with a few exceptions. While I usually find this lack of development annoying, it works remarkably well here. Still - no plot is no plot.
I can't give it more than a four, since Haruhi's character could be seen as a plot, in a way.

Character
As I mentioned under Story, Haruhi is mostly character-driven. And the characters are great! While all personalities have been seen before, they're pulled off in a lovable way. In addition, all main characters besides Kyon, and some important side characters, are special in some way. If you've seen the anime, you know what I mean. If not, I won't spoil.
Refreshingly, these traits take a background role and allow the characters themselves to shine through instead. Haruhi is unique in her trait, which also fits very well with her personality.
I can't think of any times when characters went directly against their personalities, which is good. Unfortunately, characters rarely, if ever, develop, which is a serious lack.
You'd have a hard time seeing a character with the same personalities as these in real life, but this did not at all detract from my experience.
Six, for likeable and partially unique characters with little development.

Value
If you want to catch what story there is, or simply want to see things in the order they happened, watching the series again is definitely recommended. Also, the happiness and great animation make me turn back to Haruhi from time to time - it always leaves me refreshed. Since it's only 13 episodes, I'd say this warrants a buy. There are no groundbreaking plot devices, and nothing really "new" about the anime iteself though. Still, an eight for value.

Enjoyment
I liked Haruhi, despite it's shortcomings. While the review scores might not show many outstanding points, nothing else has measured just how fun, relaxing and refreshing this anime is. So all of that goes into Enjoyment, where I suppose it rightfully belongs. Nine.

Also, I'd feel bad if I didn't mention the great ending.

Animation was ok, but it's the same old... most other post-2k series are that way. Didn't take away from the series, but it didn't add to it either.

Sound was ok... Didn't take away from the series, but it didn't add to it.

Story was below average. There wasn't much of a plot, and of what there was it was nothing special either.
Seems most of the main storyline was written between the lines... but there isn't much there either.
The comedy didn't leave an impression either.

The characters were diverse and had great potential. That potential, however, is mostly wasted. The characters show what they are capable of but do little with that capability beyond the where they display that capability. For as much as could be done with them, it's very disappointing.

Overall, it's mildly enjoyable, but nothing special. A lot more could have been done with it, but wasn't. I watched it in airing order, and the out of order-ness didn't improve things any... if the character were jumping around in time, the order would have significance and add to it, but that's not the case.
It seemed to me like the series tried too hard to have everything in it... but didn't get much of anything overall. Not enough substance and spread too thin.

From the great expectations I had given the positive things I had about it and the awards, the series was very disappointing. I don't even get why it would be so overrated. From what I've asked, others who like it can't say what is so great about it either...
Guess I'll have to settle with lemmingz.

SUZUMIYA HARUHI NO YUUTSU

~EDITED VERSION [Thanks to Axiom for pointing out the mistakes]


Should you choose to read and/or critique this little thing of a review of mine, all forms of opinion (on my work) will be greatly appreciated. Hell, I'll return the favor some time... maybe.

My style of writing may be confusing to some (or most), but please bear with it.


Animation / Sound ~ 10 each
A ten in any category (in this case animation) means that something or everything in said category is the best among the best, or at least top notch. To say the least about it, SHnY’s animation quality was on par with Full Metal Panic and Death Note (when it’s looking great). To say the most… is going to take a few lines worth of typing. Colors are sharp, characters drawn with great detail (or at least consistency), and all the scenes that needed to look good looked great. Asahina Mikuru no Bouken, the first episode, was (intentionally) made to look like (to put it nicely), an amateur’s work. It looks like crap, but at the end, we (the viewers) are blessed with what Haruhi and her Brigade should look like. Being able to make a series look great is one thing, but having the skills to actually make it look bad on purpose takes even more.

Recently, an omake of sorts was released based on the ending theme, Hare Hare Yukai, a song sung by the seiyuu for Haruhi, Yuki, and Mikuru. It played at about 30 frames per second and showed a full version of the dance routine that the aforementioned trio performed. It was, to say the least, a feat of animation (for me, anyway).

In the episode Live A Live (#12), which in itself is a reference to something else (thanks be to Wikipedia’s trivia section), Haruhi joins a band in trouble and soon after a concert with them on stage. Unlike other anime, this concert didn’t have random pictures of the band members flitting across the screen; the performances were animated like a real concert with people moving and actually playing what they were supposed to be playing.

Imagine the amount of work something like that must have taken for a moment. First, receive a strain of video of a band playing and the music to go with them. Second, start drawing the band playing and make sure to synchronize everyone and everything. Third, make it look good. Accomplishing that, in itself, is a dazzling feat, so I’d like to make a shout-out to the people at Kyoto Animation for making the concert a concert (=P).

There are, of course, a few frames that look below the par (bogies, I guess they would be called), but that goes without saying. Why take a castle apart when you can just live in it?
~ That was an attempt at analogies or something of the sort…

The Opening and Ending themes to Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu were both very well done. Bouken Desho Deshou? and Hare Hare Yukai, respectively the OP and ED, were both sung by Haruhi’s own seiyuu, Hirano Aya. Her tones of voice in these two songs are totally different from both her acting voice and the voice she used to sing the insert songs God Knows… and [Lost My Music] for episode 12.

The voice acting is nothing like what can be found by turning your TV onto a series released in America. Hirano Aya, Chihara Minori, and Goto Yuuko (the seiyuu for Haruhi, Asahina Mikuru, and Nagato Yuki respectively) bring their own distinct talents to the front. Not only were the seiyuu themselves talented, but their voices matched their characters well. Yuki, for example, is the cool and silent, and her voice goes more towards Bleach’s Kuchiki Byakuya instead of say, Orihime.

Story ~ 10
We’ve seen the plotline for this series before, but not so much that it gets old or boring or unoriginal or etc. A general formula for the story would be: Person A lives in world => A gets bored with world => A drags B, C, D, and E in to her world and it gets better (for all of them) as they go.

Suzumiya Haruhi, East Junior High’s famous girl of ambiguous intentions, comes onto the stage of her namesake show as a mildly depressed and bored… person. Enter Kyon, the sarcastic protagonist to stand alongside Haruhi on her many dubious quests to find abnormal creatures. Following him will be a trio, to be saved for the “Characters” section of this thing of a review. Anyway, she (Haruhi) hopes and wants desperately for the existence of aliens, time travelers, espers, and dimensional sliders to put her world on the edge of its seat.

There are hints, or hardly even traces, of drama and romance in Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu. Kyon holds in his heart feelings for the female trio, but they’re all different and unique (his feelings are).

As for the episode order, there are those out there who didn’t like it (probably because it made them confused and feel bad), but I loved it. It somewhat emphasized on the queerness of the main characters Haruhi and Kyon.

Season two’s coming out in the fall… wonder what story’ll be used for that.

Characters ~ 10… no wait, 9
Strange how things turned out, but Haruhi got called on to be the main character to her own show, and she’s not an average every day main character. Haruhi is openly selfish, has convenient bouts of deafness (or just refuses to listen to others while she’s in monologue), and is also (considered by her peers) to be a superfreak. Many series before have used such a character, but, what, you ask, makes Haruhi different from all others? The people standing by to support her (though are main characters themselves) bring her eccentricities to light and life better than they could have been without them.

Kyon is, without a doubt, the voice of reason. He grew up glued to such thing as UFO specials on TV, and even secretly hopes that such extraterrestrial things exist. Sadly, however, as he puts it, the laws of physics were too well written.

Nagato Yuki, the super silent bookworm rooted to the SOS Brigade’s headquarters, is (without a doubt) an homage to Ayanami Rei from Shin Seiki Evangelion (for proof, look to Google). She will change as the series goes on, as evidenced in the book version of SHnY, but enjoyment of such knowledge as Nagato’s development I leave to your own discovery.

Next up is Koizumi Itsuki. Haruhi has a talent for “kissing her own ass,” as Kyon phrased it, and Koizumi just happens to be the one in the SOS Brigade stuck to wipe it beforehand. He is, as described in one of the other reviews, the Yes Man, who goes along with anything and everything that his leader whims.

Last, and definitely not least, would be Kyon’s lust interest Asahina Mikuru. As the big “moe” factor and mascot girl in SHnY, this submissive redhead is doomed to face Haruhi’s wrath… or at least, to jump into any getup Haruhi presents her with.

The supporting characters are unique as well. These people aren’t like the supporting characters in other series… not very much alike, at least. What makes them different? Who they are. Gracing the stage for the first time in Haruhi's mockery of a film were the Taniguchi and Kunikida duo, a social joke and lineless nice guy respectively, and Tsuruya-san, one of Asahina's friends whose energy is matched only by Haruhi. If they aren’t being laughed at, they’re the ones laughing, and even as supporting characters have their own roles to play.

~ Tsuruya happens to be my favorite character by the way…
Green hair + contagious laughter = greatness.



Value / Enjoyment ~ 8 and 9 respectively
When I first started watching Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, it was already on episode 10. That episode, which definitely is NOT the best point to start at, was strange for a clueless newb such as myself. After waiting a week to watch episode 11's first scene, I thought "Ah, finally we get to what the series is about." Soon after, I watched the series in as strange an order as it was already released in (meaning I watched the broadcast releases in the order I downloaded them, which was also abnormal).

After getting the whole series (alongside a few episodes of Ouran High School Host Club), my family and I took a vacation to the Philippines, where I had 0 home access to the internet whatsoever. Luckily, I had a laptop, a portable hard drive, and all 14 episodes of SHnY to keep me company. I watched and rewatched the episodes every day that I could, simply because I couldn't find anything else to do. Between Ouran and SHnY, I chose SHnY day in and day out simply because it was what I enjoyed more.

Because of all the small things done in such large manners (fully animating the concert performances, making people in the background move, the abnormal episode order), this quickly and suddenly became a series worth the time to watch and rewatch, no matter how many times you've watched it. In my case, with each new viewing, something got clearer and pulled more questions up with it.

After watching this series, I fell in love with Hirano Aya's music. She's very talented, as were those working both behind and in front of the scenes in "Haruhi".