Haruhi Suzumiya: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya [REVIEW]

Yes, really.

I have a complicated relationship with the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise. I first found out about it thanks to the Endless Eight arc; after reading about that, I couldn't resist trying out the anime, and so during the height of the pandemic I watched the first season and fell in love. The characters, the direction, the achronological episode order, they were all expertly done to maximum effect – well, aside from that whole matter of sexual harassment acting as a "titillating" recurring gag. In every other respect, Season 1 was a brilliant piece of television, and yet... and yet. Complicating matters further was the messy structure of what I can only call "Season 2", and by the end my opinions were a soup of things I loved, things I couldn't stand, and things I was just plain fascinated by. For all it was and wasn't, Haruhi Suzumiya as a series never left my mind.

So when I started watching less TV and going on a big reading kick, reading the original novels was only the natural thing to do. But it meant there was a catch: having watched the animated version first, and then going back to the novel, severely colored my perspective on this book. It ended up being hard not to draw comparisons to the anime I loved, despite knowledge that the book is its own distinct piece of media. As much as I'd like to judge it on its own merits, I inevitably end up comparing it with what was later made of it. But hey – let's try doing the former first, then loop back around to its relationship to the anime.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is the first novel in the eponymous series, here called just Haruhi Suzumiya for clarity. is a book about a high-schooler named Haruhi with mysterious, godlike powers unbeknownst to her, and the SOS Brigade: a club she creates at the suggestion of Kyōn, her acquaintance / friend / crush / reluctant partner in crime / all of the above (take your pick). She's obsessed with the supernatural, and intends to discover real-life supernatural phenomena through the SOS Brigade. Her plan kind of works: the club attracts the interest of other individuals who gradually reveal themselves to Kyōn as various types of supernatural beings who have been sent to observe Haruhi's effects on the world around her – the catch being that if Haruhi herself found out, she might inadvertently cause the end of the world. The whole thing reaches a climax when Haruhi dreams up a whole new universe, nearly overwriting the current one, and Kyōn is the only one who can snap her out of it.

Let's start with the positives. The prose is quite nice – it's simple but never dull, and the English translation by Chris Pai flows very well. Kyōn's blasé personality and its manifestation in the prose style is intentionally designed to let the colorful story and characters shine through, but nevertheless he's got enough charm in and of himself to lend the narrative a unique flavor. It surprised me just how more vibrant he was than in the anime, where he's a perfectly serviceable protagonist but not necessarily the centerpiece. Here, his personality tints the whole story and makes it that much more fun.

The titular character Haruhi is, naturally, the other star of the show here. A bold personality with strong convictions, she strings everyone along to her will. It's a trait that heavily risks being unlikeable, but her sheer passion – and a bit of perspective given on her character near the end – keeps her very charming throughout. Aside from, well. You know. We'll get there, I promise. Haruhi feels a bit underbaked in this first installment in the series, but she's more than unique and entertaining enough to keep her scenes afloat. Usually. The rest of the cast – Itsuki the esper, Mikuru the time-traveler, and Yuki the alien – are hardly fleshed-out but still work well enough. This is especially true of Itsuki and Yuki, the two most relaxed of the crew, who absolutely have something going on beneath the surface – hopefully to be explored in future volumes.

But let's talk about Mikuru some more. I've brushed over this somewhat for the sake of maintaining a positive outlook, but the absolute biggest hindrance to genuinely enjoying this is the way Mikuru's character, and her relationship to Haruhi, is handled. Mikuru is a demure, passive girl whose scenes largely involve getting sexually harassed, fondled, and put in revealing outfits by Haruhi, and/or being objectified by Kyōn's internal monologue. This is one of the biggest roadblocks to wholehearted appreciation of this series, and the reason I can never recommend it without a massive asterisk. This girl is constantly harassed, becoming visibly upset and attempting to resist to no avail, and it's downplayed and treated as a quirky running gag – it's an absolutely vile thing to do to a character, and at least in this book there is no attempt at digging into how it affects Mikuru as a person. As written, her character is in large part only the things Haruhi does to her against her will. I cannot for a second stand the way this disgraceful attempt at comedy oozes its way into scene after scene of this otherwise-decent book. It affects the anime, too, but I was hoping that at least in prose form those scenes would be more skippable – alas, no such mercy was to be granted to me. Kyōn's narration sneaks in comments all over the place about how cute Mikuru is in that bunny girl outfit or about the sexy Mikuru pics he secretly saved to the club computer or whatever it happens to be this chapter, and I try to brush past it because I really do love so much about this franchise but there is only so much I can do when these moments are sprinkled in everywhere. Author Nagaru Tanigawa does not understand Consent 101 and it is agonizing.

And the lack of interest in demonstrating consent makes its way into the book's plotline, too, not just scattered gag scenes. In the climactic moments of the story, Haruhi and Kyōn wake up together in a new world Haruhi has constructed, and Kyōn snaps her out of it with a kiss. There are so many good things I could point to about this climax – the liminal space aspect of the new reality is executed perfectly, in ways that could only be done in novel form. Haruhi's unspoken connection to Kyōn, and the way it symbolizes her relationship to (and need for) normalcy and perspective, is a lovely bit of character work. But. At least in the anime there was some level of plausible deniability that Haruhi accepted and leaned into Kyōn's kiss. My reading of that anime scene might've been too good-faith from the start, because in the novel it's made clear as day that she did not consent to it. The book does telegraph afterwards that Haruhi did want the kiss, and it makes total sense for her character that she would; Haruhi's internal longing for connection with Kyōn, platonic or otherwise, is a lovely plot beat for what it represents for her as a person. Just that, well, said plot beat would have been that much more lovely had it been made clear that Haruhi had expressed any interest in the kiss in the moments before it happened. I don't think I need to explain why it's problematic that the male lead gets to do something to the female lead because he knows what she wants deep down, and that he's proven right in the end. It's so close to being a good character beat, but as written, it is extremely sketchy. This whole book really does not give a shit about proper consent. Please just let me enjoy my silly high school club scifi books without whatever this is.

The way the book treats Haruhi's development threw me off in general, putting that specific scene aside. The climax is very much an important character moment for Haruhi just as much as, or more than, it is for Kyōn. And yet... she doesn't really get that much before then? She monologues about her life philosophy and her past a bit, and we get to see some of how she acts in the day-to-day, but if you're looking for a book that focuses on Haruhi as she is, you'll be a little let down. The story instead spends time building up exposition by establishing who all the other club members are, and how they perceive Haruhi. The result is an interesting character study for the rest of the cast, and plays into Kyōn's ultimate quandary during the climax as he ponders how he should think of Haruhi – but Haruhi herself remains somewhat underdeveloped, despite the climax's ostensible focus on her. It's an intensely different experience from the anime, and one that I wasn't quite prepared for.

The anime's take on this arc has future one-off adventures peppered in throughout, so that the various chunks of the introductory arc (i.e. the plot of this first novel) are distributed throughout the season, and broken up by lighter day-to-day fare. That structure helps grant intrigue, perspective, and overall makes the season feel much more based in character rather than exposition. We get to spend more time watching the cast and their powers in action, see future stories that focus more on Haruhi in particular, and build up to a climax whose depth is drawn from everything we've seen thus far. It's a masterclass in pacing, intrigue, and character-building, done completely achronologically. But the novel came first, and it was never trying to do the same thing as the anime adaptation; the two are fundamentally different pieces of media. The pacing is different, the emphasis is different, the themes change – but running entirely on instinct, deep down I was still thinking of the story and themes as if they were the same as the anime's. For as much as I wanted to view the story with fresh eyes, the simple act of having already watched the anime made it that much more difficult to do so. I was let down simply because I was looking for something other than what the book wanted to deliver.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is largely a solid book on its own, and I don't want to downplay that. The translated prose is breezy, the scifi aspects are interesting and atmospheric, the story is largely solid, and (most of) the characters were a joy to revisit. I just can't mentally separate it from the adaptation that came after... and more significantly, everything in this book that has to do with consent sucks so goddamn much. Mikuru Asahina deserved so much better. Yet, nevertheless. Throughout all the bullshit, I've become attached to this setting and these characters – or rather the version of them that exists in my head where nobody objectifies each other. For better or for worse, I can't help but look forward to whatever this novel series has to offer next... that is, if I can brave my way through The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya first. Fingers crossed.