The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi!

Friends of mine would know that I am such an anime geek. In fact, I scour every now and then for some of the tastiest animes to head of Japan over the good old Internet sometimes. Discovered Cardcaptor Sakura this way before it even went ballistic over here a few years back.

Recently, my efforts have rewarded me with a wierd-ass series known simply as "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya".

Wikipedia has this to say about it:

The Haruhi Suzumiya story focuses around one girl named Haruhi Suzumiya who has an obsession with the supernatural. To find the supernatural, she forms a Brigade of five members in order to find the supernatural and play with them. Without realizing it, she recruited an alien, time traveler, and esper into her ranks. It is later found out that Haruhi herself is not a normal human, as she has the ability to alter, destroy, or create the world as she wishes. The story is narrated by her classmate, Kyon, who had just recently given up his beliefs of the supernatural.

of course, the series comes with the usual Jap hentai shenanigans with a very generous dose of high school humor reminiscent of Love Hina and School Rumble.


Haruhi cosplay costume!

The interesting thing about this series is that it's not birthed from an existing manga series but rather from an award-winning youth novel series of the same name by Tanigawa Nagaru who has of date written nine Haruhi books all entitled similarly in accordance to the title character's moods e.g "The Wavering of Suzumiya Haruhi" and "The Indignation of Suzumiya Haruhi" etc.


This is one HAWT Haruhi! I think she's Japanese...

Very nice to watch! The wife and I are currently hooked, convinced that if we wait till the day that Starhub shows it, we would have been octogenarians...


One of the book covers

And finally, THE video that got the entire worldwide cosplay community dancing to - Hare Hare Yukai or the ending theme of "The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi".

Damn cute and catchy.



Now compare it with real people dancing to it - with the exact dance steps! Amazing, it sets my otaku blood on fire again! LOL!!



If you are piqued to read the Japanese to English translations of all the books till date (Book 9 is still under works), the URL is here.