Everyone knows that espers and time travelers don’t exist. Some people even believe aliens don’t exist. The fools. But what if they did exist, and they hung out with you every day and you didn’t even know it?
Creative Staff
Writer/Artist: Nagaru Tanigawa
What They Say
Haruhi holds the fate of the universe in her hands . . . lucky for you she doesn't know it!
Meet Haruhi - a cute, determined girl, starting high school in a city where nothing exciting happens and absolutely no one understands her.
Meet Kyon - the sarcastic guy who sits behind Haruhi in homeroom and the only boy Haruhi has ever opened up to. His fate is now tied to hers.
Meet the S.O.S. Brigade - an after-school club organized by Haruhi with a mission to seek out the extraordinary. Oh, and their second mission? Keeping Haruhi happy . . . because even though she doesn't know it, Haruhi has the power to destroy the universe. Seriously.
The Review!
Packaging:
The front cover shows Haruhi excitedly pointing towards the reader, with a large, tilted red ‘H’ in the background, along with the series logo, which should be familiar to anyone who knows about the series. The back cover has a smaller version of the Haruhi on the front, in the same pose, with another, slightly smaller red H in the background. The spine has the Kadokawa Comics logo and title at the top, which is a pleasant surprise, with the series title beneath it, and below that a still smaller version of Haruhi. At the very bottom is a Yen Press logo. Inside there are four (four!) full color pages. I love color, so even though one of those is the Table of Contents, I won’t complain.
Overall I think the packaging is quite attractive. From the stylized title to Haruhi’s prominence on the packaging, you can recognize it as Haruhi even from the corner of your eye. My only complaint is that I would have liked if they had mixed up the artwork a bit. I love Haruhi, but if you’re going to only use her on the cover at least give me a different pose, or draw her in a different style or something. Three copies of the same piece of artwork is pushing it.
Artwork:
The artwork on display here can charitably be referred to as decent. The backgrounds are nothing special but avoid being awful, and the action is serviceable; the characters are where things start to go awry. Not the female characters, although even they have their wonky moments. Haruhi, Mikuru, Nagato and Asakura are all drawn pretty well. Kyon and Koizumi, on the other hand… they could have starred alongside Vincent Price in House of Wax. Their faces tend to slide around, sometimes looking fine, other times squashed or stretched, or as though their features are sloshing around their faces.
It’s honestly a little puzzling to me that, considering the name recognition Haruhi seems to have, the visuals are so mediocre. Notice that I said ‘seems’, and given the echo chamber-like nature of both the hobby and the Internet at large I could be completely wrong. Regardless, the artwork is the most disappointing aspect of this release.
Text/Translation:
I found the translation itself to be quite good. This is particularly important since the narrator/main character Kyon is a very sarcastic guy and if his never-ending parade of quips and muttered commentary aeemed clunky or malicious it would severely impact enjoyment. The sound effects translation is also pretty slick; the Japanese sound is translated and beneath it in parentheses is the English equivalent. This is quite useful if you, like me, have no idea what ‘HYOWAN’ or ‘GARA’ are supposed to signify.
The one area where there is a problem is with the text bubble alignment. It’s not the biggest issue in the world, of course; I’d much rather have sound translation and readable font, but it does take you out of the story when there’s text noticeably off-center in a speech bubble. If this was a tiny publisher with a microscopic budget I’d be more lenient, but Yen Press should know better by now.
Contents (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Haruhi is the story of sarcastic, derisive everyman Kyon, whose real name is never revealed, and begins with his first day of high school. He has a run-in with Haruhi Suzumiya, who quickly announces that she’s only interested in aliens, time travelers, and espers (people with psychic powers, or ESP). True to her words, when anyone tries to engage her in conversation she quickly tells them to shove off. Soon Kyon notices that Haruhi changes her hairstyle daily, and works up the nerve to ask her about it.
That’s when Kyon gets sucked into Haruhi’s world as though she were a black hole. After recruiting him for the club she creates, the SOS Brigade (in English, the Save the World by Overloading it with Fun Suzumiya Haruhi Brigade), and seizing control of the Literature Club’s room and sole member, Nagato, Haruhi sets her plans into motion: to find aliens, time travelers, and espers, then hang out with them. Haruhi later drafts two more people into the club, second year student Mikuru and ‘mysterious transfer student’ Koizumi, and together they attempt to stumble upon strange happenings.
It all sounds pretty mundane until Nagato is revealed to be an alien, Mikuru a time traveler, Koizumi an esper and Haruhi as some sort of super-being who has the power to do absolutely anything she wishes. A power which she is, thankfully, unaware of.
Comments:
It’s the classic high school romance story of a guy, a girl who controls the universe, an emotionless alien, a ditzy time traveler, and a sycophantic psychic. The setup itself is interesting, to be sure, but the real focus here is the way the story is told. There are no sly winks to the reader or tongue-in-cheek references. The creator wants you to believe in the possibility that this could be real, so while there is plenty of humor and even some fan service on display here, they come about naturally from the characters interacting with each other rather than being crammed and canned for our enjoyment.
It’s disheartening that I’ve found a well-told story to be such a rarity in manga. Good stories are uncommon enough, but when they’re told with conviction and not cluttered with gratuitious fanservice, slapstick buffoonery, unbelievable characters and/or other extraneous baggage, you’ve found something truly special. Haruhi seems to strike a balance between a character-driven manga and a plot-driven manga, which recalls fond memories of some of my favorites from Heinlein, Asimov and Zelazny. Seen through the eyes of Japan and taking place in a rural high school, sure, but it’s still something I found myself surprised by.
I’d like to point out that this manga is an adaptation from the series of light novels of the same name, and as such there have been some concessions made in places for the sake of brevity or general cohesion. Nothing too noticeable to any but die-hard fans in this first volume; I only mention them because I, as a die-hard fan, did notice, but the changes are relatively inoffensive. More importantly, I expected the story to be propped up by some amazing art. Sadly, this is where Haruhi falls short.
I’ve made most of my comments in the Artwork section of this review, so I will simply say that Haruhi should have A+ artwork, B at the minimum, and instead has what I find to be just barely C quality. If someone is only interested in the story they can read the light novels (which are excellent, by the way); a manga must be judged on both art and content, and when one side of the coin is lighter than the other you get… well a coin not suited to be flipped. The metaphor kind of ran the rails a bit but you see what I’m saying.
I was a fan of the series before the manga, and I liked this first volume. That being said, I don’t believe this is the best introduction to the series, and would suggest either the anime or novels to someone who’s never heard of it before. If you’re already a fan and want another fix, dive in and don’t look back. If you’re looking for a cheap entry into the world of Haruhi without all that fancy word readin’, I can wholeheartedly recommend the manga. It’s not perfect, but it tells a good story with interesting characters in a nice package, and it may get you hooked.
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