Just in case someone liked the show but didn’t know about this, I figured I would post this once the work was done.
After more or less a year and a half of waiting, Baka Tsuki finished translating all eight novels by Nagaru Tanigawa: Melancholy, Sighs, Boredom, Dissapearance, Rampage, Wavering, Intrigues and Indignation. Although the anime adapted the chosen chapters practically word-by-word, there’s still approximately five volumes worth of content that was either skipped or never gotten to, and the story advances a whole lot more, albeit sporadically.
Maybe I’m out of it (I don’t usually hear about manga or anime until after it’s licensed), but what is it about Haruhi that makes it so great to a lot of people?
It’s… hard to explain actually. It’s funny, but not utterly ridiculous. It’s got insane stuff but it’s neither entirely nonsensical nor needlessly loud. The characters are purposely stereotypical and at the same time very original. And it has a completely and utterly believable protagonist armed with nothing but a very cynical attitude.
You’d really better see/read it instead of asking because it’s just so out of the ordinary that it’s difficult to explain correctly. If you don’t like fansubs, I hear the dub should be ready soon, and Kyon is being played by Crispin Freeman, which is just AWESOME.
I think the heart of Melancholy’s charm is with Kyon. Haruhi is a pretty interesting character, but Kyon is not only completely believable, he also has a good sense of humour in a dead-pan delivery kind of way.
That is the general consensus yes. I personally find Haruhi to be the least interesting character, mainly because she’s static: We know her personality, we know her desires, we know everything there is to know about her on the character level and since she’s fine enough as a tsundere stereotype as she is, I doubt she’ll ever get a lot of growth. I thought her character had exhausted itself by the end of Melancholy, which is pretty consistent with the way in which the focus shifts over to the rest of the brigade, obviously centring on Kyon. From the third novel onwards, she’s more of plot device to kick-start things in half of the cases, and she’s even reduced to an oblivious bystander in the other half.
Well yeah, Kyon is the protagonist. Haruhi is just the wild element in his world, the novels revolve around him and his reactions to whatever ridiculous situation he finds him self in, rather then focusing specifically on her exploits. You could probably make a pretty good argument on the point that Kyon is actually the one with the power, and Haruhi is the physical embodiment of his internal frustration with the world. And even if that’s too far fetched, Kyon does hold a certain amount of power in the sense that he generally is the only one with the ability to greatly affect Haruhi’s reasoning and decisions.
Take the novel, The Great Gatsby for example (I’m sure some of you had to read it in high school), who’s the main character in that book? Is it Nick Carraway, the narrator and the one who is experiencing the exploits of the other characters, or is it Jay Gatsby, the one who is actually pulling off the exploits? I’d argue for Nick Carraway despite Gatsby being the central focus. It’s ultimately Nick who’s viewpoint and explanation you receive, and how he believes it’s effecting the world around him.
“The Kyon Theory” is actually pretty popular in the fandom and Nagaru slips a single comment that might point to it in one of the latter volumes, albeit through Koizumi, which predictably makes it extremely ambiguous as he says it’s possible and at the same time says he doesn’t think it is the case.
I haven’t read Gatsby, but I understand what you mean. What I was going for wasn’t about Kyon’s protagonism, which is pretty much indisputable, but Haruhi’s irrelevance as a character once Melancholy ends. Koizumi, Mikuru, Yuki, and hell, even Tsuruya are sporadically (and in Koizumi’s case, almost surreptitiously) given development or at least a reasonable amount of limelight without the need of a specific series of events being centred around them. Koizumi is the best example as nothing so far has had him as the central focus, yet he still manages to be developed a bit.
Haruhi, on the other hand, is just… there. If she’s lucky. Sometimes she’s not even there, and sometimes she’s not even responsible for what happens. It’s hard to even consider her a secondary character but more of a “wild element” as you said. I just have trouble referring to her as an “interesting character” like Cless mentioned because, to put it bluntly, she’s more of an object than anything else. Just reading any of the conversations Kyon has with Yuki or Koizumi about the strange shit that goes around makes it clear how she’s usually referred to as a phenomenon rather than a person.
Yeah, I get what you’re saying and I’m agreeing more as I get done with more volumes. Haruhi really is a plot device, which is a shame because there could be a lot done in ways of character development. I mean, shouldn’t the eventual outcome be to have her mentality between reality and fantasy become more in line with what Kyon’s rationality was at the beginning of the books? Kyon discusses that idea with himself in the second volume, wondering for how long he would have to serve as the one to keep Haruhi content with reality as it was.
I don’t believe “The Kyon Theory” myself, but I still find the possibility interesting as it would really be an entirely different insight. Regardless, I do believe Kyon does have more control (in the most figurative sense) over Haruhi’s mentality, and thus the fabric of reality itself, then he realizes.
It’s hard to discuss if you haven’t read them all yet because I’m afraid to spoil anything, but after the end of Disappearance, Kyon’s rationality, or at least his sense of what should and shouldn’t be real takes a hit when he himself realizes that, bothersome as it is, he likes Haruhi’s whacky world better than the “common highschool life” that he mentions so often. As for Haruhi, Koizumi (Who pretty much becomes a barometer of Haruhi’s behaviour, at least as far as Kyon is concerned) often mentions that she’s actually a completely rational person deep inside who just happens to be extremely eccentric. She wishes for a lot of stuff to happen but doesn’t really believe such things could happen, so she doesn’t manifest anything (As in Sighs, when all the shit starts appearing as she gets frustrated, and in opposition, when Kyon fixes all the disturbances by making sure she remembers it’s all fiction).
The best development she has gotten so far is a slight shift from her insane interests into things a bit more mundane, but to be frank, if Koizumi didn’t keep repeating “The Closed Spaces are decreasing in number” every few chapters, I wouldn’t even notice.