The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya (manga) volume 1

Contrary to popular belief, I do NOT worship every item the Haruhi has touched, thankyouverymuch

Well, I actually did NOT hit gold while scouring my local library for comic books and manga to review. As the college priest of the Eastern Orthodox church of Haruhi Suzimiya, I was utterly compelled to pick this up. Unfortunately, my expectations were not met.

Sadly, this wasn’t nearly interesting as the anime version of this series. Haruhi just isn’t nearly as interesting panel by panel. I dunno, it just lacks… energy. It doesn’t help that the anime uses a lot of bright colors, which doesn’t translate will into black and white. So, this is Haruhi with much less vibrance. Also, the characters are drawn a bit differently, while not always a problem, they actually look a bit bland. Haruhi’s enthusiasm isn’t something that translates well onto paper, so she just comes off as a sociopath. Ya know, Haruhi could very well be an antagonist if the franchise took a different direction…

Anyway, the plot… It’s kind of a jumbled mess, if you don’t know what’s going on from the anime. Kyon is a high schooler who has resigned himself to a boring life until he meets Haruhi, a wacko who wants to turn this boring ass school into something more interesting, with Aliens, time travelers and espers. Haruhi decides that Kyon gets to be her bitch and makes him do all her dirty work. They then conquer the literature club and assimilate its only member into a society known as… the SOS brigade.

Same plot as the anime, except that fiasco with Ryoko~chan happens before Mikuru joins the Brigade. I highly recommend you watch the anime instead, since the three dimensional medium allows the characters to be fleshed out more. You know, I’ve been a bit disappointed with this franchise lately. Maybe I should check out the novelizations, I heard those are pretty good.

Oh yeah, don’t buy this on Amazon, I heard there was a screw up and this got confused with the light novel. Customers were happier with the product they got though, so I guess they win?


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