The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Anime Deluxe Complete Collection Boxed Set (Limited Edition).
I thought that when I entered high school, my days of believing in aliens, time Travellers and ESPers were going to be over. That is, until she introduced herself. Claiming to be interested in only aliens, time travellers, and ESPers, Haruhi Suzumiya was the strangest girl I'd met in a long time…
Before I knew what was going on, I'd been dragged into her weird club, and it looks like I'm not the only one who has been drafted into this “SOS Brigade” of hers, because there are three other students who don't seem to be so ordinary themselves.
Either way, we've all found ourselves caught up in Haruhi's quest to search for all things extraordinary. And what's this I hear about us making a movie?
Contains both seasons 1 and 2, Movie, and HARUHI-CHAN & NYORON! CHURUYA-SAN in one collection. with bonus features.
13 disc set – over 16 hours of content!
Special Features
- Season 1 broadcast order episodes
- Textless songs
- TV broadcast previews & promo spots
- Making of Haruhi Suzumiya clips
- Aya Hirano's Nekoman gallery
- Location scouting videos
- Behind the scenes of Aya Hirano's music video
- Endless Eight prologue
- Special Event Video
- Background music recording with Australia's EMINENCE Orchestra
- Special screening in Tokyo & Kyoto
- Cutting, Dubbing & Editing featurette
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Series Review
By DVD Talk
"A lot of people who claim to out-and-out hate anime usually have a fairly good reason for that: a lot of anime is derivative of other, more successful anime. Granted, this is just like any industry, where the cool thing du jour is immediately cloned and recycled over and over until it's neither cool nor du jour. (Discuss.) If there is anything special about this practice as it applies to anime, it's likely the specialty aspect of the product, that it comes from Japan, that it's animated, that it contains identifiable style characteristics. To the uninitiated, all magical girls, for instance, may look alike. A Sailor Scout is as good as a Magical Knight Rayearth, etc. Hell, to the initiated it can all get a little bit hazy.
Every once in a while, though, something truly special comes along, an anime series that not only sets itself apart content-wise, but that does so by taking familiar genres and twisting them into imaginative new contortions. Think of how FLCL warped post-Evangelion giant robot conventions into a hormonal metaphor for teenage angst, and you might start to get an idea of what The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya does to all kinds of shojo fantasy subgenres. Released in Japan in 2006, and directed by Tatsuya Ishihara, a veteran of Fushigi Yugi, Tenchi Muyo, and other popular series, it was an instant sensation, prompting Bandai to release the series stateside on four DVDs in rather quick succession over the following year.
..Though our young and cute heroine Haruhi gets the title slot, the story is told from the point-of-view of Kyon, a high-school freshman in Haruhi's class. Kyon is trying to grow beyond childish things and has every intention of leaving his preoccupations with fantasy behind when he enters high school–particularly since this school is in a different district than his junior high, meaning a whole new student body. A little shy, a little awkward, he wants to fit in, not stand out. Like many a plan of mice and men, this one goes wrong when he ends up sitting in front of Haruhi, a girl well-known for her odd proclivities. She has all the preoccupations that Kyon has been trying to shed, and she actively wants to uncover her own x-files. Thus, she forms the SOS Brigade, a school club devoted to finding aliens, psychics (which she calles “espers”), and time travelers. Her first member is Kyon, the second is the bookish Yuki Nagato, the last remaining member of the literature club, whose meeting room Haruhi commandeers. The first disc is mainly devoted to establishing the Brigade, and so we see Haruhi recruit the attractive and bubbly Mikuru Asahina and “mysterious” transfer student Itsuki Koizumi. Once the club is set-up, though, the show is off and running, with Kyon learning that Haruhi may not be as crazy as she seems and that all of the weirdness she longs for actually exists.
As FLCL used giant robots as a manifestation of one boy's changing body, so too is The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya a story about a pubescent girl's displacement and anxiety in a world that is far too boring for her burgeoning imagination. As it turns out, Haruhi doesn't just think she's the center of the universe, she actually is, and the fantasies born from her ennui are changing the fabric of space and time. All three of her desired supernatural phenomena are represented in the SOS Brigade: Nagato is an android from beyond the stars, Mikuru has come to Haruhi's time from the future, and Koizumi is an esper with psychic abilities. Just what is going to happen if Haruhi's mental powers are not brought into check and what Kyon's role in all this will be is the driving force behind the anime's narrative. With each episode, another piece of the puzzle comes into view, and the deeper Kyon is drawn into her world. At some point, Haruhi has to be persuaded to accept life as it is, or she might destroy all of existence in favor of her ideal way of living.
Kyon is one part hero, one part sidekick, and one part comic foil. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya audaciously flaunts the sexy conventions that get many male viewers to tune in to romantic fantasy anime. Haruhi is constantly putting Mikuru into new, skimpier costumes, dressing her as a maid and as a bunny rabbit to try to attract more attention to the SOS Brigade. Kyon is outwardly disgusted by her techinques, but then chides himself in voiceover for being turned on by the get-ups, even resorting to stealing some photos Haruhi took. Similarly, he flirts with the robotic Nagato, complimenting her when she forgets to make herself a pair of glasses when she has to reconstruct herself. Like Tenchi Muyo and other single-guy-amongst-many-girls before him, Kyon is in a kind of teenage boy fairy tale (the warnings by way of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty references being purposeful in their design), in love with all the girls, and having all of them possibly in love with him. Who will he choose? Where is the real love? Can the over-stimulated perv ever reconcile his noble intentions with his base impulses? Or is that even just too damn conventional for an unconventional series like this?
..The animation throughout the series is quite good, featuring a vibrant, clean style and detailed backgrounds. There are only a couple of episodes where quality seems to suffer, which is pretty good for a series of this kind. There are some playful experimental sequences in some episodes, including the computer-animated bug battle in Episode 7 and the spaceships in Episode 12, as well as the rotoscope style of the murder mystery theories in Episode 10 (nicely contrasted by Kyon's primitive hand-drawn version). The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a good looking show with cute characters and slick action…
FINAL THOUGHTS:Highly Recommended..this is a convenient way to get your hands on this fun anime series..A sly, bubbly metafictional runthrough of anime conventions, Haruhi Suzumiya is ultimately a story about a group of friends and the wild child at their center. A true sensation in Japan, the show is like a breath of fresh air in the anime world, and it more than delivers on its hype."