Despite drawing a lot in the anime art style, I'm actually not much of an anime watcher. I dabbled in anime a little in my early to mid teens, but fell out of it afterwards when I took up other hobbies with renewed interest, such as drawing and video games. When people asked me what my favourite anime was, I'd respond with anime I had generally enjoyed watching, such as Gintama or Inuyasha. But although those series shaped much of my formative years, I felt like calling them my "favourite" felt a little dry and empty. They felt fun and cool, sure, but they never really resonated with me on an emotional level, they never spoke to me at my very core. I think such a powerful connection is necessary for me to feel as if something is my "favourite".
I watched a lot of shounen growing up. I also read a lot of fiction, particularly in the realm of fantasy. Like many other kids, I spent a lot of my childhood believing in these magical worlds and hoping that the magic would come to find me someday. And even as I grew up into an adult, a small part of me continued to cling onto that belief, hoping desperately that there was more to life than this. I think a large part of the depression I experienced in my late teens that almost prevented me from graduating high school was due to this feeling. What was there to look forward to in life if there was nothing grand and magical about it? Where was the meaning and adventure, the great highs and lows of a carefully made story? I felt like my life was an empty pit compared to the things I saw in media. There was nowhere that my life would lead, and why bother trying if the outcome was going to be mediocrity no matter what I chose? I only ever wanted to settle for something great. Something amazing. Something beautiful.
Things got better, of course. I eventually crawled out of my depression, went to college, met new people that I loved. I felt a lot more stable mentally, and I put a lot of what I chalked up to be teenage angst into the back of my brain, setting it down in a small corner where it could fondly gather dust.
Then, I was introduced to slice of life anime. I had never given the genre a second thought: from an outsider's perspective, it seemed to pale in comparison to the intensity and complexity of shounen. But my first slice of life anime, Chuunibyou, really ended up convincing me otherwise. There were powerful character moments and complex narratives. There was meaning and beauty in every aspect of the story. And most of all, they were with characters that were just normal people. Characters like me.
Chuunibyou, great in its own way and warranting a long review of it as well, really ended up setting the stage for what was to become the most positive and powerful anime experience of my life: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
I had mixed expectations when I started the anime. My initial impressions were that it was a simple romance between a typical male protagonist, Kyon, and a tsundere, spunky female love interest, Haruhi. Surely, they would grow closer, fall in love, and have a big confession scene where everything is finally revealed and they live happily ever after. That was what I expected from anime featuring a male and female lead at this point.
But then, things in the show began to get strange. Haruhi shows her obsession with the supernatural. Characters appear claiming to be an alien, a time traveler, an esper with supernatural abilities. It was here that I began to realise that this wasn't a regular slice of life anime like I had been led to believe. If anything, it must've been closer to urban fantasy or sci fi. This was even further consolidated when Haruhi, the show's namesake, is revealed to have God-like influences on the world. The catch, though, is that she is completely unaware of her powers, and that she could never come to know about them: the alien, Yuki, the time traveler, Mikuru, and the esper, Koizumi, were there to make sure of this. Otherwise, the very fabric of the universe could come undone. But I was still wrong. That wasn't the point of this anime.
I'm barely like Haruhi Suzumiya. In fact, I probably share more in common with Rikka from Chuunibyou: I'm more reserved, have a wild imagination, and feel a lot of pent up emotions that I have trouble processing. But even so, I began to feel an intense connection with Haruhi's character. It instantly transported me back to my teenage years, seeing the way she was so adamant about supernatural things existing. Like me, she also wished for things to be great. For life to be exciting and so wondrous. To believe anything else would be a betrayal of who she was.
And yet, her God-like status is never fully realised. Haruhi, effectively the protagonist of her own life and everyone else's, cannot experience the amazing things she wants to see. There are times in the show when she wishes to do what I wanted to do in the past: close herself off from the boring world, make everything start anew, bring an end to the monotony of this painful, everyday life. Yet each time, Kyon and the rest of the SOS Brigade, formed by the aforementioned supernatural characters, pull her back from the edge. There are things to love about the world as it is. There are people who are irreplaceable waiting out there, there are ordinary, mundane experiences that will change the very fibres of your being waiting to be found. There is something beautiful about the everyday lives we live, and that should never be forgotten. Such messages were what I felt the show was trying to give, and as a former hater of normalcy, I felt those messages resonate with me vividly.
Haruhi never gets to escape her "mundane" life. To her knowledge, nothing exciting ever happens. But she does kiss Kyon at one point, she does go on summer vacation to an island, and she does film a movie with her best friends. And the way these experiences are framed in the show imply that Haruhi enjoyed every moment, even without seeing anything supernatural happen. And seeing that made me reflect on my own life as well. I never got to see fairies or dragons. But I did get my first kiss with the guy I love. I did go on a long winded summer road trip. I did spend time creating art with all sorts of friends. And maybe in the end, those experiences are just as amazing in nature as any kind of fantastical encounter. If I view these simple life events through a more appreciative lens, I come to see a beautiful side of them that I had been unable to discover for all these years. The beauty and amazement I had been searching for all this time was already all around me. I just had to open my eyes to it.
Haruhi Suzumiya is a strongly flawed character: she harasses Mikuru, she is bossy and stubborn and brash, and she is very, very self centred. Yet despite it all, she still cares for those around her, and the bonds she formed with her friends in the SOS Brigade are unbreakable. The meaning in her life comes from those she loves and the little, ordinary adventures they go on throughout their day to day existence. Supernatural wonders may or may not exist beneath the normal guise of reality. We may never know. I personally still like to believe there's a little magic out there somewhere, and that I just don't know where to look. But I don't need that magic to be happy. I don't need aliens, time travelers, or espers showing off their otherworldly powers to satisfy my interests. I just need people as they are, just ordinary, struggling people who can laugh and cry with me in this strange but regular world, and that's all it takes for me to feel complete.
