Kyon’s narrative is brilliant (and doesn’t get old) and Haruhi gets way more tolerable as time goes on. Also, you will be coming up with a *lot* of theories, mainly about Kyon’s status in everything (a few of Tsuraya’s comments to/about him will really raise your eyebrows if you think about it). Also, yay multi-layered time travel paradoxes!

The novels are indefinitely superior to the anime, which is still pretty good in itself.

@Peter S: no probs. I often had mixed feelings about the TV show – some episodes were brilliant while others felt like filler. If there was one thing episode 0 managed, it was preventing me making any sort of snap judgement. I didn’t know what to make of it, so HAD to watch the next one just to make up my mind! In the case of a book this isn’t much of an issue, but for a TV series trying to get viewers tuning in the following week, it was a really neat idea.

@ Martin: I’ve been meaning to read this book, but for some reason I’m just biased about translated light novels (as opposed to something by, say, either Murakami). I suspect the people in charge of art design were aware of this bias too, which is why we see the softcover the way it is. Since you gave it a chance and liked it, though, I don’t see any good reason why I shouldn’t. Cheers.

I’m a broadcast-order fan, but I admit it does lead to a dead zone of episodes, where it looked like the series had lost its way amidst islands and murders and carrying space heaters up a hill. Get to the important stuff!

I absolutely agree with you about Episode 0, which, interestingly, is the first ep on the DVD no matter where you buy it. It’s a brilliant tease, establishing each character in ways we couldn’t understand yet. Maybe the best thing it did was give the narrator great lines, so that even if I didn’t understand WTF was going on with this weirdo home movie, I had a guy there who was thinking the exact things I was. Next episode, we learn that the man who had my back in ep 0 was this guy named Kyon, and because of Ep 0, I’m already on his side. Ep0 is the best first ep I’ve seen, not only in anime, but in television.

Enough. My fanboying is through!

The most important thing was that the shuffled storyline made certain events more relevant. Playing baseball, trip to the island retreat, the cultural festival, etc., there were no big revelations to be made after the Melancholy arc. They’re pretty filler-y in chronological order. But in broadcast shuffled order, things take on greater significance. The baseball ep hints at Nagato’s powers before they’re told to us or shown to us in full, and what would be a reference to the end of the Melancholy arc becomes foreshadowing instead. We see Koizumi and get to know his personality a bit before he’s officially introduced, and see some of his esper network at the island retreat before he explains they exist. Things are set up for us, we see these fantastic abnormalities, and we’re prepared to believe what we’re told when the characters do finally tell us/Kyon.

In broadcast order, the imfamous Episode 0, Mikuru’s Adventures, takes on different meaning in its purpose in the story: it’s an elaborate tease in the Who and What of the Haruhiverse, an obfuscated microcosm of what’s to come. We get a fictional time traveler, alien, and esper, who are poorly acted. We hear Kyon’s voice as the narrator before we see him, and we feel that omnipotent force, egotistical and controlling, driving the production forward before we see her. We get to know these people before they introduce themselves to us, and I’d say it affords us a more genuine window as to who they are.

Another thing the broadcast order does is break up the longish Melancholy arc into digestible pieces. Melancholy basically is a string of expository info dumps by Nagato, Mikuru, and Koizumi, essentially communicating the same thing: Haruhi is a super special person and that they all want to observe/control. There’s this closed space phenomenon, Kyon kisses Haruhi, cue 8 episodes of filler. Part of me thinks Haruhi wouldn’t have been nearly as popular shown that way, chronologically that is. In fact, I don’t think so, I know so. I’ve showed friends a couple episodes of chronological Haruhi, they thought it was interesting, but also kinda boring. Then I showed them some episode 0 and the baseball episode, and they wanted to see more. It just works that way.

The broadcast pace of Fun->Story->Fun->Story->etc. is enormously entertaining. Episode 0 was made to be the opening episode, and the end of Melancholy was made to be a season finale, yet between them, nobody knows what to expect. A criticism of mine about the second season of Haruhi was that it lost a bit of its mysterious edge, it lost the sense that it could do anything at anytime. The randomness and freshness of the first season transformed into 8 episodes of Just-As-Planned E8 trolling and 5 episodes of mostly retreading material we saw in one episode over 3 years ago. Remember, I never read the novels, so I wasn’t spoiled yet as to what the new story arcs were going to be about, and I came away thinking, “I waited 3 years for that?”

Well, that sums up my viewpoint about it. Maybe it can change some opinions?

Point taken on the manga. I’ll give it a miss and save up for the other light novels instead!