Explaining Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is kinda tricky. Much like some other Japanese humor-based shows (see: Excel Saga or Kimagure Orange Road), it is really freaking weird. It is reasonably coherent, but not exactly sane. But I suppose I should start out with the dance.

(At this point, I would highly recommend opening up a new tab, heading off to youtube, and searching for "Haruhi Suzumiya dance". It's not that long, and will help explain things a bit.)

You see, there is this oddball animated sequence featuring the characters in this series doing a dance. An elaborately choreographed, complex dance. This essentially became the Japanese equivalent to the OK Go "treadmill video". There are copycat videos starring Pokemon, salarymen...pretty much whatever you can imagine.

Needless to say, the series has a phenomenal cult following throughout the anime community, even before it came out in America. In fact, the following was so fervent this TV show was licensed almost immediately, and was on DVD here in the states almost months after being broadcast in Japan. This pretty much never happens, so...expectations are high.

As to whether or not it meets said expectations...I don't know.

Essentially, the high concept of this series is that this ordinary teenage boy named Kyon whose life is thrown out of whack after meeting a cute-but-weird girl named Haruhi Suzumiya, a girl utterly dedicated to only knowing people that aren't really human, the aliens, time-travellers, or espers of the world. Kyon, naturally, assumes that Haruhi is totally nuts. Unfortunately, Haruhi also decides Kyon is to be her friend in pursuit of the strangeness of the world.

In order to further her plans, Haruhi founds the "SOS Brigade", an after-school club devoted to finding the weirdness of the world. Haruhi strong-arms people into the group, all of whom turn out to be exactly the kinds of weird beings she's looking to find. Of course, they don't tell her this. Hilarity ensues.

I will give one warning: the first episode of this DVD is not indicative of the rest of the show. This 00 episode is kinda a parody of the series itself, frequently pointing out that the story makes no sense.

Actually, that's a recurring theme of the show: Kyon narrates the series, being spectacularly sarcastic the whole way. This makes sense, seeing as Haruhi believes that the world operates according to the logic employed by television.

For instance: She gets a small, cute, busty girl to join her club. "Why?", you may ask? Well, because interesting stuff only happens around small, cute, busty girls, of course! Even more so if you get her to wear a maid costume!

The animation is generally decent, by Japanese TV standards. The character designs are solid and generally attractive, and the animators I rarely noted going off-model, but that should be expected given that it's a Bandai co-production (the other studio, Band Zoom!, I'm unfamiliar with, but this series won't hurt their reputation, in my opinion).

The English dub is actually pretty good, even if the voice actor for Haruhi is the generally annoying squeaky-voiced Wendee Lee. She manages to reign it in enough to make it tolerable, but the high point would be the always wonderful Crispin Freeman voicing Kyon. He captures the mood wonderfully, combining the mystified and sarcastic tones of the character.

This DVD contains the first three episodes of the series, along with the aforementioned parody episode, "The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00". The DVD also has a fair amount of added content, including the TV ads, textless openers and closers, teasers, and the usual trailers and whatnot you'd associate with a Bandai Entertainment product. Not really my thing, but still nice.

I will admit: despite its generally weird tone, I found this show quite amusing. I don't know if the concept could entirely carry itself for long, but the show is only twelve episodes, so I'm optimistic for the rest of the series. If you're into some of the more "wacky" anime series, you'll probably at least like this. It pokes fun at a lot of anime conventions (particularly the "moe" fashion of recent years), and, hey, in a later episode, there's a Phoenix Wright parody!

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older