Anime Thoughts: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

By and large, I'm not in the habit of chasing the very latest anime through the murky water of "fansubs"; instead, seemingly too busy watching my way through officially licensed DVDs, I let others do the "trend-setter" work for me as I pick up on the slow percolation of message-board "buzz." I suppose this means missing out on the shared excitement of tracking a series week by week, but I may perhaps just feel I'd rather let my reactions be my own... and avoid any risk of that "shared excitement" twisting into "complaining sessions."

A while back, though, I began to pick up on what seemed an especial amount of "buzz" about one new anime series. It was called "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya," and I heard that it opened with a peculiar first episode that turned out to be one of those "show within a show" deals, specifically a hilariously amateur student video, and then moved on to the titular high-school character declaring she was only interested in "aliens, time travelers, and psychics..." A noticeable part of the interest in it did seem to be about nothing more complicated than a catchy and well-animated dance in its end credits, and there were those who made the inevitable declaration that the show's popularity was nothing more than a bandwagon effect proving that it didn't deserve attention at all, but all of it caught my attention. I never quite got around to trying to find the time to locate and watch its "fansubs," though, instead deciding that I would just wait for the official release... and then, things started getting complicated.
( Things may be given away... vaguely, but at length. )