The Brilliant Parody of Haruhi Suzumiya
There be spoilers in this post
Parodies get away with a lot. It’s easy to excuse actually bad writing to just be a parody of something poorly written. A lot of the time, a bad parody is hard to differentiate from a good parody. The show that steps into today’s spotlight is none other than one of the best parodies I have seen: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
What makes Haruhi such an interesting parody is that it doesn’t just take the standard tropes and present them to us ad absurdum, like Shaun of the Dead or Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil (both are really funny. Check ‘em out.), it actually takes the tropes as they are and presents them to us in a more realistic setting. It’s a bit like a deconstruction in that way.
The characters are where this really shines. Nagato, Koizumi, and Asahina all represent anime stereotypes that have been done to death, mostly in the harem genre.
Starting out our harem would be the eternally cold Kuudere: Yuki Nagato, and in true anime fashion, she’s also an alien. No wacky sexual antics for her to either completely miss or be indifferent to this time. Instead she’s put into situations where she’s being shot at, or she’s reliving the same two weeks 15,532 times. Koizumi would be the protagonist if this were a harem. He’s both a mysterious transfer student and an incredibly passive and bland nice guy, but instead of getting into wacky and sexual situations, he plays board games with Kyon and gets called creepy for always being so chipper. The last of the two situations is a more realistic look at how his fellow students would think of a guy who always smiles and never really seems to care about anything. Rounding out or stereotypical characters is Miss Asahina. Specifically sought out by Haruhi to be the club’s moe girl/mascot, she is the fanservice-y character any harem needs. Her incredibly prudish nature and high-pitched voice coupled with a very... adult figure make her perfect for a typical ecchi. But The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya isn’t an ecchi, so there’s no way to exploit these.. features.
Here’s what makes it genius.
Haruhi is parodying anime as a whole. Not just the final product, but also the production of it. Haruhi interrupts the lives of our character tropes, and physically manipulates the world to be more like an anime. She even physically causes the sexual harassment that just needs to be there in an anime.
Haruhi takes the position of the writer in this world. Manipulating the world around her to make it more like an anime, and in the process, taking these people who would have normal lives, and making them more stereotypical. Contrast this with Kyon: the physical manifestation of a film critic placed within a movie. Whatever stereotypical situation the Brigade gets itself involved in, Kyon’s always there to be completely bored and unimpressed and to get out a great quip or two about something stupid someone said or some ridiculous situation. If you removed Kyon’s narration from series, you could reconstruct it from random reviewers and bloggers who are watching the show. But despite how Kyon or a critic might have ripped into it, “of course [he] had fun!” Haruhi and Kyon are in-universe manifestations of real-life types of people involved with a show in some way: Writer and Critic; Haruhi and Kyon.
We have the miracle baseball team that wins in their first event ever, against professionals no less. Except they only won by cheating because there was no way in hell they could win that legitimately. We have our untrained main characters stumble upon, then solve a murder in Haruhi Suzumiya: Ace Attorney. Except it was all set up so that Haruhi could have some goofy fun and not cause more closed space. What makes The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya a great parody is that it doesn’t make an absurdist presentation of the realistic, it makes a realistic presentation of the absurd.
areudirty
janainaart
prguitarman
snowghoul
titsay
