I’m Haruhi Suzumiya, from East Junior High. First off, I’m not interested in ordinary people. But, if any of you are aliens, time-travelers, or espers, please come see me. That is all!
—Haruhi

Haruhi is many things. Excentric, hyperactive and strange are some of the adjectives that can be applied to her. But Melancholic is not one of them, so I have no idea of where this title came from. Nonsensical title or not, this is one of those series you really need to have seen. This is history, like Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it’s rating of “Masterpiece” at Anime News Network(a site that is to Anime and Manga what IMDB is to “regular” films) is well deserved.

The series is aired with the episodes in a more or less random order, meaning it feels a bit like watching an animated time paradox. It is obvious which order the episodes are supposed to be in chronologically, but you’ll be better off watching it in the default order, since the ending is chronologically in Episode 6… Also, the first episode is number 0 and doesn’t have almost anything to do with the main series other than being referenced in Episode 12. Aside from confusing all viewers, this random order seems to have confused the production company as well, since in Episode 10 there is a reference to the episode “Bamboo Rhapsody” which was never aired until the remake.

The story revolves around a girl named Haruhi Suzumiya(she who wasn’t melancholic, remember) but is told more from the perspective of her classmate Kyon(a bit like how Final Fantasy XII is told from Vaan’s perspective). The first day of high school Haruhi clearly announces that she has no interest in “Ordinary Humans” because they’re boring, but asks any time travelers, espers, sliders and aliens who may or may not be listening to join her. If this wasn’t weird enough, she initially changes her hairstyle, having one hairstyle for each day of the week. She also never turns anyone down, but drops them after a short while instead, as she thinks that love is a sort of mental illness that she don’t want to have any part in. She initially also doesn’t talk to anyone, and joins every club in the school, but decides that they’re all boring and quits them. Then Kyon says something about that if nothing suits her, then she can just create her own. Haruhi takes that as an offer, and forces Kyon into a club she just created in hope of something out of the ordinary happening. She somehow manages to get her hands on both the Literary Club’s clubroom and the Literary Club’s only member, Yuki Nagato, who would do just about anything as long as she can read her books. After that she proceeds to “scout”(= force into her club no one has any idea what it does) a random cute 2nd year girl named Asahina, who spends most of the series making tea, and a not-particularily-mysterious transfer student named Itsuki. That far everything seems normal to some degree. Then it turns out that Nagato is an Alien observing Haruhi because she apparently manipulates “data” surrounding her, Asahina is a time traveller who observes Haruhi because she is apparently a Time Warp that seals access to anytime prior to 3 years ago and Itsuki is an Esper who observes her because she apparently is god, and created the world 3 years ago. Haruhi isn’t aware of any of this, least of all that she is that powerful. And Nagato, Itsuki and Asahina are all working hard to prevent her from discovering her own potential, since that could spell the end of the world. Haruhi’s ability simply works like that if Haruhi wants something to happen, that happens. So if Haruhi wants to play detective, someone gets murdered, etc. And with this background, one of the weirdest and most enjoyable Anime series ever begins.

One of the weirdest things about this weird series is the way Kyon constantly seems to be stuck in the middle of weird situations he has more or less nothing to do with. Haruhi also doesn’t realize how dangerous she is to her surroundings until in the final episode where she and Kyon gets stuck in Closed Space. This series contains a lot of parodies on other things, such as in Episode 8 they imitate Case Closed’s way of showing shadow silhouettes of suspicious people, and also make a parody of Phoenix’s classic ‘Objection’ pose from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. And that’s just two of the countless references. I think the Giants in Closed Space is somehow based of Adam from Neon Genesis Evangelion, but I’m not sure.

All of this neatly comes together in a very original and incredibly well made high-school story that you should watch here right away.

Screenshots by Random Curiosity. Used with permission.

This game is set in a world where everything is caused by Spirits, the official language is cliché and all names seems to be just a bunch of scrambled letters thrown together. Everyone also dress worse than in Final Fantasy X, and no one seems to have put any care into either the character design or the voice acting.

There are two main characters, Aldo and Reiha, who somehow gets windled up in a nonsensical story involving spirits. That’s about all there is to the story. It’s lucky there’s no minimum amount of characteristics required to call a character a character, otherwise not a single character in the cast would have passed it. Aldo hits things with swords, Reiha hits things with Magic, and one other party member runs after you acting like a moron.

I can stand bad stories if the gameplay are any good, but Twin Age is played the same fashion as Runescape, which essentially means you tap an enemy and they will trade blows until either of the characters involved dies. And with that I’ve covered all there is to the gameplay as well. You tap your way through the entire game, completely unchallenged since all enemies are constantly under-leveled, through dungeon after dungeon consisting entirely of a straight path with some side-tracks scattered along the way. Possibly just to raise the irritation even more all main characters runs extremely slowly, and the loading times just gets on my nerves. This entire game smells of low budget long way, and I couldn’t stand more than a few chapters. I’m gonna play Lunar Knights as soon as I’ve fixed my DS, since that game at least had some sort of quality to it.

It’s not even worth my time making a picture gallery for.