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The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya

Review Date: 2007 July 31 13:52

Reviewed by: LittleWoodenBoy

Released by: Bandai Entertainment

Age Rating: 13+

Region: 1 - North America

Volume 2 of 4

Length: 100 minutes

Subtitles: English

Audio: English 2.0 Stereo
English 5.1 Surround
Japanese 2.0 Stereo

Summary

Kyon continues his adventures of being in a high school club with aliens, time travellers and espers for members. Even though its club leader Haruhi that wanted them there.

Review

Things just don't let up for Kyon as a member of the SOS Brigade. A club created by the rather tsundere Haruhi Suzumiya to investigate anything out of the ordinary. She wanted to look for details of time travellers, aliens and espers. Without realising it, she has recruited one of each of these to the SOS Brigade, and its Kyon that seems to have to keep things running without incident.

The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya: Volume 2

The first three episodes of this volume are the continuation of the opening arc which after having introduced the characters in the previous DVD, shows a bit more about each of them and culminates in what was the series finale in the Japanese broadcast (more on this later). These episodes do a really good job at fleshing out the characters and their motives. As Nagato (the alien), Mikuru (time traveller) and Koizumi (esper) are all content just to observe Haruhi as the fear of what would happen if they informed her, the focus is shifted to Kyon to see their abilities.

Events range from Nagato's back up trying to assassinate Kyon so that Haruhi's reaction can be monitored to meeting future members of the SOS Brigade to seeing the enclosed spaces that Haruhi can create which if left unchecked could destroy the world. The finale of these episodes is when both Haruhi and Kyon become stuck in an enclosed space. Not only are they surrounded by giant monsters wanting to crush them, they cant get back unless Haruhi wishes to and seeing as this is the first strange event she has encountered herself, she really doesn't want to.

This volume finishes on a lighter note which sees the SOS Brigade members play a game of baseball in a city wide tournament. However, as this is Haruhi its not quite so normal. The game is two days away and they don't even have enough players. Kyon drags along some class mates and even his little sister while Mikuru brings along her classmate (a particular fan favourite) Tsuyriya.

As with volume one, the animation looks nice throughout, especially the battle scene in episode 4. Though the subtitles still look a bit nasty.

Once again there is quite a lot of extras for an anime DVD. There are two making of videos, the first showing Aya Hirano (Haruhi) recording one of the songs for the culture festival episode, the other follows the three lead Japanese female voice actresses during a photo shoot. For fans of the Japanese dub, these two are well worth a watch, even if its just to hear The Legendary Mikuru theme played live. There are more next episode previews for the out of sequence Japanese TV broadcast. An interesting extra is the Nekoman galleries. Nekoman seems to be a creation that Aya Hirano (Haruhi) likes to draw. There are several more fancy promos in the form of the Adventures Of The ASOS Brigade.

Then there's the limited edition that also contains a Brigade Leader armband, pencil board, t-shirt transfer. But easily the best part is a second DVD that contains the first five episodes in the Japanese broadcast order. As mentioned earlier, the Japanese TV broadcast was deliberately shown out of order, which means things are happening that you don't understand and the last episode of the series is shown in the middle! Its certainly an interesting way to watch the series. The second disc is subtitled only which shows its mainly for the existing fans as there's no reason to not put the dub on there as well.

Overall, this is a great continuation and the disc is packed with bonus material.

Rating: 9/10

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