There have been two big trends in anime since the turn of the millennium. The first is the increasing number of painfully cute young girls in all things, including romance, but stopping juuuusssst short of the Lolita Complex. The second is the adaptation of that uniquely Japanese pastime, pornographic dating games, into serious and “work safe” anime. Utawarerumono has both, and while there have been worthwhile animes with just one of these (see Fate/Stay Night, or Hayate the Combat Butler), I can’t think of one series that handles both well. Is this anime the first? Read on.
Based on the young men’s novel by the same name, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi is a series that took Japan by storm. I doubt anyone could have foreseen just how popular this series would prove to be (the first DVD debuted at no 1 in the charts), but once watching it, it’s easy to see why.