The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi is a tale about a seemingly ordinary girl who has the supernatural power to change reality subconsciously.
The Melancholy of Suzumiya Hahiru is a tale about a seemingly ordinary boy (and that's because he is ordinary) who has the not-so-supernatural power to fuck his classmates. His classmates have supernatural powers, but who cares about that? This guy has the power to fuck!!
Anyway, Hahiru is a live-action film adaptation of Kyoto Animation's Haruhi TV anime series (yes I know it was originally a light novel series, but the film clearly used the anime as its reference point), from film studio Total Media Agency (TMA). As with most animation-to-live-action adaptations, Hahiru takes a fair amount of liberties with the story; most notably the addition of sex scenes which take up the majority of the film's runtime (because hey, sex sells!).
When you first put in the DVD, text appears on the screen promising you "visual, sensuous entertainment". Let's see how well this film matches that description…
A short clip starts playing, introducing the viewer to the scenario. Yes, the film starts playing before you've even got to the menu! First, we are greeted by Coca-Cola's mascot, then some UFOs, Nessie and aliens, thereby giving foreshadowing as to the supernatural events that are to come.
This guy (真内賢司 Manai Kenji is supposed to be Kyon. No, I don't think it looks like him either.
And here's 鳴沢賢一 Narusawa Kenichi (a.k.a. Goro), the famous actor best known for fucking you're waifu. He's supposed to be playing Taniguchi, but the first time I watched the film, I didn't even realise. By the way, the acting in this scene is so stiff that you'd be forgiven for thinking that time had frozen!
The tittyular Hahiru (henceforth in this review referred to as "God"), played by 香坂百合 Kosaka Yuri, stands up and gives a speech for a while. It's apparently so boring that Kyon falls asleep.
When he wakes up, he finds that God is still talking, so he turns around to find out what God even looks like. Turns out she's kinda pretty and Kyon is lovestruck. Here's Kyon being lovestruck:
We finally get to the menu screen. In the background is a looping animation of the Hahiru logo. If you've ever seen the Haruhi anime, the animation is similar, but with much more realistic physics. The background music is some drumming and a bit of synth. Annoyingly, the music cuts out abruptly. You'd think they'd use a remix of "Bouken Desho Desho?" or something, since the music they did use doesn't feel Haruhi-ish at all.
There are three options in the menu: "ALL", "CHAPTER" and some kanji that I believe is "御負", apparently short for "御負け" or "omake", which I guess could be translated as "special feature" in this context. We'll explore the other options later, but for now, let's choose "ALL" to start the film.
I won't write about the whole film in detail (this review isn't a substitute for watching the film itself), but rather give a general impression of the experience.
Most of the "drama sections" (i.e the parts of the film other than sex scenes) retell the story of Haruhi, and for the most part, this is actual quite faithful. Indeed, there are several scenes that are re-enactments of moments in the anime, for example God having a different hairstyle every day.
There are, however, some moments that don't appear to be adapted from the anime that are a little strange, such as a scene where God pulls off her top for seemingly no reason, much to Goro's horror.
The acting is always rather stiff and the cinematography isn't brilliant (indeed, there are several scenes where the camera is in a fixed position for way too long). As for the audio, the volume levels often make the dialogue too quiet in contrast to the background music. The music itself is decent, if a little generic and certainly isn't anything to write home about.
The translation of God from the anime to the live-action film is actually quite decent. A similar sort of personality is conveyed, and the actress has more than a passing resemblance to God.
Yuki (若葉ひな Wakaba Hina), on the other hand, is quite different to her anime incarnation. Although she doesn't say or do much, it reflects less of a stoic personality, but rather a shy personality (or maybe she just doesn't want Kyon to be around). Her hair colour isn't the same, but I'll label it as "close enough".
It is with the introduction of Yuki that the SOS Brigade is formed. The meaning of "SOS" is explained with truly terrible special effects. The idea is that God apparently has the ability to draw words in the air with her finger, but the words don't appear she's pointing, making it look extremely unconvincing.
Due to the formation of the SOS Brigade, Yuki feels she has to get along with Kyon, so she invites him back to her home to give him a lecture on the supernatural, which is apparently so boring that Kyon once again falls asleep. Yuki takes advantage of the opportunity to get on top of him and fuck him.
As sex scenes go, the ones in Hahiru are fairly ordinary, so there's little point to going into them in detail. However, considering the film is a drama and not simply porn, they are somewhat unrealistic at times. For instance, Kyon doesn't seem the least bit surprised to wake up to find Yuki on top of him. Yuki doesn't talk a lot, and she certainly doesn't talk when she's having sex. Therefore it's a bit strange that both Kyon and Yuki know which sex positions they'll use without talking. I suppose Kyon must have some sort of supernatural power of his own.
Apart from these abnormalities, Yuki's sex scene is nothing special. It has the usual kissing, sucking, licking and fucking. Kyon finishes things off by cumming onto Yuki's glasses, which is rather rude, really.
Mikuru (美咲沙耶 Misaki Saya) is the next member of the SOS Brigade. The actress looks nothing like the character looks like in her anime form, and the hair colour is completely wrong. She has big boobs though, which is all God needs. God is quick to exploit that fact by telling the computer club that they can all grab Mikuru's boobs if they give her a laptop.
True to the anime, Mikuru does indeed have a mole on her breast, although it doesn't look star-shaped. Later on in the film, an older Mikuru appears who does have a star-shaped mole on her breast.
Grabbing her tits isn't the only thing the members of the computer club do to her… It's now time for Mikuru to be fucked! Interestingly, Mikuru's sex scene has the premise that Goro and some Random Guy are making a porn film and need a girl to have sex with. They somehow convince Mikuru to take the role, as they take upskirt shots with the camera, sniffing her pantsu and sucking her breast like a baby.
Throughout this scene, Mikuru constantly says "nya nya nya" while Goro and Random Guy say "moe moe moe". The script is hardly Shakespeare.
One interesting skit right in the middle of the film is a scene where God seems to be on the rooftop of the school, talking to an alien. This confused a lot of people, since it didn't seem to be related to the rest of the film, but in fact, this is a re-enactment of one of the adverts used to promote the original Haruhi anime DVDs (featuring everyone's favourite seiyuu, Hirano Aya). In fact, if you have the DVDs, they come with the advert and a making-of for the advert in the special features. They're worth checking out. Here's someone's rubbish YouTube upload of the original advert.
Back to the film, and things are starting to get 'a bit weird'. We meet Ryoko (沢井真帆 Sawai Maho), who if not for her costume would not resemble the character at all. She goes insane and tries to kill Kyon with a knife, but Yuki shows up to protect him with her forcefield.
Ryoko resorts to her special power, and throws a hadouken at the two, but she ends up annihilating herself in the process.
The weirdness continues when Koizumi (真央はじめ Mao Hajime) shows up and takes Kyon to see a badly animated walking ethereal giant. One of the main problems with this scene is that Kyon and Koizumi are simply standing in front of the giant, looking into the camera. The fact that they used chromakey is too obvious and makes it look like they're presenting some sort of weather forecast.
And no, Koizumi looks nothing like he does in the anime, either.
It's now time for Kyon to get intimate with the main girl – God! The filmmakers don't hold back with lots of upskirt shots revealing God's shimapan. Again, there isn't anything particularly out of the ordinary in this sex scene, apart from the apparent revelation that God doesn't take her shoes off for anyone.
Kyon and God are now lovers, and all the problems have been resolved. All that's left to do is to show a tiny photo of the back of Haruhi's head. THE END.
After the film, we are treated to some screens advertising TMA's Blu-ray Disc releases and the special features they offer.
We also see trailers of TMA's yuri adaptation of Maria Watches Over Us…
…And Faith/stay knight, the trailer of which strangely has Ace Attorney style background music.
Finally, an advert for TMA's website, currently inaccessible outside Japan before we return to the main menu.
Let's explore the other options in the menu. We've got a 'chapter' button which takes us to the chapter selection menu. In the background is a clip from the 'walking giant' scene, and 'spacey' music plays as background music. Thumbnails of each chapter is displayed, with heart symbols under each sex scene chapter. The 'back' button takes you back to the main menu.
Finally, the 'special feature' button takes you to an additional sex scene that's not part of the main film. It's a sex scene with Ryoko. Interestingly, we never get to see who the guy fucking her is.
In conclusion, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Hahiru is a fairly decent adaptation of the story, although more effort could have spent on making the characters look more like their anime counterparts. Certainly, it needed more Goro.
2022 update: I have learnt that Misaki Saya, who played Mikuru, died on 6th July 2007 at the age of 21. May she rest in peace.
