Haruhi Suzumiya/Characters: Difference between revisions

Also note that there are '''unmarked spoilers for the novel series''' as of this writing,<ref>for your information, the anime and [[The Movie]] completely covers first four volumes and few side stories from later volumes</ref> so if you've only watched the anime, you might still be getting spoilers for future seasons.

 

 

[[File:HaruhiSuzumiya.jpg|frame]]

{{quote|Voiced by: [[Aya Hirano]] (JP), [[Wendee Lee]] (EN)}}

 

The story essentially revolves around the antics caused by her powers, directly or indirectly, and the [[Character Development]] which ensues within the SOS Brigade.

* [[Agent Mulder]]: Or she'd like to be. Her inner [[Agent Scully]] keeps her from [[Weirdness Censor|actually recognizing the weirdness around her.]] When Kyon actually tells her about the truth about herself and the other members, she doesn't believe him at all and scorns him for it.

* [[Allergic to Routine]]

* [[Ambiguous Situation]]: Numerous points, but these are the two biggest: One, is she really God as Koizumi suggested early in the story? She seems mortal enough and it's implied she didn't always have her powers. However, is that really a meaningful question considering her implied omnipotence? Two, did she {{spoiler|rewrite the universe}} at the end of the first novel/season of the anime? Even the characters instory don't know.

* [[Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other]]: Often has these moments with Kyon or Mikuru.

* [[Beam Me Up, Scotty]]: The slider is frequently omitted from quotations of her famous first line.

* [[Crystal Dragon Jesus]]: And just like in Christianity, debates rage over her nature as God and girl.

* [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]]: Normally she would qualify as merely [[Genre Savvy]]. However, her abilities to shape the fabric of reality itself to her will means that any genres she thinks should apply to a given situation suddenly WILL apply.

* [[Defrosting Ice Queen]]: Well, '''duh'''.

* {{spoiler|[[Deicide]]: A near-victim of this during the climax of ''Astonishment Vol. 2''.}}

** It's strongly implied that she destroyed the universe [[Arc Number|3 years ago]], and replaced it with one more to her liking.

* [[Moment Killer]]: Will happily bend the laws of space and time just to keep Kyon from talking to other girls. Has berserk superhuman strength when he seems to be writing love letters to other girls.

* [[Mood Swinger]]

* [[Murder the Hypotenuse|Molest the Hypotenuse]]: Reacts coldly to girls that Kyon seems to favor. It gets worse when he then jumps to their defense.

* [[Naughty Is Good]]: Well, to her it is.

* [[Never My Fault]]: Even [[Peanuts|Lucy van Pelt]] apologizes more often than Haruhi. Of course Haruhi is never even told of most of the things she does.

* [[No Sense of Personal Space]]

* [[No Such Thing as Space Jesus]]: Most brigade members question God being one of us, rather than above the clouds.

* [[Parody Sue]]: Of [[God Mode Sue]] and [[Jerk Sue]]

* [[Pet the Dog]]: As the series progresses, she reveals that [[Character Development|she genuinely cares for her friends.]]

* [[Precision F-Strike]]: In episode 2 of the anime, but it got [[Sound Effect Bleep|bleeped]]. Unabridged quote below:

{{quote|'''Haruhi''': Then I'll tell everyone at school that all you geeks ganged up on her and fucked her!}}

* [[A Simple Plan]]: Form a club, pass out flyers, win a baseball game, make a movie. There must be a conspiracy sabotaging each of her simple plans.

* [[Shameless Fanservice Girl]]: She doesn't care if guys see her naked. Kyon concludes that mentally she views them as being the same as potatos. The point where she starts kicking Kyon out of the room when changing is therefore pretty telling on her part.

* [[Skepticism Failure]]: Haruhi ''causes'' skepticism to fail.

* [[Skirt Over Slacks]]: Briefly in ''Disappearance'', when she's changing into Kyon's tracksuit. When trying to fit the skirt of her uniform underneath, she fails miserably, basically says "Ah, forget it!" and drops the skirt entirely.

* [[Start My Own]]: Her motivation for this after Kyon talks to her a little about how people adapted or created things to suit their needs.

* [[Stepford Smiler]]: Demonstrates this after finding Nakagawa's written love confession to Yuki. She does it again in "The Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina".

* [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]]/[[Villain Protagonist]]: She [[Character Development|gets better]].

* [[Who Wears Short Shorts?]]: Sometimes, most notably in "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody", "Remote Island Syndrome", and "Endless Eight". The rest of the time she wears a [[Magic Skirt]]. One imagines she'll wear a long dress exactly one time.

* [[Zettai Ryouiki]]: [[Justified Trope|Only in the winter, though.]]

 

[[File:kyon hs.jpg|frame]]

{{quote|Voiced by: [[Tomokazu Sugita]] (JP), [[Crispin Freeman]] (EN)}}

 

Kyon [[Unreliable Narrator|presents himself in the narration]] as a [[Blatant Lies|levelheaded, objective, philosophical guy]].

* [[Accidental Pervert]]: Although his thoughts regarding Mikuru sometimes move toward [[Covert Pervert]] territory.

* [[Action Survivor]]: Several times. One of the most dramatic ones being when he's attacked by Asakura, which causes some severe [[Mood Whiplash]]

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Dear God, ''the'' [[Deadpan Snarker]].

** Taken to hilarious extremes in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7bQG6LcMDY his version of Hare Hare Yukai] in his [[Image Song]] album, where he keeps interjecting in between ''his own singing'' to snark at the lyrics.

* [[Did I Just Say That Out Loud?]]: Both the novel and the anime play with this. In the novel, Kyon's dialogue is very rarely formatted as such, leaving it indistinguishable from his usual narration. The only way to tell if he's either saying or thinking something is from his interlocutors' responses. The anime achieves this effect by having his mouth offscreen during these parts. In both cases, it is the audience that is meant to be confused, Kyon himself never makes the mistake.

* [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?]]: Did you just French the Lord thy God? And in the second season of the anime, he literally tries to punch out God. And for his next trick, one must emphasize, he {{spoiler|''blackmails'' the ''[[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|Data Overmind]]''}}. Really, considering the nature of both Haruhi and the threats he faces, [[Did You Just Index Cthulhu|this entire index]] applies to him. Thankfully [[The End of the World as We Know It|given what it would most likely lead to]], [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?]] has thus far been averted (just).

* {{spoiler|[[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice]]}}: In the fourth novel/[[The Movie]].

* [[Inner Monologue]]: All the time.

* [[It's All My Fault]]: He feels personally responsible for the events of ''Disappearance'' as even though the Integrated Data Thought Entity failed to give Yuki a more complete personality (which put a strain on her) he decides that his over-reliance on her was the straw that broke the camel's back.

* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Despite his snarky dismissal of, well, everything and everybody, Kyon is a deeply compassionate person who treats everyone equally and seriously in thought, if not in action. This applies whether they're a normal student, a [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|living computer]], or God.

{{quote|'''Kyon:''' [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Position target in the center, pull the switch.]]}}

* [[Meaningful Name]]: [[wikipedia:Cynic|according to Wikipedia]], Kyon's nickname might come from κύων / kyôn, Ancient Greek for "dog", from where the word "cynic" may come from. Another possibility: Haruhi in the novels loves the story of Tanabata, involving a romance between a man and a woman separated and only allowed to meet once a year; the Korean name for the man can be romanized as 'Kyonu'.

* [[Meta Guy]]

* [[Morality Chain]]: To Haruhi.

* [[Ordinary High School Student]]: Or so he would like to think. But the other SOS members, particularly Koizumi, constantly have to remind us that there's more to him than this trope alone.

** In the seventh novel Koizumi offers to train Kyon to be an esper. Apparently there are not a whole bunch of other persons who can be trained.

* [[Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory]]: In ''Disappearance'', for [[Epileptic Trees|unclear reasons]]. {{spoiler|May have been intentional on the part of Nagato in order to give him a choice in the matter, but the fact that he needs protection from the reality warp when [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|he goes back in time to stop it]] leaves this in doubt.}}

** {{spoiler|There's doubt about this? Yuki says outright at the end of the movie that while she couldn't prevent herself from rewriting reality, she COULD ensure that Kyon would be unaffected. The reason he needs protection when he goes back is because her failsafe was used up when Kyon chose to activate it at the famous READY? prompt. The program said that once it was run it would be deleted, so it time-travelled him outside the sphere of effect at his choice. Presumably had he chosen to stay, he would have subsequently be subjected to the re-write (as seen in the spin-off manga).}}

* [[Wouldn't Hit a Girl]]: But Haruhi seriously pushes it, once or twice.

 

[[File:yuki nagato.jpg|frame]]

{{quote|Voiced by: [[Minori Chihara]] (JP), [[Michelle Ruff]] (EN)}}

 

The author of the light novels has commented that Yuki is one of his favorite characters to make stories about, since [[Robot Girl]]s are easy to write [[Character Development]] for, hence the number of short stories (and one whole novel) focusing on her emotional development.

* [[Adorkable]]: Few people make dopey ignorance towards Earth-Technology so darned cute, as show with [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHZmor8eadU&feature=related THIS little old scene].

* {{spoiler|[[And I Must Scream]]: Her fate during the "Endless Eight" arc, in which she is forced to relive the same 2 weeks for approximately 595 YEARS!}}

 

 

[[File:Mikuru.jpg|frame]]

{{quote|Voiced by: [[Yūko Gotō]] (JP), [[Stephanie Sheh]] (EN)}}

 

Mikuru is, as far as the audience can tell, the least diligent in the whole "observe/control" Haruhi business. Indeed, she seems content to be the SOS Brigade's personal [[Meido]] (having an especial fascination with tea-brewing for some reason), deal with 21st-century culture shock, and endure Haruhi's [[Black Comedy Rape|constant molestation]] and enforced [[Cosplay]]. It's not that she's around [[Ms. Fanservice|solely for window-dressing]]. It's just that she's passive to the point of being [[The Chew Toy]]. (And partly around for window-dressing).

* [[Adorkable]]

* {{spoiler|[[Anti-Hero]]: Her older counterpart can be quite morally ambiguous and manipulative at times. Her younger self [[Alternate Character Interpretation|may or may not]] [[Obfuscating Stupidity|have her moments.]] Koizumi definitely originally thought she was faking her "moe" tendencies to manipulate Kyon.}}

 

 

[[File:itsuki.jpg|frame]]

{{quote|Voiced by: [[Daisuke Ono]] (JP), [[Johnny Yong Bosch]] (EN)}}

 

If Kyoko's words in Volumes 10 and 11 are anything to go by, he is {{spoiler|[[King Incognito|the founder and the leader of the Agency]].}}

* [[Alternate Character Interpretation]]: Oh, so much. That he keeps his own emotions hidden behind [[Stepford Smiler|a plastered smile]] makes him the one character in the series almost no one in the fandom agrees on.

** There's even a bit of this in-universe with Mikuru distrusting his motivations originally, Koizumi swearing loyalty to the brigade, and Kyon being simultaneously annoyed by and trusting of him. Koizumi himself all but confirms his personality is an act, but even then he might have been lying...

Interestingly, she has a [[Evil Twin|good twin]] in ''[[The Vanishing of Nagato Yuki-chan]]''; a dimension where she ''is'' Yuki's [http://www.mangafox.com/manga/nagato_yuki_chan_no_shoushitsu/v01/c002/16.html best friend]; and genuinely tries to help her be with Kyon. Although she is just a little bit jealous ([[Les Yay|of Kyon]]), she tries to hide that.

 

* {{spoiler|[[Anti-Hero]]}}: {{spoiler|As of Book 10, a definite Type V. She's still the same Asakura, she just happens to be fighting on the same side as the Brigade now.}}

* [[Bitch in Sheep's Clothing]]: It can kind of be argued either way; on the one hand, when dealing with the vast majority of people, she seems to be legitimately, actually nice and to even enjoy it, doubly so in ''Disapperance's'' [[Alternate Reality]] and its related spinoff (which, given the nature of [[The Verse]], [[Mind Screw|may or may not count, depending]]). Her interactions with Kyon, however, run the gamut; she starts out nice, then there's the big stabbing incident, then a lot of her lines with him in ''Disapperance'' straddle the line between "good-natured ribbing about Yuki" and "passive-aggressive bitchiness", {{spoiler|then she stabs him ''for real''}}, and '''then''' {{spoiler|in Book 10, she saves his life ''[[Big Damn Villains|while holding a knife to his throat at the same time]]''}}. Perhaps it's most accurate to say that if she has an Inner Bitch, Kyon brings it out, and since [[Unreliable Narrator|he's our narrator]], we may get a disproportionate view of it.

 

No one really knows what's up with '''Tsuruya-san''', Mikuru's classmate, ersatz SOS Brigade member and something of a [[Sixth Ranger]]. She's got the ([[Rapunzel Hair|ankle length]]) [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|green hair]] one would expect from a Humanoid Interface, but seems to be totally normal, if just as much of a [[Genki Girl]] as Haruhi. She's also notable for her [[Cute Little Fangs|Cute Little]] [[Fashionable Asymmetry|Fang]], [[Big Fancy House]], [[The Hyena|tendency to point and laugh (very loudly)]], and for inspiring the [[Fan Web Comic]] and [[Memetic Mutation]] Sensation, Churuya. She also seems unusually aware of the SOS Brigade's oddities for a [[Muggle]], but seems content to enjoy the show rather than disrupt the Brigade's attempts to keep Haruhi under control. Sort of an [[Ensemble Darkhorse]].

* [[Big Fancy House]]

* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: Her tendency to laugh at almost anything.

 

'''Emiri Kimidori''' is a mysterious student in North High—somewhat of a [[Yamato Nadeshiko]] and a [[Mysterious Watcher]] to the Brigade. She is revealed to be a humanoid interface just like Yuki, but has done very little, save for a couple of minor plots and being an ally to the [[Student Council President]]. That is, until Volume 10, where {{spoiler|she reveals herself to be somewhat of an [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]] working under the Data Overmind. She becomes an observer to the Sky Canopy Domain, but refuses to act unless ordered by the Data Overmind.}}

* [[Adaptation-Induced Plothole]]: More regarding characterization. The character songs for the anime's first season were released prior to the tenth-novel preview; building off the fact that she's an interface, the songs portrayed her as someone reaching for humanity and wanting to participate in the fun everyone else has but being unable to. The tenth-novel preview, however, revealed that {{spoiler|she doesn't give a damn about anything that interferes with what the Entity wants, not even Yuki's personal safety}}.

* [[All Powerful Bystander]]: {{spoiler|Of the first and last variety at the same time: she hasn't been ordered to help out Nagato when she gets sick in the tenth novel, and she doesn't care enough about her to do so either. Thus, she just continues to watch.}}

 

'''Taniguchi''' and '''Kunikida''' are [[Those Two Guys]] and Kyon's main non-SOS Brigade friends. Both totally normal to all appearances, Taniguchi is a [[Big Eater]] and something of a teenage [[Casanova Wannabe]] who is implied to have dated Haruhi for exactly five minutes back in junior high. Kunikida is Kyon's junior high friend, and receives no [[Character Development]] or [[Backstory]] detail whatsoever - except that he gets better grades than Taniguchi or Kyon {{spoiler|and, as is revealed in the eleventh novel, may have a crush on Tsuruya}}. They both act as an anchor of normalcy for Kyon, and occasional extra bodies in the SOS Brigade for things like baseball games or magazine publishing.

* [[Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?]]: Taniguchi briefly tasted Haruhi's shortest relationship, listed one alien as a top pick then dated another one for a few months. Fortunately for his sanity, he's [[Locked Out of the Loop]] and just a [[Romantic False Lead]].

* [[Shipper on Deck]]: Taniguchi for Kyon x Haruhi and Kunikida for Kyon x Sasaki. (In the novels at least.)

 

'''Kyon's Little Sister''', [[No Name Given|known only as]] [[Japanese Sibling Terminology|Imouto-chan]], is a [[Cheerful Child]] who occasionally tags along on her brother's sort-of-adventures, being a bit [[Genki Girl|hyper]] but still better-mannered than most [[Annoying Younger Sibling]]s. Because [[Adults Are Useless]], she forms the core of Kyon's family life in the novels. He doesn't get much screen time at home in the anime, so she's follows he him out of the house more often.

* [[Cheerful Child]]

* [[Genki Girl]]

* [[No Name Given]]

 

----

 

 

A nameless character who is the president of the Computer Society. His role in the plot is essentially [[The Chew Toy]], being the subject of several of Haruhi's antics—being blackmailed into giving away computers to the SOS Brigade, getting taken over by a cricket-like Data Entity, etc. He declares himself and his club to be rivals to the SOS Brigade and challenges them to a game of their own creation, but they lose and become "vassals" to the SOS Brigade. Emiri Kimidori also pretended to be his girlfriend. [[Butt Monkey|It must suck to be him.]]

* [[Butt Monkey]]

* [[The Chew Toy]]

 

Another character with [[No Name Given]], he is the school's [[Student Council President]] introduced in ''The Anger of Haruhi Suzumiya'' by Koizumi to give Haruhi an antagonist and to keep her from getting bored. He acts like a [[Bespectacled Bastard Boyfriend]] in his role as the president, but he is secretly laughing at how ridiculous his job is. Later on, it seems that Haruhi's influence is making him take his job more seriously.

 

* [[Becoming the Mask]]: He comments that he slips back into his mask every now and then, even when Haruhi isn't around.

* [[Full-Name Basis]]: Or a Japanese variant thereon: he always addresses female students with the honorific "kun," which is typically used for boys and young men. As [[That Other Wiki]] notes, there are two exceptions to that practice, "in business settings, young female employees may also be addressed as -kun by older males of senior status," and "in the Diet of Japan (Legislature), chairpersons use kun when addressing diet members and ministers." Either way, he's being pretentious.

 

Contrary to the popular pre-''Astonishment'' theories, Yasumi has not yet been revealed to be one of the supernatural beings that Haruhi has been pursuing. However, as her presence is the most obvious difference between the Alpha and Beta plots (aside from the mysterious phone call to Kyon {{spoiler|which was probably made by her in the first place}}), [[Haruhi Suzumiya/WMG|speculation has abounded as to her true nature]]. {{spoiler|But ''really'', she was born of Haruhi's subconscious to save Yuki and Kyon from the troubles they suffer in the Beta plot, causing the [[Alternate Universe|Alpha plotline]] to occur in the process.}}

* [[Chekhov's Gunman]]

* {{spoiler|[[Deus Ex Machina]]: Literally, she was created by Haruhi's subconcious precisely in order to handily solve the plot.}}

'''Yuki:''' ''(Matter of factly)'' That was ventriloquism. }}

 

* [[Contemplate Our Navels]]: He's awfully philosophical, when he can speak.

* [[Meaningful Name]]: Shamisen (the instruments) use cat skin in their construction.

 

[[File:asos.jpg|frame|Clockwise from the top-left:Fujiwara, Kyoko Tachibana, Sasaki, and Kuyo Suo.]]

The "'''Anti-SOS Brigade'''" are [[The Psycho Rangers]]. While not nearly as cohesive as Kyon's [[True Companions]], they've more or less allied for differing reasons.

 

 

* [[A-Cup Angst]]: A one-off comment from her in ''Rainy Day'', where she expresses a hint of jealousy upon the idea of Kyon ogling the popular girl in their class and her larger "assets".

* [[Evil Counterpart|Antagonistic Counterpart]]: To Haruhi.{{spoiler|..[[Good All Along|at first.]]}}

** {{spoiler|She was one of few, however, to exactly ''know'' she was the group's pawn and secretly worked to stop it.}}

 

* [[Evil Counterpart|Antagonistic Counterpart]]: To Itsuki, even though she more resembles Mikuru.

* [[Dojikko]]

* [[Wham! Line]]: Delivers the main one in ''Dissociation'': {{spoiler|"We believe the existence of the real god is not Miss Suzumiya, but Miss Sasaki."}}

 

* [[Artificial Human]]: She is an interface, after all.

* [[Blue and Orange Morality]]: Does not understand morality. All she knows is that she wants to communicate, but doesn't know what it actually means to communicate or to fully grasp what other entities are.

* [[When She Smiles]]: Subverted; her smile is beautiful, but it's [[Uncanny Valley|just not right.]]

 

* {{spoiler|[[Big Bad]]: Of "Scheme of Haruhi Suzumiya" and also ends up as "Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya"'s one too.}}

* [[Deicide]]: Goes out of his way to {{spoiler|make a ''very'' serious attempt on Haruhi's life}} at the climax of ''Astonishment Vol. 2''.

* [[Wham! Line]]: During the climax of the 11th novel: {{spoiler|"Go kill Haruhi Suzumiya!"}}

* {{spoiler|[[Yandere]]: A brotherly one toward Mikuru.}}