371


When I watched The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya on DVD, the episodes were
shown out of order. It was somewhat funny, since in the previews, Haruhi and
Kyon argue about which episode number comes next, but other than that, I
didn't see the point of it. It didn't have interwoven plot threads, or any in-
universe reason to be shown out of order. It looks like in other releases, the
episodes were arranged in chronological order, so it must not have been
essential to the viewing of the series.

Put simply: **Why did The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya have a version that
was not in chronological order?**


CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-12-13T21:44:29.967
370
2019-10-28T08:26:01.317
2012-12-13T22:08:49.620
61
61
question
haruhi-suzumiya
Why was The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya broadcast out of sequence?


As far as I can tell (and admittedly this is a bit speculative), the reason
was to spread out the plot to avoid having the second half be entirely
episodic. The creators knew that the main plot (episodes 1-6 in chronological
order) would not take a full season (14 episodes), but the next major
storyline was not for a while, so they had to insert some episodic content.
However, these 6 episodes don't leave much room for breaks, and equally
importantly they would rather use canon content from the light novels than
make up their own.

So the creators used content from future light novels. This let them
intersperse the plot with the episodic material. The 6 plot-related episodes
are all in order among themselves, and the others are placed in whatever order
the director thought was best (e.g. in terms of character development).

I'm looking for something official to confirm this, but I've had no luck so
far. Barring that, this seems to be at least the prevailing opinion of most
people on the internet.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-12-13T22:05:40.350
371
2012-12-13T22:05:40.350
24
370
answer


According to
[asosbrigade.com](http://web.archive.org/web/20080107085851/http://asosbrigade.com/oplet01/),
the [ASOS Brigade site
run](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-12-25/bandai-entertainment-
updates-haruhi-suzumiya-site) by Bandai:

> The Regular Edition DVDs contain the exact same episode order as released in
> Japan on the R2 DVDs. [...] Due to pre-existing contractual obligations, the
> regular edition MUST contain the R2 DVD ordering of episodes. This was set
> in stone, there were no exceptions. [...] After deeply intense negotiations
> to try and please the existing fan-base, we are able to release a Special
> Bonus DVD in the TV Broadcast order as an extra.

According to a [DVD 1 review](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/the-
melancholy-of-haruhi-suzumiya/dvd-1) by ANN (May 31st, 2007):

> Another oddity came in the fourth broadcast episode, which originally jumped
> ahead to episode 7. This DVD release does not do this, however, instead
> opting to release the episodes in chronological rather than the scrambled
> broadcast order

According to the [episodes list on
ANN](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=6430&page=25),
the broadcast order against chronological order is:

[code]

    Broadcast       1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 14
    Chronological  11  1  2  7  3  9  8 10 14  4 13 12  5  6
    
[/code]

This order is reported in the [episodes list on
Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Melancholy_of_Haruhi_Suzumiya_episodes)
as well, with DVD release following the chronological order with the only
exception being the first episode.

asosbrigade.com reports the chronological order (C) as Haruhi's order, and the
broadcast, "scrambled" order as Kyon's order (B). The Regular Edition DVD
order is Haruhi's order, with the exception of the first episode.

Regular edition was and _ever_ was in the right order because of "contractual
obligation": [Region 2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code) DVD
(Japan) must apparently have the same content of [Region
1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code) DVD (USA). Bandai was
pressured by fans to release the "scrambled" version.

Why did they have to, back in 2006-2007? From here on, speculations: because
fanbase watched the fansubbed version from the broadcast (2006-04-02 ~
2006-07-02) and ask for that order. I cannot find evidence of requests by fans
to do so, so we have to trust Bandai's words in the meanwhile.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-12-13T23:04:35.887
387
2014-06-25T05:16:40.760
2014-06-25T05:16:40.760
1908
98
370
answer


Good question!

As far as I can tell, the broadcast was released in that order to improve the
flow of the season's episodes, best establish the relationship between Haruhi
and Kyon, and to best appeal to Haruhi's existing fanbase. This ties in with
Logan M's entirely correct point about spreading out the plot.

The broadcast begins with _The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina_ , which I believe
was a fan-favorite storyline, to both satisfy fans and establish the weirdness
of the Haruhi universe. The broadcast then leaps backwards in time to begin
the story proper.

The rest of the episodes build the relationship between Haruhi and Kyon,
culminating in Kyon's realization about Haruhi's first act of selflessness,
just after the school festival.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-12-15T06:23:06.293
461
2018-04-02T15:21:09.650
2018-04-02T15:21:09.650
172
172
370
answer


From a writer's standpoint, showing the episodes in the order in which they
originally aired was almost certainly a move to improve the flow of the story.
If you read the books, although the idea behind Vol. 1 is fascinating, it's
mostly the protagonist talking to various characters who explain the situation
to him, and there's only one real action scene (or possibly two). Vol. 2 has
lots of action, since it's made up of short stories, but no real overarching
plot. By breaking up both volumes and scrambling them, they made the
overarching plot of Vol. 1 cover the whole season, while using the short
stories in Vol. 2 to provide the "action" episodes that Vol. 1 was lacking,
and the discrepancies between the volumes (Why does that one character wear
glasses in Vol. 1 but not in Vol. 2? Where did that other character go? etc.)
helped to keep audiences interested and guessing.

In my opinion, putting the movie first was a genius move: It actually tells
you a whole lot about the main story and the principal characters, but there's
no way to know that or understand how deeply ironic it is until Yuki starts
explaining the actual world a few episodes later. If the writers had put it
near the end of the anime, the brilliant penny-drop moment when you realize
that all the crazy stuff that you snorted at in the movie is actually
happening in real life (well, sort of) wouldn't have existed.


CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-28T08:26:01.317
55709
2019-10-28T08:26:01.317
50539
370
answer