Haruhi Suzumiya

"I'm Haruhi Suzumiya, from East Junior High. First off, I'm not interested in ordinary people. But, if any of you are aliens, time-travelers, or espers, please come see me. That is all!"

- Haruhi Suzumiya Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒ Suzumiya Haruhi) is the title character and heroine of the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise (original light novel series, TV anime, and manga). She is a student at North High who serves as the leader of the SOS Brigade, a club at her high school with the purpose of finding aliens, time travelers and espers.

Although she doesn't know it, all the members of the SOS Brigade she recruits (besides Kyon) happen to fit into these groups (Yuki Nagato, Mikuru Asahina, and Itsuki Koizumi respectively). She is incredibly eccentric and usually anti-social, with no interest in "ordinary" humans.

Haruhi also, unknown to her, has the god-like abilities to change, destroy, and reshape reality. It is said that if she were to become bored enough with the world, she could create closed space, meaning a new world which could prevent destruction in the "real world". After revealing themselves to Kyon, the trio of Yuki, Mikuru and Itsuki all state they were sent by their respective higher-ups to watch over her, and Koizumi specifically mentions they must keep her entertained so she doesn't become too bored.

Appearance
Haruhi has a pale skin tone, big brown eyes, and brown hair. Though the tallest of three SOS Brigade girls, she is fairly short, standing lower than most of her female classmates.

At the beginning of the series, her hair is long and reaches to about her waist. She always had different hairstyles every day. However, after a talk with Kyon about her hair, she cuts it to just about her shoulders. After settling on a hairstyle, Haruhi is always seen wearing an orange-yellow headband with ribbons on the side, in her hair. Many male students consider her attractive, including Kyon.

Personality
Haruhi is driven primarily by her desire to live an extraordinary life. She enjoys being the center of attention, and her schemes often stem from her desire to increase the SOS Brigade's notoriety and her view that things that are out of the ordinary are fun. She has very little regard for what constitutes 'normal' behavior, and at times even purposely engages in deviant behavior in an effort to overcome a fit of boredom. At the same time, she heavily subscribes to conservative principles; she addresses adults in a respectful manner and using conventional etiquette, and emphasizes the observance of traditional holidays.

Haruhi is a blunt and bossy person, consistently expecting others to either obey or submit to her. Resistance, or performance which fails to meet her expectations (which are typically unreasonably high) spurs her to anger. She is bright, energetic, and athletic, excelling at both academics and athletics in school. She alternates between melancholy and incredible optimism, often unpredictably due to her hesitation to share her feelings with others.

Her boundless energy and confidence has a continuous need for an outlet. Because of this, her paranormal observers spend considerable effort in setting up adventures for her to keep her from being bored. Kyon observed that before she started the SOS Brigade, she seemed like a boxer in search of a fight. Her eagerness to aid those in need and correct wrongs where she perceives them is usually motivated more by her love for adventure and conflict than by altruism. It stands in contrast with Sasaki's complacency with the world as it is. Early in the series she can be insensitive and bullying, forcing Mikuru Asahina into costumes and activities that she is uncomfortable with, even over her anguished protests. Later in the series she becomes more sympathetic to others and displays a strong sense of responsibility towards the well-being of the SOS Brigade members, acting as a benevolent queen-bee.

Haruhi is stubborn and doesn't like to admit her mistakes, sometimes blaming other people but usually just improvising with the situation while acting as if it were what she planned all along.

Her behavior was considered eccentric, and she had little interest in her classmates, at least until Kyon began providing an empathetic ear to her frustrations. After he gave her the idea to form the SOS Brigade, she became more mentally stable and gradually connected with schoolmates in club activities.

First in Snow Mountain Syndrome and later in The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya, it is mentioned she is good at cooking. Haruhi reveals that the reason why she is good at cooking is due to her mother having "awful taste" and always measuring ingredients and spices by the eye, causing every meal she makes to "never taste quite the same each time". In primary school (elementary school) Haruhi attempted to cook on her own, found that she had somewhat of a natural talent for it, and insisted on cooking her own meals ever since.

Her mother's low cooking skills are also the reason why Haruhi never brings a lunchbox to school. This is all of the information Haruhi reveals about her mother upon mentioning her for the first time other than saying "She works a lot, and so we help each other out."

Haruhi's personality may be described as overpowering. She has a knack for convincing others to do what she wants, whether by using charm, intimidation, blackmail, guile, or sheer charisma.

Biography
When Haruhi was in sixth grade, she went to see a baseball game with her parents and was shocked by the amount of people attending. After finding out that the large amount was only a small piece of the entire world, and realized that she was only a small part of it, Haruhi believed herself to be ordinary. She resolved that if there is someone out there with an interesting life that it should be her. This results in Haruhi's desire to find strange things.

During elementary school, she came to know Sasaki, under the surname Sasaki was using at the time.

Middle school
In middle school, East Junior High, Haruhi committed a number of eccentric hijinks, such as putting talismans up around school, but attracted the most attention by drawing a huge graffiti mural on the field of the night of Tanabata, year 0, which was reported in the newspaper. Kyon was actually the one who drew this under Haruhi's orders after he and Mikuru traveled back in time. (According to Yuki Nagato, the mural meant "I am here".) Thanks to the dark, Haruhi could not make out his face, and Kyon used the alias "John Smith" to keep himself secret. "John Smith" implied to Haruhi that there were strange things out there and that there might be interesting people at North High, inspiring her to attend the school. Shortly after, the same night, Kyon shouted out to her "Cheers to saving the world by overloading it with fun with John Smith!".

The consequence of her ability erupting was a timequake preventing time traveling to before this point. This also seems to have sundered the timelines of Fujiwara and Mikuru Asahina.

Throughout middle school she dated and quickly dumped every guy who asked her out when they proved to be too boring for her tastes (Kyon thinks Taniguchi might have been one of these boys), making her feel disillusioned and ultimately disinterested in romance.

Until she went to high school, Haruhi sought "John Smith" at other schools, but was unable to find him.

The SOS Brigade
When Haruhi attends North High, she introduces herself to Class 1-5 by saying she is only interested in aliens, espers, time travelers and sliders. Haruhi joins and quits each of the student clubs (even abandoning the Supernatural Research Society), finding them all boring, and changes her hairstyle each day of the week for no more reason than to wear the number of braids she feels corresponds to that day. The girls in her class, particularly Ryoko Asakura, secretly an alien assigned to observe her, try to make friends with her. However, she finds their interests mundane and bluntly cuts off attempts to converse with her.

Kyon begins talking to Haruhi about aliens, making him the first person there to demonstrate a common interest with her. Their first conversation is about her hairstyle changes; she asks if they have met before. Shortly after, when the seating arrangements change, Haruhi ends up still seated behind Kyon, implied to be the result of her power acting on her desire to maintain her acquaintanceship with Kyon.

Haruhi tells him about all the clubs she joined, and why they were so boring. Kyon gives a speech about human inventiveness. This inspires her to form her own club. She drags Kyon with her to the Literature Club room to use as their club room and abducts Mikuru Asahina. She announces the name of the club as the SOS Brigade and recruits transfer student Itsuki Koizumi. Haruhi unknowingly drags the exact types of people she wants into her life.

When the formation of the SOS Brigade fails to lead to any exciting adventures, her dissatisfaction with the world hits its peak and she creates an alternate reality (a closed space) from which she can create a new, more exciting world. This becomes a threat, as the new world would possibly replace the old world. By kissing her, using clues from Yuki and a future Mikuru, Kyon convinces Haruhi to bring the old world back. Though Haruhi recognizes her experience in the closed space as real while there, upon her return she believes it all to have been only a nightmare.

Haruhi becomes a participant in many activities surrounding her that she does not understand: the SOS Brigade wins a competition by modifying a bat; a logo for the SOS Brigade that she creates awakens an ancient data lifeform; she causes time to loop over and over because she does not want summer to end; she confuses the fictional world with the real world while filming a movie, causing the movie's events to come true; Yuki must hack into a computer game in order to satisfy her desire to win it; the world is altered, creating an alternate version of her with no powers; a mysterious alien entity traps her and the SOS Brigade in a strange mansion; a Mikuru from eight days later appears behind her back.

Despite her lack of awareness of the paranormal adventures she is involved in, her experiences lead her to become more conscious of the adventures present in normal life and more embracing of life in general. Watching her during a volleyball game, Kyon notes that she has begun to make friends apart from himself.

Over the vacation between first and second year at North High, Haruhi meets Kyon's friend from middle school Sasaki. Sasaki introduces herself as an "old friend" of Kyon's, confusing Haruhi since he never told her about Sasaki. This results in the creation of closed space.

In her second year, Haruhi starts to accept first-year recruits into her Brigade, but is picky about who enters; she kicks out who she wants and challenges those who have the guts to return to the brigade room.

Beta
When Yuki mysteriously falls ill, Haruhi organizes the rest of the brigade to care for her.

In The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya, she shows a much more human and even motherly side when she cooks and makes remedies for the ailing Yuki. Her intuition also shows that she possibly thinks/knows that Yuki does not have a simple cold.

The Future
Near the end of The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon time hops to a few years into the future and lands on a college campus in front of Haruhi Suzumiya. She asks him why he's wearing his "old high school uniform" then is called out to by someone in the distance (a college-age Kyon). She appears confused and surprised as to why a young, uniform-clad Kyon is in front of her and a normal one calling out to her at the same time. Kyon time hops right after that. Her age is speculated to be anywhere from 19 to 22. Kyon comments that her hair had grown out since high school.

In "Editor-In-Chief★Straight Ahead!", it is revealed that Haruhi was the one to create the central foundation for the time plane theory, eventually resulting in Mikuru's ability to time travel. Because Haruhi lives next door to the boy who is implied to have created Mikuru's TPDD, Kyon realizes that it is possible for the boy to have seen the theory and thus created the mechanism.

Alternate Haruhi
Alternate Haruhi appears in the Disappearance arc. She does not attend North High but instead attends Kouyouen School with Itsuki Koizumi. She becomes a key player in this arc and helps Kyon to restore the former world. When Kyon tells her about espers, time travelers, and aliens, she believes him and helps gather all the members of the brigade, allowing Kyon to go back in time to Tanabata, year 0, call out to Haruhi to "take care of Kyon" and eventually restore the world. (This erased the alternate reality constructed by Yuki Nagato.)

Yasumi Watahashi
Yasumi Watahashi (渡橋泰水 Watahashi Yasumi) is a character introduced in the α timeline of The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya. She is eventually revealed to be a part of Haruhi's subconscious that noticed the SOS Brigade was in trouble and appeared to help them. She vanishes once the crisis is solved.

Yasumi was initially presented as a freshman candidate for the SOS Brigade, becoming the only one to pass the tests Haruhi sets forth. In the timeline, she is the one who calls Kyon on Saturday evening. She becomes an extremely enthusiastic member. Haruhi tells the SOS Brigade members to instruct her in things like tea making. Yasumi greatly improves the SOS Brigade website. In the process she discovers the Mikuru folder, but keeps it a secret. She charms Asahina and Nagato, the latter even lending her a book. She leaves early, saying something has come up. However, when Kyon made it home, Yasumi is waiting in his room for him. She says she just wanted to visit him but makes confusing statements, such as not being able to keep pets anymore and wanting to see some in friends' houses. She leaves a strange flower (from the mountain near Tsuruya's place) at the clubroom. Koizumi takes pictures of it and sends it to sources, who inform him it is an orchid.

Yasumi has Kyon meet her at 6 PM in the SOS Brigade clubroom. The Beta Kyon walks in, and Yasumi gets the two to clasp hands and combine into one. During the subsequent battle with Sasaki and Kuyou Suoh, Kyon notices Yasumi standing on the roof of the school.

Afterward, Koizumi reveals that Yasumi was a portion of Haruhi's subconscious, which Kyon says is unsurprising. Koizumi notes that the proper kanji reading of her name yields "Watahashi Yasumizu" (渡橋泰水); rearranging the syllables yields watashi ha(wa) Suzumiya, "I am Suzumiya", indicating her true identity.

By the next Monday Yasumi contacts Haruhi and lets her know she had to quit, as she is actually a middle school student who had acquired a North High uniform.

Watahashi requested her name be spelled in a certain way (to make her name's meaning more obvious). She wears a hairpin with an emblem of a faint smile (at the end of The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya, Haruhi mentions that she wore something similar in elementary school) and a North High uniform which appears to be too large for her. She is described by Kyon as a girl that is moe in a different manner than Mikuru Asahina.

The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-Chan
The incarnation of Haruhi who appears in The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-Chan is largely a gestalt of her character in the original timeline and Alternate Haruhi. Like Alternate Haruhi, she has no powers and attends Kouyouen Academy, but like the original Haruhi, she assembles a club herself (in the altered universe, the SOS Brigade only came into being because Kyon remembered it from the original timeline). Like both versions, she develops a particular bond with Kyon, but unlike either version, she already has an optimistic and proactive attitude by the time she meets him in high school, having taken encouragement from her early encounter with him as "John Smith". In this universe the "John Smith" encounter was with a middle school-age Kyon rather than a time traveler, but it played out much the same despite Kyon not having instructions from Mikuru Asahina.

She is more open with and accepting of her feelings for Kyon than in the original timeline; in "Be My Valentine", she takes him on a date, and in "Her Melancholy" she acknowledges to herself that her Valentine's gift to Kyon was love chocolate. However, she does not pursue her feelings so that Nagato can have him instead. Her sexual features are also considerably more exaggerated than in other versions, as Kyon himself comments on in "His Uncertainty" as he gawks at Haruhi in a bathing suit (while barely glancing at the similarly attired Mikuru Asahina and Ryoko Asakura).

Powers
Haruhi has the ability to create reality (or "data"), but the power is unconscious and she is unaware of it. Sometimes this manifests as the direct fulfillment of her desires, such as closing off a remote island with fog to enhance the atmosphere of a murder mystery. Her powers manifest more frequently when she is in a positive mood, responding to her smallest whims. In The Sigh, for example, following her reconciliation with Kyon, any scenery or special effects she wants for the SOS Brigade's film becomes real. When she is overjoyed, her abilities have changed the weather, made animals speak and even changed the orbit of the Earth. In her typical moods, her powers are relatively dormant, leaving her subject to the same frustrations as anyone else.

Many usages of her powers are implied and not stated outright. In The Melancholy, the class seating patterns are changed, but Haruhi still ends up sitting behind Kyon.

In Mystérique Sign, Yuki Nagato says Haruhi's abilities summoned or awoke a data organism (creating terabytes of data in what seemed like a simple image), and in "Wandering Shadow" it is implied that Haruhi's abilities summoned another type of data organism.

In Endless Eight, Haruhi's powers create a time loop (which she herself never noticed, nor did most humans) in an effort to get a summer vacation that she could be satisfied with.

Closed space
Main Article: Closed space

When her emotions become unstable, she subconsciously creates closed space and celestials which begin to take over the world, destroying things. 'Agency' espers such as Itsuki Koizumi believe it is their duty to destroy the celestials, restoring normal space. Koizumi said that the system was born of "common sense"; Haruhi encloses the celestials in closed space to prevent destruction in the "real world".

According to Koizumi, Haruhi's powers created espers like himself, time travel and even aliens such as Yuki Nagato. (Time traveler Mikuru Asahina vehemently disagrees with this.) Koizumi said that Haruhi has the power to create a new world (destroying the old one in the process) and the "current world" came to exist as a result of Haruhi's power. As a result, some of the 'Agency' believes Haruhi to be a "god". While Koizumi initially said he might agree with this statement, he later admitted to being a skeptic, saying that if she were a god, she could not live in this world without becoming self-aware, but since Suzumiya lives in the world she can alter without noticing, Koizumi concludes that she can only alter the world to a certain extent. He states that Haruhi does not really believe in espers, aliens and time travelers, and they only exist because she subconsciously wishes them to do so. If she ever became aware of them, or other strangeness such as "talking cats", she would recreate the world in such a way that talking cats made sense. Koizumi feared this would "overthrow all the concepts already known to mankind".

Koizumi believes that someone granted Suzumiya these powers, but also prevented her from knowing about them. This entity is more likely to be a god. "The reality right now may be a failed product of creation, and perhaps Suzumiya-san was given the mission to amend this flawed world."

If the world were recreated, humanity could be wiped out, but this hasn't happened, due to her consciousness leaning toward creation rather than destruction. If her mentality became negative, she might focus on destruction.

Sasaki has similar closed space abilities. Esper Kyoko Tachibana believes that Sasaki originally had all of Haruhi's powers, but they were "stolen" from her and given to Haruhi instead.

Creating alternate realities
Haruhi has the ability to split and recombine reality into two alternate parallels.

She demonstrated the ability to create a human incarnation of an aspect of her subconscious, Yasumi Watahashi.

In The Disappearance Yuki Nagato steals Haruhi's abilities, creating yet another reality, although the changes are eventually reversed.

Kyon
Kyon was the first person Haruhi ever spoke with in high school. Kyon is Haruhi's sole voice of reason, and is the only person Haruhi will ever take advice from, such as making her forfeit their team's place in the baseball tournament, adding a fiction disclaimer for the SOS Brigade movie, and convincing her to revert the universe to its normal state. Later in the series, Kyon in turn increasingly turns to her as a confidant, even discussing the supernatural problems faced by the SOS Brigade in "Snowy Mountain Syndrome" and The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya under the veil of "family problems" and "study problems" respectively.

Haruhi is implied to have feelings for Kyon, although she maintains that love is a sort of mental illness. Earlier in the series she becomes irritated whenever it is even implied that Kyon is interested in or is the subject of interest of another girl (such as in The Boredom, she suggests putting Mikuru's hair in ponytail, but after a look at Kyon, she drops the subject). Later in the series, either due to a cooling of her feelings towards Kyon or a confidence that he could not be interested in any girl but her, she takes a more amused stance towards such situations. When she chews him out for his seeming romantic exchanges with Nagato and Mikuru (in "Love at First Sight" and "The Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina" respectively), she is uncontrollably grinning the entire time. Koizumi often theorizes that she holds romantic feelings for Kyon given that she willingly opened up to him despite him being completely ordinary. In the film version of the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya the alternate Koizumi, after admitting that he fancies Haruhi, remarks "Makes me jealous..." while commenting on how Kyon immediately aroused excitement in her as compared to her quickly boring of Koizumi. In the same story, when Kyon ends up in a coma, she spends the next three days with Kyon in the hospital, even sleeping there.

Haruhi is fiercely resistant to her feelings for Kyon becoming known, wearing a mask of outward disdain towards him. When he catches her putting her cardigan on him to keep him warm in "Someday in the Rain", she is mortified, and in The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya, after preparing for him an elaborate treasure hunt with Valentine's chocolates made by the three SOS Brigade girls, she warns him not to tell anyone about it since it would "start rumors."Regardless, Haruhi's relationship with Kyon has often been described as an unbreakable bond of trust. It is because of this bond that Haruhi chooses Kyon as the only being to be with her when she attempts to recreate the world, despite knowing Kyon for such a short amount of time.

Haruhi often exploits Kyon's lack of imagination. Anytime she has a task that would be complicated by somebody else's creativity, she'll assign that task to Kyon. Examples include converting her drawing and uploading it to a website, pointing a camera as she directs, and going to pick up a room heater without picking apart the deal she made for it. She is shocked whenever he manages to mess up such simple tasks. Because Kyon stands by her without being afraid to question her actions, Haruhi sees him as a warm body who can provide silent support when searching for a missing classmate or dealing with the gratitude of a rock band she helped out. His presence means she's not alone when skating out at the limits of her bravado.

Near the end of The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya, the college version of Haruhi is shown to have a relatively close relationship with the future Kyon, a revelation possibly foreshadowed by the ending of "Wandering Shadow" in which Kyon receives a romance novel selected specifically for him by Nagato (whose fortune telling skill he remembers) that the manga further clarifies to be the story of a high school boy and girl going on to college together.

Mikuru Asahina
Haruhi initially viewed Mikuru more as an object for appeal than a person, which is most clearly defined in The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya when she declares Mikuru to be her toy. Haruhi often dresses up Mikuru in cosplay outfits or sexually harasses her. Haruhi believes that any resistance from Mikuru is "futile" and had no compunctions about going to her house and "abducting" her to play her role in her movie when she claimed she was ill. She is also somewhat hostile because she believes Kyon has a crush on Mikuru. Later on in the series, Haruhi begins to grow genuine affection for Mikuru and respect her rights more. Much like Kyon and Koizumi, the two of them are best friends by The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya and she feels the need to look out for her as well as Yuki Nagato.

In The Melancholy of Haruhi-chan Suzumiya, Haruhi is much friendlier towards Mikuru from the get-go. She yells at Kyon and Itsuki when their male escort outfits make Mikuru cry, and becomes solemn when she accidentally hits Mikuru with a blow-dart. This does not mean, though, that Haruhi does not use Mikuru to make ends meet, but her methods are much tamer than the main series.

Yuki Nagato
Although Yuki is technically a member of the Literature Club, Haruhi includes Yuki in the Brigade. Haruhi perceives Yuki as a gullible and vulnerable girl, even though the opposite is true. Haruhi also values Yuki's presence in the Brigade, exemplified when Kyon tells Haruhi about Yuki possibly having to move away and Haruhi threatens to give "Yuki's parents" a piece of her mind.

Haruhi has taken a protective role over Nagato. When she thought Nagato had gotten sick in Snow Mountain Syndrome, she insisted on carrying her (over Nagato's protests). She also defended Nagato's Literature Club from the Student Council President, and when Nagato got sick in The Dissociation, she ordered the Brigade to report to her apartment daily to take care of her.

She has on occasion showed jealousy toward Nagato's relationship with Kyon, seeming irritated during club events when she spent time alone with him.

Itsuki Koizumi
Haruhi brings Koizumi into the SOS Brigade because he fulfilled her supernatural expectation of a "mysterious transfer student". Even though Kyon sees it as obvious that Koizumi is only being a kiss-up, Haruhi laps up all the compliments and agreements Koizumi throws at her. She bestows more honors and accolades on him than the other Brigade members, largely because he demonstrates much more enthusiasm and resourcefulness than the others, but she also seemingly sets lower standards for him than Kyon. In Random Numbers Kyon noted that Haruhi couldn't guess what Koizumi was thinking from his expressions.

Haruhi has a problem accepting praise and this may reduce Koizumi's reliability in her eyes in favor of the more silent support Kyon offers.

Koizumi is the only member of the SOS Brigade who Haruhi addresses by family name rather than given name, often with the "-kun" honorific.

Voice actress
Haruhi's Japanese voice actress, Aya Hirano, won the "Voice Acting Award" in the Sixth Annual Tokyo Anime Awards and a nomination for the "Best Actress in a leading role" category from the first Seiyū Awards. Aya Hirano sings as Haruhi as part of ENOZ in the episode "Live Alive". In the English dub, her voice actress is Wendee Lee; she also does Haruhi's voice while she sings in the episode "Live Alive".

Trivia

 * A short profile found in the game "The Perplexity of Haruhi Suzumiya" affirms that Haruhi's birthday is on October 8th, her blood type is AB, and her weight is 44 kg. (97 lbs.).
 * The Japanese school year begins around April 1st and ends in late March of the following year. Due to this, her birthday is only about five months after the Japanese school year first begins, meaning she'd age not long after the Japanese school year begins, as well as before the timeline point of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, which is winter (December), as October 8th occurs before December 18, the timeframe of the novel.
 * Second-year high schoolers in Japan begin 11th grade at 16 and age to 17 when their birthday occurs. Later on in the series, Haruhi and Kyon are both second years, along with various other main characters in their grade.
 * In The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya, she appears very briefly as a college student. Students in Japan begin their first year of college at 18 and age to 19 on their birthday.
 * Both of Haruhi's voice actors play Konata in Lucky Star. Both characters share some traits. Konata even cosplays as Haruhi and makes numerous references to the Haruhi franchise. Both shows are produced by Kyoto Animation.
 * Both Lee and Hirano used their Konata voices for the spin-off, The Melancholy of Haruhi-chan Suzumiya.
 * Hazel Hernan, her Filipino voice actress, also voices Konata Izumi in the Filipino dub of Lucky Star. Both series aired on TV5 in 2009 and 2010.
 * Haruhi appeared in the 2007 McDonald’s Cartoon Network poster.