As children, we have the freedom to use our imaginations to dream up fantasy worlds and amazing people to fill our lives with wonder and excitement. Eventually the magic is lost for most of us though, as we realize life is unsympathetic. To succeed and fulfill the expectations of society, we must let our imaginary happiness go and become serious people pursuing serious goals.

In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the title character is a High School freshman who yearns for something more than ordinary existence and believes a new school and new people just might provide her with what she’s looking for. An alien, an esper, or even a time traveler would be enough to quench Haruhi’s need to dispel the tedium of her monotonous existence, but to her dismay, she just can’t seem to find anything interesting.

Despite excelling at sports and being enthusiastically welcomed into every club at the school, Haruhi is dissatisfied that none of them alleviate her hunger for the extraordinary. And while her beauty and enigma leave her classmates intrigued, her brusque personality keeps them at arm’s length.

At the other end of the spectrum of High School expectations is Kyon. Having abandoned the whimsy of youth, Kyon regards his fresh start in High School with indifference. Unfortunately for him, getting assigned the desk in front of Haruhi is about to make his life a little too interesting. For some reason, Kyon is the only one Haruhi seems interested in having a conversation with, and when he gives her the idea to start a club of her own, he finds himself unwittingly dragged into being one of its founding members.

The SOS Brigade is Haruhi’s brain child, and the club’s mission is to seek out the supernatural wherever it exists. And while Kyon is himself a victim of Haruhi’s fancy, even he acknowledges his predicament pales in comparison to the other unwitting club members. Whether it is the abducted damsel Mikuru Asahina, the eerily cheerful transfer student Itsuki Koizumi, or the taciturn bookworm Yuki Nagato, each member seems helpless in the face of Haruhi’s overt coercion.

But despite the questionable methods behind the induction of Kyon’s new partners in misery, and their even more dubious treatment by Haruhi, no one seems in any hurry to leave. And while none of them strike Kyon as being “normal,” he’s about to find out there is a whole lot more to the club members than he could have possibly imagined.

What ensues is a series full of creativity that uses Kyon’s narrative to illustrate the quirky world Haruhi ironically finds so mundane. If the special “movie” that opens the series strikes you as bizarre, stick around, because you’ll have no idea where it’s all headed. And while it may be a comedy at its core, the series shows a lot of heart, as the characters quickly start to grow on you. If I have one complaint, it is that the series seems to end abruptly with no real closure. Taken as a whole though, the series is a great find for anyone who enjoys an eccentric show that will make them smile.