While most animes struggle with the dissonance between the serious content and the silly otaku/fan-service elements, The Melancholy revels in its silliness, while simultaneously being able to explore mature topics and themes. It does so by embracing the complete absurdity of the situation which is only hyperbolic of the absurdity of life itself. Its premise, at the very core, challenges the idea of objective reality. This reminds me of two things:

1. the slogan on one of the posters for the Get Rich or Die Tryin' movie, which said "live in your dreams or die in someone else's"
2. the famous parable from the book of Zhuangzi, where after seeing a dream where he was a butterfly, the titular author exclaims: "I do not know whether I was Zhuang Zhou dreaming of being a butterfly or whether I am a butterfly now dreaming that I am Zhuang Zhou" As philosophically deconstructive as the premise is, the story matches it with a narrative deconstruction, utilizing a number of traditional anime archetypes and exaggerating them to the degree that exposes their flaws. Yet, at the same time, it doesn't treat them as mere caricatures, and builds their complexity with moments of genuine vulnerability, creating a real human connection with the audience. This, in turn, reminds me of the way Watchmen deconstructed the idea of a superhero while remaining respectful to it and depicting relatable human characters. Am I saying that The Melancholy is the Watchmen of anime? The titular character, Haruhi Suzumiya is equally a surrogate of the viewer and a guide to the world of new ideas and beliefs. Her rise to the leadership of a school club and consistent success in achieving its goals through unethical practices echoes the many historical cases of dictators rising to power. She preaches a philosophy relatable to the audience and has the confidence and strength to follow it against all odds. She literally manifests her utopic vision into the world through the sheer power of her will. Her speeches are propagandistic in nature, as she praises the successes of the club's campaigns even when the results are negligible, if they exist at all. In addition, she is purposefully designed as a pretty schoolgirl, rendering her "out-of-character" actions as merely "cute" to the onlookers, while also making them perfectly fit the framework of a typical anime series. Which helps us contextualize her actions as abusive and manipulative, thus opening a window to critique anime as a genre. And yet, under her hard shell, she is revealed to be as vulnerable as anybody else, suffering from the same exact internal problems, such as loneliness and existential crisis, which furthermore makes her relatable to the audience. Her philosophy thus tackles a common problem among the dwellers of this century. In the past people entertained their dreams of better future with imaginings of either retrospective racial utopias or futuristic egalitarian societies. But in this post-modernist semi-digital era, escapism has taken on a new form. As Clark Ashton Smith puts it: "Only the impossible has any real charm. The possible has been vulgarized by happening too often." Haruhi seeks to deviate, not only from the social norms, but the very ontological foundations of our reality. To her such radical deviations mean transcendence, while to others an existential horror. In this, the show walks a line between the Eastern religious and philosophical concept of letting go of attachments, found in Daoism and Zen Buddhism, and the more common idea (though also emphasized in the aforementioned religions) of appreciating reality for what it is, not seeking to control and change it. Whether intentionally or not, but by portraying the conflict between the two, it reveals the absurdity of the idea that God could be a person or have consciousness in our modern understanding of the word. Throughout the series Haruhi and her SOS Brigade take part in various activities. Some of them reveal underlying layers of reality that challenge our notions of what reality is, others alter the existing reality, and a third category represents surrogate forms of reality-crafting like filmmaking and playing video games. However, if you watch the show in the chronological order, the last episode stands out from the rest, as you'll find the characters doing ... nothing. Nothing "significant" that is. It asks the viewer to reflect on all those little moments throughout the show where we've seen the team simply hang out together and bond. In the course of the show, with all the extraordinary and supernatural events, we rarely pay attention to those moments, but it's almost like the creators are telling us that life itself is magical, if you pay attention. It's not the events that are valuable, but everything in between them. The stillness. And the beauty of the human soul and the soul of the nature is most revealed in that stillness.