PHOTOS: Haruhi Suzumiya Returns to Akihabara in Special Noizi Ito Exhibition
All photos by Daryl Harding
It’s no question Akihabara has been the home of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya franchise since its beginnings: It’s where the light novels originally went on sale, where writer Nagaru Tanigawa and illustrator Noizi Ito celebrated the release of volume eight just as the first season of the anime premiered and famously where the anime became a pop culture phenomenon.
As the series approaches its 20th anniversary in June, Akihabara held the “Noizi Ito The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Artworks Exhibition” at EDITION88 @ TOKYO ATOM over the holiday season in three parts, looking back at the original illustrations featured in the light novels with some fun and original behind-the-scenes looks at how they came to be.
The Drafts of Haruhi Suzumiya
(November to December)
It would be one thing for the exhibit to just show the now iconic Ito illustrations on display in some of the best quality ever seen, but the exhibition went one further for its first rendition: it showed how the designs came to be in two ways.
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The first showed the completed design on top of the drafted line art version and, if available, a marked-up draft with original notes and sketches. The second was presented as an acrylic standee which had the line art in front of the completed design. While some of the illustrations in this format, such as the above original cover of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, were interesting, others on display were much more intriguing.
The above illustration of Mikuru from the December 2005 issue of The Sneaker magazine was one such example. Not only was the line art on display, but so was the original sketch with feedback notes, for example, one says the glasses should be a little less straight on Mikuru’s nose.
These three images came together on the acrylic standee, which showed the complete process from sketch to final design.
Most of the illustrations on display throughout the three editions were presented this way, giving some fun insight into how Ito went from her original designs to the completed ones.
The Evolution of Haruhi Suzumiya
(December to January)
As the second edition of the exhibit was underway, it paved the way for a deeper look into how Ito’s Haruhi Suzumiya art evolved through the two decades of drawing the members of the SOS Brigade.
Luckily for us, as the illustrations became more modern so did the sketches and art itself, showing more detail in the process of their creation.
These finer details, as you can see in the Haruhi sketch from the cover of The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya (First Half), include where Ito erased her skirt and redrew the lines. For long-time fans of the series, being able to see these kinds of details on decade-old illustrations is just astounding and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
This is especially true in the above illustration of Kyon and Koizumi from the Haruhi-ism art book released in 2009, with the bottom right drawing showing Ito’s thought process behind the image, showing where trees would be drawn and how Koizumi would stare deeply at Kyon.
The Modernity of Haruhi Suzumiya
(January)
There was a grand total of zero Haruhi Suzumiya novels published between 2013 and 2020, with only a few short stories in certain magazines and various art books released. This gave Ito not only a break from the characters but also ways to update their looks with the passage of time and technology.
The only cover illustration featured in the third and final edition of the exhibition was that of The Intuition of Haruhi Suzumiya, the latest light novel to release in 2020. The draft shows a thicker outline of Tsuruya and Haruhi in the blue line-art version that looks like it was drawn fully digitally, rather than have hand sketches in earlier pieces. Though it seems this wasn’t where it seems the bolder lines started.
The above image of Haruhi putting graffiti on a wall was released in 2014 as the 20th-anniversary piece for Shonen Ace, the magazine which published the manga version of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I personally love the big bold blue graffiti art Ito used in her draft.
But it wasn’t only the blue used, as Ito used red and purples to differentiate between foreground and background elements, giving not only a sense of perspective but also mapping out the physicality of the elements before adding them behind the character. This was also best shown in the above three illustrations drawn for The Sneaker magazine in 2018.
As a fan of Haruhi Suzumiya for over a decade now — first watching the anime in 2008 — it was unimaginable that an exhibit like this would be held, let alone in 2022/2023 in a small Akihabara gallery. While my opinion on the city itself may be changing, I’m glad some of its roots remain, giving some fans of older series the chance to enjoy a look, even a small one, into how some pieces from classic series came to be.
Daryl Harding is a Senior Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram. Proud Haruhi-ist since 2008!
