The Importance of Kyon
Posted: May 19, 2009 Filed under: Uncategorized 17 Comments »
Kyon, Kyon, Kyon. He says that he wishes people would “stop calling him that,” but I doubt that many in the audience aren’t intrigued about Kyon’s actual name.
But why is his name never given? Why don’t we ever get to know the name of the person who speaks to us directly, the character who is so much more than simply a character, simply a narrator?
There is quite a valid reason for this, but I’ll get to that a bit later.
I’ve a single point to make on this page: that Kyon is the most unique character in anime (and that he contributes to the greatness that is Haruhi).
To back up this point, I’m going to look at two things.
- Kyon as a character
- Kyon as a narrator
Kyon is a powerful character. A very strong male lead with a case of intense sarcasm unmatched by most, if not all anime characters.
He alone drives most of the show’s comedy. We laugh because Kyon never laughs. Because his almost always emotionless exterior contrasts so heavily with his sarcastic and funny thoughts. Even when his “passion is running wild” over Mikuru in a bunny girl outfit, Kyon still dons the straightest of faces.
Do we laugh at Haruhi’s random thoughts and actions? Yes. Her getting dragged away while handing out fliers in a bunny girl outfit is hilarious. But Kyon is much funnier. Mikuru is emotionally hurt by the bunny girl event, and as she walks away, Kyon keeps his signature straight-line-for-a-mouth while thinking of all kinds of things. Mikuru just “failed to get into college” and “bought a house beyond [her] budget.” His wild imagination parallels that of Haruhi, yet his static exterior differs from Haruhi’s eccentric exterior, and it is this difference, as well as the contrast between his own thoughts and actions, that ultimately run this show.
Yet does this alone make Kyon the most unique (redundant, I know) character ever? No, it just qualifies him as a “great” character.
What really sets Kyon apart from the thousands of anime guys is not his strength as a character, but rather his status as a narrator.
Is there any other anime told in a quasi-first-person point of view? Yes.
Are any of them like Haruhi? No.
Why?
The answer lies in the screenshot above.
Kyon is the audience. He represents us in this strange world of Haruhi’s. He talks to us directly, saying whatever comes to mind. The anime is often even shot from Kyon’s point of view.
And he remains unnamed. Unnamed because he doesn’t need a name. He is us, and we are him. He is an audience member, a spectator in Haruhi’s world who observes Haruhi’s actions and makes his own remarks about everything, because that’s what we, as viewers, do. We watch the anime and think about it.
Not only this, but we also share Kyon’s thoughts. Although we may not be making sarcastic remarks at every corner, we believe what Kyon believes. “Deep in my heart, I wished that aliens, time travelers, ghosts, demons, espers, or evil organizations might pop up in front of me,” says Kyon, and so do I, and so do we. Kyon and us all share a wish that “common folk” really can go beyond “an ordinary life,” though we realize that “geniuses” are the ones who advance society. This desire to change something, to makes yourself known and remembered, and to simply live the “more fun” life that Haruhi strives for is compromised by the harshness of reality.
We want to sprout wings and fly. We want to meet an alien, a time traveler, an esper. We want to lead the abnormal, extraordinary life that we know will not happen, that Kyon wishes for, that Haruhi wishes for.
Yet at the same time, Kyon is a character. Kyon is more than just an observer. He can actually talk with Haruhi. He can see Yuki, Mikuru, and Koizumi every day after school. He lives in Haruhi’s world. He lives in the world that she alters on a whim, the world that we and Kyon have dreamt of for so long.
Because Kyon is a character, he can do more than we can. Because Kyon represents the audience, he can directly transfer his experiences to us. In effect, we explore the fantastic world of Haruhi through Kyon’s eyes. We see what he sees, he hear what he hears, and we feel what he feels. This gives life to the anime, and brings out our inner childish wonder, the desire for fairy tales to come true. Haruhi makes these fairy tales come true simply because we are inside of the anime as Kyon.
Kyon is the only character in anime who can truly fulfill the “normal person thrust into an abnormal world” stereotype. That Bleach guy? That Blood+ girl? Those Yu Yu Hakusho guys? Is there any other anime character who fits this role more than Kyon? IMO, hell no.
Goku’s story may have been the most epic in all of anime, but did Goku really connect with us? What about Lelouch? Or Chidori? Keiichi? Has there ever been somebody besides Kyon who made us, the audience, feel that we were in their shoes, experiencing the immersion into a world where dreams come true? As far as I know, there’s been none.
Had Kyon been a girl, he could’ve topped Mikoto.
Kyonko is cheating.
P.S.: Lol, I actually used my brain.
all i got out of this was
“poor kyon, he hasn’t even gotten to see mikuru naked once, even after all the haruhi instigated raep and molestation incidents”
A couple years late, but a good analysis nonetheless. May I direct you here for another excellent post on the unique narrative structure of Haruhi Suzumiya?
http://animegeijitsu.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/the-rediscovery-of-haruhi-suzumiya/
So if Kyon is the image of a youth that has given up on dreams and given into the grind of daily life, and Kyon is also an extension of ourselves, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that the story of Haruhi Suzumiya is about saying that a little bit of pointless fun and idle dreaming in life ain’t all that bad.
@jersey: Bah!
@kadian: Yeah, well, I typed this up after having [re]seen only episode one. D:
And yeah, that’s pretty much the theme of the series, except it’s also not the theme. It sure as hell applies to episodes 7 – 14, but the main arc tells a more fantastic tale separate from the “pointless fun and idle dreaming.” [Though you could say that “Ponytails turn me on” reverts all the insanity back to normality.]
That was quite the awesome post in the link, by the way.
Stumble across here from otaku.fm 🙂
I do like Kyon myself but I never put a really deep thought into it, but what you said make a lot of sense. I had spent sometime thinking about why he is nameless, but your analysis make a lot of sense 🙂
Interesting. I actually forgot that Kyon is not the real name. ^_^;
Or that Kyon never laughs. Poor Kyon.
@Wolfheinrich, ookini: Yeah, the first time you watch Haruhi, you don’t really pay close attention to everything.
Kyon is one serious man.
I am keenly aware of the importance of Kyon as the Narrator, but I never drew the connection between Kyon as part of the audience-us.
I wish I had something more substantial to say than “great post”. I’m just not as witty as Kyon.
Despite what you said, I found myself connecting more with Haruhi than Kyon when watching the series for the first time. Partially because I had assumed that _I_ was responsible for the creation of life, the universe & everything, but that’s another story. Really, it’s Haruhi’s feelings of inadequacy that make her feel the need to compensate for what she believes is her inconsequential existence, which is something I experienced in high school and something that I have since come to terms with.
…Wait, why am I bothering to develop my character in some guy’s comment section?
what can i say bout tis….
if you are given an essay on Suzumiya Haruhi…
=.= you will get an A+ but not the best…
to sum it up…
go spend some quality time thinking about ur life than to think of haruhi-ism
or Kyon…
Thought-provoking stuff. If you’re right, and the audience identifies with Kyon (and I think you are right), and OGT’s right that the story’s partly Kyon ‘(very gradually) learning to enjoy non-reality’, does the audience take part in that process too? It strikes me that ‘enjoying non-reality’ is part of how we buy into fiction in the first place.
Kyon’s an everyman character. He’s a particularly thorough example (remaining unnamed is taking things quite far), but there’s no unbridgeable gap separating him from other anime characters (I suppose it’s a difference in degree not kind), let alone from characters in other media. It feels to me like a novelistic technique, which would make sense given that he narrates the novels.
Soooo . . . have you read Genette’s Narrative Discourse?
I hardly put attention to male characters when the heroine is a girl, but in this show Kyon is a very representative male character (the support one) who leads in the successfull Haruhi’s anime show..
Concured… Haruhi is awesome, very awesome, but Kyon is just as awesome in his own way, being a male character, he’d be epic as a female, but thinking it trough he probably wouldn’t have as much “charm” as a female, also Koizumi being Gay wouldn’t be as fun.
@Wolfheinrich: Haha, well, of course! Kyon being the narrator is pretty obvious. Sorry if my previous comment was a tad unclear. 😛
@Super Spong Brothers: Yeah, I felt myself connecting more with Haruhi (and still do), but I think the Kyon – audience link is more subconscious-ish. We are like Kyon, though we want to be like Haruhi… so we connect with Haruhi’s determination for weirdness rather than Kyon’s realistic POV.
@Tohno: Maybe I’ll go even more crazy when To Aru Kagaku no Railgun comes out!
@The Animanachronism: I do think that the audience is part of the enjoying non-reality scheme. We certainly aren’t directly enjoying it, but we sure are trying to. Enjoying unrealistic things are something that we subconsciously desire, and it is quite true that that’s one of the greatest appeals of fiction. Still, Haruhi is quite the oddball in the “enjoying non-reality” line of shows in that it immerses you deeper than any other anime via an almost first-person point of view (which allows us to better experience this non-reality). [I went kind of off topic, sorry]
The view of Kyon as a commonplace character is certainly true. He is so common that even his name isn’t given, allowing us to connect with him even more. We are the common people who sit back and watch the geniuses change the world, as Kyon puts it.
I guess it could just be that I like the narration of Haruhi rather than Kyon himself… *shifty eyes*
I don’t read books. (Where’s the damn screen on those things?!)
@phossil: Definitely. I rarely even pay attention to male characters (though in this case, it’s pretty hard not to, given the way Haruhi is told!)
@bob: Koizumi being what?
He might not have as much charm as Kyonko… but son’t you think that Haruhi would have it even worse as a guy? (Haruki = do not want)
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I never went so far as to consider Kyon the lone everyman character who shows us the world that Haruhi lives in. I’m sure we may identify with him to an extent but on my initial and subsequent viewings of HSnY I see Kyon as a classic example of an unreliable narrator. Oftentimes we have no knowledge of whether Kyon is narrating or not. Sometimes he might speak directly to the audience and at times his thoughts tend to contradict the situation or how he responds to the situation. It makes me think there is so much more to Kyon we have yet to see.
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