Haruhi Suzumiya (character) - Personality

Personality

Throughout the series, Haruhi's personality is shown as having many different facets, something that is often connected to her supernatural abilities and their use. She is noted as being very intelligent, athletic, and naturally talented at nearly everything that she sets out to do. Coupled with her short attention span and tendency to grow bored easily, this leads to her joining and quiting every after school activity club. This is set against a front of coldness and indifference to anything that she considers normal and uninteresting, until her encounter with Kyon causes her to become more open.

As the leader of the SOS Brigade, Haruhi shows a startling degree of self-centeredness, she is often seen bullying her members into agreeing with her many ridiculous ideas, especially Mikuru Asahina, whom she habitually forces to change into various cosplay outfits whenever she grows bored. For example; she blackmails the president of the Computer Club into giving the SOS Brigade a brand new state of the art computer by setting him up, taking a photograph of him supposedly sexually harassing the unaware Mikuru.

Haruhi has a very competitive personality, and accepts any challenge that she comes across without hesitation, regardless of difficulty or time constraint. Her constant optimism and over-confidence causes others to view her as arrogant. While she is competitive and quite intelligent, her brashness leads to her being unable to make tactical decisions, and she often rushes head first into anything that she considers a worthy challenge. She has impossibly high standards, and won't accept anything less than perfection from herself and her Brigade. She is quite complacent and has fairly unrealistic expectations of her Brigade members, especially Kyon, to get accomplish the tasks that she sets out for them, regardless of what they may be. This often leads to her appearing to be selfish and unfair.

She seems to enjoy being the center of attention, as her various 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 automatically fun. She has very little regard for what constitutes as normal behavior, as seen when she actively changes clothes in public, even when surrounded by classmates. When it comes to her relationship with Mikuru, she is both physically playful and domineering. She often comments on Mikuru's attractiveness and seems to find enjoyment in exploiting it to her own ends, often forcing Mikuru into and out of various cosplay, such as bunny girl, nurse, and maid outfits, as if she (and to a lesser extent herself) were a human dress-up doll.

Haruhi also does her best to show no signs of weakness, the few times that she shows signs of vulnerability are when she's alone with Kyon. She also has trouble with accepting words of graditude; following her concert performance at the school's culture festival when Yuki and herself filled in for two members of the band ENOZ, Haruhi reacted awkwardly when the band members thanked her the following day. As Kyon pointed out, Haruhi was not used to receiving praise because of her tendency to act mischievously towards others in the pursuit of her abnormal interests.

Although a number of Haruhi's conscious efforts are devoted to the discovery of supernatural beings and events, she is still a rational human being. While she undoubtedly hopes that supernatural phenomena exist, some part of her still understands that such things may be impossible in their universe. For example; although Haruhi attempts to contact aliens during the Japanese holiday of Tanabata three years prior to the events of the series, she still dismissed Kyon when he posits that the other members of the SOS Brigade (Yuki, Mikuru, and Itsuki) are supernatural creatures, stating that it's 'too convenient' to be true. At another point; Haruhi's encounter ith several gargantuan alien-like beings within closed-space prompted no notable degree of shock from her, but later she chalks up the whole experience to being a dream. During the early events of the series Itsuki states that Haruhi does not force Yuki, Mikuru, or himself, to reveal their true selves to her because; subcounsciously, her common sense will not allow her to believe that they exist. Itsuki; however, has been known to bring up several competing theories, so this alone is not definitive proof of her subconscious denial.

Haruhi has grown very attached to the SOS Brigade and its members, and has told Kyon that she has no intention of yielding her position as Chief to anyone else. She will go to any lengths; even through the exploitation of the brigade's members, to bring attention and support to her brigade. She often forces her whims onto others for the brigade's sake, such as procuring the room from the litterary club, obtaining computers from the computer club, forcing Kyon to create and maintain the SOS Brigade's website, participating in sports tournaments, and organizing city-wide searches for strange phenomenon, among other things. When she produced and directed the Brigade's amateur-movie The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina for the school arts festival, she did so without ever writing a script, showcasing her renowned spontaneity.