This is a list of the characters featured in the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise, written by Nagaru Tanigawa and illustrated by Noizi Ito, which contains a multitude of other secondary, and minor characters who are introduced throughout the course of the series. The main characters in the series are the five members of the SOS Brigade, including the titular Haruhi Suzumiya.
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SOS Brigade members
The SOS Brigade is an unofficial club at North High School, founded by Haruhi Suzumiya to investigate mysterious events.
Kyon
Kyon (キョン) is the protagonist of the series. Kyon's real name is never given, and everyone calls him by his nickname, given to him by his aunt.
Kyon is a student at North High with a laid-back and sarcastic attitude. He's drawn to Haruhi's unusual approach to life and begins talking to her daily before class. Kyon is often annoyed by Haruhi's demands, but in The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, he comes to the realization that he always goes along with them without hesitation, meaning that he enjoys the activities Haruhi orchestrates more than the dullness of ordinary life; he likens himself to a boy who complains about the lunches his mother prepares for him even though he won't make his own.
Yuki, Mikuru, and Itsuki reveal what they are to Kyon, saying they believe him to be a key figure because he is the only normal human Haruhi chose to interact with and because he has led to her behavior becoming more unsettled than in recent years. Kyon meets a middle-school-age Haruhi while time-traveling, introducing himself to her as "John Smith", and was the one who painted the hieroglyph in the field. Later in the series he more openly expresses his fondness for Haruhi in his narrative (though not in conversation), expressing a profound enthusiasm for seeing her happy. He becomes uncomfortable when he meets with other girls on a one-on-one basis and goes to great lengths to prevent Haruhi from finding out about these encounters.
In an interview, Nagaru Tanigawa admitted that Kyon was to be an esper in his original conception, but while writing The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon was instead changed into an ordinary student. He is the main character of the spin-off series The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan. In The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya, Kyon time leaps and briefly meets a college-age Haruhi with another version of himself on campus, where the two appear to be close.
Haruhi Suzumiya
Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮 ハルヒ, Suzumiya Haruhi) is the title character, the heroine, and leader of the SOS Brigade, whose energetic and eccentric character proves to be the driving force for the series. She has a mind for adventure which often leads her subordinates to be swept into her plans. Haruhi's goal is to find aliens, time travelers and espers. While smart, beautiful, and energetic, Haruhi was eyed as an oddball ever since middle school: She set all the desks from her classroom out into the hallway, painted stars on the roofs, and even drew a huge hieroglyph on the school field (though this was later shown to be Kyon). Haruhi cannot stand boredom so she comes up with activities for the SOS Brigade, making them participate whether they like it or not. In the sixth grade, Haruhi felt she was no longer special after going to a baseball game and realizing she was one in a sea of people. After that she set out to make her life interesting and unique. What Haruhi does not know is that she has the power to change the world as she pleases. By subconsciously using it, she gathers Mikuru Asahina, Itsuki Koizumi, and Yuki Nagato into one place: the SOS Brigade. The story is indirect in saying how much Yuki, Mikuru and Itsuki know about each other.
She is an important character in the spin-off series The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan. She retains her character from The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, in which she has no powers to alter reality and is a normal high school girl who attends Kouyouen Academy with Itsuki Koizumi. She retains her goal of finding aliens, time travelers and espers, as well as her energetic and eccentric character. However, she is much more open about her feelings for Kyon; she takes him out on a date in "Be My Valentine", and in "Her Melancholy", when asked if she is in love with Kyon, she gives a neutral answer.
In an interview, Tanigawa stated that the idea for the character came during a sleepless night at the beginning of the 21st century. Haruhi is considered to have tsundere character traits but is perceived by some as "too energetic" to be a true tsundere. In 2009, IGN ranked her nineteenth on their list of top 25 anime characters.
Yuki Nagato
Yuki Nagato (長門 有希, Nagato Yuki) is a bibliophile humanoid interface that was created by the god-like figure called the Data Integration Thought Entity. Yuki's responsibilities involve monitoring Haruhi and the investigation of an unexplained "explosion of data" three years before the present story. She can manipulate her surrounding environment, or "data" as quoted by her. Yuki is usually very terse but can speak at length when it has to do with her mission or a problem that has arisen. While she always seems engrossed in her reading, she comments that she is only relatively interested in them. Yuki gives hints and aid to Kyon. Due to her extraterrestrial nature, she almost never displays involuntary emotional responses or tics, but there are times when she shows interest in things, such as programming computer games and playing them, as well as reading.
In The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya novel and film, the unpleasant emotions developed throughout the series, caused by the people around her, make her wish for a normal world, and she betrays the Data Integration Thought Entity and the SOS Brigade to make her wish reality. After the situation is resolved, the Data Integration Thought Entity contemplates withdrawing Yuki from Earth due to the danger her instability poses; this is an ongoing subplot for the remainder of the series.
She is also the heroine of the spin-off series The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan. In this series, Nagato is a drastically altered version of her character from The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya: she is not a bibliophile (in "Someday in the Rain" Kyon goes so far as to say she has never shown the least interest in books), and instead plays portable video games obsessively, even neglecting sleep to do so. She has a crush on Kyon (her classmate in this universe) and idolizes Haruhi Suzumiya, admiring her confidence and sense of personal pride. In "Give Me Your Hand..." she has an accident, a near-hit with a car that possesses her with a different personality, the quiet and stoic character shown in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. With her inevitable disappearance drawing near, she confesses to Kyon before she disappears with the other Yuki taking her place.
Mikuru Asahina
Mikuru Asahina (朝比奈 みくる, Asahina Mikuru) is a time traveler from the distant future who is assigned to investigate the reason behind the inability to travel to any point more than three years before the present story. Mikuru is a soft-spoken girl, the lowest in her Time Travelers' Committee. At the beginning of the series, she is kidnapped by Haruhi and regularly used as sex appeal. She often tries to explain what is going on but is heavily censored by an undisclosed future technology which makes her say "classified information" in place of anything she is not authorized to speak about to people of the past. Haruhi loves dressing up Mikuru in (usually embarrassing) outfits, claiming that she is the "mascot" of the SOS Brigade.
Kyon appears to have a crush on her. Haruhi is jealous of her and Kyon's relationship at first, but later in the series is increasingly unconcerned with their interactions. Despite this, Mikuru remains terrified of her. In the anime and novels Mikuru discourages Kyon from acting upon any feelings that he may have for her, explaining that he is Haruhi's "chosen person." In The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya light novel she implies that if he is nice to her, bad things will continue to befall her. She is also a supporting character in the spin-off series The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, in which she is not a time traveler but retains her character from The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.
Itsuki Koizumi
Itsuki Koizumi (古泉 一樹, Koizumi Itsuki) is an esper who, like the other members of "The Agency," suddenly acquired the power to explore "Closed Space" and combat the Celestials that Haruhi Suzumiya creates when she is stressed three years before the present story. He is fairly carefree and always smiling. Kyon is annoyed by his habit of putting his face close to that of the person he is talking to, his arguing contradictory theories for rhetorical purposes, and his half-joking insinuations of a romance between Kyon and Haruhi, and often threatens to hit him. He openly expresses fondness for the other SOS Brigade members, Kyon and Haruhi in particular, but explains to Kyon that Mikuru, or anyone, could be putting up a fake personality and deceiving everyone.
Unlike Mikuru, Itsuki believes that aliens, time travelers, and espers would not normally exist, and were created three years ago when Haruhi wished for them to exist. He is also a supporting character in the spin-off series The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan in which he is not an esper, but a normal high school boy who attends Kouyouen Academy with Haruhi Suzumiya. He retains the same character he had in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya where he is in love with Haruhi.
Yasumi Watahashi
Yasumi Watahashi (渡橋 泰水, Watahashi Yasumi) is a student who briefly joins the Brigade in the tenth novel, claiming to be a first-year student at North High. She is instead a literal deus ex machina, created by Haruhi to block Sasaki's interactions with Kyon. When the crisis is resolved, she disappears from existence with Haruhi believing she was a middle school student who sneaked into the brigade. When written out in katakana, her name forms an anagram for 'I am Suzumiya' ("Watahashi wa Suzumiya").
Other North High students
Ryoko Asakura (朝倉 涼子, Asakura Ryōko)
Voiced by: Natsuko Kuwatani (Japanese); Bridget Hoffman (English)
Ryoko is Yuki's backup and, as such, is another "humanoid interface." Like Yuki, she finds it difficult to empathize with humans. Unlike Yuki, she possesses exceptional social skills, and successfully passes herself off as a compassionate and hard-working high school girl. Her enormous popularity made her the unanimous choice for class president of Kyon's homeroom. She is unable to befriend Haruhi in order to better observe her, so when she notices Kyon successfully interacting with Haruhi, she encourages him to "open her up to the class". She later tries to kill Kyon with a combat knife in the hopes of catalyzing an observable reaction from Haruhi. Yuki stops her and removes her from the school, using the cover story that Ryoko moved to Canada. Ryoko returns in the light novel The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya, fulfilling her role as Yuki's backup when Yuki is disabled by the Heavenly Canopy Domain. However, the Data Integration Thought Entity still regards her as a risk due to her attempt to kill Kyon, and she is given limited authority to act.
An alternate version of Ryoko appears in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. In this story Yuki alters reality to make herself a normal human, and remakes Ryoko into a protector for her. She is destroyed by another Yuki that came from a few months later in order to restore reality to its former state.
In the spin-off miniseries The Melancholy of Haruhi-chan Suzumiya, she appears as a chibi form dubbed 'Achakura' as the result of a failed reincarnation, and moves in with Yuki after she saves Achakura from a cat. She is subject to pranks from Yuki, such as being transported around in a baby carrier or dressed up like a Hinamatsuri doll. In Nyorōn Churuya-san, her appearance is similar to Tsuruya/Churuya and she has a crush on Kyon. She is one of the main characters in the spin-off manga, The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan. In Yuki-chan, she has none of her psychopathic tendencies, and instead serves as a neighbour and sisterly/motherly figure for Nagato - doing things like waking her up and making her dinner. In this reality, she actually does move to Canada to study.
Tsuruya (鶴屋)
ENOZ
ENOZ is an all-girl student band featured in "Live a Live" and its anime adaptation "Live Alive", though the band is not named in "Live a Live". The name derives from the last names of the members: Enomoto, Nakanishi, Okajima, and Zaizen. During the high school festival Enomoto (lead singer and guitarist) has tonsillitis and Nakanishi (guitar) suffers a sprained wrist, so Haruhi and Yuki fill in for the missing members. In "Live a Live", the band consists of only three members; the singer/guitarist was split into two characters for "Live Alive".
In "Live a Live" the impromptu band performs a full set, while in "Live Alive" they only perform two songs, "God Knows" and "Lost My Music", with Haruhi explaining that she and Yuki didn't have time to learn any more. The episode trims both songs down as inserts. "God Knows" has all of the song save for about half of the guitar solos during the beginning and end, and the entire second stanza and chorus. "Lost My Music" barely finishes the first stanza and chorus, leaving the second and third out.
"God knows" and "Lost My Music" were included in the soundtrack EP Suzumiya Haruhi no Tsumeawase (涼宮ハルヒの詰合 ~TVアニメ「涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱」劇中歌集シングル~). The sole vocals for ENOZ are sung by Japanese pop singer and voice actress Aya Hirano, who voices the main character of the series, Haruhi Suzumiya. In addition, Hirano sings the main opening and ending themes for the series. (See a listing of Haruhi Suzumiya albums.) Susumu Nishikawa (西川 進) plays the guitar, Takeshi Taneda (種子田 健) the bass, and Yutaka Odawara (小田原 豊) the drums. In the English version, the songs are performed by Wendee Lee, Haruhi's voice actress.
ENOZ is a homage to the real life all-girl J-pop band Zone. Its name is simply "Zone" spelled backwards.
The members of ENOZ are:
Miyuki Enomoto (榎本 美夕紀, Enomoto Miyuki)
Voiced by: Mai Kadowaki (Japanese); Michelle Ruff (English)
Is the lead singer and guitarist in the band (the Italia Mondial II Woody Deluxe Woodtop used by Haruhi is hers).
Agency
The Agency is an organization of espers who believe that Haruhi had converted them into espers in the year 0. Among the members of the Agency are:
Keiichi Tamaru (多丸 圭一, Tamaru Keiichi)
Voiced by: Kazuhiko Inoue (Japanese); Dave Wittenberg (English)
Supposedly a distant relative of Itsuki Koizumi's. He is a wealthy middle-age man who has a private villa on a small isolated isle. He played a part in the murder mysteries, as well as the other three agency members, that were meant to alleviate Haruhi's boredom.
Yutaka Tamaru (多丸 裕, Tamaru Yutaka)
Voiced by: Toshiyuki Morikawa (Japanese); Vic Mignogna (English)
Keiichi Tamaru's purported younger brother. Koizumi suggested that Keiichi and Yutaka merely pretend to be brothers.
Sonou Mori (森 園生, Mori Sonou)
Voiced by: Akane Omae (Japanese); Hynden Walch (English)
She leads negotiations with Mikuru Asahina's captors in The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya, suggesting that she has a higher ranking position in the Agency. She appeared as a maid in the murder mysteries. In The Melancholy of Haruhi-chan Suzumiya, Mori has an estranged relationship with Tsuruya as she constantly receives an uneasy feeling when Mori is around. They engage in a battle scene when attending a mall exhibition. The reason for their hatred is unknown. However, it seems they can put aside their differences for a while as shown in the light novels, when they laugh when they couldn't resist punching the fruit instead of picking it. Mori appears regularly in The Melancholy of Haruhi-chan Suzumiya parody manga, often as a pawn or victim of Koizumi's or Suzumiya's games and plots, sometimes forced to act or dress in a manner offending her sensibilities.
Sasaki's group
Fujiwara (藤原, Fujiwara)
His real name is unknown. In The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya, he identifies himself as Fujiwara, a blatantly false name, since it references an ancient Japanese family. He is a time traveler, but his group "does not wish for the existence of time travelers, or for the possibility of time travel." Kyon notes that he seems to assume a sneering manner and cartoonishly villainous behavior in order to make people dislike him.
In The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya, he has a tense conversation with Kyon and Mikuru, holding an important item. He returns the item to them, explaining that it was a pre-determined event and that the object in question was "an important artifact for the future." He attempts to kidnap Mikuru later in the book. He returns in The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya, allied with Kuyoh Suoh and Kyoko Tachibana in an effort to transfer Haruhi's power to Sasaki. In The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya it is revealed that he is Mikuru's brother, and that his goal is to restore the original timeline in which Mikuru exists.
Kuyoh Suoh (周防 九曜, Suō Kuyō)
A humanoid interface created by the 'Canopy Dominion' rather than the Data Overmind that spawned Yuki Nagato and Emiri Kimidori. Kuyoh has extremely long hair and remains mainly unnoticed by human beings, most likely due to a form of data manipulation. Her purpose on Earth remains unclear, although her patrons have an interest in Haruhi. They are generally hostile to humanoid interfaces from Yuki's side. Kyon considers her to be much cruder than Nagato; she has difficulty with communicating, her words often nonsensical, and her sense of individuality is very weak. In an attempt to get closer to Haruhi, she dated Taniguchi for two months before realizing that she had mistaken him for Kyon.
When she fights Asakura Ryoko and Kimidori Emiri, they note that she does not require any requests or permission to alter data, as there was no data leaving or entering the space. The assumption for this is the Canopy Dominion does not have a consciousness, leaving a mystery behind why they have an interface on Earth.
Kyōko Tachibana (橘 京子, Tachibana Kyōko)
Other characters
Kyon's Little Sister (キョンの妹, Kyon no Imōto)
Voiced by: Sayaka Aoki (Japanese); Kari Wahlgren (English)
Not much is revealed about Kyon's fifth-grade sister; not even her real name is given. Other characters simply refer to the ten-year-old as 'Kyon's (Younger) Sister' or Little Sis (妹ちゃん, Imōto-chan). She has relatively few speaking lines in the anime, though she appears in The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina: Episode 00, episode six, and fourteen, fulfilling the duties of an irrepressible younger sister. She has an even smaller role in the original novels than in the anime. Usually, her presence is made apparent when Kyon is at home.
She is carefree, happy and playful and is the force behind the use of the nickname "Kyon"; after she heard their aunt call her older brother such, she started using the nickname as well in front of his school friends. From there, the name spread and stuck. She seems to get along well with all of the SOS Brigade, especially with Mikuru and Tsuruya, sharing a sister-like relationship with them. In the manga Kyon sees a similarity between his sister and Haruhi, especially when they are playing detectives.
Okabe (岡部)
Voiced by: Eiji Yanagisawa (Japanese); Michael McConnohie (English)
The homeroom teacher of Kyon and Haruhi's class. He is in charge of the handball club at the school. First name remains unknown.
Miyoko "Miyokichi" Yoshimura (吉村 美代子（ミヨキチ）, Yoshimura Miyoko)
A girl whom Kyon wrote about when forced to come up with a romantic story for a Literary club assignment. Although Kyon appeared to have had a romantic date with her, the truth was she was a classmate and friend of his sister. She had asked Kyon to accompany her to see a horror movie that required a guardian over the age of twelve.
Nakagawa (中河)