The Atrocity of Haruhi Suzumiya's Paperback Cover

Augh! Do you see this cover?? It's horrible!! I recently picked up the novel translation for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Yen Press. A friend of mine at the comic book store told me that it was released, but I didn't realize it looked like this >_<

I didn't realize that there is a hardcover WITH the official Noizi Ito cover, which cost a bit more than the CAN$9.99 pricetag of this one. BUT I'd rather pay more to have a better than cover than this piece of... dung. So right now it has been shipped from Amazon. I'm under the impression that the hardcover edition is only available through online... but I haven't proven this yet.

The inside back doesn't make it any better... I wasn't aware that neon is back in style. Ugh... It's like a rainbow taking a puke over my masterpiece that is the Haruhi Suzumiya novel. I personally don't mind if they redesign to make it look different than the Japanese version, but if only it's a good design! This is an atrocity!

The back is pretty simple and straightforward describing the inside of the book. Still if you see the original Japanese cover, this is prety much junk.

At least the colour pages are intact and they're translated it too. I loves my Noizi Ito art.

The novel translation itself is pretty good. I did read the Baka Tsuki translation last year and saw that this is pretty similar to that translation. I am a bit annoyed that the "Integrated Data Entity" has been simply translated as "Data Overmind", but that was nothing compared to the cover (yeah, sorry, I'm not letting that cover atrocity go). I'm pleased with Koizumi's "organization" translated into "agency" instead of Bandai's "syndicate" that they used for the anime.

The following picture shows the last few pages of the last chapter, so it may be a spoiler if you plan to read it, but I'm assuming everyone has watched the anime at some point.

Not very pleased with their font usage though... This is the part where Yuki is typing in the computer. I would love to see it in some kind of computer font thing instead of Extra Bold Gill Sans. Yeah, I'm too damn familiar with fonts nowadays. Occupational hazard...

Overall I'm happy to finally read it again in my hands. I read it within a week. I took these pictures before I lend it to a co-worker of mine. I personally wouldn't mind not getting it back since I have the hardcover on order anyway and I will read it again. It's one of my favourite books and heck probably one of the only novels I'll read ever since I finished the Shakugan no Shana novels. I hope Yen Press release the second volume soon and hope they rethink of the design for the paperback version, because to me it doesn't attract attention and these books DESERVE attention!