Bandai Entertainment will produce and distribute the North American edition of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of the most eagerly anticipated anime releases of 2007.  Kadokawa Pictures U.S.A. is the master licensor for the property and will handle all licensing matters. 

Based on a series of 'light' novels by Nagaru Tanigawa (and illustrated by Noizi Ito) that appeared in the seinen (young men's) novel magazine Sneaker, the cult hit anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (which takes its name from the first of the eight novels in the on-going series) ran on Japanese TV from April to July in 2006.  The 14-episode series has developed a real following in Japan where its adherents are known as 'Haruhiists' and the first two Haruhi Suzumiya DVDs sold nearly 100,000 copies each.  The property has spawned two manga series and has become an Internet phenomenon.  Fansub versions of the anime have been very popular in North America and within 24 hours of its launch last week, the MySpace page devoted to the series jumped into the Top 50 most viewed MySpace pages.

Like the novels the anime series focuses on the activities of an eccentric young high school girl (Haruhi Suzumiya) who forms a high school club (the S.O.S. Brigade in which the acronym can be loosely translated as 'Save the World by Overloading It With Fun') to look for (and play with) espers, aliens, people from the future and alternate worlds (and to keep Haruhi from getting bored). Eventually it becomes clear that Huruhi has superhuman powers to alter the universe and that all the members of her S.O.S. Brigade save for the cynical narrator Kyon are precisely the sort of extraordinary characters that the club is attempting to locate.

With the series of novels, the manga, the anime and a wealth of merchandising potential this property could prove to be a very interesting phenomenon for pop culture retailers.  Look for more announcements about Haruhi Suzumiya North American licenses throughout 2007.