The best way to bring joy and excitement into a lonely male protagonist’s life is through exciting experiences out in the real world, and Uzaki and Haruhi are both masters of the craft. Naturally, Uzaki’s cat cafés and Pokémon Go trips can’t really compare to reality warper Haruhi’s giant bug battles and murder mysteries in terms of scale, but at least Sakurai is never in any danger when he hangs out with Uzaki. Kyon routinely has to work with the other club members to keep the fabric of the universe from unraveling as a result of Haruhi’s antics, and if he refuses to indulge her whims, she could inadvertently destroy the world.

We’d say that Haruhi’s approach is more effective, since the inherent danger forces Kyon to come out of his shell to a much greater degree than Sakurai. But both Sakurai and Kyon admit to themselves at some point that they’re happier being with their manic pixie dream girls than they were alone, so at least both sets of exciting experiences accomplished their goal.

Even though Haruhi is a beautiful and talented girl with an offbeat, fun-loving personality, she’s also kind of a horrible person. She sees nothing wrong with blackmail, drugging, and molestation as long as it amuses her, and the rest of the SOS Brigade just has to put up with it or else. Mikuru has to endure constant groping and humiliation, while poor Yuki got caught in a time loop for hundreds of years just because Haruhi didn’t want her summer vacation to end. It’s an interesting subversion of the “has no purpose other than brightening Main Character-kun’s life” aspect of the manic pixie dream girl trope, since Haruhi does all of these things for her own sake and drags Kyon along because she wants company. Still, just because she has depth doesn’t mean that she’s likeable, no matter what the show and her legions of fans may tell you.

Uzaki, on the other hand, has less nuance but feels like a more realistic and appealing character. She’s known Sakurai for a long time and doesn’t want him to wallow in solitude forever, so she latches onto him – first as a sort of project for herself, and then later as a genuine friendship. She’s certainly pushy and obnoxious, but she also cares for him when he’s sick and takes his feelings into account when she’s planning activities for them to do together. She may not be as independently minded as Haruhi, but we’d much rather hang out with her because she seems like a decent human being.