the minimal superpermutation problem asks how many symbols a string must have before it contains all $n!$ permutations of $\{1,\ldots,n\}$ as substrings. the haruhi problem asks for the most efficient way to watch the anime ``the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya'' in every way possible. remarkably, these two problems turn out to be equivalent. even more remarkably, the anime community has made more progress on this problem than the mathematicians! in this talk we will discuss an improved lower bound to the minimal superpermutation problem that was recently discovered on 4chan, as well as the anime theoretic motivation for considering this problem. as time permits we will also briefly discuss de brujin sequences. this talk will be entirely self contained and assume no prior knowledge of anime.