Though he is the narrator, he isn’t the main character, Haruhi Suzumiya is. He is interesting because of the style he tells the story in. For example, the entire story is about a reality warper who is unaware of her ability, a time traveller, ESPer, and alien, along with Kyon, the only normal human, who try to stop the reality warper from unknowingly ending the world by keeping her entertained.

It is advantageous over third person because if it wasn’t told from his view, it would lack the snappy style and sarcastic wit in many places. Of course, it could be conveyed in dialogue rather than thought, but the wit often comes out in dialogue AND thought, meaning there is twice as much. The more wit the better. Haha. Also he calls Haruhi an idiot, moron etc a LOT, but only in his head, because he’s afraid to invoke her wrath. He probably would say it to her face, if it couldn’t cause her to subconsciously destroy the universe.

“Damn them! What the hell, those damn teachers! They always get in the way!”
Unsure why she was so angry, I asked:
“Is there a problem?”
“I hadn’t even handed out half the fliers and in comes a stupid teacher asking us to stop handing them out! What the hell is wrong with him?”
You moron. If the teachers ignored something like students dressing up as bunny girls and handing out flyers at the school entrance, then that’d be abnormal!

He does think in a really interesting way, complains about stuff Haruhi forces him to do, and makes random observations about the workings of Haruhi’s mind, and then saying something so hilarious I fall out of my chair. Haha. Despite the moments that should be annoying, I never find them to be so. You’d be complaining too if you constantly had to run around looking for non-existent creatures, getting stuck in time loops, making a really stupid movie for a school festival, in which his friend is put into more and more dangerous situations, and nearly getting killed by giant blue things constructed by her subconscious.

I find the best part about him to be that in a group of five main characters, any one of whom could be used as narrator, it’s the normal, everyday guy who gets picked. It can’t be told from Haruhi’s perspective, because she doesn’t know she’s special, and she never knows about any of the weird things that happen. Furthermore, the time traveller, ESPer and alien are all aware of each other’s statuses, but Kyon, as a human, has no idea. This makes him a good reader-surrogate, because when they explain to him, it’s being explained to us.

In conclusion, the series would not be as good if Kyon wasn’t the narrator.