The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

Overview

I finally got around to watching The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya after finishing the series a month ago. It was a good watch, but it’s also a very long watch for an animated movie, running for over 2 hours and 40 minutes.

If you’re looking for this movie to provide an actual end to the Haruhi series then you’ll be disappointed to know that the end of this movie is basically just as open as the ending of the series was. However, if you’re looking for more of your favorite SOS Brigade then this is definitely the movie for you.

Once again we follow Kyon as the protagonist as he tries to make sense of the strange situation he’s been put in. However, there is one striking difference between what happened on this December day compared to all the other strange things he’s gone through with the SOS Brigade; Haruhi is nowhere to be found.

Upgrades and Downgrades

The movie did some things better than the original series, but there were also some parts of the original series I liked more. One of the more standard differences between the two is that the movie has better animation than the series did which is a plus.

The characters, however, I have some mixed opinions on. Kyon wasn’t much different from before which is good because I already liked him as a character. Koizumi and Asahina also didn’t see any real character changes either, which is fine, but I would have liked to see more of these characters and learn more about them.

Nagato was the main character who we learn more about in the movie. In the show she was a fairly one-dimensional character with some exceptions such as when she expressed interest in joining the computer club. In the movie, we get to see different sides of Nagato we never saw before and I really think this helped to solidify her as a good character.

As you may be able to tell from the title of the movie, there wasn’t enough Haruhi screen time. Along with Kyon, Haruhi is the character with the most personality and that’s what makes her an interesting character. Of course I want to see more Haruhi in a Haruhi movie, but her disappearance was done well.

Also we do get to see more of the long-haired Haruhi which I don’t think has been around since the first episode of the series, so that’s always a plus.

Other than the animation quality and the amount of screen time different characters get, the movie wasn’t actually all that different from the series, which isn’t a bad thing at all. We still got the OP near the beginning of the movie, but I was a bit disappointed that there was no familiar ED when the credits started (I didn’t watch through all of the credits).

Conclusion

While I really liked the movie, I don’t feel like I can actually give it a rating any higher than what I gave to the series back when I finished that. It slightly improves on the series, but overall it’s more of a continuation than a real improvement. With this in mind, I ended up giving The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya a 7/10.

Eight years later, I’m not sure if we’ll ever see a real end to Haruhi, but while I’m a bit sad about that, I do like open endings because they let the viewers come up with their own conclusions. It’s just not as much fun if everything is neatly finished without anything left to be thought about.