The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

Well since I did not grace Suzumiya Haruhi with a spot on my top 10 anime list and also raged about The Endless Eight, I shall now make amends by doing a post about the new Haruhi movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. This was yet again something I had been waiting for forever, pretty much since last spring and I can tell you that there were times when it was really difficult. Damn things take too long to get released on Blu-ray/DVD! Well, at least Haruhi had the decency to apologize:

That's Haruhi for you, always considerate of others. :')

So yeah, onwards to the movie! *drumroll and fanfare and what not*!

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

Kyon alone in the big bad world.

I'm not going to lie - I had huge expectations for this movie and I was not disappointed at all. I figured that after making us suffer through The Endless Eight (and I have to point out I've suffered through it TWICE), they just had to give some treat for us next for our effort to be worth it, and this movie was definitely a treat. I slightly did raise my eyebrows when I saw that it was nearly three hours long, but the movie was so well done that the length did not give it any disadvantage.

Let's start with the story. It was very much Haruhi-like (what we've come to expect of the Haruhi saga), but at the same time it was not. Familiar elements were in place and reused for new purposes, but as a new addition there was a sense of urgency and despair. Sure there have been serious situations in the series (*SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT*), such as getting stuck inside Closed Space, class president with malicious intent and murder on an island. Let's face it though, these situations did not awaken such feelings of urgency and despair, as in Closed Space we were focused on being curious about what the two of them would do there finally left alone,  class president didn't worry us because Nagato was there and murder on the island - who cares, it was a random granpa. This time though, in the movie, Kyon was alone. Completely alone. This takes the saga to a whole new level in my eyes, as up until now it was not much different from your average school comedy anime, apart from being way better than most and with lots of unique ideas woven into it. The movie however brings a deeper aspect to the happenings of the SOS-Brigade, making it all the more special as an anime saga.

This brings me nicely to the next topic - Kyon. Throughout the series he's had nearly the same attitude, though some times he seems to close the gap between him and Haruhi a bit but the next moment it has returned to what it was as if no progress had happened at all. In the movie however it is easy to see that he grows a lot - the Kyon in the beginning is almost completely different from the Kyon at the end. His monologues are really deep and he makes some very important observations about himself during the course of the movie. 

We are shown some new sides to all of the other characters as well, though I am not going to say what these were and for whom as it is better to just see the movie yourself for those as they are quite crucial details in my opinion. I have to say that this makes me very eager to see what comes next in the Haruhi saga and how the characters will keep developing.

Now to one of my favorite topics, even if Nana had nothing to do with it this time - the seiyuu. Hirano Aya does an amazing job as Haruhi's voice yet again, as was to be expected. She is an excellent seiyuu in her other roles as well, but somehow nothing quite compares to how she pulls off Haruhi. Kyon's seiyuu, Sugita Tomokazu (who also is the seiyuu of Hoshi in AUtB, just had to throw that out there), does a great job and nicely keeps up the atmosphere in the movie with all the emotion he puts into the different states of mind we see with Kyon. Chihara Minori as Nagato does the different kind of Nagato very well and even graces us with quite the beautiful ending song, which is mainly just vocals. A very pretty song and the only vocals -approach works really well with the general feel of the movie. Very good choice.

The art in the movie is really beautiful and most of the scenery is simply breath-taking. I would show you one of my favorites, but alas, it was during an important scene in the movie and hence would spoil very much... so you'll just have to take my word for it for now. ;)

I shall leave it at that I think, and as a parting gift here is valuable piece of wisdom from Haruhi-chan:

Do it, or ELSE!