alternate worlds | Dr. Grob's Animation Review

Directors: Tatsuya Ishihara & Yasuhiro Takemoto
Release date: February 6, 2010
Rating: ★★★
Review:

It is not wise to watch a feature film based on a series. The film presumes an audience already familiar with the characters and with several if not all of the episodes of the series, making it more difficult for a novice to watch.

‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ is no exception to this rule. Following the acclaimed anime series ‘The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya’ (which I’ve never seen) the film clearly takes off after the series, even though it’s based on a separate novel within the original book series (actually the fourth of no less than thirteen).

Main protagonist of the film is high school student Kyon, a rather timid member of “the SOS Brigade”, featuring his four friends. In some of the first scenes this troupe prepares for a Christmas party. All looks pretty ordinary, but we soon learn that apart from Kyon himself these high school students are actually time travelers, robots and espers. We see little of that, however, because one morning Kyon awakes in a much more mundane world, where Haruhu Suzumiya indeed has disappeared (hence the title), and his friends Yuki Nagato and Mikuru Asahina have turned into perfectly ordinary schoolgirls. Thus, how outlandish the series may have been, most of this film is surprisingly prosaic in its looks and its nature. Only after 100 minutes some of the spirit of the original series returns (we apparently even go back to events from a previous episode).

‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ is a strikingly heady movie. We’re inside Kyon’s mind and thoughts a lot of the time, and in one bizarre scene we even watch him in a discussion with himself. Throughout the film we maintain with this character, and we even literally watch the world through his eyes: a recurring theme in this movie is Kyon opening his eyes to the world, which is depicted as if we were Kyon himself.

‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ knows high production values: there are the usual intricate background paintings, the lighting is beautiful, the character animation is fine, even if the designs are disappointingly generic, and there’s a high number of special effects, including moving backgrounds rendered in computer animation. Nevertheless, the film never really transcends the high school meets science fiction trope, and Kyon’s revelation, that he should be content with the world he lives in, is as predictable as it is banal. Moreover, I felt that the mundane version of Nagato was too easily discarded, as she clearly had Kyon something to offer, unique to this version of the world. ‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ is in no sense a bad movie, but certainly a slow and heady one, with a lot of voice over, and of lesser interest to anyone not familiar with the original series.

Watch the trailer for ‘The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya’ yourself and tell me what you think: