Jeez.

Kyon made the only right choice. Not just for himself, but for humanity. It's not like this was a choice between two equally "valid" worlds - on was (as far as we - and Kyon- knows, anyway) the real world, the original world. The other, an altered reality that changed the lives of probably hundreds; possibly millions of people - and not for the sake of the betterment of their lives, but for the sake of making the entire fucking universe meet the desires of one person. No one has the right to do that, and yes; Yuki's act was selfish in the extreme.

So - Kyon's action was not merely to pick the reality that was the "most fun", or the most convenient, but to set things right. Though his motives may not have been so noble as that, his course of action was the right one. The only right one.

How does this explanation justify your claim that KYON committed an act of genocide, exactly?

If we're really going to throw the "concrete future" card out there, Nagato knew three years in advance what she would do, what "choice" Kyon would make, and how his mission would turn out. The ultimate outcome of everything that transpired in this story was inevitable since before the start of the series. The only people who were "killed" were the people of the "Yukiverse," who never had a future in the first place, because again, the future is set in stone according to that theory.

I don't believe I said Kyon was responsible for it. I just said he had to pick between two equally nasty options (destroying the original world, or destroying the new one). Yuki's the one that gets full blame.

I can't argue with that. Just remember that my argument was concerning the original change, though, not Kyon's reversion.

All things that deal with time travel or the future depend greatly on ones impression of it.

However, in our terms, you cannot kill anyone in the future from the present because of a choice or a change because you can't kill something that doesn't exist. Despite Mikuru's explainations, the future is always in motion. We have seen that choices can be made and time altered, thus the future is not fixed. Thus you have Mikuru's people...what are they doing? Mikuru herself shouldn't be there at all, but she is...times two. Kyon shouldn't be able to go back in time, yet he does. Two weeks shouldn't be able to repeated, with variances, at all, yet they did....15,532 times. Even in a closed time loop it is possible for the instances to change, thus time is not fixed, no matter what Mikuru's people claim.

Mikuru's people most definitely DON'T think the future is fixed. Otherwise they wouldn't have been so damn careful about doing what they do.

The entire purpose of the time travellers going to the past was to protect their own future. Yes, it is true that the future haven't permanently changed "yet", but it is obvious that adult Mikuru is spending her working life dedicated to timeline consistency. If future was truly fixed and eternal, she wouldn't need to work so hard. In fact, she wouldn't need to do anything at all.

One could argue the future isn't so much fixed as being held in place. The time travellers have been building scaffolds and placing sandbags around the timeline to stop the future changing. Because if the future truly changed, it would be too late to do anything about it.

Imagine if the timeline was changed so that you were a completely different person. Your memories are all a lie, and worst yet you'd never know it happened.

I guess it "doesn't matter" since to the new "you" nothing actually happens. But hey, it's the lives of everyone in existence, and usually the decision is too big for someone to make for all of them. Unless of course, it was something like earth blowing up... But usually, you don't want to fiddle with these things.

Kyon did have his reasons.

Haha, I think we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. There wasn't any genocide at all, in the strictest sense of the word. People from the old world still existed in the new one by Yuki, no one disappeared, no one died. As far as Yuki was concerned, what needed to be changed was the students' memories and positions in society, nothing more. It'd be a bit extreme to call it genocide. :D

Furthermore, those changed weren't even aware of it. For all you know, those of the old world weren't destroyed at all, they may still be living happily in the backup program created by Yuki, waiting to be reactivated by Kyon.

Unless you want to discuss the philosophical meaning behind creating a new world then deleting its inhabitants and its equation to genocide, its would be safe to say no one was physically harmed in The Disappearance. (Except kyon perhaps; poor guy, his life is pushed around by the women around him) :heh:

Well, Asakura died. Again. Sort of. Hard to say with her, really.

Since she appeared again, I'd say that Yuki just converted her to raw data the first time around, since their people can't create data, it makes sense that they cannot destroy data either, just convert it into a different form. So Asakura likely went back into storage.

I was under the impression that that's what we were doing... <_<

Finally got a chance to watch this great movie, the movie's length made it a bit hard to find time to watch it. I was surprised but delighted to hear the original theme song was used, liked Haruhi's little warm up routine. While Alt. Yuki was cute, like Kyon I prefer the real one, same goes for Haruhi, though the long hair really does suit her.Kyon delivers some great monologues as well, especially that final internal conflict, was it just me or did his "Inner Kamina" (thanks Triple R for that phrase) sound a bit closer to Sugita's Gintoki voice? There was a bit of foreshadowing, but Ryouko was fantasticly psychotic, spinning around. "Bed head" Haruhi hilarious but she still looked good. Liked Kyon telling off the Data overmind, and the Yuki/Snowing scene does have me wonder how the dub will do that line. I was hoping we would see the party, I wonder if it's the party we see in Haruhi-chan? Or is that covered in a later book?
Lastly I liked the ending theme song.

I can't blame someone for killing someone else who tried to kill him twice.

Finally watched it , i won't argue much about it , just , Awesome Movie , all in this movie , nuff's said. Waiting for the next.

Heh, I like Kyon's decision, because I like Haruhi more than anyone. His decision was the right one, but truthfully, having Haruhi around is the only thing I care for. Some may despise Kyon for taking away Yuki's happiness, but Yuki's happiness goes against Haruhi's happiness, if I'm correct. Just a thought, there. So, it's a matter of personal opinion. Though, most everyone seems to speculate further, I just go with the simple thought of, Yuki's happy world or Haruhi's happy world. Which one you like better, probably has something to do with which character you like better. Maybe.

Now I know I'm late and all but I got to read around some of the discussion about Haruhi being useless against nagato.

Maybe it might've been speculated already but here it goes.

I think Nagato wasn't able to take Haruhi's power completely or render it completely useless. Just surpressed to the point that it may seem non existent. The thing is when Kyon mentioned he is John Smith one would think such sparks might've been a great way to start the flame again. Sure Haruhi may look normal in the movie but hasn't she been that way since the whole series began? Without Itsuki, Nagato, and Mikuru we wouldn't actually know she was extraordinary.

Original Nagato's message was just an instruction or a sign. It needed something in order to be achieved which in this case Haruhi getting worked up about Kyon's story. She made everything possible to run things beyond Nagato's control.

Well that's about it. So I don't see what some people say that it is a plot hole of some sort. It's just that it hasn't been explained yet but as you can see this case can be quite the explanation we're looking for if I'm correct/lucky.

Oh wow, just finished this marathon of a movie and I still want more! It's been so long since I've remembered watching anything haruhi and this really brings it all back.

It felt weird how everything revolved around yuki more than haruhi for a change. I'm wondering if this is to accustom the more recent fanbase. But innumerable memorable moments of super moe yuki in this movie.



It was a story that could've gone off the ledge in complexity but the producers did a fabulous job to explain in more detail certain past plot points when necessary. Time travel always fascinates me, especially when it revolves around mind-twirling space-time discrepancies to sort out.

I just saw the movie dubbed at Otakon 2011...I don't think we invented words good enough to describe my love of that movie. But love come close. That had everything, it made me feel all of my emotions, several times. I don't think I can talk about which parts I liked, because honestly, I enjoyed every minute of that nearly 3 hour movie, and everything about it. I especially loved the characters, ALL OF THEM. Reasons for liking the main characters have been probably stated many times by now, so I'll talk about Asakura:





I thought the series was good, but this movie felt perfect to me. The music was great. I loved the animation style -the way they had Kyon wake up every morning, the scene where Asakura was spinning around in front of Yuki (and the music that went with it). Having not had anything spoiled about the movie the climaxes and various twists hit my mind like a Mac Truck. >dat feel when Kyon says he's John Smith. Watching it Otakon was great, there was on the order of 1000 people in the room, and we all laughed, awwed, clapped, cheered, and cried silently together.


Sorry for the TL;dr post forum, but I think my head was gonna explode if I didn't share this experience. I hope you all loved the film too

Finally. Some posts that reflect the original purpose of this thread. Good job, reviewers.

Phew.

Well I'm glad you enjoyed it. Like you, I watched the premier at Otakon 2011 but was in a row behind a group of extremely loud con attendees who insisted on overly-laughing at every moderately funny thing that happened (like when Kyon missed the soccer ball.) They would continue to laugh for minutes on end and it became difficult to hear.

I received the DVDs for this movie from RightStuf a few days ago, having pre-ordered it around the end of July. I loved the dub and have said elsewhere that I loved Crispin Freeman's performance as Kyon(and I also give high marks for the work that Wendee Lee, Johnny Yong Bosch and Stephanie Sheh brought to it. Michelle Ruff was good in it too).

Having read the novel that the movie is based on about four or five times, I already knew the plot of the movie, and so the twists weren't a surprise to me. Having said that, the movie takes what was in the book, and basically hit all the right notes with it. Reading Kyon going crazy because things are not as they should be is one thing, actually seeing it happen and then hearing it as delivered by a top notch voice actor(Freeman and Sugita in the Japanese version) just took it to a different level. The range of emotions that Kyon goes through in this movie was a wonder in itself, and all of it was absolutely convincing. If this were live-action, we'd be talking Academy Award level of acting. The animation as always is just incredible, and Kyoto Animation's attention to detail is certainly present in this movie(for example, when Kyon is looking through his phone's address book and sees that Haruhi's phone number is no longer there, at the top of his address book is the name Sasaki in those Japanese characters). The rooftop scene near the end also shows us a very realistic view of Kobe(something that we can also see in one of the DVD extras).

There are quite a few rewatchable scenes in the movie, like Yuki's smile when Kyon is leaving her apartment, the rooftop scene where Kyon says "Yuki." The dub has a significant and well-timed pause before he says "it means snow, right?". I also loved GAR Kyon manhandling Taniguchi and then what he says when he leaves the classroom. Other than a few instances where the pace was a bit too slow, this was a great movie. I give it a 9/10.

Damn it! You got yours already?!! LUCKY!!!! I ordered from anime corner, I hope they at least ship this week. How exciting, can't wait!

I ordered my copy from Amazon once I saw that people started receiving theirs. All signs point to a two-week wait for me. Oh well.

I ordered mine from Bandai on Monday night, they shipped it Tuesday afternoon, and I got it Thursday.

In case anyone back in Ireland is reading this, there will be a travelling film festival with screenings of TDoHS in different parts of the country next month.

Awesome. I can attend the last one, so I can't wait! :3

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya was exactly the kind of experience I've come to expect from this series, but there was definitely a sense that the series has stopped playing around and is looking to make some relatively significant progress from here on out. Indeed, what was once a relatively fun franchise sets out to become more serious.

And consequently get ahead of itself along the way.

Part of the reason I take issue with the series suddenly taking itself seriously are the liberties it takes with its narrative. While Nagato managing to supersede Haruhi's powers brings a sense of vulnerability to the latter's character, it undermines the point of watching over the titular character in the first place; perhaps Suzumiya's abilities are not fully developed yet, but when "God" is overrided by the "servant", I'm probably not the only one who isn't going to swallow that.

Then there's the matter of the time paradox towards the end of the movie where Kyon has to go back to save himself. Personally speaking, the time loop makes no sense, as what is the point of saving himself if he already survived and furthermore, when did he "first" travel back in time? I know a later novel covers the trip in detail, but really a good movie should be able to stand on its own, or at least for one that's part of a series, not to leave any threads answered by upcoming events.

I have no problem with a series deciding to take itself seriously, but the aspects which affect the plot should be tackled honestly as well.

Still, this is hardly enough to affect the value of the film by any significant amount. Because more than a hard science-fiction series where reality is at stake, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is a movie about self-realization, or in Yuki's case, self-admittance. And indeed, Nagato gets some significant development in this installment, so much so that I often muse that the movie should be called "The Melancholy of Yuki Nagato."

But I digress. We see a different side to many characters who were previously just a tad one-dimensional; we see Tsuruya portray a protective side for her friends when she steps between Kyon and Mikuru; we see Haruhi actually behaving like a normal girl at least before Kyon spills the beans on his situation, and most of all we see a side to Yuki that is, perhaps, her bottled emotions (in a pinch I'd ship Kyon and Nagato, but that's another story for another day).

And of course there's our (un)reliable narrator himself. His want to bring the world back to the way it was, while predictable, was more about the journey itself. KyoAni once again shows their capacity to create a good drama out of anything, never going over the top, but never glossing over the events in realistic/cynical fashion, because our main character is sarcastic enough already.

If there's one thing I'm still apprehensive about, it's where the series goes from here. As a stand-alone movie it's nothing short of incredible, but how well is this going to fit in the long run? Only time will tell, but for now the fifth slot on my favorites list has disappeared with the appearance of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

I thought it was more like trying to steer a charging bull in the direction that you want--Yuki wasn't actually in command of Haruhi's powers so much as she duped them into executing her request, sort of like a hacker injecting a command into a computer's code without actually taking full control of the system.

Time in the Haruhiverse does not strictly flow from cause to effect, but instead all aspects of a moment in time come into being "all at once". Several times in the series, time is described as being like frames in a movie film reel, with each frame existing by itself independent of the ones before and after, and time travelers being "edited into" the frames in which they appear. Thus, Kyon's rescue of himself has "already happened" right from the start--there never was any "original" timeline where the time travel didn't happen.

Also gives the effect of wanting more. If nothing else, to see what happened and when.

Also the hope that maybe...someday...we will see Yuki smile again.

I'm saying that there had to have been a point where a Kyon who wasn't aware of his past self's circumstances (and likely not sent to the "disappearance" world) was informed to save himself. The question then becomes when or even if Mikuru or the like plastered themselves in those said frames. Because if there isn't it would make even less sense than it already does, and it really doesn't help that the only indication of time travel we get is Kyon's passing mention of the one more trip he has to make...except he has no reason to go back seeing as he survived, but the "original"/"edited into" Kyon/Asahina/whoever would.

Akito, it's TOTALLY not worth your time to argue time travel. I did so for pages and pages when I first joined the site, and the counter-argument inevitably boils down to "well the author says it works so that had darn well better be good enough for everyone." How do you argue against "it works because it works"?

A wizard did it?
Also, time travel in shows never makes sense, I've learned to not question it anymore.

Well, if it happened, from Kyon's point of view, from his experiance with time travel so far, that means it must be done so that with does happen (see earlier in the film when Haruhi tells him she met him a second time "on that date" and told her something specific that she remembered. Kyon knows he didn't say that after he met her last time, so when he goes back to that date again, he (with Mikuru (BIG) reminding him) goes to see young Haruhi off and tells her the very same thing her older self told him he said to her that night.

Thus, Kyon remembers seeing a second Mikuru and having himself tell him stuff. So in the future he will somehow get Mikuru to take him to that point, and remember not to do anything until his old self gets stabbed, then something will stop Ryoko..at which point Kyon will come as say exactly what he heard himself say (after both Mikurus cry over him). After that, Kyon has no idea what will happen or what to do, exactly, so he'll wing it he guesses. Another reason for him to go back is to find out what happened, and how did he get to be taken care of. And where did the backstory Itsuki told him come from? That is something else Kyon wants to know.

So at some point Kyon will go back to that every mornng to find out the rest. But like he says before going into the SOS-dan christmas party...that is a story for later.

Yeah, arguing time travel is pretty pointless, but from where I saw it, it all made perfect sense. Everything was done very carefully with very little conflicts with the defined way time travel is told to work in the haruhi universe, and I think it was done much better than any other time travel ideas I have seen. There were no "changing the past" or "alternate universes" things, instead it was more like "We have to go back in time because we have to avoid a paradox/Keep history straight" (kinda like it's fate, they have to do something no matter what or paradox, even if they themsilves don't realize it until later.). I really thought it was done very well for something completely fictional and theoretically impossible.

And yes, it does seem like it's going to get a lot more serious from here on, and I like that. I really loved the movie, especially how it didn't seem conflict with anything from the show at all, but instead fit in quite well, albeit being a near stand alone movie.

The only thing that makes me watch this movie is Kyon's feeling's regarding Haruhi and nothing more.

Hey, I will not argue if they change the title to "Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: The Movie: The Kyon x Yuki Arc, do I still to answer why?

Good movie, I never expected that Yuki will go this far....unconciously?!

And what if he doesn't? What if Mikuru comes crying to him saying, "Kyon you have to go back in time with me!" and he just tells her no? What if he keeps deciding, "eh, I can't be bothered with this right now...I'll save myself later" until the day he dies?

Obviously those things don't happen, but that's the problem with the time travel in this series. The characters have to march along mindlessly like puppets, or else it all falls apart.

Maybe. So far Kyon seems to take things at face value (with a heavy dose of snark), but we have yet to see them attempt to not follow though with time travel.

It might be that he'll go even if he says "no". Mikuru can just knock him out and take him there "for the sake of the timeline" or something. Everything that happens supposely already happened from her point of view, so it will happen...somehow. Or maybe it is something else. Recall that Endless Eight does sort of show that there can be different paths in time. It could be that stuff in the "present" is changing the future, but Mikuru can't grasp that because her memory of the events changed each time so that the only way we'd know about it is if she told Kyon something, and it happened different, and then she told him about it again as it actually happened as if she'd already told him that before. But instead it is usually "Classified Information", which provides a great cover. It becomes even more weird because there are two Mikuru. (BIG) who supposedly knows everything that happened to herself, and (small) who appears to be mostly clueless and just follows orders when she gets them.

The resolution to Dissppearance might also show that time may not be as set at Mikuru claims (as you still have to figure out what happened those three days there are supposedly two Kyons...the wounded one and the one that will be the wounded one. And if they overwrite the world the Kyon we follow saw...then what happened to the other Kyon? The one that fell down the stair? The one that was asleep, home, in bed, while Nagato is changing the world?)

Plus there is the supposed weirdness from Books 9-11 that might alter how things work in Haruhi with multiple timelines.

So things may not be so simple. All we have to work with is what Mikuru tells Kyon and what we see via Kyon as the results of his time travel events. The only other person we have for information is Nagato, who's not saying much.

Now that I can finally take a break from medical school, I have at last been able to take the time to purchase the DVD and watch the movie for the first time.

Of course, I already know every single scene that happens. I practically have the script memorized, given how often I read the book. But to have everything be fulfilled in glorious animation, to be blow away by the quality being even higher than I expected (and I expected a lot, given what I heard), and to see it all unfold before me like that...it was truly a wonderful experience.

Bravo. Thank you, Kyoto Animation, for making it happen.

Perfect excecution: the graphic is just awesome, the animation is wonderful, the appropriate music for each moment, growing emotions when kyon does that monologue and asks himself what he wants, really sudden stabbing from asakura (that stunned me), new uncovered sides of our characters(yuki smiling sure was an event), and an Haruhi with long hairs(that was just hot). And the thing i'm happier the most is that i watched this movie before actually reading the novel, and therefore it surprised and mindfucked me the whole time while i was watching it. Oh ye, i also have the super high definition version of this movie saved, so i did actually enjoy it to 100%. So far i've watched it 4 times, and still it gives me the same thrills and chills. I just love it.

It's actually this movie that made me begin reading the novel, up to the last volume. It got me addicted to Haruhi. I do not hope in a third or other season, considering they haven't been producing anything for a while now, but i'm still burning for the next volume to come out.

What gets me is that she's downright cheerful about it--and that she thinks that Yuki should be likewise cheerful. She doesn't have the anger or sadistic pleasure or even sheer coldness that any halfway sane human would have, and she doesn't have the emotionless flatness that she would have if "logic dictated" that she should do it. It's like she really can not comprehend that Yuki and Kyon do not think that Kyon's death is a genuinely good thing.

She was like that the first time as well.