[TheHaruhiIncarnate]

Originally Posted by GMT

I've been working through the Blu Ray for Disappearance, and I have some notes below:

A) The movie was about as long as I remembered. Though my work schedule demanded that I watched it over the course of several nights, so the feelings of "Ugh, this thing just drags" weren't quite as bad as they were when I watched the cam-rip.

B) It's quite pretty as a Blu Ray title. Not quite the title I'd pop in to wow friends and family over the quality of high-def, but pretty nonetheless.

C) They really put a lot of effort into the dub. Though I could be feeling this because Disappearance is mostly Crispin Freeman talking to himself, and his take on Kyon is always excellent. The fact that Crispin Freeman's Kyon is more expressive than Japanese Kyon made the 353,243 years of Kyon's navel-gazing far easier to take.

D) Wendee Lee's Haruhi was good, as always. She doesn't quite have Aya Hirano's energy or range; but she does great with what she has.

E) Stephanie Sheh does annoying moeblob Mikuru and assertive, self-possessed Secret Agent Mikuru very well. Johnny Yong Bosch's Koizumi B.S.es just as well as Daisuke Ono's Koizumi; though Bandai's translation of alt!Koizumi's lines differs noticeably from the fansubs in how he expresses what he thinks Haruhi feels for Koizumi.

F) Like some others, I too found nothing wrong at all with Michelle Ruff's alt!Yuki. Minori Chihara's alt!Yuki was an annoying moeblob that was terrified of her own shadow. Michelle Ruff's alt!Yuki was just a painfully shy bookworm willing to cut Kyon some slack because he did her a monumental favor once. I found English alt!Yuki to be far more sympathetic and (not jarring at all); unlike the original Japanese alt!Yuki. In fact, Michelle Ruff's portrayal of alt!Yuki significantly improved the film for me. I remember that, when I first reviewed the film, I had pointed words about how the Japanese alt!Yuki was a useless moeblob who exceeded Mikuru in sheer and utter uselessness.

Agreed so much with you. The English dub made me more sympathetic to Yuki than in the Japanese version.