Review of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

The first two seasons of Haruhi Suzumiya are pretty much mandatory to understand this movie (which is lame for people who like to watch stand-alone movies.) The art and the sound of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya are both good. I felt that the story was paced a bit too slowly for the first 30 minutes. I think this was meant for people who finished the first two seasons of Haruhi a while ago and needed a little warm-up and refresher before jumping back into the world of Haruhi. After that, the pacing picks up and is perfectly fine. The actual plot of the movie is simplebut good. It's as much about discovering the reason behind the mysteries that occur as it is about going in-depth on the feelings of the members of the SOS Brigade. Any plot holes you can come up with can be reasonably filled with "because aliens" or "because time travel"...as is par for the course in Haruhi.

Characters. As I mentioned before, we learn more about the motivations and feelings of the members of the SOS brigade in this movie. I have to say, if the first two seasons of Haruhi had more character progression like the movie, they would have been much better. We get more insight into the mysterious Nagato as well as pretty much everyone else except Koizumi (my least favorite character.) This is mainly the Nagato show, though.

Overall, I thought the movie was much better than the first two seasons of Haruhi. Therefore, I'm giving The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya a solid 7 for being a good anime movie.