You know, I’ve never enjoyed watching
It’s A Wonderful Life. Not that it’s a bad film – far from it!
It’s amazingly well acted, with brilliant cinematography and
everything else people say about it. If anything, its problem might
be that in a sense it’s too good. I end up feeling so much of the
pain and misery through the middle of the film that even though I
totally recognize its quality, I don’t have a good time with it. It
just isn’t that kind of film for me.
Most of its imitators, though, are hard
to watch for the usual reasons. The original, despite my personal
aversion to viewing it again, had a subtle touch and a lot of skill
behind it. As is often (but not always) true of great works,
attempting to imitate what a master was able to do without being a
master is a recipe for disaster. So, you can imagine my trepidation
when I learned that the cinematic followup to the Haruhi Suzumiya
series was supposed to be cut from the cloth of It’s a Wonderful
Life. That film’s what we’re looking at today – I know I usually
do a series for Monday, but it’s Christmas week, you’ll excuse me a
little diversion from the usual in order to stay on theme.
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is
a sequel to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, but I don’t know how
much of Melancholy you actually have to have seen in order to follow
it. I don’t think it’s that much; you should have a handle on the
general premise, and probably have seen the episode “Bamboo Leaf
Rhapsody” since we revisit the three years before present events
that were first scene there. It also might be a good idea to have an
awareness of the Endless Eight and what that meant for Yuki Nagato…
In any case, if you’ve read my Melancholy review you’re prepared for
the Disappearance Review, and possibly for the film itself.
And, the basic premise of the film is
that after yet another hectic day for the SOS Brigade, deep in
December and getting ready for Christmas Eve, Haruhi… disappears.
Kyon goes to school as normal, but no one seems to remember the same
reality he does. Nobody knows Haruhi, Koizumi is missing, Asahina
doesn’t recognize Kyon, and Yuki Nagato is ignorant of the situation
and seemingly an ordinary human! This is the ‘bad timeline’ we find
ourselves in, one in which everything from the original series never
happened. And, as is often the case with these setups, you could say
that it’s exactly what the main character might have wished for.
Kyon did always desire a normal, uneventful High School career, a
hope that was snatched away by his association with Haruhi. It
wasn’t exactly by Kyon’s will that this change of worlds happened,
but it does subtly line up with being something he wanted.
And I think here is one of the big
points of difference between Disappearance and the orthodox “It’s A
Wonderful Life” formula… here in Disappearance, the contrast is
not between a Good Timeline (that may not have looked so good) and a
Bad Timeline, it’s between a Weird Timeline and a Normal Timeline.
There is a lot of value in the ordinary world, and the versions of
Asahina and Nagato that don’t have any kind of weirdness are good on
their own. For Nagato, in particular, the fact that she’s human
rather than an alien robot is a world of change, arguably for the
better.
Kyon doesn’t quite have nothing to go
on, though… a bookmark, seemingly left by Alien Robot Nagato, tells
him to gather the keys for a program that will presumably fix
whatever has happened to the world. Over the following days, he
works with Human Nagato, until he discovers that Haruhi isn’t
vanished without a trace… she went to a different high school in
this timeline (Along with Koizumi).
Meeting Haruhi again is a pretty
amazing sequence, in terms of its execution. There’s a very palpable
feeling of relief in the scene, and the degree to which Kyon has been
missing Haruhi really communicates through to the audience. It’s
effective on its own and arguably more effective coming off of
Melancholy. Throughout the original show, there was a quiet
understanding of the feelings between Haruhi and Kyon, more
pronounced on Haruhi’s side, that was overall handled with subtlety.
Here, it’s still handled with a lot of subtext as well as the text,
but the sense is a good deal more intense. Absence makes the heart
grow fonder, I guess.
So, in another change from the standard
“It’s a Wonderful Life” format, rather than getting the
redemption for the suffering only at the end, we start to get it in
the middle when we reclaim not the prime timeline, but Haruhi
herself. She’s about like you’d remember by this point (though if
we’re talking objectively, she’s on some of her best behavior) –
upbeat, interested, maybe a little self centered, and utterly
enthusiastic. With Haruhi’s energy (and lack of sanity) obtained,
the SOS Brigade is brought back together, providing the key to
Nagato’s program.
And that’s what really brings us to the
big change, one that’s so critical and central as a difference from
the formula… there’s a real choice. Kyon is presented with an
opportunity to either accept what the world has become, or struggle
to turn it back to the way it was, and it’s a real decision.
Most of the time, if you’re imitating
It’s a Wonderful Life, the return to the old world is a matter of
desperation. The nightmare world that has been accessed is simply
too horrific to contemplate, awful in every way. The traveler has to
beg, plead, or sacrifice for the powers that be to please take them
back to the way things were before. That ticket “home” is just
handed to Kyon… but there’s a legitimate question as to whether or
not to use it. Everyone is fine in this world, they’re even becoming
friends again. Nagato’s human, there’s no threat of Haruhi
accidentally destroying the universe, and Kyon can have the
uneventful High School career he had hoped for in the beginning.
Naturally, though, Kyon still chooses
to go back. This actually draws an interesting parallel between Kyon
and Haruhi. Both, as of this film, wish for a world with magic,
mayhem, and interesting things… and both of them make it happen.
Kyon’s path of course, is not so simple as just pressing the button
that Nagato left behind. After all, there is the question of why the
world changed… It is, after all, not something Haruhi would do.
While the film is great at building up
Kyon and Haruhi, as you may have already guessed from getting to see
her human form, it’s no slouch when it comes to developing Yuki
Nagato… and the titular Disappearance, much like the option left in
Kyon’s hands to reverse it, is down to her. This is why I think it’s
good to have something of an understanding of the Endless Eight going
into Disappearance, because it underscores how and why Nagato broke.
While Nagato put the choice in Kyon’s
hands (trusting his judgment more than her own, which she knew to be
compromised), she didn’t make reverting the world trivial: he needed
to both access the altered events of Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody and help
once again give young Haruhi a push in the right direction, and also
administer a cure of sorts (You might call it a patch, given how
robotic Nagato’s existence seems to be) to Nagato herself. The
moment of choosing whether or not to administer the program is the
real moment of truth.
While Kyon is, essentially, successful,
he does manage to get himself stabbed by a psychotic counterpart of
Yuki from the original series (being, as they are, back in a time
where she still exists) and has to be rescued by his future self and
yet another Mikuru. On awakening in the hospital, Kyon finds himself
in the world he once left behind, Haruhi in a sleeping bag next to
his hospital bed in one of her more cute moments. His injuries, it
seems, had their nature covered up but that didn’t stop her from
worrying. Kyonalso makes sure to preserve Nagato – she’s been
steadily becoming more human, and especially with this slip up, her
alien overlords wouldn’t much care for it… but if they ever try to
hurt her, then he can tell Haruhi the truth, and lets them know that
he’d do just that. We get hints that a lot of the unique persona of
Human Nagato is still there in Alien Nagato… and there’s even
enough time for Kyon to stop off at Haruhi’s Christmas Eve party
before he has to go back in time with Mikuru to save himself.
And… it’s all done well. Pretty much
all the strengths of the series are in this movie, and most of the
weaknesses are left behind. It has some experimental moments where
high concepts and strange visuals help bridge the action, but it also
has a lot of stuff that’s just fun, and doesn’t try to take itself
too overwhelmingly seriously. The characters are loud and colorful,
but especially the main three for the film (Kyon, Haruhi, and Nagato)
do get a good enough treatment that you can see multiple sides of
them.
And, because the film knows how and
when to break with the traditional formula of It’s a Wonderful Life,
it actually does work as a feel-good movie for me. There are still
stakes in this movie, even heavy ones, but it doesn’t really beat me
down the say way Its a Wonderful Life did for me, nor does it feel
pointlessly cruel or mean-spirited the way lesser imitators can. By
coming at things from a different angle than simply “good” or
“bad”, Disappearance adds a layer of complexity that’s often
neglected and allows you to enjoy yourself for basically the whole
running time, not just at the end.
And… that’s really all there is to
it. I could say more, but I don’t think I really need to. The
Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya gets an A from me – just a hair
higher than Melancholy, because it’s a much more consistent product,
and because it gave me something new to dig into for Christmas time.