Sequel movie to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Genre(s): Comedy, Mystery, Romance, Supernatural, Sci-Fi, School
Age-Appropriateness: 13+ (violence, mild language)
Platforms: None (Blu-ray and Amazon are affordable)
Episodes: One 2 hr. 42-minute movie
TheAwersome Rating: 8.8 / 10 (Best anime movie from a TV series)
Premise: One cold Christmas day, Kyon heads over to school and the SOS Brigade’s holiday celebration, only to realize that Haruhi Suzumiya seems to have disappeared. Moreover, no one even remembers her or the SOS Brigade; Mikuru Asahina knows nothing and is now afraid of him, and Itsuki Koizumi has also gone missing. The Literature Club, formed only by an uncharacteristically shy Yuki Nagato, now occupies the old SOS club room.
TheAwersome’s Thoughts: Take everything you loved from the original series. Now, remove everything you didn’t like about it. Next, add in improved animation, direction, cinematography, philosophy, emotion, and music. There’s always an amount of pressure for an anime movie that’s part of a series to be better than an extended episode, and this knocks it clear out of the park in a way that’s true to the original and then so much more. The artistic direction in this is so much more than what we’ve seen until now and we get to explore depths of the characters we hadn’t before seen.
TLDR: If you find yourself not enjoying the main series so much, you’ll have this to look forward to; it’s definitely worth it.
This movie is another testament to KyoAni’s absolute love and dedication to what they do. They say the best ingredient in food is love and like, that’s a nice idea and all, but I’ve rarely been able to tell from a blind test if certain food was made with passion and love. With KyoAni works, however, you can definitely tell how much everyone working on it was in love with the project.
It also has the best use of classical music in a movie that I’ve seen, and it’s persistent. The only other time I’ve thought “No, THIS is what this song was made for” was with Debussy’s Claire de Lune at the end of Ocean’s Eleven. That same perfect fit applies through most of this movie, specifically for Erik Satie’s Gymnopedies.
To add the spoopy supernatural vibe of this one, we happened to watch it during the calendar week that it takes place, purely by chance. Add it to your list of “Not really Christmas movies, but they take place at the same time” collection, because you’ll want to watch this again in the future.
At a Glance Anime 