The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya  

Written by Shadowfox on October 13th, 2009 in Anime    2 comments

Eh? What? Where did she go?

Patience my friends. All shall be explained.

The second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya finished airing in Japan last month. Basically, it consists of the first season of the Melancholy, and adds in additional episodes based on events in the novels following after the first volume.

I’m currently, rather painfully, making my way through the ‘Endless Eight’ arc – an arc which reportedly ‘pissed off’ a large number of fans. It doesn’t surprise me. I feel the same way. And I’m a rather big fan. But I’ll talk about that at a later date, when I finish the series and do a review. In detail …

Suzumiya HaruhiSo what’s this ‘Disappearance’ about? you may ask. Were people so disenchanted that the series got scrapped?

No – a teaser trailer was actually aired at the end of season 2 – the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya concerns the events detailed in the fourth volume of the series – and a planned movie is in the making – scheduled for release in Spring 2010 (that would make it March-April for the people in the Southern Hemisphere).

So what’s the story about? Read the title again … fair enough – you want a synopsis. I’ll give you one.

Our favourite cynic – Kyon – wakes up one morning to find the world he had wanted when he started high-school. Normal. Very normal. So normal, in fact, that he finds it abnormal.

No Haruhi. No SOS Brigade. Asahina doesn’t know who he is. Koizumi (and his entire class) doesn’t exist. Yuki, the ever silent, expressionless doll – has emotions and no abilities beyond that of a normal human. Asakura Ryouko sits behind him in class, in the position formerly occupied by the SOS Brigade Chief, and considering the events of the first season, probably not something Kyon is entirely comfortable with.

However, Kyon has had, by this time, about eight months to get used to the SOS Brigade and the whirlwind disaster (read Haruhi) that had transformed his life and immediately sets out to find out why his world had been turned upside down. And to set it back to rights – if possible.

You most likely haven’t read the novels yet – the second novel is only now being released in translated format – but when they become available, I would definitely recommend getting hold of them and giving them a read – for a new author (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya was Tanigawa Nagaru’s first novel) it was a spell-binding read.

My final treat – Kadokawa has made the 30-second teaser trailer of the upcoming movie available on their YouTube channel – have a look.

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  • Angelic_Mew

    Hearing about the endless eight arc and what has been happening… I have not even been bothered to have a look at the new season of Haruhi.
    Most posts I’ve read never explained anything about the arc or story. The general consensus was that it’s all a load of… yeah…

    I’ll be looking forward to a full review from you Fox.

    (BTW… just for a little fun. I also read an interesting article and your picture in the post was also used there. There is a strange likeness of characters in Haruhi and K-On!. Not the exact picture used but they compared that pic and one of Yui… http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x177/crisuskeer/blog/03/kon101.jpg)

  • http://www.quantumworx.co.za shadowfox

    A review will certainly come … but first a comment … it does indeed include all the episodes from the first series … so my apologies for that mistake. The extra episodes are the additional stories included in the light-novels. I’ll update the post when I have time :)