Makoto Shinkai and The Dissapearance of Haruhi Suzumiya script and voice recording (Patreon)

If you’re anything like me and got really into anime, and anime movies, you’ve probably heard of some big names, such as Studio Ghibli and, the focus of today’s video essay, Makoto Shinkai. 

For those who don’t know, Makoto Shinkai is a writer and director for some of the highest grossing anime movies ever. He started off with creating and working on OVAs in the 90’s and began directing movies in the early 2000’s but got his biggest break in 2016 with the release of the movie “Your Name”. This isn’t to say he wasn’t a well respected creator before this. Before this movie he already had a couple of praise-worthy works under his belt such as “5 Centimeters per Second” and “The Garden of Words”. While it is clear his main inspiration for “Your Name” came in the form of a deadly earthquake which racked the Miyagi prefecture in 2011, I, and many others, have pointed towards another inspiration for the stories style and direction, “The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya”. This movie, which came out a year prior to the earthquake and 6 years before the release of “Your Name” shares many similarities in structure, pacing and feeling to Makoto Shinkai’s later works. 

Part 1: Story Breakdown

To show the similarities between Haruhi and Makoto Shinkai’s works, we must first go over the basic synopsis of both. If you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend watching “The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya” and “Your Name” as I will be spoiling both of these movies. They are all great movies in my opinion and I suggest watching them blind (well, you should watch “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” before watching “The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya”, but I personally didn’t do that and still enjoyed the movie, please don’t crucify me for this). Now, let’s start with a breakdown of Haruhi’s Disappearance.

In the original draft of this script, I spent a full page explaining this one, so I rewrote it to keep it more concise. If you want the original draft of this script, I’ll upload it to my patreon with free access. Just wanted to point out that I will be having a patreon and that I’ll try and keep it updated. Gotta make money somehow. Anyways, unto the (hopefully) more concise synopsis.

Kyon is our main character. After having an uneventful day (well, in comparison to the usual) he wakes up in an alternate reality where main girl Haruhi Suzumiya doesn’t go to his school and isn’t god. After some shenanigans involving harassing Yuki, a school-girl who used to be a hyper intelligent AI robot, and girl-boss gaslighting Haruhi into believing he is from an alternate universe where she is god (from everyone else's perspective at least. Cause he is actually telling the truth) they head off to their old clubroom to reinstate their old club, the SOS Brigade. After arriving, more shenanigans happen and then he gets sent back in time to when he talked to middle school Haruhi, well past him, and has to fix young Yuki so she doesn’t create the alternate universe after gaining emotions and realizing she’s fed up with Haruhi-sama’s shit. After dying, he awakens in a hospital bed, finally in his correct time and universe with everything being set straight again, besides the Hivemind intelligence that Yuki reports to now wanting her dead for breaking protocol and destroying the timeline continuum. 

Now, for a short synopsis of Your Name. We start with two characters, Mitsuha and Taki. Taki lives in Tokyo but wishes for a slower life, Mitsuha lives in the country and wishes for a life in the city. They ended up in a weird thing where they switch bodies every couple days and we keep hearing of a comet that will pass by earth. Long story short, the comet ends up hitting earth and destroying the country-side town Mitsuha lives in, killing her and her entire family. After learning of this, Taki goes to the remnants of her town (after visiting it once already, that’s actually how he learned of what happened) and goes to this small cave thing in a crater where he drinks some Mitsuha Holy Water Saki and goes on a trip in his favorite rocket ship as he follows the threads of time back to the day the comet kills everyone. After attempting, and failing, to get the townspeople away from the comet's strike zone, he goes back to the crater and sees Mitsuha for the first time. After embracing each-other, Mitsuha, now back in her own body, goes back to town (how did she make the trip so fast? No fucking idea) and gets everyone to evacuate to the school before the comet hits. Mitsuha and Taki lose their memories of the body switching but end up finding each other again as adults and ask for each other's names, THE END.

Part 2: Similarities

So, some similarities are already apparent. Supernatural time bending shenanigans involving a pair of male and female leads who try to fix a problem and end up growing closer because of it. But, to be fair, this type of story isn’t necessarily new or groundbreaking. This is pretty much the idea for every action fantasy romance story. However, I would say this is only where the similarities begin.

The tone of Haruhi’s Disappearance is far different from the main series. With the main series “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” ironically taking a more fun and zany approach while the movie takes a more serious and melancholic attitude. With more gut-punches than a UFC match and more character development between much of the main cast. While this style isn’t anything new (early Ghibli having a couple works in this style such as “Grave of the Fireflies”) It also meshes in the zany antics and really only throws the gut-punches in the middle and end of the movie. Similarly, during the first half of “Your Name” we follow the two leads as they deal with the others' antics while they control each other's bodies. And we only get the big gut-punch about half-way through. We also get plenty of hints towards the big gut-punch through-out the beginning of both movies (although, that is just good story telling. Just look up Chekhov's Gun). But, during the finale of both movies, we also get a switch up that makes us believe the film isn’t a happy ending. With Kyon dying and the comet crashing while the real Mitsuha tries to get her dad to evacuate everyone. In both cases, we are led to believe for a short time that these characters failed and are dead. But are quickly revealed to still be alive. With all of these things added up, it’s kind of hard to deny their similarities. But, when trying to write a good story, it’s always helpful to look at the past for some pointers. Thank you all for watching and I’ll see you guys in the next video, peace.