An interesting fact of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya to me that both seasons were incredibly successful despite having a fatal flaw so huge that few other shows could have survived being torn apart for years to come. The first season featured a non-chronological ordering that altogether ruined the experience of the show, despite being episodic in nature. The second season had twelve episodes, eight of which—known as the Endless Eight in no affectionate sense of the word “endless”—were identical minus a few minute details, from the clothing of a particular character in a particular scene to color changes. Somehow the characters, who each were little more than an archetype with clothing, plus the generic high school club setting had such a wide appeal and impact that these absurd issues couldn’t sink Suzumiya Haruhi’s popularity.
To me the thing that separates The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan from the rest of the franchise, rather than their drastic art change and removal of all supernatural elements, is how safe they decided to play it as a show in compared with the huge risks that failed previous seasons. And yet they may have played it too safe, as the work is now fairly indistinguishable from any other high school show, minus the nostalgia invoked just by seeing this cast together again. And all of them, even the ones that spent less than an episode on screen in the original work, have retained their personalities, minus the new protagonist, the enigmatic Nagato Yuki, whose original mute personality has been swapped for a more shy and airheaded but fully engaged cute girl archetype.
Nagato may have been the most surprising character in Haruhi Suzumiya in that her lack of a personality or defining characteristics made her the most widely loved character in the whole series among fans. Eventually The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya made major waves as one of the strongest anime movies of the 2000s to date, whose plot heavily revolved around Nagato and the existence of an alternate world where her personality is more well-adjusted in the high school setting. The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, with its title paying homage to that movie, is the story of this alternate world, and all of its humdrum plainness. Granted, a quiet life isn’t a bad one necessarily, but the franchise made the right choice in following the hectic supernatural world of Haruhi Suzumiya and using the world of Nagato Yuki-chan as a counterpoint. To spend sixteen episodes inside that very world when the original world really had only seventeen (unique) ones is certainly a bizarre choice, and for as engaging as Nagato is in it compared to the original series, centering the story of Haruhi Suzumiya around her is a rejection of the vibrant energy that originally set it apart.
Oddly enough, with all that said I prefer every character in the Nagato Yuki-chan universe to their equivalents in Haruhi Suzumiya. Nagato’s personality is a take on moe that is focused on food and video games, which along with her simply written dialogue sells her as a completely plausible high school student, far removed from the mysterious alien she was in the original series. She finds the energy herself to start the Literature Club at school as a way of engaging with people, and seems to take her role as an active member seriously. She is helped in her daily life by her best friend Ryouko, who served as her enemy for one episode in the original show, but watching them as close friends is much more fun. The club is populated by the nervous wreck Asahina, her devious friend Tsuruya, and of course, the somewhat quiet straight-man Kyon, who becomes Nagato’s love interest this time around. Kyon hasn’t changed a bit since he was the main character in the original series, but his comebacks seem a bit more snappy and his personality slightly more tolerant, if only because the show doesn’t revolve around Haruhi this time.
Most notably of all is Haruhi herself. She is as high-energy and self-obsessed as always, but here she starts off with no outlet for her insanity, trapped in the humdrum life of high school. The Literature club slowly becomes a real escape for her, and as she becomes more and more like the Haruhi we all know, she becomes infinitely more sympathetic than the annoying narcissist she was in her own show. Having her on the fringe was definitely a relief.
And yet for as overbearing as she was in the original, it did allow the series to be fantastical in ways many high school themed shows cannot achieve, and it lent more sympathy to the Kyon character who has now been our humble narrator in both series’. Centered around Nagato, the show is a much slower and quieter romance, with comedy that doesn’t pack nearly the punch it used to. If Haruhi had received the same treatment in Haruhi Suzumiya as it did in Nagato Yuki-chan, the former would have been an unequivocally better show. Watching Nagato Yuki-chan, I realized that for all the better choices they had made this time around, the focus inevitably limited it from having the full potential of the franchise.
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya plotline does eventually catch up, and for a few episodes we lose this season’s Nagato in place of the original Nagato, cool, collected, and all but mute. I was skeptical of introducing her as a dramatic plot point at first, and indeed those episodes are the least engaging by far. However, the conclusion of the show in the aftermath of her presence is more satisfying than I would have expected given the generic high school daily life trajectory it had taken all season. It was a little late and not enough for me to recommend the whole season to an outsider or romance fan, who have no preexisting attachment to Nagato and are given little reason to develop one. To the Haruhi Suzumiya enthusiasts, who will inevitably watch Nagato Yuki-chan despite the incongruence of the new art and the lack of fantasy elements and the total plainness of the show in comparison to their beloved slice-of-life behemoth, it will certainly be a nice closing, and assurance that Nagato’s world that was left behind is doing well in its own quiet way.