Production
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, the fourth volume in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya light novel series, was first planned to be adapted as part of the second season of the anime show. The studio, Kyoto Animation, started production of the new season in June 2007. The production team decided not to worry about the runtime of Disappearance until the script was finished and the storyboards were at an advanced stage, in order to give ample time to all the necessary scenes; they ended up with seven manuscripts for a provisional total of seven episodes. At an unknown point in time, the plans changed to adapt The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya as a film instead. This led to the film being 162 minutes long, the second-longest animated film at the time. Director Tatsuya Ishihara expressed that he wished the film had been a bit longer to adapt even more scenes from the novel, but ultimately was satisfied with the number of scenes they were able to leave in.[3][4]
Directors Tatsuya Ishihara and Yasuhiro Takemoto decided to employ little camera movement to emphasize the atmosphere of the scenes and Kyon's loneliness. Noriko Takao joined the directors in drawing the storyboards at her own request. Both directors expressed that it was helpful to have a woman's point of view during the creation process, which was particularly different in regard to the character Yuki Nagato. The storyboards ended up divided into six parts, A-F, with Ishihara and Takemoto splitting the beginning and end, and Takao doing the C and D parts. They discussed the dialogue extensively to make it sound as true to the characters as possible.[3][5][4]
Ishihara, Takemoto and Takao said that they spent the most time discussing the depiction of the characters Ryoko Asakura and Itsuki Koizumi. They considered these characters, in the narrative of the film, as people who "hadn't been chosen." In particular, Takemoto asked Koizumi's voice actor, Daisuke Ono, to express the sadness of a sad clown. Takao was the main responsible for illustrating the "people not chosen" aspect in the storyboards. Contrarily, they wanted Haruhi Suzumiya's few scenes to create a "sparkling" feeling.[3][5]
The studio employed techniques like 3DCG and photography to increase the level of detail in the layouts when the camera panned out far enough that doing it with traditional drawing methods from scratch would be too difficult.[3]
Each of the A-F parts of the film had a different animation director that would check the work, which would then go to the director, then to chief animation director Futoshi Nishiya, and lastly to super chief animation director Shoko Ikeda. Nishiya put the most care into addressing the posing, gestures, and facial expressions, while Ikeda's role was to ensure the characters matched their design. For a better result, Ikeda gathered the animation directors at the beginning of the film's production to explain the details of each character design, what to bring out, and what to avoid. She also gave advice on how to avoid an excessive level of realistic detail to allow for more flexibility in the characters' expressions and body postures during the dramatic scenes. Nishiya found it the toughest to work on Kyon due to the wide range of emotions he goes through in the film, whereas Ikeda found it more difficult to work on Nagato Yuki due to the unusually high number of gestures for the character and the delicacy in her emotions.[3][6]
To better convey the emotional development of the protagonist Kyon throughout the film, instead of recording the voice acting for the scenes where all characters are together first, which is the usual method, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya was recorded in the order the story develops. Sound director Youta Tsuruoka was highly pleased with the result, praising Kyon's voice actor Tomokazu Sugita for his performance. As for himself, Tsuruoka said that it was a challenge to pack the entire length of the film with the right sounds.[3][7]
The writer of the novel series, Nagaru Tanigawa, gave feedback during the scriptwriting process. Tanigawa also conceived the epilogue exclusive to the film and wrote the lyrics of the ending song. Producer Atsushi Itō suggested that the ending song be a cappella.[3][4]
