I just watched The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, and while I want to talk about the rest of the movie, I REALLY want to talk about this part of the movie more than anything else.

So it comes without asking that there will be SPOILERS for this movie, so beware.

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Okay, if you’re here, then you’ve already watched the movie or don’t care about spoilers, so let’s talk about the decision.

Future Nagato leaves Kyon with a choice on the club computer, and it can only be executed once. He can choose to stay in this new world, where there are no aliens, espers and time travelers, meaning a normal, if slightly peculiar, high school life. The other option, is to erase this world and revert to the old one, where he will always be rushing around, but he will be with old friends.

As we know, Kyon decides to go back to the world as it was with Haruhi as a god, because it was, in his own words, fun. I know that deep down, fun for Kyon just means, I get to be with Mikuru, Nagato, Koizomi, and especially Haruhi, the world which he had grown to accept and love.

He didn’t want to be in a world where he knew nothing, and nobody, at least as he did for the past year in his original timeline. I can completely sympathize with his character, and I think it was some amazing storytelling how they showed him struggle with that choice, and I personally believe that from a narrative standpoint, this is exactly the choice Kyon would have made.

With that said-

Staying in this new timeline would have been the best option for the most people, for the most logical reasons, and my own personal bias, of course. Here are my two reasons, and first and most important:

Haruhi Is No Longer A Threat

The Haruhi in Nagato’s world is just as peculiar as the Haruhi we know and love, but now she can’t end the world with a thought. Of course, from a narrative standpoint, this would mean ending the series prematurely because that’s the whole premise, but in-universe, why on earth would you not let this be?

How many times has the world almost ended in the TV series just because Haruhi was a little upset? How many close calls of her discovering her latent ability have almost ended the lives of innocent people? Whose fault was it that everybody in the world, and most especially, Nagato, spent 594 years reliving the same day over and over because of her own selfish wants?

I cannot blame Haruhi for these actions, of course, she has no knowledge of her own power. You may as well tell fire to stop burning for all the good it will do you. However, if the end goal of the series was to keep the world safe, then what safer and most peaceful way is there to solve the problem than by removing Haruhi’s powers?

The most that they lose by transferring over to the new timeline, is the loss of the precious memories of the time they spent together in the SOS Brigade. I know, that these are really, REALLY, hard to give up, especially if a whole chunk of who you are relies on those experiences. However, if you weigh your own wants and needs, memories, against that of the safety of the world and even Haruhi’s?

Sacrifices have to be made. Kyon chose what he wanted, not what was needed, and he sacrificed the safety of a new world in favor of curing his own boredom.

Nagato’s Happiness

Of course, Nagato’s reasons are just as selfish as Kyon’s. She wanted to escape from the near-impossible responsibilities and tasks assigned to her, the unbearable stress and trauma of experiencing the same day over and over again, and most foreign to her, she wanted what Kyon had for herself. Kyon was always dragged into fun situations, and despite his complaints, he himself admits that he loved all of it. Nagato Yuki had no way to deal with the emotions she had gained from centuries of stress and experience. Kyon had saved her from the endless eight, and she was extremely grateful.

All of these things combined led her to make the decision to change the world with all of her power, at the expense of all the happy memories they had, and by separating everybody for a while. This must have taxed her endlessly, but for the first time, she finally had emotions, could finally get to Kyon and talk to him without it being a world-ending event, and even have the normal school life that she had only pretended to have for so long.

Maybe I do just like Nagato Yuki much more than Haruhi, but I think somebody who has suffered as much as she has, and sacrificed so many things, only to leave the end choice of which world should come to pass to the person she trusted most in the end?

I think Yuki deserves this happiness.

Conclusion

I can go on and on about this, but I wanted to make a quick core thoughts post about it, and I also wanted to talk about this with people as quickly as humanly possible to bounce my thoughts on it.

What would you have done, in Kyon’s shoes? Let me know in the comments below!

-TLM