Underrated movies

Disappearance of haruhi suzumiya: Yes I know it's already in the top 100, but it should be way higher. I find it absurd how that movie isn't in the top 10 considering how even people who dislike haruhi admit it's incredible. Considering how more people have completed it than s2, I'm pretty sure the reason it's not in the top 10 is 100% because a notable number of people watched it without having seen the tv series.

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise: I have 0 clue how this doesn't even have a score of 7.5. It's a fantastic movie in almost every way. it's score is criminally low.

But more people have seen season 1 than the movie.
If anyone did start with the movie, I blame the hype. Fans all but stopped discussing season 1 after the movie premiered, and even those who previously disliked that franchise began recommending the movie. Prospective viewers exposed to such comments will not want to sit through a pair of mid seasons.

No one would watch all of season 1, skip season 2, and then watch the movie.

The fact that the movie has more completed than s2 is proof that a lot of people skipped straight to the movie.



I couldn't disagree more. If someone is dumb enough to watch the part that everyone says is the best part of a series without seeing everything that comes before it, that is 100% on them.

It's like skipping to Clannad: After Story.

people swear by how criminal it is to skip jojo parts, and those have decently disconnected stories which is not the case at all with disappearance. Your reaction to "oh this latest season/movie is so fucking good and the best part of the series"

shouldn't be "well I guess I'll skip everything that comes before it"

Like you don't need to be a genius to know why that's a horrible idea, sequels build up on everything that came before them. If you skipped to breaking bad season 5, it wouldn't be as good. If you skipped to AOT S3 P2 it wouldn't be as good. The fact that skipping to the best part of the show is even considerable to anyone is beyond stupid to me.

I did, because I didn't want to watch the same episode 8 times. I tell others to skip the repeated episodes too.



But Disappearance and After Story are not just known as the best parts of their respective shows, they're considered so good that they even win the hearts of haters! Personally, I don't understand how someone who hates either show could derive any enjoyment from Disappearance or After Story.

The other thing about Clannad is that most of the arcs don't matter, but fans will not admit they don't matter.

Ok but like that's a portion of season 2.

I actually did watch endless 8, and genuinely think if someone has the patience, they should. Because I do believe even that adds to the impact of disappearance. It's one thing to know a character went through 15k loops, it's another thing to experience a tiny bit of it, and go through the agony of seeing the same episode over and over and over again yourself.



The main haruhi series is a fun supernatural show with over the top wacky plot points and characters. It has some serious moments, but outside of the first arc, they are few and far between.

Disappearance is a full on slow paced atmospheric mystery. I am a HUGE mystery fan myself, it's my favourite genre. And I think disappearance is the literal peak of mystery writing.

A lot of disappearance's qualities are just not things that you would see in the original, so I'm not surprised even people who didn't like the series enjoyed it.

I myself really liked the show too, but disappearance is what I consider to be one of the best pieces of media I have ever seen. It is so good, that I don't find it surprising at all that it won the heart of even the people who disliked the rest of the series. But the thing is, even for the people who hated the rest of the show, they wouldn't like disappearance if they hadn't seen the earlier parts.

Without knowing who the yandere girl is, seeing her alive doesn't mean anything. Without knowing the original Yuki, her motive or character change don't feel like anything. without having seen the show, haruhi being missing isn't as huge of an event.

And above all else, Kyon's choice at the end of the movie was a masterclass in writing that only worked because of 2 seasons of him being sarcastic about how hard his life is and how done he is with the SOS club. None of these do anything without the context of the rest of the show.

So while it makes sense that even people who disliked the series may like the movie, it's also true that they NEEDED to watch those parts for disappearance to work.

But that means Disappearance fans should have enjoyed the Melancholy arc too. Not all of the franchise is serious or mysterious, true, but there is mystery from the start.


I'll never be convinced that someone who doesn't like any of those 3 girls can become invested in seeing their return.


I'm just going to ignore this part because we've already discussed it in the past.

I would say that one is the most similar, it's just not nearly as good imo. and due to being the first arc, it's spending a lot of time on just introducing the characters and has a good bit of info dumps.



You don't need to be invested in the girls, the fact that a dead girl is a live, god is missing, and the alien is acting like a normal girl is just so interesting that even if you had 0 investment in the characters beforehand, you would still want to know wtf is going on.

something similar actually happened to me, I thought the original madoka magica was a good show, but I could not care less about the characters. so I wasn't really that invested. but then I watched rebellion and I was hooked instantly because of the mystery.

You're going to pretend Disappearance doesn't have those? 😑


Is that so? I was able to enjoy Rebellion only because it has more of the parts I like and less of the parts I dislike.

It's been a while since I watched it, but I can't remember any.

I don't consider all explanations to be info dumps, like I remember a scene where someone is theorizing how this could be a parallel world in disappearance. That is something that is actively building on the mystery, characters talking about what could be happening is a part of what makes a mystery enjoyable.

On the other hand, the melancholy arc had characters just explaining who they are, who haruhi is, why haruhi is a god, what each character does... stuff like that. But I could be forgetting, it's been like 4 years since I watched haruhi... which reminds me, I should definitely rewatch it, it's the only show in my top 10 that I haven't rewatched.



Most of the things that make rebellion one of my favourite anime movies straight up don't exist in the show.

The reason for it is actually a common theme with a lot of my favourites, I LOVE having 0 clue what is going on when it's by design. That's the main reason for why I love disappearance and rebellion so much, and why shows like sonny boy and steins;gate instantly fully hooked me.

That feeling is then 10 times better when the show/movie also has good music, directing and a strong sense of atmosphere, which all 4 of these examples exceed at.

That reminds me. I started playing a visual novel that's nothing but theorizing. I dropped it because I'm more interested in what characters do than in what they think. Perhaps you'd like it more, but I don't think the music is good either.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1432500/The_Sekimeiya_Spun_Glass

It looks pretty interesting. Honestly I'm not that much of a VN player, so my priority would probably be playing the Science Adventure series, since I already played steins;gate and own 0....

but this also looks like something that I would love. Thanks for the suggestion, I'm actually considering buying it on impulse and seeing how it goes.

I did that with 13 sentinals and it ended up being one of my favourite stories in anything!

I also thought I might have loved it. Reviews warned me the game would focus on mystery at the exclusion of all else, but they did not warn me that characters would constantly run their mouths without making any progress in solving said mystery.

Damn, well that's unfortunate. I have no problem with the talking part, but not making progress is definitely a big turn off.

I think a good mystery can make a character follow the mystery along with the audience, make them too dumb and it becomes frustrating to watch, but make them too smart (BBC sherlock, Gosick) and the character solves the mystery before the audience has the time to figure it out.

Alternatively, the audience can be ahead of the characters, but not because the cast is dumb, but because you give the audience information that other characters don't have. Heavenly delusions is an example of that being done extremely well.

@Lucifrost Ah... I see. I mean you could use that effectively if the final answer ends up being something completely different, or if you just do this at the start to put the audience in the right mindset. but I agree, laying out every possible outcome is pretty lame.

Although I guess if they want to give the audience a choice, it has to be out of some options. It's a bad thing, but I can't think of an alternative when it comes to involving the player in solving stuff. unless you do a 13 sentinals where the options don't matter cause you have to get all the possible paths anyway.