…Sorry. Once it’s done, this post shall be removed forever and ever and ever and ever….

…and ever.

That is a11.

(Why, yes, I have been reading MegaTokyo a lot. Why do you ask?)

“I’m getting bored and just fed up watching something that doesn’t seem to be changing at all.”

- Asakura Ryoko, chronological Episode IV of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

In 2006, Kyoto Animation made a simple little anime called The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It was based on a popular series of light novels written by Nagaru Tanigawa. Even still, nobody expected it to be very big. Kyoto was not trying to make a popular anime. All they wanted to do was make a good anime.

And maybe that’s what went wrong with its 2009 sequel of sorts. That they forgot what Haruhi truly was. That they, rather than wanting to make a form of art, made a capitalistic envoy instead.

As stated, Haruhi was never made to be a hit. But people saw that it was good. Very good. It was something people had never seen before. Imagine someone on YouTube in 2006, idly watching random videos. Then he or she saw Hare Hare Yukai, the ending theme of the show. It featured spunky, beautifully animated synchronized dancing.  A magnificent concept. People caught on. They correctly decided that the anime itself would be at least as good as the ending theme. It was, and a whole lot more. What people got was a highly original show. It featured a simple but rich story about a girl who became bored with the everyday and wanted aliens, time travelers, and espers. And she got them, but she never knew. She also had the power to change – and destroy – the world, and the club she formed, the SOS-dan, must keep her entertained so that she does not go subconsciously ballistic. The characters are rich and deep, a high achievement considering it only adapted a fraction of the source material. The animation is beautifully done, the music is memorable, and it was a very fun show.

The only problem was that it was only fourteen episodes. Everybody wanted more Haruhi. Instead, they got false starts, broken promises, and hostile PR. For three years.

Unfortunately, though the animation company was skilled at their jobs, the marketing company, Kadokawa Shoten, seemed to have been run by a bunch of trolling monkeys. For three years, they constantly went back and forth, one day pulling a preview out of their asses, and the next publishing an angry press release stating Haruhi was canceled. Three years. And as a result, the fanbase moved on to other works, including, unfortunately, Kyoto Animation’s K-ON!. The fanbase had become zombified. But a loyal few waited. And waited. And waited. They flamed on message boards and threw insults at Kadokawa and Kyoto Animation, but they knew that one day, a new season of their beloved show would come.

It did, but not in the way they wanted.

In 2009, a rerun of the first season was announced. But there was a juicy little detail: it was to be 28 episodes. Could it be?

On May 22 2009, Haruhi Suzumiya was reborn.

The first episode was considered a success. All the quirks were back. The characters were acting as fun as ever. We were welcomed back into the messy but warm clubroom. It also seemed to serve as a prelude to what was expected to be the main attraction of the season, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

June 19, 2009. Another new episode. Endless Eight. Two words that would become etched in fans’ minds, a memory of one of the biggest, most insane trolls in anime history.

But at that point, nobody expected it. A simple summer slice of life episode. Fairly entertaining.

The next week, there was another new episode. Endless Eight. The only truly new episode for a long time. This time, there was a twist: summer had been repeating almost 15,000 times. It was getting interesting.

The next week, another new episode. Endless Eight. Basically the same thing. What was going on?

The next week, another episode. Endless Eight. Basically the same thing. The trolling had begun anew.

Endless Eight. Endless Eight. Endless Eight. Endless Eight. We had seen the same episode with only minor variations eight times. Eight times.

So much for the new season.

* * *

Hopefully by now, the context has been established, and one can see why this season was such a disappointment. The review will now be divided into five sections, based on MyAnimeList’s review criteria.

Story/Enjoyment

The story is entertaining, but nowhere near the levels of the first season. The first story was Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, by the way the only story with a good amount of screen time. It’s interesting, establishing Kyon’s time travel back into three years ago, to help junior high Haruhi and establish John Smith. While pretty interesting, the spunk of any given first season episode is gone; the episode just chugs along.

Then came Endless Eight. The exact same thing over and over again. The premise is this: Haruhi wants to spend the remaining summer with the SOS-dan. She is not fully satisfied, though, and subconsciously repeats the same two weeks over and over again. Eventually, Kyon invites everyone to his house to do homework. Haruhi is satisfied, and the time stream goes on. Fairly simple, and could have easily been accomplished in one, two, or even three episodes if you wanted to give the feeling of a loop. But instead, Kyoto Animation decided to drag this on for eight episodes. Needless to say, it gets extremely boring and repetitive. Each episode by itself is passable. But put together, it is one of the most boring, redundant, pointless, and driveling arcs ever devised.

After that ends, we get The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya, where they make the movie seen in the first season. It’s interesting seeing the movie being made and the ordeals everyone had to go through, but the charm, the wit, the feel of the first season are still, well, disappeared. The story itself is a bit tedious, too.

Story: 6/10

Enjoyment: 4/10

Animation

Another weak point for the show. Kyoto Animation began a show shortly before Haruhi Season 2 called K-ON!, a moe-blob anime with cosplaying, tea-drinking, and a surprisingly small amount of actual rock performances. (Or so I hear; I didn’t have the patience to watch the show.) This show had an extremely large influence on Haruhi Season 2’s animation, and it really hurts it. The character’s eyes are taller, more childish. Everybody suddenly develops buckteeth. The colors are less bold, more washed out. There is much less detail. The animation is not as smooth. Animation changes are expected, especially in a period of three years, but for the animation company to regress rather than advance is a terrible thing. I often found it painful to see K-ON! expressions copied and pasted onto everybody, and had to rewatch a first season episode to try to blot it out of my mind and only think of the first season designs whenever I thought of the characters.

5/10

Sound

The sound is average, which means highly disappointing. In 2006, we got Hare Hare Yukai, Bouken Desho Desho?, God Knows, and Lost My Music. All excellent pieces of J-pop. Even the background pieces are memorable. But in 2009, all we get are Tomare!, Super Driver, and a couple new background pieces that are extremely meh. Tomare! and Super Driver are still fairly good J-pop songs, but when you think of how Hare Hare Yukai, Bouken Desho Desho?, God Knows, and Lost My Music were done so well three years before, they don’t stand a candle.

7/10

Characters

Exactly the same. Still excellent. Haruhi is still God (though she doesn’t look the part anymore due to the K-ON!ification of the animation), Kyon is still snarky, Yuki is still awesome, Mikuru is still a moe-blob, and Koizumi is still gay. Koizumi and Mikuru are still meh, but that’s just a case of me not liking their personalities and mannerisms; they’re still good characters. And I do not think Haruhi is a bitch, because there is so much more to her character. (It doesn’t matter though; people will still bitch about how Haruhi is a bitch in their butthurt opinions.) (I know I’ll be flamed for this.) One small complaint: Kyon seems a lot less observant and a lot more slow than last season. (His lines aren’t quite as memorable this time around, too.)

9/10

* * *

We have deeply regressed. Haruhi was such an original show. It was indescribable. The second season, however, can be easily described in two words: troll, and disappointment. Which is a pity, because this show had so much promise. There were so many more stories to adapt. There was so much more character to develop. There was so much more merriment to be had.

Kyoto Animation has turned an excellent show into an average show. And they will never learn from their mistakes, because they will still sell hundreds of thousands of Endless Eight DVDs. They will have succeeded in milking as much money as they can from this hot property.

All we wanted was a good show.

Instead, we got a big middle finger.

7/10

*snickers*

*chuckles*

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111!1!!one!!!one

Oh, I’m so fucked up immature…

Ugh. First off, pork brains? I’m Korean-American, so plenty of meat isn’t very strange to me, such as dog and fish brains. But pork brains? Disgusting. And 3500 mg of cholesterol? Geez, I wonder how many you’d need to eat to get a heart attack. One? One half? One quarter? One sixteenth?

But of course, I, being the anime fan I am, noticed this one first:

*facepalm*

I… I… ugh. Let’s begin, shall we?

First off, it’s canned bread. Canned bread. Could you imagine how soggy, how gross, how moldy, how just plain unappetizing it would get? But even more alarming is that they’re advertising it with, yes, Clannad. Clannad! Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they were advertising it with Kyou, Tomoyo, or Kotomi, but the poster has Sanae-san IN YOUR FACE, guaranteeing that not only will this canned “bread” be disgusting, but also simply horrifying. I’m surprised they haven’t pulled lawsuits yet! Or maybe they have. I wouldn’t even be daring enough to get the “bread” with Tomoyo, Kyou, or Kotomi on the can, lest it be an evil marketing ploy organized by Akio-san.

Ugh. Where’s the jam…

Endless Eight was… okay. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad, and some episodes (4, 5, 8) were better than others (basically the rest). Notably, with the exception of the first, all the best episodes had differences from the rest (4 had crazy symbolism, 5 was really funny, and 8 had a good ending). Really, at the end of the day, it was just another arc of the Haruhi story. Only problem? It took too freaking long!

And that’s really the big beef with Endless Eight. Not the actual arc itself, but its placement in such a short show, and how it took up so much time within the show, leaving a total of 6 episodes for original content, one of which had already aired.

Pros of Endless Eight (yes, believe it or not, there are pros)

-It was still an okay arc.

-You really felt the repetition all the characters had to feel, and you really got the idea that this truly was Endless Eight.

-When Kyon noted that the ordeal must have been incredibly difficult for Yuki in the light novel, I didn’t really feel it. In the adaptation, I really knew what he was talking about, and understood.

-We got to witness the total destruction and disintegration of the Haruhi fanbase, which in itself wasn’t a very good thing, but it sure as hell was hilarious.

Now for the cons:

-IT TOOK TOO FREAKING LONG! A couple repetitions were necessary for this arc. One, okay (would be most similar to light novel). Two, good. Three, good (I think three would have been best). Four, pushing it, but okay. Eight, WTF!

-We don’t have enough room to adapt much else. This really is the biggest problem by far, and really outweighs the pros by itself. What most people wanted from the second season was Disappearance. Because let’s face it: Disappearance was amazing, and the best arc of Haruhi. Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody was the debut of the second season, so it would be logical to think Disappearance was coming. Then Endless Eight takes up eight bloody episodes, leaving only five episodes. Five episodes actually would have been enough for Disappearance (although a little tight, but KyoAni is pretty skilled), but this week, Sigh started, which pretty much means Disappearance isn’t coming this time around, and we’ll have to wait for it for 6+ damn years.

-The Haruhi fanbase is dead. D-E-D. Dead. One may have thought it was already dead before the second season even started due to the epic fail trolling of Kadokawa, but that was nothing. Most fans are alienated, angry, and have given up. Fanbases are annoying, but they’re the ones who buy the products, who support the series, and who help push studios to make more of something. After all, if it weren’t for the fanbase, we probably wouldn’t even have a second season.

-Kadokawa and KyoAni are even more evil than we thought. I wasn’t there, but those three years of waiting were brutal. That was already a pain, but add Endless Eight, and you have an army of trolls that could even rival Sunrise and Studio Pierrot. (Yes. It’s getting that bad.)

-The animation really, really suffered, as I already covered in a previous post. Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody’s animation was actually pretty good, but already not up to the levels of the first season. But with Endless Eight, each episode’s animation kept getting worse and worse. Haruhi looked less and less like Haruhi, and more and more like Yui (see this post for a full rant)

* * *

But it’s all over now. It’s finally over. Sighs has started, and we can breathe a sigh of relief. The first episode was pretty good, and shows some promise. I’m undoubtedly disappointed that Disappearance probably isn’t going to happen, but oh well. It just makes me happy to see them at school, with their school uniforms, hanging out in the clubroom.

But what’s this? The animation is actually… worse? I thought it was supposed to get better after Endless Eight! After all, the animators don’t have to animate the same thing over and over aga-

Eww.

Ewwwwww.

EEEEWWWWWWWWWWW.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! My eyes! WHY, KyoAni, WHY? Oh, the humanity! Oh…. oh god.

Before, she just looked like Yui. Now, she just looks like shit.

W.

T.

F.

How I miss the days of the first season yore…

*Reminds himself of Fred having over 1 million subscribers*

Okay, maybe not THAT bad. Plus you haven’t descended to the ranks of Studio Pierrot, who produced the same episode over and over again for TWO YEARS. (Okay, okay, the plotlines of each episode were different, but in the end, it’s all the same shit.) But you’re still a bunch of trolls, and nobody should want to have that designation. (Except for 4chan, who wants themselves recognized as useless trolls and goes extremely far to get that recognization, but that’s a different story.)

My reaction to each of the Endless Eight episodes:

1st: Hey, good idea! Have everything repeat again in the next episode and catch everyone off guard! Good thinking.

2nd: Huh. Well, all right, then.

3rd: Seriously? It’s still not over? Ugh! It BETTER end next episode!

4th: OMGWTFBBQ IT’S STILL NOT OVER AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH~ All right, that’s IT, I’m putting this SHIT on hold! (Goes on for a little less than a week) (After that almost-week) Ah, what the fuck, I’ll watch it anyway.

5th: Meh. But hey, this is supposed to end next week. Trynottogetyourhopesuptrynottogetyourhopesup~

6th: *sighs* I don’t know what the fuck to do anymore.

* * *

And here we are. Whoever thought this was a good idea is a total ape. You’re not even going to make that much money from this stunt! Sure there’ll be some fans who’ll buy Endless Eight on DVD anyway, but plenty more won’t.

But there’s a slight, slight glimmer of hope. On KyoAni’s website for Haruhi, all of the Endless Eight episodes are counted as one episode. If this really is the case for the actual show, we would only have had two episodes of the second season so far. So if the second season is 14 episodes, we’ll still have twelve episodes left. I highly doubt this will happen, but even an extremely, pitifully slim chance is still a chance.

* * *

But just to drag this post back into the depths of misery and pessimism, let me talk about the animation style, which probably won’t be fixed, even if Endless Eight is counted as one episode (See Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody.). I’ve noticed the animation getting progressively worse (read: K-ON!ish) with each episode.

This is how Haruhi looked in the first season:

Notice how Haruhi looks very fierce. The series conveys her as God, and her character design really makes that believable. She carries such an aura of pure awesome “I will pwn you and you will like it”-ness. It’s just really great.

Here’s another picture, this time from an actual episode (Someday in the Rain):

Once again, Haruhi looks very powerful. The character design is simple, but masterfully done. Though simple, great effort was put in her design. Absolutely no flaws at all.

Now let’s take a look at Haruhi from the second season, or Hirahi, as I will explain later:

Taken from the KyoAni website, which is why there's text; sorry

Ugh. The first noticeable thing, for me anyway, is the teeth. Apparently, in three years Haruhi developed some nasty overbite, buckteeth, or something, because in the first season, you never saw her teeth. In the second, you always see them. Reasoning for this? Not quite sure, probably to make her more moe (babies have little buckteeth too). Another big problem is the eye shape. The eyes are now taller, more rounded, and are completely incapable of letting her have that God expression that was ever-prevalent during the first season. In addition, her skin now seems to be much softer, and shinier, something which real skin never does (but again, babies have very soft skin, so this is also probably to make her more moe). Finally, while it’s not prevalent in this specific picture, the top of Hirahi’s cheeks curve inward into her head for some reason. The design is also even simpler; details are taken out and design is simplified mercilessly. All of these things add up to make Hirahi not look like Haruhi. She actually seems to look like someone else…

Another shot of her, from an actual episode:

In this picture, Haruhi has absolutely zero God-level, and now looks like a random useless teenage meatbag. Sad. Also, if I’m not mistaken, her arms look very chubby in this shot (just like a baby). She really does look like someone else…

Okay, it’s pretty much unmistakable now. Haruhi looks more like Yui from K-ON! than Haruhi now.

As you can see, many of the features of Hirahi originate from Yui. The rounder eyes, the teeth, the head going inward, it’s like they took Yui and made her a little bit like Haruhi, to create this mutant known as the second season Haruhi. It’s also why I call her Hirahi (Yui HIRAsawa + Haruhi = HIRAhi)

Fear my crappy Photoshop 5k1||5!

If it wasn’t apparent before, it definitely is now. Haruhi and Hirahi look unmistakably different. KyoAni has taken Haruhi and Yui, mixed them together, and created a dastardly concoction. A hybrid that loses all the God-power of the original Haruhi. What have they done?

So those are some complaints about Haruhi I have. You’ve probably heard most of this before, but I just wanted to put it in my own words.

Starting a series of Endless Eight reviews very soon; I’m having a little writer’s block right now (for a short little review, embarrassing, I know).

And that’s all for now.

So we finally get our new season, just to get AT LEAST five Endless Eight episodes. I’m not really not sure who’s at fault here. At first I immediately thought KyoAni, but after hearing some things, Kadokawa may be of blame too. All the way until last week, I decided I would watch it anyway, but then I suddenly just decided, “Fuck it, I’m not putting up with this.” I’m not sure what snapped in me; perhaps a sudden fear that Disappearance wouldn’t be animated after all. Whatever it was, I’ve put this show on hold until either Disappearance airs or I suddenly stop being upset. But I’m sure I’ll cave and keep watching it anyway… Turns out I did. Oops.

I really wish Endless Eight would just end already.

Woah, that sounded odd…

Also, I’ve been quiet recently. No reason, actually.

On another note, any recommended summer season anime?