“Hello, Mr Mouse. I’d like to make a donation to your blog.”
“MOUSE LIKE MONEY.”
“Would you be willing to do a blog post setting out your thoughts on the latest developments in the field of Quantum Chemistry?”
“Well I don’t know anything about Quantum Chemistry and in fact had never even heard of it before but I’m sure an hour or so of research on the internet should be all I need to get up to speed.”
“I’ve made a HUGE mistake.”
Replace “Quantum Chemistry” with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and that’s pretty much where we’re at, folks. I…I misjudged this one, not gonna lie. I thought “Sure, I’ve never heard of it, but it’s a cartoon! I can review cartoons, I do it all the time!”. But The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a cartoon show in the same way the Bible is a novel. I didn’t know what it was before, and after many hours of research I still feel like I’m missing pretty vital information. This is a show with no clearly defined genre packed with references to advanced scientific and mathematical concepts. This is the kind of stuff I was coming across when researching these episodes:
Ah. Of course.
Okay, let’s start with the facts. The Melancholy of Haruhi Susumiya is the animé adaptation of Naguro Tanigawa’s series of light novels featuring the eponymous schoolgirl. Haruhi is really bored with her everyday life and the boring people around her and founds a school club with her friend, Kyon, to find aliens and other supernatural creatures and…just…hang out with them. Oh, and Haruhi is actually an all-powerful reality warper who has to be kept in the dark about her abilities in case she does untold damage to the world around her.
Ah, that old saw.
The TV adaptation was first broadcast in 2006 and became one of the biggest hits in the history of animé, achieving worldwide success and becoming an unstoppable cultural behemoth. Apparently. Because, as I hinted before, I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF THIS THING AND NOW I THINK I’M GOING CRAZY. DID I SLIP INTO AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE?
“WHY DOES NO ONE REMEMBER THAT NELSON MANDELA DIED IN PRISON AND WHY CAN’T I FIND SHAZAAM ON NETFLIX?!”
But apparently yes, this show was huge. So after the first season was released the show seemed unstoppable. The second season was announced in 2007 and the fandom was whipped into a frothing lathery frenzy. And then…
Hooooo boy.
What followed was one of the most spectacularly misjudged testings of fan loyalty that I have ever heard of. Within a single story arc, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya managed to piss away every last drop of audience goodwill it had accrued over the years. The franchise carried on after this for a while but it was a dead toon walking. No third season has been announced, and the franchise is now effectively dead. The arc in question was called The Endless Eight. So, what did this animé about a Japanese schoolgirl do to honk off its fanbase to the point that they abandoned it en masse? Did it involve tentacles? Surprisingly, it did not.
The Endless Eight is a story that sees Haruhi, Kyon and their friends trapped in a time loop in the last week of summer. The first episode ends with them still in the timeloop. The second episode is the first episode repeated. Because they’re still in the time loop, y’see. And each week, increasingly bewildered and enraged fans would tune in, only to be forced to watch the same episode again and again and again and again and again and again and that is not hyperbole because no lie they did this EIGHT GOD DAMNED TIMES. For real. Eight weeks of the same episode. And here’s the thing, it’s not like they just re-screened the same episode. Each episode was re-animated from scratch, each line of dialogue recorded eight times but the script remained the same with a few changes here and there. Every time.
I…just…that’s brilliant? Is it? No? I…no. It’s stupid, isn’t it? It’s real stupid. But at the same time…the balls that takes, right? But still, no. That’s just…no. But, isn’t it brilliant? But…GAWD. That’s the kind of reckless, devil-may-care creative choice that I can’t help but admire.
So here’s the thing, I know nothing about this franchise. I do not have the time to devote to exploring its mysteries and subtleties and its place in animé history. So I’m just gonna throw myself into this headfirst and review all four hours of the The Endless Eight because, fuck it. You only live once. Or eight times. Whatever.
Episode 1 begins with Kyon sitting on his coach one morning watching baseball on TV.
“So put your little hand in mine…”
He gets a call from Haruhi who tells him to meet her and the rest of the gang in town, and to bring money, swimming clothes and his bike. Kyon is really all that keen, but because he basically has to keep Haruhi happy like the little kid in that episode of the Twilight Zone so he goes. So I suppose I should introduce all the members of Haruhi’s SOS Brigade (it stands for Spreading Cheer to Our Student Body and Playing Real Fast and Loose with the Established Conventions of Initialisms Brigade). Each member is weird in a different way.
Itsuki: An “esper” with psychic powers who belongs to a secret clandestine agency.
Yuki: A construct of pure data created by aliens to learn and interact with the human race.
Mikuru: An example of the normalisation of paedophilia in Japanese pop culture.
Okay, Mikuru is actually a time traveller from the future but yeah, I need to talk about this first. Kyon has a huge crush on Mikuru. Fair enough. They’re both high school age kids, ain’t nothing wrong with that. But everything about Mikuru, particularly her voice performance, just screams little girl and it is messed up. Every time Kyon starts inner monologuing about how cute she is I half expect Chris Hansen to show up and ask him to take a seat. Everything about how Mikuru is presented just makes my skin crawl.
“Oh Mouse, she’s just a loli.”
Yeah, I know she’s a loli, Otaku Oceania. The fact that this trope is so common that it has a name doesn’t make it better. IT MAKES IT MUCH MUCH WORSE. If we had a specific word that meant “Somebody who goes around tearing off people’s faces and eating them while they watch” that would be a pretty bad sign for where we are as a society.
Haruhi tells them that it’s August 17 and they only have two more weeks of summer left so they’re going to have the ultimate summer before school starts again. They cycle to the swimming pool and Kyon complains that Haruhi just ordered him to come out without even telling them where they were going. Well yeah, but…she also told you to bring your swimming gear, Kyon. You couldn’t have taken an educated guess? Itsuki is just happy because Haruhi is happy and so won’t destroy the world.
After the pool they go to a diner and make a list of all the things they want to do. Sidebar, the kids all address each other very formally, like Mikuru is always “Miss Asahina” and Haruhi is always “Miss Suzumiya” and it sounds like they’re all having a board meeting. I presume that’s accurate to the setting but it raises a question for me, if you’re not on first name terms with your friends when hanging out at the local diner, who are you on first name terms with? When do you actually use first names?
“Oh Akane! Akane!”
“That’s MISS Akane, don’t get fresh with me, buster.”
Everyone seems to be having a good time, but Kyon notices Yuki sitting by herself and staring into the distance. I don’t know why this is supposed to be weird but that’s what she always does but apparently this is weird now. Anyway. After the pool they go to a diner and Haruhi sets out the plan of activities for the next two weeks. After shopping for yakutas (traditional Japanese dresses, obviously) they go to a Bon Festival which as we all know is a Buddhist festival for honouring the dead.
“Glad to be of service!”
“Dude, shut up!”
At the Bon festival, Haruhi and Mikuru go and scoop goldfish while Yuki buys a mask. Then they go down to the riverbank and let off some fireworks. Kyon asks Haruhi if she’s done her summer homework and she says of course she has, because that’s the only way to enjoy the summer fully.
The next day they go hunting cicadas, and then stargazing. Then they play baseball. Then they get part time jobs wearing costumes and handing out flyers for a local store for no pay just so Haruhi can stick Mikuru in a frog costume because she thinks it’s cute and Mikuru is her plaything. More fireworks. They go fishing. They go to a graveyard at night. They watch a movie. Beach. Karaoke.
On August 30th they meet back in the diner and Haruhi asks if anyone wanted to do anything else. No one can think of anything so she gives them the day off (pro tip, if a friend is giving you the day off? They are not your friend, they’re your boss) and Kyon goes home.
The next night, he tries to do his homework, but ends up going to sleep before he can finish it. Aaaaand the episode ends.
I know it sounds excruciatingly boring but it’s actually not.
It’s a pleasant enough hang-out episode and, (with the exception of Mikuru) I actually really enjoy all the vocal performances. On its own, it would probably just be remembered as a fine, faintly dull but not unpleasant episode.
Episode 2 begins with Kyon sitting on his coach one morning watching baseball on TV.
“So put your little hand in mine…”
Something is different this time around (and my God but those words will be precious as we go on) and Kyon instinctively feels that something is off. He has a premonition that Haruhi is going to call and then of course she does. At the swimming pool Kyon gets a feeling of deja vu when he sees Yuki staring into space, and then again at the Bon festival. They go through the cicada hunt and the part time job as before but then, one night, something different happens (oh God sweet relief).
Kyon is woken up in the middle of the night by Mikuru, sobbing in the register of a wounded bat, who tells him that something terrible has happened. Next, Isuki comes on the line and tells Kyon that they have a situation and that he needs to come meet them.
Kyon, Mikuru, Isuki and Yuki meet in a public park and Mikuru tearfully explains that she can’t travel to the future anymore. Itsuki explains that they’re caught in a time loop that’s been repeating over and over and that he’s been having intense feelings of deja vu. He says that he figured it out when he spoke with Mikuru and Kyon angrily interrupts saying “Next time call me when you want to speak with her!”
Kyon assumes that the timeloop was caused by Mikuru because she’s a time traveler (that is profiling, dude) but Itsuki says that it’s Haruhi who’s to blame, and that she must subconsciously want summer to last forever. Also, if you’re a fan of “Itsuki looking like he’s about to take Kyon roughly like a longshoreman” I would definitely recommend Episode 2.
Dude. C’mon. Personal space.
Itsuki says that Haruhi probably has no sense that this is happening, and that it would almost certainly be disastrous if she did. He tells Kyon that everyone’s memory resets with each loop and that the reason they can sense deja vu is because they’re the ones closest to Haruhi, but that there’s someone whose memory isn’t affected at all. Yuki then drops the bombshell; because of her alien nature she has experienced every loop with perfect recall. All 15,498 of them.
That’s right. Episode 2 of Endless Eight takes place almost six hundred years after Episode One. And Yuki remembers all of it.
Episode 2 shows how Endless Eight could have been awesome if the creators had just had a bit of restraint. The scene where the truth about the time loop is revealed is delightfully creepy, and Yuki’s emotionless monotone as she recites the mundane details of the last 15,498 loops to an increasingly freaked out Kyon is really effective. It sets the stage for a great resolution…that won’t arrive for another three hours.
Cycling home Kyon muses on what Yuki has gone through, and what it must feel like to experience the same events over and over and over.
“It was approximately as boring as watching Meet Joe Black.”
The next night, we’re back in re-runs as they go star gazing again.
I feel ya, ladies.
When Haruhi falls asleep, Itsuki and Kyon discuss ways to break the time loop and Itsuki suggests that Kyon grab Haruhi from behind and tell her that he loves her because…I actually think he wants to get Kyon killed? I mean, I haven’t watched most of the show but I am getting a distinct vibe that Itsuki is a serial killer who enjoys watching people die. Kyon says that that’s not going to happen and Itsuki suggests that he do it and then clarifies that he was only joking and wistfully says “That’s not a role I can play.”
Right. Because you’re gay and in love with Kyon. Right? I’m right amn’t I? Someone tell me I’m right.
And so Kyon and the others just wile away the long summer days doing exactly what they did before. Baseball, graveyard, bowling, karaoke. And on August 30th they’re once again back at the diner and Haruhi asks if there’s anything else they want to do. When no one can suggest anything Haruhi goes to leave. Kyon desperately tries to think of something to make her stay but can’t. The episode ends with Kyon leaving his homework unfinished as school’s never going to start anyway.
Episode 3 begins with Kyon sitting on his coach one morning watching baseball on TV.
“So put your little hand in mine…”
Episode 3 is on my shitlist. Episode 3 can go straight to hell. Episode 3 is a garbage episode and if you like it you’re a garbage person.
Episode 3 is the “Oh shit, they’re really doing this” episode. Episode 3 is where it all comes crashing down. Episode 3 proves the non-existence of time travel, because if someone invented time travel in the future they would have come back and stopped this episode being made and, yes, this makes Episode 3 a kind of Baby Hitler Episode, and no, I don’t think that’s an unfair analogy.
It’s Episode 2. Again.
There is nothing new of consequence. A few re-ordered lines of dialogue, but that’s it.
Fuck Episode 3.
Pool, Bon Festival, Fireworks, Part Time Job, Oh No We’re in a Time Loop Whatever Shall We do? I dunno let’s just play baseball and go to the fucking graveyard and sing in the goddamned karaoke like we’ve done before and not actually devote any effort to trying TO DO ANYTHING DIFFERENTLY AND MAYBE BREAK THE TIME LOOP GAWD!
They end up back at the diner and Kyon again fails to suggest ANYTHING that they should do and Haruhi walks out and it all starts over again and I die a little inside.
I want to get off. This was a huge mistake.
Episode 4 begins with Kyon sitting on his coach one morning watching baseball on TV.
“So put your little hand in mine…”
Episode 4 is a liar and a bad role model for our children. It seems like something might be actually happening, all through the episode even as we go through the stupid swimming pool for jerks and the sucky bon festival and the fireworks display for people too stupid to live just as before, there’s this recurring motif of clouds and planes which seems to be strongly hinting that the key to escaping the time loop is something to do with planes. Like, maybe what Haruhi really wants is a foreign holiday but she’s scared of travelling abroad and that’s what’s keeping her from fully enjoying her summer? That would make sense, wouldn’t it? YEAH. IT WOULD.
Even at the final meeting in the diner, Kyon thinks to himself “There must have been some clue” and the episode has the fucking unmitigated BRASS to show us the plane flying through the clouds.
You taint the very sky with your LIES!
Because the solution to breaking the time loop has absolutely NOTHING to do with the plane.
Episode 5 begins with Kyon sitting on his coach one morning watching baseball on TV.
“So put your little hand in mine…”
WHY DON’T THEY KILL HER?
WHY DON’T THEY JUST KILL HER!?
KILL HARUHI SUZUMIYA AND YOU SHALL BE FREE! WE SHALL ALL BE FREE OF THIS LIVING DEATH!
Sorry. Almost lost my cool there for just a second.
Episode 5 is no Episode 1, and if it ever compared itself to Episode 2 I would smack it in the mouth and tell it to know it’s damn place. But it does have one new scene that wasn’t in any of the previous episodes so that puts it ahead of those degenerate scoundrels 3 and 4 (damn their eyes). There is actually a tiny little scene in the graveyard where Kyon asks Yuki why she didn’t, y’know, SAY ANYTHING about the time loop to the others before they discovered it themselves. She tells him that her function is only to observe.
Look, I know it doesn’t sound like much but two and a half hours in it’s like manna in the frickin’ desert.
Episode 6 begins with Kyon sitting on his coach one morning watching baseball on TV.
“So put your little hand in mine.”
I’ve begun to repeat dialogue without realising it. Also, the characters have started talking to me.
“Give up Mouse! You cannot possibly watch all eight episodes! YOU ARE WEAK”
“Yeah man, why are you doing this to yourself?”
“YOU WILL NOT DEFEAT ME!”
Other than that, it’s the same GODDAMNED episode.
Episode 7 begins with Kyon teaming up with a wise-cracking manatee to solve his mother’s murder.
“So put your little hand in mine…”
No. No.
It’s the same episode. Nothing changes.
Nothing.
Episode 8 begins with Kyon sitting on his coach one morning watching baseball on TV.
“So put your little hand in mine…”
This is it. We made it. The final episode.
But, more importantly, I have achieved inner enlightenment. I now see that all time is an eternal loop and I am one with it. I am here, I am there, I am yesterday, I am now, I am tomorrow. Time has no hold on me. I have become an immortal. I have become a god.
“You’re…God?”
“I’m A god, I’m not THE God. I don’t think.”
Okay so, sing along one last time: Swimming pool, Bon Festival, Fireworks, cicada catching, part time jobs, “Oh what’s to be done with this dreadful time loop?” meeting, stargazing, baseball, yadda yadda yadda.
And then, finally, we’re back at the diner. Haruhi asks if anyone has any ideas for anything else they can do and no one does. Haruhi makes to leave and OH GOD NO STOP HER YOU IDIOTS NOT AGAIN.
But this time Kyon finally realises that he has to say SOMETHING and blurts out that he still hasn’t started his homework. The rest of the Brigade realise that with all that they’ve been doing none of them have done their homework either. Kyon tells them all to come over to his house and Haruhi demands to come along too, even though she’s already finished hers. This is the summer experience that Haruhi has been missing and she is finally satisfied, ending the time loop.
Yup. The kids save the universe. By doing their homework.
Did I mention this was made in Japan?
***
As I’ve already mentioned, Endless Eight touched off a firestorm in the Haruhi fandom that may well have been the deciding factor in killing the show off for good. The producers justified the decision by saying that they wanted the viewer to experience the frustration and helplessness of Yuki as she had to endure every iteration of the time loop. Fair enough, but it raises a simple question: Why?
See, the world is full of art that is difficult or downright unpleasant to watch; Schindler’s List, 12 Years a Slave, The Passion of the Christ. But making the audience endure that can have an enlightening effect, helping them better understand the suffering the subjects of those films endured. But why force an audience to suffer through something that no human being has ever experienced or ever will (he said, tempting fate like a brazen hussy). What can possibly be gained by making an audience experience what it’s like to be trapped in a closed time loop? The only reason for the creators to do this is: Because they could.
They had the clout, and they felt invincible, and they thought they could subject their audience to anything and they’d still come back for more. It was sheer artistic hubris, and they paid dearly for it. That said, if its goal was to induce frustration, boredom and anger in its audience, Endless Eight must be considered an unqualified artistic success. Unfortunately, they created a situation where the only way for Endless Eight to succeed artistically was to fail as entertainment.
Despite this, I’ve not been turned off completely from Haruhi. I’ve seen this show at it’s worst and it was still good enough to compel me to try it at its best. If you decide to tackle Endless Eight yourself I recommend watching 1, 2 and 8. Alternately, watch all eight simultaneously while dropping acid and become a Star Child.
Scoring
My scoring system came, it saw, it took one look at Endless Eight and it ran away screaming. If I was to score this using my usual method ranking animation, leads, villain, supporting characters and music it would be a decent but not exceptional 59%. That would put it on the same level as An American Tail and Ducktales The Movie, and while neither of those movies is perfect, they both have the virtue of wrapping up their business in less time than a Wagnerian Opera. The problem with the Endless Eight is something quite separate from its animation, characters and score which are all fine. It’s the basic idea at the heart of it that’s so wrong-headed. So rather than trying to crowbar it in to my usual scoring system, I’ll just recommend that you only seek it out if you’re curious or need a sleep aid.
NEXT UPDATE: 12 October 2017
NEXT TIME:
unshavedmouse 
Bravo, Mouse. You have survived Endless Eight, and thus are now eligible to join the “I Survived Endless Eight” club among with the rest of us anime fans. I’m glad I was able to be of service to help you with your research. Don’t worry about your prior lack of Haruhi knowledge; the only people who knew about it were those living in Japan and those who were huge anime nerds.
Allow me to give you a lecture about “loli” and “moe”. While the two often overlap, they are distinctly separate concepts. Mikuru doesn’t qualify as “loli” among anime fans because her character design is too maturely drawn. She’s more along the lines of the “dojikko” archetype than “loli”. That’s not to say that “loli” and “moe” aren’t problematic- because they are. “Loli” tends to be squicky more often than not, and in this commenter’s opinion, “moe” is creatively sterilizing the anime industry. Just my two cents.
Whatever it is, it skeevs me out.
The difference is negligible: both styles overlap to such a degree at this point that it’s practically a skeevy art-style in general. Japan in general has a huge problem with child pornography (it is sold in adult video stores) and its treatment of women and girls is very backward (an entire business built around underage idols for older single men to fantasize over), its world gender equality ranking is about on par with those of certain Middle Eastern countries. Effective consequences for sexual assault are virtually nonexistent due to their shaming culture. One famous manga artist was recently caught with child porn, and the vast majority of anime today star sexualized underaged girls intended to be seen by adult men. Most anime fans (at least as far as I can see in America) don’t want to acknowledge that their favorite thing is morally repugnant, that laypeople have good reasons to stay away or that the country of origin has some serious issues regarding women and children. Japan didn’t even consider it enough of a problem to bother with until it brought them international shame, because its traditionally been considered more important to look good rather than be good.
IIRC, the book version of Endless Eight has an actual payoff, in that Yuki does in fact go insane from it and does… something in one of the later stories? I dunno, OverMaster could probably clarify (also, I believe it was a single short story in a whole collection of them, and the author didn’t subject the reader to eight copy-pastes of the damn thing).
Sooo… likin’ the new DuckTales?
Actually I think you’re referring to The Movie, Disappearance.
Only seen a few minutes but it seems great.
So far I’m loving it. Has all the strengths of a modern cartoon, but is deeply in tribute to the classic show and comic.
You…you did it. You gazed into the very maw of Bahia itself. And something at least resembling you came back. When the Horned King hears of this, he’ll count himself lucky he escaped meeting you with his life.
Yeah, Haruhi. Like many people, I was very impressed with season 1 and wanted more. And then Endless Eight came out and suddenly Haruhi was the Trunchbull and I was Bruce Bogtrotter and she was holding a massive cake and saying “More, did you say?”. By which I mean I did NOT care for Endless Eight.
Mikuru bugged me too. Stephenie Sheh (yeah I watched in English, sue me) is a fine voice actress who has given many performances that did not feel like someone taking a dentist drill to my eardrums, but the character was just obnoxious by nature. The creepiness factor doesn’t help. What DOES help a little is that Kyon meets her as an adult early on, and she eventually grows up to be a lot…less Mikuru. I always chose to believe that his obsession with her was at least partly because he knew she’d be a real person someday, and was holding out.
Now let me guess, your next seven reviews are just going to be this one agai-The Last Unicorn?! YES! I’ve been waiting for this one. Love to hear your thoughts on it, I adore it, but I’ve always worried it’s one of those things you need to see as a child to fall in love with.
Oh, and small amount of advice (since you heeded my advice to avoid Endless Eight so well 😉 ), I believe the DVD of The Last Unicorn contains two audio tracks. You may want to make sure you listen to the original theatrical one, the other is edited to remove some curse words, and made kind of a pig’s ear of it.
“Now let me guess, your next seven reviews are just going to be this one agai-”
Well played, sir. Except he’d have to change to different screen caps each time, and add maybe two different sentences in a couple of the versions, and who’s got time for that nonsense?
Well. Except the creators of the Endless Eight, obviously. 😒
What do I look like, a hack?
Well great, now he HAS to do it, thanks
Problem is, in the books Future Mikuru turns out to be a villain.
I only read the first two, but I did hear about that. Kyon wouldn’t be aware of it at this point though.
Besides, even Evil Mikuru would probably be less annoying than Teenage Mikuru, The Human Whimper.
Villain questionable, skilled and manipulative spymaster yes. That she’s essentially running her past self as an agent is honestly a pretty brilliant story idea, which is one reason I was holding out hope for an ‘Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya’ adaptation, which explores that aspect more fully.
Then again, I was a big fan of George Smiley well before I discovered Haruhi Suzumiya, so that might color my perception a bit.
Oh man, huge Smiley fan.
Stay tuned!
But what would they have done if they had wrapped it up in three episodes, like they should have? They didn’t have any other ideas for the rest of the season. 😏
Well, never mind. Thanks for the review, Mouse! Although, I suddenly want to make you review a Wagnerian opera… 😛
“Right. Because you’re gay and in love with Kyon. Right? I’m right amn’t I? Someone tell me I’m right.”
Shh, that’s subtext, you shouldn’t refer to it directly… Wait, does it still count as subtext if it’s more blatantly obvious than a fifty-foot neon sign? 🤣
Actually that extra time was gonna be for Disappearance, but then they decided to make that a Movie instead.
Ahem. Please don’t take my already not very funny joke, and then completely dismiss the punchline. 😢
I have only a nodding acquaintance with the phrase “Endless Eight” because anime just isn’t my thing. But it is very much the thing of a best friend so I probably picked it up through osmosis.
It’s funny — “Groundhog Day” had basically the same idea but it managed to do it right.
Groundhog Day had the combined powers of Murray and Ramis behind it. And also wasn’t three hours long.
That’s the biggest problem, Endless Eight would be okay if there was just LESS of it. 3 episodes would have been fine. Maybe if they combined all the “different” stuff from episodes 4-7 they could justify a fourth. But even then, it’s at least twice as long as it needed to be.
I loved this review. Really this was excellent.
Not really an appropriate place to put this but I can’t think of a better one. On the US DVD (can’t speak to other countries) of the Studio Ghibli movie Only Yesterday, there is a very good making of documentary that shows a bunch of the technical details of making an animated movie which might be of interest to the readers of this blog.
Silly Mouse, Mikuru can’t be a loli when half of her character is made of her large non-loli breasts.
And actually, I think what sank the franchise for real was not so much Endless Eight (the later movie did good numbers, proving the anime could bounce back from that), but the fact the author of the original novels the anime is based on lost all inspiration on how to finish the damn thing, gathered all his millions and ran away laughing his head off. So there’s no more material to adapt anymore and nobody else wants to be known as The Guy Who Made Up an Original End for Haruhi That Everybody Hated.
Finally, let me say I’m impressed. This is the first review of Endless Eight I’ve seen anywhere that doesn’t include… THE ASS SHOT. You must know what I’m talking about. That shot where Haruhi’s ass takes up the whole screen, and for some reason or another, yeah, ahem, ahem, that single moment image invariably shows up in every damn review of this damn arc until today you’ve broken the curse. So congratulations, I guess.
Still hoping you get to review Fate Stay Night someday. I’d pay you if I could and I weren’t living in freaking Venezuela at the time, but alas, Cu Chulainn. As an Irishmouse, you owe yourself to see what they did to him (and to Diarmuid of the Love Spot in the prequel) and see if that’s the worst or the most awesome thing ever.
What you said about the Book sis true, but the Anime hasn’t cover all of them. in fact from what I’ve heard what’s ahead is the best stuff. We still haven’t met the Student Council or the Anti SOS Brigade.
I recommend newbies start Fate with Fate/Zero, then UFOtable’s Unlimited Bladeworks. Don’t watched the Dene Anime just because someone said you need to see the Fate Route first. Trust me, you don’t.
Oh man I didn’t even touch on all the creepy fanservice.
I watched Haruhi season 1 in the hype of Haruhi and was so excited for season 2. Watched episode 1, like you thought it was a cute episode. Clicked on episode 2 and for ten minutes I had to research if I had clicked the right episode because this was the exact same episode wasn’t it? Then looked at the episode summaries and went “Hm, ok we’ll wait a while and see what happens”.
Episode 3 happened, stood it. Lost it on episode four when I went “Just do your freaking homework, guys, how hard is this to figure out!?!?” and stopped watching then googled how the freaking time loop ended and bam they had to do their homework to finish it oh my what clever plotting there writers why did you waste my time.
Haruhi season 1 is brilliant. Haruhi season 2 I hear after the abomination that is the endless eight has a few decent episodes, but never want to watch that series again because it betrayed me. The spin off series about Yuki as an average high school student with the others is good, until Haruhi pops up and ruins the nice slice of life premise of the series.
You have a lot more fortitude than I, Mouse, I could and never will finish the endless eight lol. But yay for the Last Unicorn! Love that movie, can’t wait to hear your thoughts on it 🙂
Honestly I thought the Yuki spinoff really only became worth watching once Haruhi showed up. Sure her presence effectively turns it into the original show without the magic / sci-fi stuff, but without her it just kind of feels watered down since there isn’t really a central focus, Yuki while still a good character is very different from normal, Kyon seems to have had a personality-dectomy, and the others don’t really get all that much screentime.
I enjoyed it but I like slice of life type of stuff. If I wanted to watch the original show I’d watch the original show, so Haruhi being in it always erked me.
I went in fairly optimistic. Then the art style began rubbing me the wrong way almost immediately, and I turned it off after five minutes.
It seems very petty for “Yuki in the literature clubroom idly playing a PSP” to be the last straw, but there you have it.
“I still feel like I’m missing pretty vital information” because, thanks to this, there is vital information in the Light Novels the Anime never got to. Of course even the novels aren’t done, their Author is Japan’s George R R Martin.
Endless Eight should have been an OVA (For readers unversed in Anime lingo, I’m saying basically a straight to DVD release). You don’t usually get 4 hours on a single OVA, but I know that you can put four hours on a single DVD disc.
I think what they were going for is effective. But it works better Binged, which is how most Americans viewers experienced it, explaining why perhaps we’ve been more forgiving of it.
No jokes about Itsuki being voiced by the second Black Power Ranger?
Mikuru is not a Loli, a Loli is 12 at most, or at least by far the shortest character in the cast. The Loli fans generally prefer Yuki, but even that is a stretch.
All the Japanese Formalism would come off less awkward if they just left the Honorfics untranslated. Because in Japanese they are more like suffixes then separate works. In Japan your allowed to drop Honorfics pretty much only with your immediate family.
Johnny Yong Bosch does voice a serial killer in Fate/Zero.
On the subject of Kyon and Itsuki, the word you’re looking for is Yaoi.
They can’t Kill Haruhi cause one of Itsuki’s theories is that their entire existence is basically her Dream. In other words, she’s basically Azathoth.
For the record, I think I only watched 4 episodes (My memory may be skewed), the first two and last two. There are good reasons not to skip 7.
Holy shit, Mouse. You utter goddamned madman. You did it. I can’t believe it. You finished the Endless Eight.
I was hoping to ease you into the show when I placed the request with the first story arc–that, at least, is an actual story told properly, and there’s quite a bit of weirdness to get used to later on–but I never dreamed that you would plunge headfirst into the deep end. Mad respect.
Did I mention that I was silently mouthing obscenities in sheer wonder through the review?
Now, in hindsight, after the release of the movie, what they were trying to do becomes a little more evident: the movie is very much about Yuki and her trying to handle the consequences of having to go through the time loop for a few thousand years’ worth of iterations (spoilers: badly), and at least in the short stories the spillover effects cascade onward. But in terms of storytelling craft…eeesh.
When I heard about it I couldn’t not do it. It was just so perversely fascinating.
Ah, so you were reviewing the second season. I guess my whole advice on the order was useless.
Then again, I think that might help explain some of the reasoning the producers used for the whole “same episode 8 times” shtick. They got away with a mixed-up order to the narrative in the first season, and in fact it helped get people interested. My guess is they thought they’d do even better if they made the set-up even stranger. They were wrong.
Thanks for reviewing the season. I’ve been considering diving back into Haruhi, but if I do I’m going to skip the Endless 8. This is a good example of how NOT to do a timeloop scenario. It would have been good if they started out somewhat the same, only they increasingly escalate into craziness as we progress through the loops. Haruhi gets increasingly frustrated and starts inventing things to entertain herself, until she’s about ready to crack reality open into a chaotic mix of everything from magical girl dinos to sushi samurai warriors. Things manage to get back to the original set-up in the last episode, but Kyon is desperately trying to find a way to end it, as he knows that she’ll eventually go back to that state if the loops continue. To just have the same old, same old each time…no, I’m staying out of that.
Well, in any case, if you’re going to watch the first season, please remember the advice I had about the order.
That’s exactly it. There is no progression and no escalation.
I remembered watching this anime in High School and liking it, but my local anime club never got to this story arc. And apparently, I’m quite thankful for that now.
Figuring how to render/translate honorifics is a hill many a translator has died on (and Korean has even more levels). What is funny is your little “joke” is pretty much played straight in “Summer’s Begining” a very late sequal to the 1980s love triangle/slice of life/Espers TV show. KOR also did a time loop (set at Christmas, 3 loops one episode).
Somewhere in the stories, Itsuki tells Kyon that he plays up the “Yaoi” (“slash”) with him, because if he didn’t, Haruhi would make him do it anyway.
This was HUGE for about 2 years, then endless happened and we’re still looking for the black box. I think the other thing that hurt it was LOST/Moffat Dr Who. I don’t think the fandom has any faith that the story will wrap up in any way that makes sense. Which is too bad, cause it was a fun ride to be on.
For a show with comparable plot twists that actually came off, check out Madoka Magica (or just check out SFDebris’s legendary review of it.
Ha, way back when I requested this review, I was internally debating whether to point Mouse at this series or at Madoka Magica. I decided on Haruhi Suzumiya for two reasons: one was that PMMM is very much an all-or-nothing affair, and the other is that SFDebris–who Mouse mentioned being a fan of–already did the review.
(That said, very much seconding the motion for Mouse to watch the series, and then to watch Chuck Sonnenberg’s reviews.)
The people behind this didn’t have some amazing vision for it, as the “we wanted the viewers to FEEL THE PAIN!!!” explanation may make it seem. They just didn’t have anything to fill the timeslot with after they decided to turn the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya book into a movie. So they were like “shit, what do we do now? We don’t have enough source material”.
Yeah…
The endless eight arc as an standalone thing is awful, but it actually has some payoff if you watch the aforementioned movie. Most people agree the movie is the best thing about the anime and a decent ending point for the series, so yeah, you should watch that sometime.
Some of the best comedy I’ve ever witnessed has come from a long, long lead moving into a single, solitary joke. Meet Joe Black made the unfortunate mistake of reversing that process.
I’m not far into the review, and it already feels like a three-act play where the second act follows you home, badgers the dog, steals the good silverware, moves your bookmarks, and hides your unmentionables until you fork over for another ticket. This’ll be a (bus) ride.
Well, I hate Haruhi even more, now. What awful, virulent noise.
Man, you just seem to get yourself into one sticky situation after another. And yeesh, your description of it sounds like that one copypasta description of Rick and Morty. Except less condescending, because it’s written by an outsider. Honestly, though, it seems a wonder to hear you’re confused by something, seeing as you drop enough references which are new to me that I could probably make my piggy bank overflow with a nickel for every time I had to open a new tab while reading one of your reviews.
…Wow, that’s really something the creators did. Interesting you should review this just after talking about how gutsy Disney was for refusing to repeat anything for so long. This seems to be the complete other side of the gutsy coin, doesn’t it? Also, was Kyon watching that one Disney Renaissance compilation music video? He was, wasn’t he?
Yep, this was a weird one, all right. Also, didn’t you already review The Last Unicorn? Is this a time loop? Or am I just suffering a Mandela effect myself and remembering someone else reviewing that on That Guy With The Glasses? In any case, thanks for sitting through that for all of us.
I did review Last Unicorn last year.