Ranked #2003

Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu (2009)

Endless Eight Arc - Enough Said?

The entirety of the season can be summed up almost in much the same way as the first season, so i am going to focus my attention on the Endless Eight arc of this season. This arc seems to be the part most mentioned in reviews and in most cases negatively so. It is also the most prominent memory we have of the season when you mention the 2nd season.

Eight episodes of the same events, over, and over again. Everyone can agree that this was not a cheap measure to save money. since the animation, clothing, and scene of every event were unique to each of the eight episodes. But hatred still seems to fill the hearts of the viewers about this arc.

Indeed it is long and boring over time. But like how FLCL must be completely confusing to get it's point across, so must this be the way of Endless Eight. This arc is the lead up to the movie "The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya" For those of you who've read the novels or have done your research you should already know this, but if not well now you know. This arc was intended to bore bore you. it was designed to make you angry. But what can you do? you are only the viewer of this show. you can only sit there and hope the next episode will advance the plot. sounding familiar?

if you have not guessed already the main character of this arc is not actually Kyon. Although the show is told through him It's Yuki we should be paying attention to. Ms. Nagato, the alien computer interface placed on earth as an observation tool unaffected by time loops or altered realities. she has the omnipotent power to know all and to do all, the only catch? she cannot do anything. her job is simply to observe and assist when absolutely necessary.

now in order for us to fully understand this we'll also need to understand the philosophy behind Artificial intelligence and how it works. but to keep it simple, intelligence is intelligence. Be it natural or artificial it will learn and develop things called emotions. we are not born with emotions. they are learned, just like data being collected, compiled and processed. It is inappropriate even to call it "excess" data build up. For us humans the compilation of data for emotions happens between age 8 and 18 this is when we try to establish what everything is to us. Yuki has entered as an AI into this stage of her life. and it is a confusing and frustrating time.

now you're angry having to sit through this 8 times. each time is ~25 minutes for us. Now then, lets do the math shall we?(sort of, not really) those 25 minutes each represent in that universe 14 days, an entire 2 weeks. Those two weeks have repeated, in one of the episodes the number was, 15,521 times. Yuki has sat through not only 15,521 episodes, rather she has sat through that many iterations of a 14 day cycle. Imagine how frustrated and angry she must be.

looking at it from the point of view that this is the lead up to the disappearance arc, it is an amazingly well done and high risk choice made by the director which i feel worked perfectly. Not only did he anger the fans, it was his exact intention to do so. the same effect cannot have been achieved with 3 or even 5 episodes. If this arc did not completely piss you off it would have failed to deliver the emotions of the characters in the story. Tatsuya Ishihara, i salute you for this bold move. read more

There have been a lot of negative reviews on this site, which I can agree with to an extent. However, most of them focus entirely on the Endless Eight arc, while disregarding the rest entirely.

I can't say I disagree that the Endless Eight arc sucked; Having to sit through so many episodes of what was, for the most part, the same thing was somewhat annoying. The first time it happened, I had to check to make sure I didn't accidentally rewatch an episode. The changes are subtle enough to miss if you don't watch the episodes back to back.

However, I do like the fact that the producers tried to do something different, which a lot of others do not. If experimentation like this never occurred, we'd likely never have had the pleasure of watching greats like Cowboy Bebop, or even the original series of Haruhi.

I also very thoroughly enjoyed the other episodes, especially the final ones that very nicely covered the events that had us watch the greatest first episode of an anime ever. And while the Endless Eight arc was long, I really, really loved the final moments of the last episode of that arc.

Art and sound was spectacular, which was always to be expected. You have to hand it to the artists who managed to draw the same episode different ways so many times. The Endless Eight arc was -not- enough to detract from the other episodes of the series, which are all incredible in their own right.

In the end, as long as you're one of those people who only see the negative aspects of something, or have a hard time pushing them out of your mind, you'll probably hate the season.

I personally enjoyed it very much as a whole, and will continue recommending series 1, and start recommending series 2 to anyone who hasn't seen them. And I suggest you not let a few bad reviews deter you from what is ultimately a very enjoyable viewing. read more