Going through endless 8, I will say it wasn't a pleasant experience. But, it wasn't as bad as some other people made it out to be. Granted, in my opinion, 3 or 4 episodes would have sufficed to make the point. If it was only 3 or 4 episodes, it would have been a lot more effective. Im not going to defend KyoAni for that, seeing as they did spend 8/14 episodes basically airing the same story --which left only 6 other original material episodes.
The other 6 non repeating episodes were quite enjoyable, and quite clever too. In the latter half of the "sigh" arc, there was some interesting character development mainly in kyon and haruhi. And everything leads up nicely to the "someday in the rain" conclusion episode.
All in all, this was definitely not on the same level as the original airing. Maybe, our expectations were a bit high, but nonetheless the anime proved entertaining.
On a side note, for those who've watched K-on, theres a lot of styles carried over to this season of haruhi. It was a bit unnerving to see haruhi in K-on styles while somewhat retaining her edgy voice. And on the topic of her voice, Aya seemed to have changed her voice for Haruhi somewhat as well...minor gripe there.
