The Never-ending Summer

Something was wrong. Kadokawa and Kyoto Animation had been dropping hints at a second season for quite some time, even going back to that CCTV viral site that many said hinted at the Disappearance novel being animated. Since then, we’ve had the announcement that we would get a second season, which was then subsequently revoked when we were told it was only a re-run. Cue internet hysteria.

Someone at Kadokawa must’ve stumbled across this thing called “viral marketing” somewhere, and thought it would be a good idea to string the fans along for a good number of years before finally giving us more new episodes of Haruhi goodness.

I must say, I kind of liked the way they were doing it – seeing the speculation build about what they were doing, along with the theories that they might just repeat the first series twice in their 28-episode slot for a 14-episode show. The hype machine was certainly at full steam when Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody aired basically unannounced. There was a sense of occasion around the whole thing, which thankfully distracted from the animation, a lot of which came from the K-On! school of drawing and which I thought was visibly poorer than the older episodes.

Then came Endless Eight. ‘Well, there need to be some normal episodes in Haruhi, right? Exciting stuff can’t happen all of the time,’ I thought. Then I downloaded the next episode, and I swear, I thought at first I had got the previous episode by accident.

The first time (or should I say the 15,498th time) the episode repeated, I thought that this was such a novel idea. Play the same series of events from a slightly different angle, introducing very slightly different nuances for each repetition (that we see broadcast, at least). It was easy to play two of the episodes back together and see the surprising amount of effort that went in to each Endless Eight-titled episode. Different tones of voice, an added line of dialogue here and there, different angles, positions and clothing, it’s a lot of work for what is essentially the same episode being replayed over and over.

And on that, it probably should have stopped repeating last week. Apparently this particular story only occupied one chapter in the original light novel, and although you could draw this out over any number of weeks by definition, it’s probably gone on a bit too long.

On the subject of the opening and ending, many believe that they aren’t a patch on the first seasons efforts. I would tend to believe this for the new ED, which is wonderfully forgettable, but certainly couldn’t be described as generic. The new OP however, has grown on me immensely. It doesn’t convey the same sense of unbound adventure that Bouken Desho Desho gets across, but there’s a certain energy around its comic book gestures, running characters and especially the “drummy” bit near the end of the TV size track.

Back to Endless Eight. I wouldn’t mind it continuing a bit longer. It’ll bring us a bit closer to Yuki, who has had to repeat the same August for the past 594 years. A bit of empathy wouldn’t hurt. Also, like Kyon keeps saying, there must have been a clue somewhere. It was especially evident from the latest episode (5th of Series 2, 15th chronologically) that new hints are being dropped for us to work out the mystery. In a world where it’s difficult for an anime to be original within its creative bounds without completely alienating everyone watching, it’s a good creative experiment. (Plus, I’m sure we all want to hear Little Sister say “Kyon-kun, denwa” in at least one more way. Search your heart, you know it to be true.)

It’s just unfortunate that many won’t have the patience to see it through, even though they do have a point.