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.
