Friday, 23 March 2012

Completed: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2

Originally published January 2, 2012 on tumblr


32 times….. that's how many times i have sat through endless 8… 16 times in japanese and now once in English….

anyways…. i have a major love hate relationship with this show.

may as well start at the beginning… so way back in…. 2006? yeah i thinks thats when it first aired…. anyways my friend told me “hey this show is great…. i think you’ll like it…” granted this is the same person who said princess tutu was stupid based off episode 1 but still he did know my taste and most of the time he recommended good shows…. so he put on episode 00…. and i just kind of stared at him and sighed.

“what the hell is this?” i asked as i stared at my friend
“trust me and watch the next episode… that episode is supposed to make you think wtf”
so i sighed and watched the next episode…. and then i understood.

however the show had a really long title that i had a hard time remembering (suzumiya haruhi no yuutsu) so when i got home i forgot about it for a while… eventually…. like a month or so later i got curious and asked him what the show was called and where i could see it and i got that info and watched it…. and it became one of my favorite shows of all time.

the very second it came out on dvd i bought it…. in fact i was one of those fools who bought the 70 buck special edition (granted i only paid 70 for the first part…. i payed closer to 40 for the other 3 parts)

i loved everything about this show, the animation is pretty, the music is fitting, the character design is fun and i loved the characters… specifically the titular character and Kyon. i was so excited for season 2 because the story in both orders just kinda ends (more so in chronological order)
so a year passes…. nothing

another year…. still nothing….

rumors rumors rumors and finally in 2009 they start re-airing the first season…. which in japan is odd…. they are notorious for no reruns….

they were showing it in chronological order and i think it was after the melancholy arc we got a new episode “Bamboo leaf Rhapsody” and it was really good… interesting plot, great animation and we see more of the characters powers….

then it went back to season 1 episodes…. it was clear… we were going through this watching with both seasons mixed together to make the chronological order make more sense.

The next episode probably brought on so much fan rage i’m surprised the building was left intact…. they did receive threats…. but i should explain.

endless 8 started as a fun summer episode where haruhi orders everyone around in the last two weeks or summer so they can have the best summer ever
however by the end of the list she wonders if they did enough. oh well they did do a lot of things…. she hands kyon the bill and leaves….
end of episode.

not so bad right? nice filler episode right? wrong.

they repeat this episode the next week…. only this time it’s a little different and the characters start having a sense of deja vu
they find out that they are in a time loop and have repeated the same two weeks for 595 years. one of them remembers all of this… the Alien Yuki Nagato… however since her purpose is only to observe she didn’t tell them earlier.

ok that's still fine though… i mean… it’s a good way to show that they are repeating time…. since once again haruhi isn’t satisfied…. it’ll all be finished the next episode right? i mean…. everything in threes right?

NOPE.

cause see the title of the episode is endless EIGHT…. some retard thought it would be a brilliant idea to have this season… which is 13 (or 14… don’t remember) episodes long…. and make 8 of them the same thing.

so…. each episode is 22 minutes long…. times 8

nearly 3 HOURS of the same thing repeating with SLIGHT changes. this arc went on for around 2 months of airtime cause there is only one episode per week

so…. understandably so…. people were angry…. we waited 3+ years to get 8 episodes of the same thing. and to be fair…. this was based on a 30 page chapter in the original novel which only went through the final loop. the studio was of course unapologetic….

on the 8th episode it’s all solved…. Kyon just needed to finish his homework : D

so…. i think there was an ep or two of old episodes and then we get the sigh of haruhi suzumiya….
which is probably my favorite arc of the show so far.

it deals with all the chaos that ensued when they were shooting the movie which is episode 00
it’s brilliant…. it renewed my love in the show and even though it ends and we are still in season 1…. i didn’t care… i was happy…. and the movie had been announced at the point. so i could deal with all the bullshit.

so last Wednesday i went and finally picked up season 2 for a decent price… and a few days before bandai closed down so that was lucky….

I thought about abridging it and only watching 3 episodes of endless 8…. but i watched to watch the whole thing… and to be fair…. when it’s just 3 hours of the same thing instead of 2 months of it… it’s actually quite effective… you really do feel that this is endless so the resolution really does fell great….

still mad about the whole endless eight thing but you know what…. i can’t help but love this show…. i feel like a puppy that's been beaten yet i still come back….

also the movie “the disappearance of haruhi suzumiya” is really good and if bandai hasn’t licensed/released it yet i hope someone else will since bandai is no more : (
alright…. natsume yuujinchou season 4 is about to air…. so off to crunchyroll ^^

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