KyoAni, you won the game. You are boss.
Thank you for Endless Eight in Haruhi S2. It was an epic trolling we won’t soon forget. Love it or hate it (hopefully the latter), Endless Eight will live in infamy among Haruhiists and the anime community at large. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us. Fool us six times, we look like f***ing morons for putting up with this bullshit. Analysis and ranting ahead mateys.
Endless Eight. Let those two words soak in a bit before we start.
Endless Eight (E8 from now on)… None of us could have possibly seen this trolling of epic proportions from a respected and generally loved studio like KyoAni. After all, KyoAni was always the “good kid”, and the “good kid” would never trick or deceive us, right? They’re arguably the most popular studio in Japan right now, and deformed K-ON hands aside, they have an excellent track record of quality and professionalism, and the great majority of their shows have been runaway hits to say the least. Air, Kanon, Clannad, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu (2006), Lucky Star, K-ON. KyoAni shows have a tendency to absolutely dominate every season, and their only recent “flop” was probably Sora wo Miageru Shoujo no Hitomi ni Utsuru Sekai (Munto TV), which was actually quite good but nevertheless a flop by KyoAni standards.
What did the number one anime studio have to prove? Absolutely nothing. No one ever expects the “good kid” to do anything bad. In all honesty, a stunt like E8 is more akin to a prank that “troublemakers” like Gainax or SHAFT would pull. We never saw it coming precisely because it was the “good kid”. We really got the wool pulled over our eyes on when E8 struck.
The first episode was all well and good. The group doing summer activities together, this should be fun! I love episodes about summer festivals, bug catching and other summer activities! Goodie! The first episode was fun. In the back of my mind I knew something was amiss though since it was called Endless Eight but didn’t think too much of it.
The following week we were treated to Endless Eight again, but (gasp) something was strangely amiss! I wasn’t too surprised, and the narrative of Kyon and company finding out they were trapped in an endless recursion of time made sense. Then the next week, Endless Eight again. And again. And again. I’m a patient person, but it started to get old the fifth time around. I’m sure everyone else was fed up long before then though. Speculation began about when the dreaded E8 would finally end. Would E8 actually match the namesake and go eight FULL episodes? Rumors swirled that KyoAni wouldn’t dare pull this shit and go the full eight episodes. We got the joke. We expected it to end at six… But it didn’t. It ultimately did go to eight episodes, and we got the full experience of Endless Eight, while the big wigs at KyoAni laughed their asses off at our stupidity for coming back.
Was it really so hard for our lovably cynical protagonist, Kyon, to end the cycle? Why did it take him 15,532 tries to finally get it right? The kicker is what finally ended the repetition though, and it was right under his nose the whole time — Getting homework done. Itsuki’s suggestion to Kyon to confess to Haruhi to end the cycle was a giant red herring. No, the catalyst for finally ending E8 was homework. That’s a powerful message for today’s youth though. Do your homework or you’ll be sent to a purgatory of sorts where you have to live the same two weeks over and over again until you finally do your homework. Somewhat fitting too since E8 aired over the entirety of summer and should act as a reminder for fans still attending school not to neglect their forgotten summer studies. Seriously, do your homework kids.
Ranting aside, E8 wasn’t all bad. Barring some exceptions as stated by Yuki, it was surprising that the group did and said almost the exact same things 15,532 times. The cycle always started with Kyon getting the exact same call from Haruhi and ended the same way each time with Kyon letting his future selves take care of the homework in the next cycle, which is very ironic now that I think about it.
It is astounding how often the group did the exact same list of events with little variation that many times. The O-bon festival was the major group event of E8 and was only omitted 2 times out of 15,532 (0.013%). Goldfish scooping being omitted 437 times may seem like a larger number, but that number is statistically insignificant at 2.8%. Even part time work occurred more often than not in 58% of the cycles. If we were stuck in an endless recursion of time, would we keep looping like the SOS Brigade did? Would we do the same things over and over again without realizing it, or would we be like Kyon and the others and mostly do nothing about it? The fact that the loop went on for almost 600 years is somewhat telling of the human condition. We can berate Kyon for his centuries of indecisiveness, but we probably couldn’t do better, much less end the cycle.
Furthermore, E8 has given me a newfound respect for Yuki for putting up with so much bullshit for almost six centuries. If I was her, I would have gone Ryoko crazy by the fifth cycle and each cycle thereafter. I respected Yuki before, but I give even more props to her now because she’s a damn saint… Though if Ryoko was still around she certainly would have made E8 much more interesting. An endless cycle of Ryoko murdering Kyon… Doesn’t that sound wonderful?
During the six fillers in between the first and last episodes of this arc, I wanted to see the cycles that were drastically different from the norm. If the SOS Dan didn’t go to the O-bon festival, what would they do instead? I at least wanted to see those two instances because seeing that it was only omitted two times, the O-bon festival was the group’s major activity together. It would have been a welcome reprieve to have had seen the cycles that strayed from the norm.
So… What was the point of Endless Eight? Haruhiists can look at it as a test of loyalty and wear the “I watched all eight episodes of E8″ bade with pride. Meanwhile the smart fans sat it out and laughed along with KyoAni at the Haruhiists for being so dumb and gullible. If it was for attention or publicity, KyoAni got it in spades, though Haruhi S2 will now live in infamy as a result. E8 could have feasibly been done in four episodes, but it just had to be eight for maximum trolling effect. Will KyoAni seriously release DVDs with nothing but E8 episodes on them, and more importantly, will anyone in their right mind buy them? Whatever KyoAni’s diabolical plan was, we certainly won’t forget Endless Eight anytime soon. KyoAni, I loathe and applaud you at the same time for this trolling.
Never forget Endless Eight. Also, don’t forget to do your homework either. Let’s look forward to better things now as the fairweather Haruhi fans hop back onto the bandwagon.
tl;dr: Hated Endless Eight but applaud KyoAni for being bold enough to troll us so hard. Cry some moar!
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I agree they could have at least changed some more things like Yuki said.
@garuto62: Yeah, but it had to be the same thing. Eight. Times. In. A. Row.
LOL I’ve only seen the first episode of S2…so this is why I saw so many threads labeled “Haruhi S2 Ranting!?”. Too bad I really liked the first episode too. And I agree about Ryoko, I really like her and she is actually my favorite character from thes series, if they were in a situation where she still existed she should totally get some screen time
. Such a shame she had to exit so early on in the series but her exit was one of the highest points of the show for me. The next highest point for me was in fact the concert, I (like so many others) was smitten with that scene.
lovelyduckie´s last blog ..My Vacation Accomplishments!
I didn’t see it coming, but I’m not surprised they did it. Then again, I was complaining when they spun the first season out of order. Guess I don’t have the mind of an artist.
Baka-Raptor´s last blog ..Endless Eight? More like Endless Pedophilia
Edit: Nice, I’m Mion. Higurashi, now there’s a show that does time loops right.
Edit #2: Looks like I’m Harima now. Still a badass.
@lovelyduckie: I honestly suggest watching all of E8 to get the full effect of the trolling because it makes the payoff of Kyon FINALLY getting it right that much sweeter, but you could just watch E8 1-2 and 7-8 for the gist of it. And yes, Ryoko is so much friggin love. She would have ended this nonsense with her bare hands.
My favorite Haruhi episode to date is the one where they play the space computer game. The switches between epic space opera back to the club room are what made it so wonderful, though Live Alive is definitely up there too.
@Baka: Harugi S2′s gimmick blew the out-of-order gimmick straight out of the water, but it’ll be remembered in the worst possible way. On the plus side we all have every line of E8 memorized to the letter.
“Do your homework or you’ll be sent to a purgatory of sorts where you have to live the same two weeks over and over again until you finally do your homework.”
In other words, for forgetting to do their homework, kids can look forward to an immortal existence where they can enjoy two weeks of summer bliss over and over again, with no inkling of anything going amiss beyond the odd deja-vu feeling now and then? (Unless someone alerts them to the fact, that is?)
Somehow, I don’t think we’ll see a lot of people picking up their pencils after this.
“Will KyoAni seriously release DVDs with nothing but E8 episodes on them, and more importantly, will anyone in their right mind buy them?”
Standard Japanese DVD release: 2-3 eps per disc. That means three to four DVDs with nothing but Endless Eight on them. Let’s put it at 6 to 7 thousand yen each for a limited-edition release. That’s a LOT of money.
KyoAni and Kadokawa will be laughing all the way to the bank come release day, since we can be sure that otaku – who by definition aren’t exactly in their right mind anyway – will line up like lemmings to snap up those discs. (And I can say this with impunity because if I were in Japan, I’d probably buy the whole lot in a heartbeat.)
Diego´s last blog ..So, they’ve finally killed the beast
SO THE DUDRRDRDE