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!