The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. What a strange show. It's supposed to be a rom-com, I think, but it spends a fair bit of time teasing philosophical and mysterious concepts but not really paying off on them so much. Hahuhi is clearly a horrendous human who sees everyone around her as subordinates and toys. Nobody can even really stand up to her because she's god and might just destroy the world if they tell her off too harshly. Despite that I ended up enjoying the show and it's characters anyway.
One thing I cannot forgive the show for is the Endless Eight. I just don't. What were they thinking?! Eight episodes, all the same. Each one individually animated and voiced with ever so slight differences. What a colossal waste of time, effort, and money. I spent over 2 and a half hours listening to the same dialogue over and over until I could repeat it along with the characters. What was the point? Intentionally boring is still boring, and it's not a grand artistic statement to make something boring so that I can identify with the characters. I know what it's like to be bored, and it's not a big achievement to bore your audience, in fact, it'd the default failure state of bad media. Beyond that, I don't need to go through the exact same thing as a character to empathize with them. If a character loses an arm I don't need to also lose a limb so that I can feel their pain, it's enough for me to imagine it without actually experiencing it. This should have been 3 episodes at most, since they clearly had no ideas on how to make it interesting beyond the novelty of making the same episode multiple times with no changes.
Really there was no excuse for it being what it was. Out of 15 532 loops why only show us 8 within 35 loops of eachother. Show us something within the first 100, 1000, 5000 so we can see the level of deja vu increase. It would still be shocking to find out they'd been through the loop over 10 000 times even if it wasn't included in the first loop reveal. Actually it probably would have been more shocking if they showed us a couple loops early on and then made a massive jump to 5k+. Anyway, it doesn't really make sense for the deja vu to be so much more intense after a measly 34 additional loops. When did they first realize that time was looping? Was it loop 2 or did it take more repetitions for the remnant memories add up? Even if they did realize the first repeat, surely they would have had a different reaction to finding they've repeated the same 2 weeks 10 times vs repeated the same 2 weeks 15 000 times. Also, how about showing us some of the major variations? How about showing us one of the loops where they didn't go to the bon festival, or one of the other jobs they did other than hand out balloons? They could have even used it to build some false hope that things were changing. Or show us some loops from the perspectives of other characters. Show us that conversation between Mikuru and Koizume before they call Kyon. Show us more of the later activities that were glossed over.
It really did the characters no service either. It makes everybody look quite dumb and apathetic. They never try anything to break the loop. Nagato I can give a pass, because she has the personality of a toaster, but the complete inaction of everybody else was completely inexcusable. Surely, at least Kyon would have tried *something* different to break the loop, even if next episode we see him try the same thing again, because he wasn't aware he already tried it. And why the heck didn't they even try to interrogate Nagato a bit more, she remembers 15 000 loops but nobody cares to quiz her a little over what they have or have not done to try and break the loop. I wanted to see some sort of cursory effort at a solution rather than "No, I have to say *something* or we'll be stuck in the loop" ....
Additionally, even though I guessed it around the 3rd or 4th loop the twist didn't really make sense. It wasn't something she actually even considered so how could she have it as a regret? I've heard the light novel sets it up a bit better.
There were a thousand things they could have done to shake things up without undermining the established premise. But they were dead set on making the exact same episode 8 times for some unfathomable reason. Was it laziness? They didn't want to actually storyboard and script for 8 individual episodes? Was it some strange devotion to making some sort of artistic statement? Were they just trolling their fans out of some sort of misanthropy? I don't know.
I was actually enjoying Endless Eight for the first 3 or so episodes because I absolutely love time loop stories, but the complete and utter waste of a fantastic concept just ruined over half of the second season of the show.
I was originally just going to write a little paragraph of what I thought of the show and dump it in the Last Thing You Watched thread, but I ended up having a lot to say. So, what does everybody else think of the Endless Eight and of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in general?
One thing I cannot forgive the show for is the Endless Eight. I just don't. What were they thinking?! Eight episodes, all the same. Each one individually animated and voiced with ever so slight differences. What a colossal waste of time, effort, and money. I spent over 2 and a half hours listening to the same dialogue over and over until I could repeat it along with the characters. What was the point? Intentionally boring is still boring, and it's not a grand artistic statement to make something boring so that I can identify with the characters. I know what it's like to be bored, and it's not a big achievement to bore your audience, in fact, it'd the default failure state of bad media. Beyond that, I don't need to go through the exact same thing as a character to empathize with them. If a character loses an arm I don't need to also lose a limb so that I can feel their pain, it's enough for me to imagine it without actually experiencing it. This should have been 3 episodes at most, since they clearly had no ideas on how to make it interesting beyond the novelty of making the same episode multiple times with no changes.
Really there was no excuse for it being what it was. Out of 15 532 loops why only show us 8 within 35 loops of eachother. Show us something within the first 100, 1000, 5000 so we can see the level of deja vu increase. It would still be shocking to find out they'd been through the loop over 10 000 times even if it wasn't included in the first loop reveal. Actually it probably would have been more shocking if they showed us a couple loops early on and then made a massive jump to 5k+. Anyway, it doesn't really make sense for the deja vu to be so much more intense after a measly 34 additional loops. When did they first realize that time was looping? Was it loop 2 or did it take more repetitions for the remnant memories add up? Even if they did realize the first repeat, surely they would have had a different reaction to finding they've repeated the same 2 weeks 10 times vs repeated the same 2 weeks 15 000 times. Also, how about showing us some of the major variations? How about showing us one of the loops where they didn't go to the bon festival, or one of the other jobs they did other than hand out balloons? They could have even used it to build some false hope that things were changing. Or show us some loops from the perspectives of other characters. Show us that conversation between Mikuru and Koizume before they call Kyon. Show us more of the later activities that were glossed over.
It really did the characters no service either. It makes everybody look quite dumb and apathetic. They never try anything to break the loop. Nagato I can give a pass, because she has the personality of a toaster, but the complete inaction of everybody else was completely inexcusable. Surely, at least Kyon would have tried *something* different to break the loop, even if next episode we see him try the same thing again, because he wasn't aware he already tried it. And why the heck didn't they even try to interrogate Nagato a bit more, she remembers 15 000 loops but nobody cares to quiz her a little over what they have or have not done to try and break the loop. I wanted to see some sort of cursory effort at a solution rather than "No, I have to say *something* or we'll be stuck in the loop" ....
Additionally, even though I guessed it around the 3rd or 4th loop the twist didn't really make sense. It wasn't something she actually even considered so how could she have it as a regret? I've heard the light novel sets it up a bit better.
There were a thousand things they could have done to shake things up without undermining the established premise. But they were dead set on making the exact same episode 8 times for some unfathomable reason. Was it laziness? They didn't want to actually storyboard and script for 8 individual episodes? Was it some strange devotion to making some sort of artistic statement? Were they just trolling their fans out of some sort of misanthropy? I don't know.
I was actually enjoying Endless Eight for the first 3 or so episodes because I absolutely love time loop stories, but the complete and utter waste of a fantastic concept just ruined over half of the second season of the show.
I was originally just going to write a little paragraph of what I thought of the show and dump it in the Last Thing You Watched thread, but I ended up having a lot to say. So, what does everybody else think of the Endless Eight and of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in general?
