Why do people think that book 10 will end? If you've read it, you should be thinking that it won't be ending so soon.

Novels can continue for many more volumes than just 10, take Shana for example.

Oh, I know that there's no unwritten rule that stuff *has* to end in 10 volumes or less. But it looks to me like the story's gearing up for a finale, and I think it could be wrapped up in one book. The huge delay for book ten also adds to this feeling; it's as if the ending to the story is being held back to help prolong the hype and profitable life of the series for as long as possible.

Of course, I'd love to be wrong.

While Haruhi fans are resigned to face any and all possibilities thrown at them by the (publish/animat/auth)or these days, wrapping the story up by the vol.10 would render the entire series abso-f-ing-lutely [American], devastatingly [Brits], bloody [Aussies], chotto [Humanoid Interface] unreadable. Given the amount of mysteries, loose ends, and unexplained that Tanigawa painstakingly developed, to end all that in one volume he'll either have to spill everything like a text book, or leave some things unexplained, neither is consistent with his writing style.

I'm guessing the novels will get to the 3rd high school year, just because the transition into college signifies adulthood and responsibilities, Kyon making his choice then would be natural and conclusive (as does many other high school fictions). The first year we read, spanning 9 vol. and is mainly about the nucleation of SOS; not just members physically together but functioning as a team: Kyon = brain, Yuki = gun, Haruhi = nut, Itsuki = face, Mikuru = mascot. (come to think of it, sounds like A-Team+1). And like any competent serial novelist, when Tanigawa wrote about the first year he also laid the groundwork for the 2nd - the external threats to SOS-dan. We can imagine these threats becoming more interesting and entangled, but they're not going to be the (main) climax to this story. By the time Tanigawa finish off the 2nd year and he'd be hinting about the 3rd, possibly the fundamental purposes and intrinsic conflicts between the SOS members. It'll be impressive, because Tanigawa will have the vast arsenal of characters to play with and the freedom and skills to alter realities. It'll be awesome. It'll be scary awesome.

An A-Team analogy for Haruhi....

I guess Mr. T's character has to be played by both Yuki and Mikuru (both the group's muscle and icon/publicity person).

Just the order is so weird...probably because Haruhi and Kyon have their roles mixed up, since it is Haruhi who is always on the "jazz", and Kyon should probably be crazy after all this.

But then, who knows what weirdness we are in store for the remainder of Haruhi's second year of high school....or what they plan to do when Mikuru graduates.

Because the author seems to be out of ideas.

Leaving entire aspects of the plot unexplained has been done before. Take Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou for example. After 14 volumes across 12 years, the manga never explains:
-Why humanity is dying out
-The nature of the disaster that reshaped Mt. Fuji & caused a sea level rise
-Who the owner of the main robotic female main character is.

Do we really have to know what happened to those 8 other people who saw the SOS Brigade emblem which infected the Computer President (5 of them being North High students)?

Do we really have to know where in the worlds of Haruhi we can find her playing piano as seen in the OP?

Is the discrepancy between Asahina Mikuru's explanation of a space-time as a series of disconnected frames and Kyon's observation of some continuity due to the events of Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody... is that discrepancy really important?

Is the fact that... *goes to sleep*

(9 hours later)

*wakes up* What? Oh, yeah. Anyway, I'm perfectly fine with having mysteries unsolved. It makes for easier fan fiction and doesn't rip the wings off the butterfly, to put it that way.


I myself would get hopelessly bogged down by all these loose ends. I imagine Tanigawa is itching to cut these loose plot threads off

Didn't she play piano in Sound Around?

Which is perfectly fine. Whatever satisfies a reader from a novel is entirely up to him. This particular reader would like the biggies and central ones answered, and without which the Haruhi experience would be incomplete.

The Time paradox in BLR will, and should, be resolved, because Yuki said to Kyon "You'll get it." That's an implicit promise by Tanigawa to his readers that he'll resolve this by possibly yet another mind twisting, novels spanning demonstration. [I'm still favoring the parallel world interpretation to resolve the paradox a la John Titor.] Which would a) give him something to write {contrary to some opinions that he's out of ideas by vol.10}, b) gives Kadokawa something to print {you bet they'll milk every yen out of Haruhi that they can. Now and every 10 years there after.} and c) gives people like me something to read.

We may never know the specifics of the actors' guild known as the Organization, but at some point when Itsuki is free to express his true self to Kyon it's when the Organization's agendas would become apparent as well. Again I'd be very disappointed if Tanigawa doesn't get this far.

Yuki doesn't lie. Even when she's withholding information the act itself reveals information. The meanings of cryptic and quarky things she says and do will become more interpretable with more screen time, and Tanigawa can maintain all his subtleties and provide resolutions at the same time.

On a slightly different note, what do you think is going to happen to Mikuru at the end of the second year. We all know she's supposed to gratuate then. Do you think someone will replace her, like the slider? Either way, I'll be sad to see her go.

She wasn't one of my favorites, but I can't imagine the SOS Brigade being the same without her. :( Same goes to the others are well.

^
some people think Mikuru might return as Adult Mikuru in the diguise of a student teacher or even a normal teacher and may become the advisor to the Literatrue Club... and the series changes from Haruhi to GTM (Great Teacher Mikuru) kidding about GTM lol... Although for safety's sake She migth use the Alias Michiru, the alias Kyon gave her during Intrigues.

Personally I don't mind either way, at the very least Kyon will still see adult Mikuru in one form ,shape or another.

I had thought of this, too. If it does, I'd like to see how Kyon explains it to Haruhi. It could be interesting.

it doesn't need explaining, Michiru could say, she's Mikuru's Aneki or some relative, they look similar enough for it to be believable.

But what if Haruhi was still to make adult Mikuru do reveling cosplay? Couldn't she be kicked out of the school?

I can't think of a world without Haruhi-sama... :(

^ Haruhi has common sense you know, enough of it so the world isn't cover is blue giant monsters, I mean she was pretty kind & polite to strangers during Lone Island.

I doubt she'd consider Mikuru & Michiru the exact same person.

And we'll have a Kyon tearful farewell with Mikuru and a big happy welcome to Michiru?

I'm so confused. :heh:

More like and 'Oh god, the manipulator is now among us full time' kind of welcome, I would think.

The "Mikuru is evil" camp is starting to annoy me more than the "Kyon is God" camp...

Your lack of faith in Mikuru is disturbing.

Seriously, the whole point about every book before book 9 was to set the SOS-dan as a cohesive, united force, in order for them to face the challenges offered by the anti-sos-dan. The SOS-dan members have stopped second-guessing each other's motives; why couldn't you?

She's not necessarily evil, just untrustworthy. Out of the whole brigade, she arguably contributes the least. Koizumi has the same potential of being untrustworthy, but it seems unlikely because he acts too suspicious to be untrustworthy. He and Nagato (IIRC) have stated their allegiance to the SoS brigade first, and their respective organizations second. Mikuru has done no such thing. She also does not hang around Kyon much, but this could be to subvert Haruhi's wrath. Also, she and Nagato seem to have some uncomfortable reactions to eachother, something not present between Nagato and Koizumi.

She doesn't seem sincere to me. I realize that she probably is trustworthy in all likeliness, but it's a theory I like to entertain. Her character isn't as deep as it could be so being untrustworthy, even if she's not a malefactor, would accomplish that.

That kind of logic just fails, for me. In fact, it's not logic at all. It's more like bizzaro logic. Does one have to be untrustworthy on the outside in order to be trustworthy?

Sometimes, a spade is just a spade. Mikuru is shown to be exactly who she is shown to be, a helpless girl pulled by the strings of destiny whether she liked it or not. Kyon has far more control over his own destiny than she does. Mikuru doesn't NEED to be deep, i.e. twisted and dark. She is the "innocent" character, like Maya Ibuki of Evangelion. Taking that away doesn't make her deep, it just destroys everything she represented. If every time she cries in despair out of hopelessness, you imagine she is faking it all, it would completely alter the scene concerned.

If her tears are fake, then she is not Mikuru Asahina.

If Mikuru is malicious, there would not be a need for the Ati-SOS-dan to exist as antagonists.

We'll see (hopefully) how they play Mikuru(BIG) off Nagato late this season. Then we might see just how "untrustworthy" Mikuru is and how she reacts to Nagato even after being around her for a few years and then having grown up (someplace). I doubt we'll see anything other than fear out on Mikuru.

Mikuru's basic problem seems to be that she's there because history says she was there. What training she has seems to be just enough to function and obey orders in the "present". She's obviously in regular contact with her "home" time, but doesn't seem to get instructions to do stuff very often. She also has involutary mental blocks that prevent her from giving away knowledge of the future casually (it isn't a perfect block as she's been known to say strange things without being censored). But the weeping "classified information" spam during Endless Eight was funny.

Mikuru may be there only because she's meant to be there. She may never do anything other than observe and be there for Haruhi to play with. The bigger question, aside from Mikuru(plural) and the anti-SOS-dan's future guy...are there any other time travelers around Haruhi that have better information and are actively trying to find out why they can't go farther back in time than "the timequake of three years ago"? Is there a motive for the time travelers besides observe Haruhi? Does it matter to them that they can't go back farther in time? Could they do so before some point in time, go farther back than Haruhi's timequake? Or are they just trying to be sure the "time destroyer" (Haruhi) doesn't decide to destroy them all next time around by keeping her happy with her perfect play thing (Mikuru).

The thing is...why is Mikuru(BIG) overseeing part of the operation of Mikuru(small)? They shouldn't be from the same time period. Mikuru(BIG) states that she's not seen Kyon for a long time when he first sees her. This could be false, but she looks really happy to see him in a way that suggests she hasn't seen him in a while...or the last time she saw him he was dead or something, which would also expalin why she's happy to see him. She doesn't look all that much older than Mikuru(small), maybe 10-15 years older...but then future tech/(Harem-Key MILF-like subtance) could make her almost any age...in either form. Her off hand comments suggests Mikuru is from the far future rather than the near future (within Kyon's lifespan). A question would be how do the future humans get along with the aliens like Yuki...or do they even have contact with them still. Mikuru seemed to recognize Yuki somewhat on her first meeting, so there is something there. She also fears Yuki, though Yuki and Kyon seem to have no idea why (perhaps), though Yuki is admittedly the most powerful member of the SOS-dan short of Haruhi's full on reality warping powers...and Kyon's key control over all members of the SOS-dan.

Will we find out what's up with the Mikurus? I don't know.

Wow... You really need to read this and take it to heart...

Mikuru acts uncomfortable around Yuki because she is uncomfortable around Yuki. One of the few things she is fully aware of is just how powerful Yuki is, and just how easily she can make Mikuru's life a living hell non-existence. Itsuki doesn't act uncomfortable around Yuki because he doesn't act uncomfortable around anyone. His true feelings in any situation are almost universally hidden behind his Kitsune smile, and the few times he lets that mask down, it isn't pretty.

And I don't know where you got the idea that untrustworthiness has any correlation with lack of contribution. Mikuru doesn't contribute anything other than being cute, because she can't contribute anything else for fear of eliciting a paradox from Haruhi. Yuki can do whatever she needs to due to her massive level of ability. Itsuki babbles on and on about how things work because an inherent part of his ability is insight into Haruhi's psyche and his job is to regulate that, which requires a consuming knowledge of the "why"s and "how"s. To that end, he has a fair number of "coworkers" in the Organization (and Kyon) to bounce his ideas off of. Mikuru's abilities begin and end with looking cute, making snacks and tea, and travelling through time. The first two are harmless and simple, so she does them all the time (much to the betterment of Haruhi's mood, I'd wager), but the last one has to be strictly limited (at least around or involving others) for obvious reasons.

We don't know that Mikuru(big) oversees Mikuru(small). All we have to go on that is Kyon's questionable conclusion based on Haruhi-knows-what. In the few times we've seen Mikuru(big), all she's been is a more knowledgeable (and somewhat more mature, mentally) Mikuru, which is just what Kyon has needed at those specific times. No sign of heirarchy or control over Mikuru(small) has been evident (other than her ability to put her to sleep, which is a common enough ability by later in the series that a joke is made about it). One would assume she has some level of celebrity among her ilk (she spent all that time around Haruhi in her youth, after all), but she's still just a tool to them. She's just an older, more knowledgeable, and apparently wiser tool (though not enough to avoid blowing her job and creating an information paradox her first time out).

Big Mikuru is a hell of a lot more 'frightening' or 'intimiadating' (not the correct words, but nearly analoguous) in the manga than in the anime or light novels despite saying essentially the same thing. I'm not sure if this is because of the slightly different artstyle or what.

It isn't Mikuru(small) that people are accusing of being evil, it's Mikuru(big). Which is caused entirely by Volume 7, where she had Kyon, among other things, injure someone just so he'd meet his future wife, as well as drag "Michiru" around so she could get kidnapped.

If I needed to get injured in order to meet the girl of my dreams, then HELL let me get injured. I fail to see the problem here.

And Mikuru was going to get kidnapped one way or another, the only question is which Mikuru. It was done for her own protection, so I don't see the problem here either.

Adult Mikuru is just young Mikuru who got older. I fail to see how they are any different from one another. The scene with the mole pretty much showed that she is still the same person inside.

Actually wasn't it done so that the kidnapping wouldn't happen in front of Haruhi? Because who knows what Haruhi would do if someone stole her favorate plaything from in front of her?

Either way, it was Kyon's choice to continue with the time loop; he was the one who sent Mikuru back in time, after all.

The fact is, the kidnapping was happening. It was something pre-determined, the question is what Adult Mikuru would do about it.

I still fail to see why that would imply Adult Mikuru is manipulating anyone. Adult Mikuru had no choice; she doesn't have the kind of freedom Kyon and Haruhi had in making their own destiny. Mikuru could only protect her own past. Manipulation assumes Mikuru had any SAY in the matter.

Which brings up my old-school theory, that the TRUE villains are trying to manipulate the past for real, by attempting to destroy the creation of the time machine.
And to do that, they would need to do more than just running over a schoolboy with a van; they would have to terminate ground-zero of the origin of time travel theory, of Haruhi herself.

THAT's manipulation, of the highest degree.

That may technically be manipulation, but only in the sense that punching someone in the face is technically a frank exchange of views.

I'm of two minds on the Mikuru Problem. On the one hand, there is evidence that both versions are exactly as presented, and that they are more or less functioning as time's hall monitors, keeping order and preventing others from monkeying with the past. One of these functions being, observing Haruhi which is the younger Mikuru's job.

On the other, and I'll admit right up front there's not much evidence beyond my own impressions, is that something isn't adding up. I can't shake the feeling that while they probably are everything they say they are, something else is going on too. Haruhi obviously picked everyone in the brigade to match up to her character profiles, but either she really struck it lucky in finding Mikuru, or she's tailor made for the role. Literally, whether she knows it or not.

Or on the immaterial hand, I'm being paranoid, possibly due to exposure to spy novels at a formative age.

The Fan-Fixing of Haruhi Suzumiya!
 

OK folks, here we are, suffering (or some few still enjoying, hehehe) Endless Eight, aka The Boredom of Yuki Nagato... I'd just like to offer a few thoughts on how, uh, "fixable" this situation is...

Suppose in some dream-world we fans had unlimited animation talent (and time :)), then heck, anything is fixable, we just re-animate the whole damn thing according to taste! But we don't - so...

I'm defining fan-fixing as taking the existing footage - maybe chopped up and time-shifted if desired, since that's easy enough - and re-dubbing/subbing the minimum amount required to achieve some change.

Good fan-fixing could be a new minor art-form: can a few minutes', even a few seconds', worth of change achieve a gigantic improvement to the whole way an arc goes? - and even to the way it fits into a whole series?

Well, I have some thoughts specifically about fan-fixing E8, but I'll put them in my next post, to keep this one as just "launching the concept"...

Next post to follow, internet connection permitting! :D

The Fan-Fixing of Endless Eight!
 

Right! Over here in "Spoilers and Speculation" we can talk freely about the novels and all, huh? Well, if ever some story content was a motive for launching the concept of fan-fixing (see post above), it's the novel ending of Endless Eight.

Homework! Friggin' homework! What is this, a homily to the youth of Japan to mend their attention-wandering ways? If the anime delivers us that particular aspect of the novel, after all this repetition, then holy smokes, I foresee RAAAAAAAAGE of internet-cable-melting proportions. :D:D

(Yeah, I'm aware that it's meant to represent Haruhi's sublimated desire to be helpful to others, which as a card-carrying tsundere still in her tsuntsun phase she can't quite admit even to herself, but - homework! Nooooo! It just doesn't have adequate emotional significance for her - she's bright, she did hers long ago, it's just not a major part of her mental life!)

If you agree, and of course maybe you don't, then some serious fan-fixing is in order.

How about this then, folks:

The "SOS 4" are in a real panic as the current iteration is coming to a close. They hastily convene another late night meeting - opportunity there to use the stock footage from one or more of the dropped repeat iterations (presumably a pretty much unanimous initial fan-fix is to drop enough of the damn things to cut E8 down to size, hehehe) - and thrash out a plan to break Haruhi's subconscious preference for summer over term-time.

Basically she's on a quest for aliens, time travellers and espers... but in her heart she "knows" ("knows" falsely in fact, but... "knows"!) the real world contains no such things... so the term-time excitement of running the SOS-dan has faded for her, and all she really wants now is an endless summer of shallow fun.

Well then, someone can argue - I think Itsuki would be most in-character for this - why not plant in her mind, somehow, the idea of making a fictional movie with a plot stuffed to the brim with as much alien, time-traveller and esper goodness as she could desire? With the Movie Club's facilities ready and waiting to be hijacked in typical Haruhi style as soon as term starts, that suddenly makes summer the thing she desires to get over with, and term-time the thing she craves.

Without the ability to produce fresh animation, fan-fixing will probably just have to achieve this by a cheap hack - say, the SOS 3 beg Yuki to use her powers to inject this idea into Haruhi's mind, and (perhaps after a struggle with her own conscience about non-interference, easily representable by the copious footage of an anguished Yuki) she eventually agrees.

Hey, maybe she agrees on condition that she erases the SOS 3's minds that that's what she's done, so that, post-loop, everyone believes the movie idea is Haruhi's! Then Sighs doesn't need any consistency-fixing at all, hehehehehe :D

OK just my two cents' worth... thoughts welcome!

This is a great idea! I'm thinking a re-edit of Clannad season 1 into a 2 hour movie... remove all the Nagisa & Fuko bits, extract out all the Kyou parts, and tack on the newly released Kyou-ending! :D

Is that what it was? Even after reading the novel, I never really did understand how doing homework together could break the loop. I hope they actually explain this better in the anime... assuming it ever ends... :(

Maybe Haruhi remembered Kyon's earlier comment about doing there homework. She stated that it would take three days for her to do it (and we assume she has already). But with Kyon's question, she might have in her mind that he hasn't done it yet, and realizes that she only gave him one day to finish his, thus making for one thing they didn't finished during summer. Thus she has regret and the looping starts. Why finishing the Homework breaks the loop? Haruhi now knows he's done with it so she's not worried anymore. Also it is suggested that she wanted to do one more thing during the summer, but either she couldn't put her finger on it, or else she wanted Kyon to come up with something, and he failed her (again, and again, and again, and again, and...). Thus doing their homework together fulfilled Haruhi's desire to have them all do stuff together the entire summer rather than have a day apart.

There are many ways to see it, just since we don't know what Haruhi was thinking, we'll never know for sure what it was. Only that it worked.

I don't want to second-guess what Haruhi might think of it, given that the sense of satisfaction from having someone 'elses' homework done isn't really so clear cut as the benefits to Haruhi can very alot, be it satisfaction of being helpful and/or it killed time.

I don't think footage editing of Endless Eight is required yet, as I am enjoying seeing the purposely done changes that KyoAni has implemented (which I took great pain to establish so that people can't easily say that it's just for convenience that KyoAni did it and not done so with full intent). Until then, why make life easier for people without the patience to finish all of it?

... While I'm sure a lot of people would love for that to happen, the story is, at its heart, a high school romance between two people who don't really want to admit their feelings about one another. It'd essentially ruin the entire purpose of everything beyond Endless Eight. :heh:

Time loop stories usually end when the first suggestion is finally taken.

The first suggestion was by Kyon. The second was by Itsuki. Neither has been taken to our knowledge in any existing loop. Though Yuki may know otherwise.

But consider the possibilities! An entire anime-original continuity could be spun. Imagine the end-of-the-world scenarios and other crises that can happen in:

The Dating of Haruhi Suzumiya
The Teen Pregnancy of Haruhi Suzumiya
The Marriage of Haruhi Suzumiya
The Divorce of Haruhi Suzumiya
The Single Motherhood of Haruhi Suzumiya
The Midlife Crisis of Haruhi Suzumiya
The Crimes of Haruhi Suzumiya
The Incarceration of Haruhi Suzumiya

There would be riots if this happens :heh:

Anyway, since they messed up royally with E8, why not, at least it would be finally, something new.

I'd watch The Retirement of Suzumiya Haruhi and The Mortality of Suzumiya Haruhi...

Okay, I've been lurking here for a while, but you've made me feel compelled to post. Congratulations. Personally, I find it frustrating that so many fans are confused by the homework thing. I've been correcting people on 4chan for weeks about it. It's simple.

The reason why Kyon's study group breaks the timeloop is simple: It shifts Haruhi's mindset from vacation mode to the schoolyear.

Because Haruhi already did her homework, she spends her August 31st feeling unfullfilled over her summer break, and desires more. Kyon's study group has her spend her 31st with her friends in a last-minute cram party she's never taken part of before, and it also reminds her that she has more learning to do during the schoolyear.

Kyon simply doing his homework won't break the loop. He needs to have Haruhi there to break her out of the summer vacation mindset, and shift her paradigm back into school-mode.

/rant.

There are also Kyonists out there with a theory why Endless Eight ends the way it did.

Because Kyon doesn't want to do his homework! :heh: Once he really sets his mind to it, the loop is broken. :heh: