The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - Episode 19 Discussion / Poll [2009 added ep. 9]

[Tornadium]

Originally Posted by ImaOtotsuiAsatte

Unless you think it IS good. Rewatching the series, I say Endless Eight has a tremendous pull and draw to it.

The majority of the anime community views Endless Eight as a joke. Even the Publisher has stated they don't expect it to sell.

I'm speaking from a community wide perspective, not a personal perspective. I loved Endless Eight but regardless of that fact it is always going to be somthing negative which is associated with the series.

[Ithekro]

I'd say the primary cause for the defense of Endless Eight is that there must be a logical reason for it to have been produced. While I've seen companies and stories that make no sense, Haruhi has never been one of those. And aside from Munto, KyoAni hasn't been a company that seems to make extremely bad judgement calls...and Munto was their own baby...and they themselves cut it short so they could do their movie.

Everything else suggests there must have been a viable reason to make Endless Eight eight episodes long. It might not have been a good idea, but there must be some logic behind it, or else it wouldn' have been produced...as the way they produced it seems expensive, with the primary suggestion that the finacial returns won't be up to par with normal sales results, and possibly result in a loss of money...at least for some of those episodes.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by ImaOtotsuiAsatte

Well, it's a lively discussion and healthy debate.

So what are those reasons? I'll be happy to discuss.

Even I'm almost wore out over Endless Eight discussions, but just to ensure that the other side of the argument gets heard, I'll present some short critiques against it. The first big point that I take issue with is this...

Originally Posted by ImaOtotsuiAsatte

Exactly. That's exactly what Endless Eight is. As I said in my essay, when Haruhi is 50-60 episodes and everything's been adapted, no one's going to complain that there are seven extra episodes.

Wow.

Simply wow.

How can you be so certain that all of the source material is going to be adapted?

We're talking about an animation studio that took three years to produce any new episodes for what was a phenomenally well-received anime that took the anime world by storm. If you compare Haruhi to somewhat similarly well-received anime (Code Geass, Nanoha, Shakugan no Shana, etc...), Haruhi stands out as a prominent anime that took an unusually long period of time to produce any new episodes after the conclusion of the original run.


That, in and of itself, is enough to question KyoAni's ability, desire, and willingness to animate all of the source material. I think that there's a very good chance that one of the costs of E8 is that at least some of the Haruhi source material may never receive the animation treatment.


Beyond that, there's any number of things that could result in some of the source material never being animated (don't forget that we're in a weak global economy right now)... and a lot of that source material could have already been animated if less episodes were used for Endless Eight. There's no good reason whatsoever for why they couldn't have done 3 episodes for E8, and 5 for Disappearance, instead of 8 for E8.


Beyond that, E8 became painfully boring for me after awhile. The subtitles made my eyes metaphorically bleed out of excruciating familiarity with them.

Is a joke funny the seventh time that it's said? Not for most people; most people are bored of it by then.

The same is certainly true of having to endure Itsuki's lengthy exposition on the time loop seven times (thankfully, the first E8 episode never had it).


You obviously have a high tolerance level for repetition, and that's fine. A lot of people don't. I don't (not that high, any way).

And that's ultimately what it comes down to.

1. E8 may very well come at the price of less Haruhi novel material getting animated.

2. A lot of people simply do not want to watch the same basic narrative eight times over. Period. This really shouldn't be hard to understand.

[Akka]

Originally Posted by ImaOtotsuiAsatte

Well, it's a lively discussion and healthy debate.

So what are those reasons? I'll be happy to discuss.

E8 was bad because it was incredibly boring while not bringing anything to the story that could not have been better done with a (much) shorter arc.
The point of the story did NOT need so many episodes, and most of them have absolutely no storytelling value over the previous or the next. They were simply waste.

E8 felt like a challenge to make "art for the love of art", but failed because art has a point and a value, and repeating the same episode over and over had neither - in the end, it wasn't "art", it was "soul-less technical performance".

[Tornadium]

Originally Posted by Akka

E8 was bad because it was incredibly boring while not bringing anything to the story that could not have been better done with a (much) shorter arc.
The point of the story did NOT need so many episodes, and most of them have absolutely no storytelling value over the previous or the next. They were simply waste.

I disagree.

Endless Eight by your description is boring yes, You are however missing a LOT of the hidden little touches which make it a good arc (Not the best in anime history but tolerable at least).

The ending simply could not have been done without that length of the arc, And on the point of story telling value. I believe that is EXACTLY what they are going for. They wanted it to feel like it was a repetition with no worth, nothing special about it.

At least that's what i think.

E8 felt like a challenge to make "art for the love of art", but failed because art has a point and a value, and repeating the same episode over and over had neither - in the end, it wasn't "art", it was "soul-less technical performance".

I believe EE did have some points and values drilled in there as well as some Character Development which could carry forward.

[spawnofthejudge]

Originally Posted by Akka

E8 felt like a challenge to make "art for the love of art", but failed because art has a point and a value, and repeating the same episode over and over had neither - in the end, it wasn't "art", it was "soul-less technical performance".

By this argument, you're denying that an entire genre of music (minimalism) is art, and I have to disagree with that. A point and a value can be present in repetition. (Also, have you heard of the music composition 4'33"?)

[Kogetsu Shirogane]

It could also be argued that a lot of modern art has no point and little value to people expecting paintings and sculptures to actually look like what they're supposed to represent.

[Akka]

Originally Posted by Tornadium

I disagree.

Endless Eight by your description is boring yes, You are however missing a LOT of the hidden little touches which make it a good arc (Not the best in anime history but tolerable at least).

No, I'm not missing them. But I say their value was drowned into the overly stretched length of the arc. They could just as well have made 5, 10 or 75 episodes following the same pattern, it would not have changed anything in the content. That's precisely one of the main problem.

The ending simply could not have been done without that length of the arc, And on the point of story telling value. I believe that is EXACTLY what they are going for. They wanted it to feel like it was a repetition with no worth, nothing special about it.

At least that's what i think.

Well, actually the ending was a large /facepalm moment for me, precisely because it was quite pathetic after such a buildup. I have the opposite opinion than you : the ending didn't worked because of the length of the arc. It would have been good after one or two repetition at most, but it fell flat and ridiculous after all this.

I believe EE did have some points and values drilled in there as well as some Character Development which could carry forward.

E8 had some point and value and character development.
The thing is, these points and value and character development didn't need it to be stretched for such a long time.

Imagine a piece of rubber, 10 cm long. You write a message on it. No you can grab its side and stretch it to 50 cm. The message doesn't improve nor multiply, it's just deformed and annoying to read.

[Tornadium]

Originally Posted by Akka

No, I'm not missing them. But I say their value was drowned into the overly stretched length of the arc. They could just as well have made 5, 10 or 75 episodes following the same pattern, it would not have changed anything in the content. That's precisely one of the main problem.

Well, actually the ending was a large /facepalm moment for me, precisely because it was quite pathetic after such a buildup. I have the opposite opinion than you : the ending didn't worked because of the length of the arc. It would have been good after one or two repetition at most, but it fell flat and ridiculous after all this.

E8 had some point and value and character development.
The thing is, these points and value and character development didn't need it to be stretched for such a long time.

Imagine a piece of rubber, 10 cm long. You write a message on it. No you can grab its side and stretch it to 50 cm. The message doesn't improve nor multiply, it's just deformed and annoying to read.

Well i guess it's just down to opinion.

Everything about EE can be argued based on opinion, Nothing else we can really do there :/.

[ImaOtotsuiAsatte]

Originally Posted by Tornadium

The majority of the anime community views Endless Eight as a joke. Even the Publisher has stated they don't expect it to sell.

I'm speaking from a community wide perspective, not a personal perspective. I loved Endless Eight but regardless of that fact it is always going to be somthing negative which is associated with the series.

The ratings peaked around episode 5. That suggests the general public did NOT turn away in droves and think that it's a giant disaster. That's not a colossal success, but it's not an absolute train-wreck. The fanboys who dislike it are the vocal minority.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Wow.

Simply wow.

How can you be so certain that all of the source material is going to be adapted?

We're talking about an animation studio that took three years to produce any new episodes for what was a phenomenally well-received anime that took the anime world by storm. If you compare Haruhi to somewhat similarly well-received anime (Code Geass, Nanoha, Shakugan no Shana, etc...), Haruhi stands out as a prominent anime that took an unusually long period of time to produce any new episodes after the conclusion of the original run.


That, in and of itself, is enough to question KyoAni's ability, desire, and willingness to animate all of the source material. I think that there's a very good chance that one of the costs of E8 is that at least some of the Haruhi source material may never receive the animation treatment.

Or it could be because they want to do Haruhi RIGHT and not churn them out at a thousand miles per hour. It's obvious why Endless Eight was done. Before they properly moved onto the next set of material, they wanted to fill in the gaps left in S1, chronologically. But Bamboo, two Endless Eights and five Sighs wouldn't be enough; so they made more Endless Eights so they could still have 14 to fill the gaps, without going into Disappearance and post-Disappearance material until they were 100% ready. Now whether this WILL result in less Haruhi material being animated, there's no way of knowing, but I haven't seen a single thing that suggests Kyo-Ani don't want to, quite the opposite.

[freakonboard]

Originally Posted by ImaOtotsuiAsatte

Or it could be because they want to do Haruhi RIGHT and not churn them out at a thousand miles per hour. It's obvious why Endless Eight was done. Before they properly moved onto the next set of material, they wanted to fill in the gaps left in S1, chronologically. But Bamboo, two Endless Eights and five Sighs wouldn't be enough; so they made more Endless Eights so they could still have 14 to fill the gaps, without going into Disappearance and post-Disappearance material until they were 100% ready. Now whether this WILL result in less Haruhi material being animated, there's no way of knowing, but I haven't seen a single thing that suggests Kyo-Ani don't want to, quite the opposite.

It should be better if they did 2 episodes for BLR, 4 episodes for EE and 8 episodes for Sigh, (or did some anime original episodes) instead of what we got.

You know, a decent team of script-writers could do that.

And don't get me wrong, I don't hate EE arc, but understand why people hate it.

[OkamiNoKaze]

I don't think Bamboo Leaf needed more then one episode. I read it before watching it the first time, I'm not sure what could be elaborated on too stretch it that far.

[Kogetsu Shirogane]

Sigh being eight episodes would've angered a lot more people than Endless Eight did. Keep in mind that some people were actually expecting it to be only two or three episodes before Endless Eight aired.

[GMT]

Originally Posted by freakonboard

It should be better if they did 2 episodes for BLR, 4 episodes for EE and 8 episodes for Sigh, (or did some anime original episodes) instead of what we got.

You know, a decent team of script-writers could do that.

And don't get me wrong, I don't hate EE arc, but understand why people hate it.

Ugh, no. Five episodes of Sighs was plenty, and BLR didn't really need more than one episode. E8 would've been better served as something that was no more than four episodes long, but this would leave four episodes. Some might say "Well, why couldn't they have done four episodes of Disappearance?" To which, the answer might be "Because Disappearance doesn't really fit into the Haruhi "season 1" bloc starting with Melancholy I and ending with Someday in the Rain.

What else could they have done with four episodes? There's not too much more canon material they could use. There's the Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina, which fits in this time-frame, and would be perfect for the moe-tastic 2009 art style. It's not really good for more than an episode. There's also Editor-in-Chief, which I think occurs in this timeframe, and could've been dragged out to two episodes. Which would've left one or two anime-original episodes.

Arguably, though, we got six anime-original episodes instead.

[Kogetsu Shirogane]

Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina takes place in January and Editor in Chief is in March.

[GMT]

Originally Posted by Kogetsu Shirogane

Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina takes place in January and Editor in Chief is in March.

You see, this is what happens when I can't get to baka-tsuki and have to rely on Wikipedia's craptastic novel synopses. In that case, KyoAni would've needed four to six anime-original episodes to round out a S1 chronology. Which, strangely enough, leads us back to the endless E8, or a long E8 and a couple, or more, original anime-original episodes (where would you fit them, though? As it is, the SOS-dan has so much crap going on during its first half-year, it's a wonder any of them ever get any sleep. ) Which would probably anger the novel purists that the production committee believes makes up the Haruhi fanbase. Possibly more than grossly stretching out a canon story has already.

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by ImaOtotsuiAsatte

The ratings peaked around episode 5. That suggests the general public did NOT turn away in droves and think that it's a giant disaster. That's not a colossal success, but it's not an absolute train-wreck. The fanboys who dislike it are the vocal minority.

Well, that's a new way of putting it. Where are you getting your ratings from?

[Akka]

Originally Posted by ImaOtotsuiAsatte

The ratings peaked around episode 5. That suggests the general public did NOT turn away in droves and think that it's a giant disaster. That's not a colossal success, but it's not an absolute train-wreck. The fanboys who dislike it are the vocal minority.

This is a very dumb reasoning. It's not because liked the beginning of the arc (I did) that they didn't thought the arc as a whole was a disaster (which is what I think). E8 would have been quite fun if it didn't stretch for so long. So, obviously, it was good until it went overboard.

And actually, the ratings started to fall with the third E8 ep, and plummeted by the fourth.
The people who LIKED it are, actually, the vocal minority.

[spawnofthejudge]

Originally Posted by ImaOtotsuiAsatte

vocal minority

Originally Posted by Akka

vocal minority

Without much better data, neither of you can prove your claims about this term.

[ImaOtotsuiAsatte]

I was basing what I was saying on: