The second batch of episodes of the anime series known as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has caused some controversy. While the first episode (from the context that of "new" episodes; they were shown in conjunction with repeats of the first series), "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody" premiered with much appreciation from the fans, the trouble began with the second, "Endless Eight" which began an arc lasting until Episode 9. If one were to search the Internet, they would get the sense that it was a complete and utter disaster; the actual truth is a bit more muddled than that. The ratings indicate they peaked around the fifth "Endless Eight," before falling and rising again for the finale, indicating the general audience was becoming more and more interesting in the early weeks before becoming bored until the finale.
Still, it seems to have certainly hit a nerve in the fan community. While it's true that fans, as a culture, are incredibly hard to please (as soon as the Endless Eight arc finished, there were complaints about the next arc, The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, was "boring," that the art style was too different and scenes from the novel weren't adapted as they'd hoped), Endless Eight does seem to be particularly bothersome. It's hard to look at any YouTube video about Haruhi, any thread on any message board, without comments along the lines of Endless Eight being "epic fail" or similar Armageddon language. And it's not just the fan community; former Kyo-Ani director, Yutaka Yamamoto, certain animators and even Haruhi's seiyuu herself, Aya Hirano, have expressed doubts on the validity of the arc.
So why is there so much hate for it? How could something go through so many levels of production with have this level of a reaction in the fan community? While I do not know, I can try and look, analyzing what Endless Eight is and the reasons I think it was done. More importantly, I will try to argue for Endless Eight's artistic integrity and offer why I think, far from the apocalypse reputation it has gotten, it is one of the smartest and most clever arcs ever done in the history of animation.
"Endless Eight" began as a short story by Nagaru Tanigawa, released in The Rashness of Haruhi Suzumiya, the fifth light novel in the Haruhi Suzumiya series. The short story dealt with a time loop unconsciously created by the main character, Haruhi Suzumiya, telling us the details of the characters trapped in the 15,498th loop. In the end, the story's other protagonist, the narrator nicknamed Kyon, figured out a method to end the loop and saved the day. When Kyoto Animation (or Kyo-Ani) started producing an anime based on the series, they left out the story for their first batch of episodes, but for their second, they devoted over half the series (eight out of fourteen) to it. The first episode fails to make any mention of the loop or any science fiction occurrences, focusing on just the characters having fun in summer. The second begins the déjà vu experienced by the characters and explains the time loop concept, occurring in the 15,498th loop, just like the story. This continues for the next five episodes, showing us the exact same events in one-hundred percent new, freshly-produced episodes. Finally, in the eighth "Endless Eight," the 15,532nd loop, the story follows the short story's conclusion and ends the loop.
A time loop is a stock sci-fi plot. Most shows have done it or some variation. Different ones do different things with it, each weaved to their own strengths. With Star Trek, they usually play up the scientific possibilities and wonder of it. With Red Dwarf, they use Cat for comedy ("So, what is it?"). But ultimately, it's very hard to connect to real human emotions with it because we can't relate to a time loop (except maybe doing it as a satire on bureaucratic office life but I haven't seen anyone do that yet). We, as an audience, watch and go, "Oh, must suck for them," but forty minutes later, we go, "Oh, cool, they resolved it. Can't wait for next week!"
This is different. For the first time, this makes us feel what the characters feel. As each new week passes, Kyon failing, time resets, us never knowing when it will end... We feel frustrated, we feel angry, we feel hopeless. And that's exactly what it should do! It's making us experience a range of human emotions that ninety percent of the "time," time loop stories cannot do. They're big, impossible, concept-heavy, hard sci-fi stories that are difficult to understand on an honest human level. The anime's Endless Eight arc takes a science-fiction cliché that works in a "head-in-the-clouds" sort of way and drags it down to a human level.
Fiction often mollycoddles its audience. While fiction has the potential to make humans experience the full spectrum of emotions, it so often focuses on exclusively positive ones and when it does showcase more negative ones, such as fear or sadness, it waters them down, for example, showing us cheap jump scares instead of genuine, "go-home-and-think-about-it" terror. While there's nothing wrong with it (everything has its place), we, as a society, have become conditioned to not expect drama that makes us experience heavier emotions (I've gotten into quite lengthy discussions on this in the context of other recent programs, but that's for another time). But even psychological horror and debilitating sadness are seen more than frustration. The concept of a program making you frustrated or uncomfortable has become so alien to us that some can't even fathom it. But by putting us into the shoes of the main cast (specifically Nagato, who remembers everything), that is exactly the response it elicits from us. Personally, I love that a program went out of its way to get its audience to feel an emotion that programs so rarely do.
From a production side, the arc is a fascinating experiment on the differences in directing styles. With the exception of the first and last episodes (which have two different scripts and the same director), every single "Endless Eight" has the same script by Yasuhiro Takemoto but a different director. The effects this have on the episodes is colossal. Tones, moods, the whole atmosphere of a scene, can be radically different or remarkably similar based on the personal style of each director. The opening scene has the identical script, but in earlier episodes, it gives off a joyful and carefree atmosphere, as Kyon and his sister lie around and watch TV. In later episodes, it has a dark and foreboding sense of menace. Through the lighting, the music and the camera angles, there's no pretext that this is happy or comfortable; it's the painful start of the same journey. Little, personal touches can be found throughout as well. In his episode, Noriko Takao puts in a recurring motif of an airplane, left to the viewer's imagination as to what it signifies, be it Kyon's wish for freedom or any number of things. In Tatsuya Ishihara's episode, he brings back the ticking clock imagery from "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya VI," which he also directed.
I touched upon this slightly above, but the effect this can have on the mood of the same events is astonishing. The first "Endless Eight," which going in blind shows no signs of being the beginning of an arc whatsoever, is an absolutely beautiful exercise in "slice-of-life" fiction. A friend of mine has said something along the lines of, "That first episode makes you want to join and be a part of the SOS Brigade. It goes through all the things you would want to do visiting Japan and does each of them magnificently." You can feel the energy and enthusiasm bleeding through the screen, calling out to you, almost personally. But with each loop and each episode, it degrades. What once was fun and whimsical has become a chore. By the last two episodes, it's practically a perversion of the original episode. It's a work of genius to be able to give you the exact same events and make you feel completely different things while you watch them.
Former Kyo-Ani director Yutaka Yamamoto, responsible for writing/directing such Series 1 classics as "The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00" and "Live Alive," has said that while he was at Kyo-Ani he propositioned just doing two episodes of Endless Eight instead of the eight we have now. Now, he's right; this would have gotten the job done. You set the story up in the first part and then have Kyon figure it out in the second, it works. But there's more to a product than getting the job done. We'd be able to appreciate Kyon solving it on an intellectual level, but not, I think, on an emotional one. Every single grueling minute of Endless Eight is leading up to that one moment, where Kyon realizes he hasn't done his homework and triumphantly announces that to Haruhi. After two episodes, this would have a little impact; it'd work in the same way that most conclusions work, "Ah-ha, so that's how he does it." But in the current version, it is so much better. When Kyon, arms stretched out, bellows his announcement, we feel ecstatic. Our hearts race and our body shakes; it's all been worth it. Every time we saw the pool, the fireworks, the cicadas, has been brought to a climax. The first time I saw it, I was yelling at the screen, eyes in tears, saying, "Kyon! Do it! Figure it out!" and when he does, it's such a relief; a burden's been lifted from your shoulders and it feels wonderful. It's one of the most joyous and uplifting scenes in the history of animation and I don't think it'd be the same with only two episodes.
It's here that I should point out I understand how a lot of the audience who dislikes Endless Eight feels. I, myself, didn't really get it at first, brashly proclaiming, "This is dumb," around Episode 4. But it holds up. I'm currently re-watching all twenty-eight episodes and am on the fourth "Endless Eight." It's much more enjoyable this time around; you get into the rhythm of it, knowing the dialogue and key moments so well and reciting them, internally, like the lyrics of a song (which is a good comparison for Endless Eight; nobody complains when there are multiple covers of the same song). You notice more of the wrinkles, the directorial choices and the unique aspects to each one. Yet there's still an "Oh, get on with it!" feeling of uncomfortability and restlessness so when Kyon will solve it in the final episode, you still get that feeling of triumph and accomplishment.
So, I get why a lot of people don't like it. To go on a tangent for a moment, what I don't get, and what bothers me, is this point-of-view that Kyo-Ani was "trolling" its audience. If there's one thing they were doing, it wasn't that (and no, making the audience uncomfortable isn't "trolling;" if making the audience feel a negative emotion is "trolling," then every single director/writer/producer of a horror movie in the history of cinema is responsible for the same thing). This was a business decision, something designed with the optimal artistic and financial benefits, approved and decided on every single level, from the executives to the producers to the animators. It may not have been one you liked, it may not have even been a wise one, but it was not produced by a bunch of cackling madmen, twirling their mustaches and going, "So, what can we do to make our fans mad this week?!" And quite frankly, that's slightly egotistical. They didn't make something you didn't liked, therefore the entire intention and purpose was to annoy you and others who feel the same way? That's insulting towards Kyo-Ani.
If you still feel mad or upset about Endless Eight, think of it this way. Years from now, when Kyo-Ani has adapted all of Tanigawa's books and maybe even made a couple original episodes written by him as well, when there's fifty-sixty episodes or more, when Haruhi is a completed and whole masterwork of fiction, one with a clear and defined beginning, middle and end… are you really going to still have a problem that we have seven extra episodes?
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