melancholy of haruhi suzumiya 2009 14, the sigh of haruhi suzumiya 5
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The result of our sweat and tears, a full-length spectacle!
Our long national nightmare is over. After three years of waiting, we got more Haruhi Suzumiya… only we shouldn’t have used the Monkey’s Paw to wish for it. Yikes. Eight episodes of Endless Eight… five episodes of Sighs… the Monkey’s Paw delivered all right. Did it really take 13 episodes to tell two stories that could have been told in four or five episodes total? Hell, no. Unless you’re money-grubbing and need to milk the last ounce of revenue from this franchise.
(This perplexes me too… wouldn’t you want to not piss off your fans? Rather than milking the franchise by extending stories that have no business being extended, why not just put up better episodes? Surely Kyoto would make more money selling God Knows CDs and PVC Bunny Girl Haruhi than they will selling DVDs of Endless Eight.)
Don’t get me wrong. I like Haruhi Suzumiya. I like the stories, I like Haruhi’s bat shit insanity, I like Mikuru’s moe, I like Yuki’s understatedness, I like Itsuki’s attraction to Kyon, I like Kyon’s sarcasm… I just want them to progress in the story. Haruhi 2009 just felt like they’re spinning their wheels. This is no way for a top tier franchise to be treated– I am willing to give this season a mulligan, but only if Kyoto comes back in full force with Disappearance. Sooner rather than later.
Biggest issue is that everyone has caught up or surpassed Kyoto. Back in 2006, did I think any studio could crank out anime as pretty as Kyoto? No. In 2009? Yes. Not only that… there’s better source material out there than Haruhi, like Bakemonogatari, and Shaft– bless their despairing hearts– didn’t fuck it up. In fact, they’re hitting home runs left and right. Kyoto and Haruhi have a lot of ground to make up. Could they do it? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t count them out. They just need to go back to the basics– fanservice, pacing, and epic moments. They can do all three. It just felt like they chose to ignore all three this season. In the first season, we still remember Mikuru 00, God Knows, and Kyon’s “Ponytails turn me on!” line. That plus Mikuru fanservice really made the first season pop up and stand out. Did we really have anything this season? No, not really. Those are the basics that this franchise need to get back to.
sos brigade awesomeness index
“Don’t fuck with me!”… wait, concerning the date Haruhi and Kyon went on at the very end where Kyon tries to tell her the truth… when was that supposed to happen chronologically? Was that before or after Haruhi came off her band phase? Since after viewing the movie, Haruhi gets roped into performing on stage, no? And the day after, she muses about how the SOS Brigade should do a music act for next year and drags Kyon to start preparing… so when does this coffee date happen?
(My favorite part? The other patrons looking at them. My second favorite part? How Haruhi drank Kyon’s tea in anger. My third favorite part? The emo facial distortion. There was a lot to like.)
Books… why does Yuki even need to read? And why does she read so slow?
(Yuki is Minorin’s greatest role. The long, continuous, machine gun-like explanations… perfect. Since I have nothing more to add concerning Minorin’s greatness, here’s a blurb from her Wikipedia entry: “She is good at playing catch, as her father was a baseball coach, and she was a center fielder for her junior high school team. She wanted to play as an outfielder by any means, because she feared the danger presented to infielders from high-velocity, low-batted balls. She was also attracted to the charm of being able to catch fly balls.” Wait, there’s charm in catching fly balls?)
Your face is too close… the whole nighttime scene with Itsuki and Kyon on a bridge… so gay. The smooth jazz in the background does not help. Nor does the fact that it reminds me of a scene between Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks from Sleepless in Seattle.
(Sleepless in Seattle was on satellite lately, and it’s so frickin’ dated. Weaving AOL into a major premise of a movie is a bad idea. So is incorporating an NBA team… a team that no longer exists in Seattle. And it also doesn’t help that Meg Ryan looks so old and surgically enhanced now that Sleepless Meg Ryan looks like a completely different person. And it definitely didn’t help that I kept expecting Tom Hanks to tell Meg Ryan to fuck off because he wanted to spend more quality time with Wilson the Volleyball. Needless to say, Sleepless in Seattle is one dated movie. I just hope I don’t feel the same way about Haruhi Suzumiya in ten years.)
Denab, Altair, and Vega… loved Kyon’s method for reeling in Haruhi with a disclaimer at the end. It’s perfectly logical and a great solution to the plot. Did we need five episodes to go through all of this? Of course not, but it’s still a great ending. One understated thing is that the endings to all of Haruhi‘s arcs are all logical. They don’t really come out of the blue, and, if you think hard enough, they’re perfect for the arc. This is something Nagaru Tanigawa does and does well. If only we can get him to pen the final Evangelion movie.
Mikuru backstabbing… loved Mikuru backstabbing Itsuki. That’s the way it should be. Though she really should have thrown herself at Kyon, cried, and then rubbed her chest against him… what hot-blooded, traditional male could have resisted her at that point?
(Or, option two, surprise him with a nakkid apron breakfast. At least beat out Itsuki before he shows up in a nakkid apron.)
(Mikuru’s telling Kyon that Itsuki isn’t to be trusted and Itsuki’s subsequent Mikuru shouldn’t be trusted reminds me a lot of The Bachelor/ette where one of the contestants– is there a better word for this?– would tell the bachelor/ette that some other girl/guy isn’t in it “for the right reasons”. Like the one season where a guy pretended to be a “famous” country singer because he wanted to bang the bachelorette and leak a sex tape of it. Reminds me a lot of that show. Also, I still think The Bachelor/ette needs to either use normal guys, i.e. guys who don’t need a national TV show to find a waifu or go with my trap idea where there’s 25 possibilities, only 10 would have penises and 10 would have had penises. Needless to say, if Haruhi and I were in a charge of a major TV network, it would be the greatest TV network ever.)
Self-referential… when Kyon was walking through the school wondering about all the weird people he’s been seeing lately around school… I so wanted Azu-nyan or Mio to be in the same club room as ENOZ. That would have been fantastic. Surely more fantastic than eight episodes of Endless Eight.
Shamisen… just shoot me. There’s no way there’s a penis on this. None. I won’t accept it. Shamisen having the voice that I would place more on Mr. Delicious? Wrong. The greatest blunder of Haruhi Suzumiya was Endless Eight. The second greatest blunder was making fans wait three years for new episodes, not doing Disappearance, and not really publicizing the episodes better. The third greatest blunder was not making Minorin also voice Shamisen.
Nom nom nom… I want to see Mikuru and Yuki re-enact Shinbou’s and Koyomi’s bloodsucking scenes. I think Kyoto Animation owes us this much, at least.
Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries… loved Haruhi humming Ride of the Valkyries… if we can get a classical arranged concert for Haruhi, we can get a “Best of Aya Hirano’s Humming.” I think this would sell better than Endless Eight DVDs.
Windows XP… yet another reason why K-On! is superior to Haruhi Suzumiya: Haruhi uses XP; Mio uses OS X. End of discussion.
Zombie Kyon… Kyon looks like holy hell after he wakes up. Loved the keyboard imprint… a nice touch. Though he fell asleep… wuss. Back in high school and college, I could pull all nighters and ace the test or exam the next day.
(I wonder who finished the project. I can’t imagine Mikuru doing it… Yuki couldn’t use a mouse at this point in the story… Itsuki would be too preoccupied with his play… I would have to with either Mr. Deus Ex Machina, Shamisen, or Mikuru Prime. Or is this story about how they finished the movie going to be told in volume 13 of the light novels, where Kyon has to go back in time to finish the movie?)
Cherry trees… were these the cherry trees that Tomoyo tried to save in Clannad?
Career opportunities… “For Suzumiya-san, the fine details and subplots don’t really matter. Most likely, she hasn’t even thought up an ending.”… I think Haruhi is qualified to work for either Sunrise or Gainax. But thinking about what franchise I would love to see Haruhi direct… it has to be Code Geass. Everything else is a distant second.
Oyasumi… good night Haruhi. Once again.
31 Responses to “melancholy of haruhi suzumiya 2009 14, the sigh of haruhi suzumiya 5”
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My undying love for this series will keep me waiting for season 3 (god hope), regardless of that Endless 8 blunder. 5 eps of sighs didn’t seem TOO bad IMO but the fact that endless 8 completely destroyed any possibility of Disappearance was the biggest problem in my book.
Am I the only one who saw the finished effects in the movie and just thought, “Oh, Haruhi expected it to be done, therefore it was . . . she willed it into existence”? I mean, does it really have to be more mysterious than that? At any rate, I thought this was the strongest episode of the arc. I’m not sure I liked the ‘confession’ at the end, though. Like you, I was pondering continuity and it seemed tacked on. like an afterthought.
5 episodes was about the correct amount for a volume-length arc adaption. Yes it seemed a bit slow-paced but that’s much due to all of the fast-paced events selected for the ‘first season’. If they want to get through all the novels then it makes sense to get Sighs out of the way sooner rather than later.
Yeah, 8 episodes of E8 was over the top. But for me it just convinced me that this wasn’t the true second season for Haruhi. Adding it onto a season 1 re-run and not even announcing it made sense. This way the true new season of Haruhi (presumably named after Disappearance) will be full of the next lot of great content.
I wonder how long it’s going to take before I stop giving KyoAni the benefit of the doubt. They’ve gone and thrown away the things that made them great (faced paced action, comedy and fanservice) and are living off of past greatness. It’s like how I had to decide that Production I.G. is nowhere near as good as their reputation.
Mikuru and Itsuki backstabbing each other must have hurt so much, especially since they are in love with one another.
Kyon doesn’t believe in himself, but he believes in Haruhi who believes in Kyon. The powers that be made sure the movie was finished.
KyoAni going back to the basics in the future: casting Tomokazu Sugita as Riki Naoe.
While I thought that Endless Eight was an appalling waste of CO2, I think the other episodes were quite good, especially the Tanabata episode featuring middle-schooler Haruhi, as well as the last two episodes.
I also liked the last scene in the last episode, when Haruhi storms out of the coffee shop. It was sweet of her to wait just outside the door for Kyon to catch up to her, even glancing behind her to make sure he would.
that date scene refer to the end of first novel, where three other members decide not to show up. and at the start of second novel kyon is recalling this data “that took place half a year ago”, before school festival.
I finally got a laugh out of S2. Not laughing at S2, but laughing with it, once.
…
Haruhi telling Kyon that she will stay and help him finish the movie, next cut she is beating him on the head with her megaphone, then goes to sleep. After 10 years as a video editor, that scene describes how 1/2 the projects ended up going. When the director/producer/slave driver finally leaves you the hell alone, then you can get the project done.
…
And yes, sometimes projects do finish themselves while you are unconscious. True story.
Actually, it was 10 years, 3 months and 22 days. ’10 years’ sounds so generic.
I was waiting for someone (presumably Tsuruya) to start calling Kyon, K-YON! as it would be pronounced the same way anyway.
Hmmm, what’s more tired, Jason bagging on KyoAni, or Simmons crushing the T’Wolves for drafting Rubio?
We could always get a string of Chiaki ranting off to Kana about how stupid she is and put it in the cat’s mouth. Though I believe that was the same voice we heard three and a half years ago tell Yuki she should just mind control Itsuki to fall for her…followed by the “that was ventriloquism” line.
The saddest thing about Season 2 for me is that it was merely enjoyable, and not a fantastic spectacle as the first one was. I can only hope that Disappearance is everything S2 should’ve been.
Shamisen was voiced by the same guy who did his one line or so way back in 2006’s “Episode 00,” Kenichi Ogata. Also known as Dr. Agasa in Case Closed, Leo Shishio in GaoGaiGar, Myoga in InuYasha, Genma Saotome in Ranma ½, and a bunch of other stuff going all the way back to Space Battleship Yamato. Dude’s been around.
I like Kyo Ani. I’m not sure I liked the eight episodes of Endless Eight, and I’m not sure who in their right mind would of thought “Yeah, this will fly. And instead of changing it up a bit each time around, let’s just run the same thing. It’ll be epic.”
I’m still under the belief that this season is still within the realm of Season 1. That way, I feel less dirty about looking forward to Disappearance. This also ties in with how if you look at S1 chronologically, you get this really downer of an episode as a finale.
This season should of looked into what Mikuru, Yuki and Itsuki said in the last 10 minutes more deeply. Instead, we got bug catching, frog part-timers, batting practice, festivals, and denwa. Oh and that damning denwa.
This episode really had the feel of “oh crap, we’ve only got one episode left?”. Very abrupt shifting between capturing Shamisen, backstabbing talk, movie screening and the daito at the end. I can’t remember if it all happened so fast in the novel version, but I think the pacing of Sighs could have been altered so it didn’t need a sprint at the end. And they made the stupid decision to stick rigidly to the actual timeline, and show everything along the way, rather than doing Disappearance and cherry picking other episodes like in S1, so what were they doing inserting the date sequence right at the end anyway, where it being at the start in the novels gave Haruhi the casting ideas?
Endless Eight is quite possibly the worst idea a studio’s ever had of what to do with one of its best franchises. At worst it’s retroactively made people hate the original. In a lot of cases it’s just made people drop and dislike the show. At best it’s left a bad aftertaste for Sighs, which wouldn’t have been so bad if it was showing after a 2/3 episode endless 8. Compared to season 1 this one has been a massive disappointment due to KyoAni’s mishandling of it. Assign it a competent director and the Clannad art staff, or don’t bother coming back for S3.
Oddly, I’m pretty sure they did have competent directors and the Clannad art staff working on parts of this…Endless Eight included. That’s probably what saved it from being totally recycled art every episode and why some episodes of Endless Eight were beautiful…from an art point of view. Considering how much effort seems to have been put into the art and animation..and voice work, for each episode of Endless Eight…that must have been expensive to produce for what would seem like a minimal return. We may never know why they made it eight episodes long. We may never find out just who thought that was a good idea…or if anyone thought it was a good idea at all, just something they “had to do”, for one reason or another. Like, “we have to fill out another 14 episodes if we want to get sponsors and air time, or its no go”…”What about book 4?” “There is too much we want to do with book 4 that ties in with all kinds of later stuff…we don’t have the room to do that and two episodes of Endless Eight.”….”So we need six episodes of filler? Why not write original material for that?”…”Are you crazy? These fans will skin us if we alter anything now…there just isn’t room in the material for alterations.” …”Even those genderbending groups?”…”No, its just a fad.”…”What about extending Endless Eight as filler?”….”They’ll hate that if we recycle it over and over again.”…”We could animate everything fresh. use different directors and art staff for each one to make it as interesting as we can without deviating from the story much.”…”I guess that will have to do….make it so.”
.
Or something like that….maybe.
Chronologically, the scene at the end of that episode, with Haruhi and Kyon in a café, is the time at the end of Melancholy when both go in a café “to discuss aliens, time-travelers and espers”.
Which means that it really should have been at the beginning of Sighs rather than at the end. Oh, well…
I was quite surprised by all the good vibes I got from that episode.
I believe that Haruhi S2 is the victim of being entirely planned on an after-thought; in Haruhi S1 they paced and organized the events so that in the end, the show would be self-suffcient and good on its own. They never thought that they would have to come back, fill the holes and fix the chronology.
Eight episodes of Endless Eight makes sense from a production “I have three stories to work with and fourteen episodes to fill” point of view.
Now, I am willing to bet that Disappearance will be out this winter. DO YOU HEAR THAT KYOANI? That’s the only way to redeem yourself!
Oh, and Haruhi on Code Geass. “In daytime, he is an ordinary high-school student. However at night, he becomes a rebellion supreme commander with ESP powers and an extravagant outfit! And let’s dress the heroine as a bunny girl!”
It all makes sense now! Code Geass was directed by Haruhi!
I like how this episode showed up Mikuru, Itsuki and Yuki for what they are: agents of competing factions.
As for Disappearance, I’d prefer it if they didn’t make it right away. I’d rather the current staff went back to K-On.
I wouldn’t quite call the re-airing a wash, but the Endless Eight shenanigans cost the franchise a lot of casual viewers. Oh, the hard core franchise watchers will stay, but those who didn’t even stick around for Sighs will really think twice about trusting Kadokawa now… And by extension KyoAni.
Is the franchise damaged? Maybe, we’ll really have to wait for the Endless Eight DVD sales figures to find out. Until then, I’ll wait by the sidelines and see if we can get a Disappearance adaptation that won’t be three years in the offing.
On the plus side though, I think this run showed how KyoAni isn’t really as infallible as many think it is (many of the middle episodes of Endless Eight can be considered low points, style-wise).
ENOZ should get their own series. And by series I mean yuri hentai OVAs.
I still stand by the fact that Endless eight was one episode to Kyoto! Its not like they went “endless eight I”, “endless eight II”,… etc. Every episode was titled “Endless Eight”!
Ithekro – 5 episodes is plenty for Book 4. 6 would certainly be enough. Disappearance is a very well-written story, but it’s not this magnificent masterpiece that would be ruined by simply having to share space with BLR, E8 (two or three episode version), and Sighs. If KyoAni/Kadoawa’s thinking is as you speculated then they dropped the ball on this one even worse than I think.
rh – Enoz getting their own series might be a lot of fun, yeah. Could be like a cross between Lucky Star and K-On, with Haruhi characters making cameo appearances.
Good blog review overall. I particularly agree with the “get back to basics” line.
While season 2 overall is just sucks as a whole, I really think this episode was at least a step in the right direction. Though the preceding episodes just to reach this one were really unnecessary. Totally agree that Endless and Sighs could have been told with 5 or so episodes over this ridiculocity 13.
And yeah, like someone else mentioned, the “don’t fuck with me” part takes place at the end of Melancholy, but considering that they didn’t bring up the whole Bachelor/ette scenes until this episode, I guess it makes sense for it to have happened at the end of this arc. Though I think it wouldn’t have been that shabby of an idea for them to just start off this season with an episode just based around the idea of Koizumi, Mikuru and even Nagato doing anything they can to convince Kyon that their Haruhi theories are fact and finally end it with the coffee shop scene with Kyon and Haruhi. It’d be a good bridge between the seasons. But alas, apparently pacing just ain’t happening this season.
Oh yeah, and since Haruhi’s airing all episodes in order now, would it be safe to assume next week would be Live Alive?
If you want to know where season1’s style went, try “Kannagi”. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y.....irector%29
Alas, Nagato, my heart will go on. I will wait faithfully for Disappearance. If the art style does not improve at that time, I will consider the franchise to have gone gentle into that good night with the conclusion of Season 1. Such a waste of potential. At least Canaan and Utena have healed my soul with excellence.
>>>“Windows XP… yet another reason why K-On! is superior to Haruhi Suzumiya: Haruhi uses XP; Mio uses OS X. End of discussion.”
You forget that Haruhi extorted that computer from some guys who actually know how to use computers. End of discussion.
For those wondering when the date scene takes place, it happens right at the end of ‘The Melancholy of… part 6’ They’re even wearing the same clothes as they were at the end of that episode so according to my timeline it’s well before the current ‘Sigh’ arc.
“Shinbou’s and Koyomi’s bloodsucking scenes”
Thank you for the completely uncalled for mental image :E
Well…that was rather clever of them, actually. I’m going to have re-watch that.
Kyon and Haruhi really DO remind me a lot at times of Bruce Willis (David Addison) and Cybill Shepard (Maddie Hayes) in MOONLIGHTING. What would really intrigue me would be The Marriage of Haruhi Suzumiya. ((Which does not exist ofcourse, but should)) The sweets table, I’m sure, would be enormous! I hope they get that HAPPY ending someday.
But all things considered, and said, and derided….I’ve enjoyed this 2nd season and that included Endless 8 and how it was done. KyoAni has nothing to redeem themselves over…at least to the extent that many of y’all think they do.
Now I’ve voiced my tiny critique of Endless 8 here before….stating that MAYBE one or two of those episodes could have dealt with the 2 times they DIDN’T go to the Bon Festival….or maybe they could have done an episode where they worked cash registers….and there were those times, when they went to the Bon Festival and didn’t catch goldfish….maybe they caught little SQUIDS instead. My take is that they should have gone REALLY ALL OUT with it….done 5 Endless 8 just as they did (instead of 8), and the other 3 would be: No Bon Fest; Cash Registers; SQUID!