Haruhi Season 2: Episode 4 - Endless Eight (again, once again)

Maybe I should just keep this episode summary to a minimum, and a rant to an all time high, as this episode four is nothing more than a repeat of episode 3. Now I don’t know if this is a very smart way of putting in Haruhi filler episodes or a very, very bad way of storytelling >_>. Let’s get on with the summary:

Summary of Episode 4:
It’s the same as episode 3! Just imagine varying degrees of dialogue, different scene angles, and people wearing different clothing. That’s it. Oh, and the iteration has increased. /end summary

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Not much different from episode at all. I had some hopes that this particular story arc will end so it can get on with what this season is supposed to be, which is the Disappearance of Haruhi. This story arc is the prelude to it. As important as it is, I am not liking the idea of the arc spanning so far a minimum of 4 episodes. I’m hoping episode 5 delivers something more than just another repeat of episodes 2, 3, and 4 all over again.

Haruhi Episode 3 - Endless Eight (again)

Episode 2 was a preview to what was ahead for this particular episode. For this ep, Kyon starts out the day to the same episode as episode 2. You aren’t immediately clued in to what’s going on until he receives a phone call from Haruhi asking him to meet up and to bring his bike, where he seemingly finds out (for the first time) to go to the public pool.

To the audience, it’s clear at this point that either Kyon and company are repeating the same sequence of events or the viewer has lost their mind thinking they’re watching the wrong episode. To alleviate that confusion, the show replays the sequence of events with different angles, minor character positionings, and slight variations in dialogue.

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The episode pretty much repeats itself for the most part. The minor variations are the camera angles and Kyon’s nagging thoughts of how everything looked familiar, as if he’s done these activities before recently. The largest variation is the night after the Bon Festival where Mikuru discovers that she has lost connection to the future. Kyon meets up with her, Itsuki and Yuki, where Itsuki explains how they are stuck in an infinite loop between August 17th to the 31st, and that all memories are reset when the loop rewinds itself. Well, all memories except for Yuki, who actually transcends space-time altogether, remembered every iteration. Kyon asks her how many times have gone on already, whereby she reveals that their current iteration of this repeating timeline is the 15,498th iteration already, an equivalent to roughly 600 years’ worth of days.

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After this news, Kyon has no choice but to go through all the activities Haruhi had planned out for them for the rest of the summer. By the second to last day after their list of activities are all completed, Haruhi is ready to wrap up their summer. Kyon feels a heavy presence around him as if he needs to say something before Haruhi heads home, otherwise things will repeat itself. Unfortunately, he draws blanks as he watches Haruhi exiting the diner and his hopes of restoring the future. That next day, his willingness to continue his dialy routines is completely gone, giving in to the inevitability that he will find himself erased of all memory and starting off again on August 17th.

I was rather disappointed in this episode’s finale. It basically means that Kyon realizes that he is an infinite loop. However, his realization will be erased by the next episode and he has to “rediscover” it all again, which means the next episode is going to be another goddamn repeat of this one! Things better get resolved next episode.

Finally, a new episode after some 3 weeks since Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody. From what I hear, this episode is the start of the actual season, so there are consistent episodes per week starting from here on out.

Next to Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, this episode also bears a significant amount of importance should this series cover the Disappearance arc. Anyway, after watching this episode, it would appear that this little story arc is a two-part series, although it was not mentioned at all either at the beginning or the end of the episode.

Episode Summary and Review:

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Surprisingly, this episode actually starts out at Kyon’s house. That’s refreshing, considering 75% of the episodes started at the school, and the majority in the clubroom. But there’s a reason for this, since everyone’s on summer vacation. It also appears that the animation studio is going to shoot for a basic chronological series this time around, instead of mixing them up. It is good to note that the actual Melancholy story arc episodes were in chronologically aired. Just the random eps were randomized.

Okay, back to the episode. The title of the episode, Endless Eight (or Endless Eights) may not bear much meaning from this episode alone. If the next episode covers what happens next, then the title would make more sense. The premise of the episode here is that Haruhi is maximizing the remainder of her summer vacation with the SOS Brigade and doing a shopping list’s worth of activities.

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The activities went from going to a Bon Festival, lighting fireworks, catching cicadas, karaoke, etc. I won’t go into details with the activities, so to sum things up, Haruhi, Kyon and company did a ton of things for the last two weeks of their vacation. One thing worth noting about these activities is that it explains where the frog suit came from. If you’ve watched the first season, the frog suit appears in the Day in the Rain episode.

The subplot of the episode, which is actually pretty important, is Kyon and his pending summer homework. He brings it up throughout the episode, and at the end, simply couldn’t finish it in time. Insignificant for this episode, but plays an important role for the second half of this Endless Eight(s) episode.

Not really an exciting episode by any stretch. I think the one thing to take away from this is they premiered the opening credits for the show. Unfortunately, it was rather forgettable. Still a lot of content to go, so it’s all good.

So an episode of Haruhi aired in late May 2009 and it would appear to be a teaser of sorts to bring the new season of Haruhi. It is definitely not a filler episode nor was it the strange pilot episode of the first season featuring the movie the SOS Brigade made.

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From the opening scene, it was apparent that this episode was going to cover the Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody short story from the light novels as Haruhi is excited about celebrating Tanabata. It’s a good “return” episode for Haruhi as this story ties in with both the Melancholy series as well as the future story arcs. Not to mention, “Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody” is also the title of the episode.

In terms of the timeline of the light novels, this particular event is part of the collection of stories in the “Boredom of Suzumiya Haruhi”, and this event happens after they’ve made their movie, but before Mysterique Sign and Lone Island Syndrome. As the episode opens out, it follows the novel very strictly. It’s always a good idea to follow the author’s original direction.

As far as the episode itself goes, Haruhi is excited about Tanabata and wants the brigade crew to write down wishes for the gods to fulfill. The activity reveals a little more about the personality of each character based on what they write down on the cards. After this activity, Mikuru slips Kyon a note to stay in the room after the meeting, which he’s obviously ecstatic about. Yuki also slips him a note on her way out, without any explanation.

Mikuru requests for Kyon to go with her to 3 years back to the past. She knocks him out to prevent him from seeing how time travel worked. How convenient… Kyon wakes up in the past and meets up with the older Mikuru that he met before. She instructs him to go meet up with someone down the road at a school and help that person. That person being young Haruhi, of course.

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Going back to the first season of Haruhi, it was mentioned that Haruhi was responsible for the infamous school grounds symbol drawing incident. Now we find out that Kyon is actually the one who drew the symbol while Haruhi directed him. This isn’t the only thing. His meeting with Haruhi sparks Haruhi’s interest in attending North High, I guess to meet up with more people like Kyon. Haruhi’s reaction to his obvious alias was great, by the way.

The episode concludes with the misfortune of Mikuru missing her time traveling technology, stranding them there for at least the next three years. Kyon then remembers the note Yuki gave him earlier. The two travel to Yuki’s apartment, where she syncs with her future self. Yuki offers Kyon and Mikuru a solution, asking them to sleep in the adjacent room. The light goes off, then back on as if Yuki forgot something. She didn’t though. They are already, ahem, back to the future. Pun intended.

Again, not a bad episode. This event is a very integral part of the series as the novels touch back to this single event on a number of occasions, so it had to air eventually. Also worked out really well for it to not have been in the first season. This is a perfect episode to act as a springboard to the rest of the Haruhi universe.

In terms of rumors of the upcoming season, many are saying that it’s just going to be a remake of sorts for the series, which confuses me. The first season was pretty solid in my opinion. My enthusiasm will go down the drain as quickly as it did when I found out FMA2 was a “redo”. Lost all interest. But I’m an invested fan of the Haruhi series, so I’ll see what they will do this time around. I’m still praying for the “Disappearance” story arc. If not, I’ll still settle for the movie making arc. Though both are too short to fill up an entire season on their own accord. I didn’t get anything from the ending credits as to what the upcoming season might hold, but the chalkboard image sure looks like a schedule. A movie-filming schedule perhaps? Who knows.

So I finally got my hands on the official Melancholy of Haruhi DVDs so now I can remake my original AMV without subtitles in the way. Maybe it will open things up for maybe a whole new AMV somewhere down the line. For now though, I just wanted to experiment with the idea of overlaying the DVD quality video over the old fansubbed version.

Good ol’ Premiere took some time to figure all over again. This time around I was using Premiere CS3, which is rather different than 6.0 that I originally used for this AMV. For some reason, this new Premiere put in these two black bars on both sides of the video, which took another day just to get rid of. It didn’t help that I was working on this in hot weather, while under the weather or under attack by allergens, and with a headache for hours already.

So with a few extra added scenes, slightly better cuts, and multiple file conversions between raw uncompressed video to an acceptable MP4/FLV version, it’s finally complete. Unfortunately, there were some converting issues and it’s not exactly the best thing possible, but I just don’t have enough time to sit around to fix them, if I could even do such a thing.

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It would appear that the next season of Haruhi will most likely be The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi. I’m definitely excited. And here’s why I believe it’s going to be based on this storyline (from Anime News Network):

SPOILER ALERT!! –
After the Anime News Network message, I’m going to go a little in depth to the storyline.

The official Japanese website for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya television anime series has announced further details about the franchise’s next anime project. In the spirit of the first anime series and the Haruhi Suzumiya science fiction comedy light novels that spawned the franchise, the announcement was made in a roundabout, cryptic manner.

On Tuesday, the site “disappeared” and began displaying a false error message that read, “The page cannot be found.” A second message then appears over the first message; it states that a computer program is starting up and prompts the user for a password. If the user enters “K,” “N,” “S,” “A,” and “K” (the initials of the family names of the members of SOS brigade, the main characters in the series) into the password fields and selects the radio button to the right, a fake xterm terminal session opens. A series of messages from “YUKI.N” confirms that the key to the “emergency escape program” has been found and asks for a final confirmation before starting the program. If the user hits the enter key, a new page opens that shows the character Yuki and lists the production credits of the new series.

The page reveals that the previously announced second anime season of Haruhi Suzumiya has been “cancelled” and replaced with a new animation project. Yasuhiro Takemoto (Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid, Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, Lucky Star) will direct the new project, and Kyoto Animation will still be animating as it did for the first anime project. As in the previous anime project, the fictional “leader” of the new anime project is the character Haruhi Suzumiya herself. The “disappearance” of the website on December 18 at 4:00 a.m. (Japan Standard Time) is a reference to the pivotal date in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, the fourth volume in the light novel series and an apparent indication of which novel plot the new anime project will adapt. Bandai Entertainment finished its English-language release of the first anime project in November.

Alright, on to a preview the Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi.

So what happens is one day, Kyon wakes up and the world literally has changed over night. Haruhi is missing, no one knows who Haruhi is (except for Tanaguchi), Asahina doesn’t know him, Itsuki is missing, and Asakura is back! Not to mention, Yuki, the only person who can save the day, has become a fragile loner of a bookworm. Talk about the odds stacked against Kyon.

So where’s Haruhi. Well, someone changed history to have Haruhi end up at a different school. Here she is in another school uniform. Looks quite spiffy, if you ask me. By the way, Itsuki is at this school too.

With Haruhi at another school and not having met Kyon, the SOS Brigade would never have been created. Sounds like a villain plotting the destruction of the SOS Brigade by making sure it never even had a chance to be made.

And as for the big spoiler: Let’s take a look at the image released by Kyoto Animation. This is an image of Yuki with her arm stretched out aiming at the school. Since I read the novels, I know exactly what’s going on here. And it points out what Haruhi Season 2 is going to be, which is The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi. Not only is it this, but it should be this one by the fact that it is the only one next to the original novel that actually has a decent anime-acceptable plot. The other stories available are rather short or not interesting enough. This one is, and many would agree. Here’s another cover art to finish it off:

Once in a while, I do some random searches for information that wasn’t available before. This time, I found a very exciting piece of information that I have been waiting for several months to become true. And that is a new season of Haruhi! With 10 light novels of the series, and only 1 and a half of those novels having been covered in the original Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, there was no way a second season (or even more) can be ignored in lieu of the famdom the series has created so far.

Anyway, the proof of the second season can be found in this image:

The image is a reference to Volume 3’s short story “Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody”. The story involves the Tanabata festival, celebrated on July 7th each year. Haruhi asks the Brigade to write down wishes and post them on a bamboo shoot. The top image shows her looking out the window. In the novel, she’s sitting on a chair stairing out the window, but this is close enough. Below are live-action shots of a promotion video put on my Kyoto Animation that portrays the events in the short story. Basically, Kyon is taken back to the past (exactly 3 years ago) by Asahina. Asahina is put to sleep by an older version of herself who awaits for Kyon in the past. The older Asahina instructs Kyon to help Haruhi paint the symbol on the school field that Tanaguchi talked about when describing Haruhi’s past junior high antics. So, it turns out Kyon actually helped Haruhi paint the symbol for her that night.

It’s still not revealed what exactly the second season will cover, but who cares? Season 2 is confirmed! There is a god.

I stumbled on this image yesterday while browsing around. It was such a cool looking image, I had to download it. Since it had some extra text on the image, I couldn’t help but to put my Photoshop skills to work.

As for what this image is all about, it’s a cover image for a DVD release of a live concert event performed by the voice actors of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu) anime series. I don’t know what no Gekisou means though. Oh well.

One day, a thought came to me that it would be entertaining to attempt to make a crossover between Melancholy of.. and Ouran considering the two main characters share the same name. Ironically, both shows aired on TV at the same time, making a very entertaining quarter of a year.

Originally, I only had in mind to just rotate between scenes back and forth between the two without much coherency. But that went out the window as I started. Instead I went with scenes that loosely transitioned from one scene to the next. At first I didn’t think I had enough clips to make this project worthwhile, but some how I ended up with 8 minutes worth of content.

Despite the effort, the first half of the video is somewhat slow, but the entertainment value picks up in the second half. I’m just glad the dialogue and the context of the scenes match up well. If they didn’t, I would’ve given up.

Anyway, a summary of the video would be along these lines:
It starts out with Kyon describing how he meets Haruhi, but there’s no real identification to which one is being referred to. Kyon continues to describe her, with more scene rotations. The rest of the video picks up from there and continues the same.

I had a hard time figuring out how to end the video. I had a lot of content that I wanted to add, but as I neared the 8 minute mark, I knew I had to put an end to this. Anymore would be overkill, plus leaving room for more means room for a sequel..

Summary:

At school, Kyon finds Haruhi still in a melancholic state as she complains about the weather and how boring life has become. At the clubroom, Kyon is on the computer and as he notices no one looking, he accesses the folder with the images of Mikuru. As he is browsing, Mikuru places a cup of tea in front of Kyon. He immediately closes the image and the folder. However, Mikuru notices on the screen that there is a folder with her name on it.

She struggles with Kyon for the mouse to see what’s in the folder as Haruhi comes into the room. The place falls quiet for a moment before Haruhi declares that she will be changing clothes. Kyon doesn’t leave the room, which pisses off Haruhi and he is quickly kicked out of the room. After the wardrobe change, the rest of the day is spent with Kyon playing games with Itsuki while Haruhi braids Mikuru’s hair.

Back at Kyon’s house, he prepares to go to sleep. As he is sleeping, he is suddenly woken up by Haruhi. He finds himself at the school in his uniform, but he soon realizes that he is in closed space. He’s surprised that Haruhi is there with him. The two can’t seem to exit the school grounds, so they search around the school to see what they can do. They eventually end up at the clubroom to think things over.

Haruhi ventures out on her own while Kyon remains at the clubroom. Kyon looks out the window and notices a red ball that eventually takes the shape of Itsuki. Itsuki explains that Kyon and Haruhi have completely disappeared from their world and it would appear that the world Kyon is in now is going to be the new world that best suits Haruhi. Before Itsuki had to go, he tells Kyon that Yuki wanted him to turn on the computer.

After he turns on the computer, the words YUKI.N> appear on the screen followed by Yuki asking if Kyon can see the text, which he can. Yuki tells him she wishes for him and Haruhi to return as Haruhi is an important observational subject and that Yuki herself prefers to have Kyon return as well, mentioning another visit to the library. Before total contact is lost between the two, the last statement on the screen is “sleeping beauty”.

A Celestial appears in front of the clubroom window and Haruhi storms into the clubroom. She is absolutely excited by the sight of the monster. Kyon grabs Haruhi’s arm and drags her out of the building. As he runs towards safer grounds, Haruhi explains to Kyon that she has a feeling that everything will work out in this world. Kyon tells her that he wants to be back in the old world. Haruhi is upset that Kyon would prefer that option. She truly wants to be rid of the old boring world and have this new, entertaining world.

Kyon starts thinking about his relationship with Haruhi and what she means to him. Everyone in the SOS Brigade had a different interpretation of Haruhi, but what about himself. He thinks back to what Mikuru and Yuki told him. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. At that moment, he faces Haruhi and tells her that ponytails turn him on and that she looked great when she tied her hair like that. He then kisses Haruhi as the world starts to be sucked in towards the two. Kyon rolls off his bed afterward finding himself back in the old world.

The next day at school, he finds Haruhi with a ponytail tied. Haruhi tells him she had a nightmare last night and couldn’t get any sleep. Kyon tries to cheer her up by telling her that her ponytail looks good on her. Kyon meets up with the other members. Yuki tells him the two disappeared from the world for two and a half hours. Mikuru breaks down in tears as she is glad that Kyon had returned to the world. Kyon then tells Mikuru that she has a star shaped mole on her chest to the surprise of Mikuru who checks to be sure.

A number of days later after the incident, Kyon explains that he finally turned in the paperwork for chartering the SOS Brigade. Instead of the original name that the SOS stood for, he reworded it to say something to the degree of “supporting the student body by overworking to make the world a better place Student Service Brigade”. And on the second city-wide mystery patrol event, Mikuru, Yuki, and Itsuki were all suddenly unable to go leaving only Kyon and Haruhi. Kyon plans to tell her about time-travelers, aliens, and espers.

Review:

This particular episode was the pivotal moment of the series, and therefore the series had to be structured the way it was, since there was not enough content in the original Melancholy story to span 12+ episodes. There were only six episodes devoted to the actual story while the rest were small events that happened later on, and the anime followed the Melancholy story very closely as well. At most, they would only be able to squeeze a 7th one.

Anyway, I noticed that Yuki was expressing her feelings toward Kyon as she tells him she would like to have him back. And despite her message about visiting the library fading away before she could finish her statement, I assume that she was going to say that it would be nice for the two of them to go to the library again.

As for the kiss between Kyon and Haruhi, the anime didn’t quite show it, leaving it up to our imagination. The light novel clearly explains how it went down, though in terms of Kyon’s narration.

As for the series as a whole, it was well made. The reason for it is because they practically followed the story of the Haruhi light novels to the teeth. I’ve noticed that whenever an anime strayed away from the original source, it usually didn’t end well, such as Kenshin. DBZ more or less followed Toriyama and it came out pretty good. And it goes on.

Despite the series ending so quickly, it’s bittersweet because it comes down to the preference of quality vs quantity. I personally prefer quality since the production of this series was top notch. The animators actually put in the time to draw out facial expressions instead of using over-the-top exaggerated emotions that are usually found in comedy animes like School Rumble. Well I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a second season to this anyway, so there’s nothing to worry about. The next season might feature one of the two stories: The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya (which encompasses the story behind the making of their movie) or The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (which is quite self-explanatory). Both are quite entertaining, but if I had to choose, I would pick the second one, just in case they never plan for a third season.

Finally, I would like to thank the fansub group a.f.k. for subbing this series. Excellent work.