\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\ndo kids these days even know what endless 8 is
all you young anime fans with your attack on titans and your maid dragons will never know the sheer hell of the time The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya went in to a time loop story arc and made the same episode 8 times and broadcast that same episode 8 weeks in a row
\nthey didn\u2019t just air the same episode eight times
\nthey made the same episode 8 times in slightly different ways
\ndifferent camera angles, different shots, different outfits
\neight times
\neight weeks
\nthe same episode
\nthis is a bit of anime history that i\u2019ve never heard before but sounds horrendous.
So like the context of this was they gave a light novel series a 13-episode adaptation that lightly dipped into the material and it had a cult following and then 3 years later they rebroadcast it with a campaign teasing that there was a second season but when it came this was 8 of the 13 new episodes
\u201cCult following\u201d really understates how big a phenomenon Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu was. It was an out of nowhere smash hit and pretty much the biggest thing in anime when it aired, in both Japan and the international fan community. It wasn\u2019t as big viewership-wise as, like, Naruto, or Bleach, it didn\u2019t have that big casual fanbase, but for the serious anime fandom Haruhi was the shit.
Haruhi was at kind of a turning point for anime as a whole. 2006 was the year that anime started airing in widescreen HD and Haruhi was the prettiest of that first batch of shows, which probably accounted for its popularity as much as the plot, characters, and humor did. The detailed dance routine over the ending credits, Hare Hare Yukai, was essentially them showing off how pretty they could do animation now that they were in HD.
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The dance went viral in a time when we barely knew what going viral was, YouTube had scarcely been born and it was filling up with people doing the Hare Hare Yukai. I\u2019d credit Haruhi with finally ending the split in American anime fandom between \u201cAmerican Anime Time\u201d fans who watched official translated licensed dubbed releases, which could take years to make it from Japan to the US, and \u201cJapan Anime Time\u201d fans who watched unofficial fan subtitled releases that came out within days. If you were on American Anime Time you hadn\u2019t seen Haruhi, and what kind of way to live was that? People would be doing the dance and you wouldn\u2019t know what it was.
So the Haruhi studio, Kyoto Animation, had the hottest property in otaku fandom since Evangelion, and they spent 3 years milking it and teasing the second season. They put out spinoff videogames, published absurd numbers of character song albums, and adapted unrelated properties just to stuff them full of Haruhi references. (Lucky\u2605Star I love you but that was embarrassing.) They kept the fires of the fandom burning over those three years, so that when the second season came it was the long-awaited fulfilment of a promise, the Second Coming of Our Lord and Savior Suzumiya Haruhi.
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And then yeah, Endless Eight. The same episode, week after week. Completely reshot, to prove they weren\u2019t even saving money. It was unbelievable. Frankly I can\u2019t even be upset. Yes, I would have loved more episodes of Haruhi, but I respect the commitment to their art. It sure did make the audience viscerally feel what it was like to be trapped in a time loop. Great art isn\u2019t always easy, isn\u2019t always popular, isn\u2019t always not a giant shitpost. It takes massive balls to take a franchise worth tens of millions of dollars and turn it into a urinal in a museum. That director has lived his truth in a way few men have. With its triumph of artistic integrity over even the barest shred of good sense, Endless Eight represents everything beautiful about the doomed optimism of the naughts.
Damn, Haruhi was a good-ass show. I should rewatch it.