Review of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2009)

Infinite Time Loop Overkill the Anime:- Basically if you watch the anime in the broadcast order, this will be season 2, but the fact of the matter is that there are 4 episodes of season 1 that take place after season 2, chronologically speaking. But since this page is dedicated to season 2, I will write about season 2 and nothing else. The most prominent thing about this season is the endless eight arc, which just killed the enjoyment. The arc was about how Haruhi and the gang spent their summer vacation and how Haruhi still had some regrets because of which she did not want summervacation to end, resulting in an infinite time loop where the characters kept on repeating the final two weeks of summer vacation over and over again.

The idea might seem pretty interesting and might have actually been quite successful, if the producers hadn't given symbolism more importance than the fans.

Endless Eight, is literally eight episodes long. Now, the ideal case might be showing the first summer vacation in one episode, revealing the time loop in the second and resolving it in that very episode. To keep things a bit slow, they could have used at most 3 or 4 episodes. 5 episodes would have been an overkill. What they did was kill that overkill ten times over. 8 FRIGGIN' EPISODES of the same friggin' things. The worst part was that almost everything was the same in the 8 episodes, same dialogue same scenes, same everything. If they were going to do something like that, they could have at least had some variations in dialogues, made the characters do different things or something. But the only variation was in camera angles and costumes and minor details in the scenes.

So basically if you watch the Endless Eight arc fully, you are literally watching the same thing, the same twenty two minute long episode eight times over.

Now, the rest of the episodes were kind of good. If you watch the anime in the broadcast order then the final 4-5 episodes might give you some information about the cultural festival that took place out of nowhere in the first season.

Basically season 2 is not exactly a 12-14 episode new season as much as it is a 6 episode OVA.

If you watch it in the broadcast order, you will have something like 4-5 episodes left, if you watch in the chronological order, you will have somehting like 9 episodes left to watch. So, I will recommend you watch the entire thing in the chronological order.