Review of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2009)

I've enjoyed the first season of Haruhi very much. The original 14 episodes have a cult status for me, and the story of Haruhi had a huge influence on me... no, I should even say that it changed my life. The story by Nagaru Tanigawa, which KyoAni decided to animate, had everything which a good story should have - a very original, very well thought-up story, well defined personalities of the main characters, and an epic climax. To all this, KyoAni added good art, well done voice acting, great soundtrack (I think that "Bouken Desho Desho?", "Hare Hare Yukai", "Koi no Mikuru Densetsu", "God knows..."and "Lost my music" are among the most recognizable and remembered anime tunes today)... and an interesting ordering of the episodes, with the main story from the first book going after the "what the hell?!" first (or zeroth) episode of The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina, and being intertwined with short stories adapted from later books. It all made the series epic for me.

After watching the anime, I've read all the light novels, save for the last, tenth installment which simply isn't around yet. There are better and worse stories among them, but overall, the books are great, too.

During the three years of waiting for the new episodes, we were promised the anime version of Disappearance/Vanishment (Shoushitsu - the English translations of the title vary), another great installment of the series (second best behind the Melancholy, I would say), but in the end...

In the end we got trolled. First, we were told that a new season is going out, then we were all disappointed hearing that it's just a rerun (this time in chronological order), then, finally, we were happy to see the not animated before gaps in the original timeline of the books are being filled with new episodes.

The first new episode was "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody", a short story from the third book, and a pivotal turn in the timeline. When I was reading it in the book, it was really shocking and entertaining to me. I already knew what's going to happen when I was watching the anime version, so maybe it's because of that, but I had the impression that it's too static and affected, and I didn't really enjoy it much.

Then, after few already-seen episodes, we got "Endless Eight", another short story from the fifth book. A short story - yet, with respect to its title, turned into eight episodes. Eight episodes for a short story... it sounds frightening - and it sure was. It's very difficult to explain what it means without giving a huge spoiler... When the first episode of Endless Eight aired, those who haven't read the book probably thought about it as a unimportant filler episode, or as a kind of introduction, similarly to the first episode of Remote Island Syndrome - while those familiar with the story smiled to the clever idea which the makers thought up. Second episode shocked everyone as it did not conclude the story, and with every another more and more fans were getting upset as the story was not progressing even a little bit, even though the mood varied slightly between the episodes. The finale of this story arc was certainly worth seeing, and it was probably the best scene in the whole second season - but it should have happened in the third episode, fourth at most - but not the eighth.

Sure, the way KyoAni did Endless Eight is one and only, and it may turn into an anime legend one day. But it was certainly boring to wait for several episodes to see a progress of the story - that's not a soap opera!

Finally, as a supposed ending of the season, KyoAni animated the second book, "The Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya". It's about the filming of The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00, which we've seen in the first season already. For this reason, and for this story arc being one of the least interesting portions of the book series, I doubted the very point of bringing it to the screen, but KyoAni apparently wants to have the entire Haruhi universe timeline animated. Well... it isn't bad, but nowhere near the first season, either. And the feeling of staticness and affectionateness which the Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody episode had, and which gone during the Endless Eight arc - returned, though at least with not as huge strength as in Bamboo Leaf.

I assume that this is the end - some suggested that The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00 might get re-animated - we even get a hint of that in the last episode of Sighs, where the ending credits in the screening we see, differ slightly from the actual ending credits seen in the original episode. But even if so - there's not much that can be done differently in that episode. Others suggest that after the remaining four episodes of the original series, there might be something more (Disappearance?) - but if so, I would consider it the third season then.

To sum everything up... the new episodes in the 2009 airing of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya are merely a shadows of their three-year-older siblings. The art is still good - though I hoped for real HD, not upscales. The voice actors are doing their bests - though they cannot do much about such static scenes. The opening and ending themes are great once again - though the BGM seems "glued-on" and doesn't really flow well with other aspects of the show. There are too many "thoughs" for this show to repeat the success of its predecessor. Maybe the fact that I've read the books before made me receive this show as I did. Maybe if the anime version had been the first for me to know, my rating would be better. But I find this show just mediocre.

I admit - Endless Eight and The Sighs are not the best moments of the storyline - I would even say that they are the worst, so the animators couldn't do much. But Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody could be done better, Endless Eight could be two times shorter, and The Sighs could also be more condensed and shortened by an episode or two - then we could have Disappearance animated in this run, and the overall impression of the show would be much better.