Review of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2009)
In a sentence: who decided to give the best animation in Japan to the most tiresome and worthless stories? This team has clearly selected some incredibly talented writers and artists for the job. Unfortunately, the job is rescuing all the scraps off the cutting-room floor of the first season. Not much happens. The loops are very good at putting the viewer through the sensation of a time loop. It's frustrating to be stuck watching the same thing happen over and over. However, it was also incredible to see the continuity of all the locations looking the same in each loop despite the slight changes in angleand perspective. They could have recycled animation, it would have been very easy to do and nobody would have noticed. But each time had slightly different clothes, "camera" angles, shot composition, etc. They deserve a gold star for finding so many ways to tell the exact same story and be natural about it.
I expected that after the infamous and dreaded Endless Eight arc, the other episodes would get back to a higher quality of writing. Unfortunately, the remaining episodes plod through backstory that we didn't need to see, uninteresting bits that the first season skipped over, wisely. It's got all the stakes of a prequel, which is what happens when you place your climax right before the first episode.
They try to insert some themes, some intrigue, but the fabric of the story is inherently unintriguing and they're forcing it. It all adds up to nothing and none of this really affects anything from the first season. It just feels like a grimdark reboot. OOC characters, oppressively dark and heavy tone retroactively ruining the fun of the previous season.
The Endless Eight arc runs in circles to fill time with meaninglessness, and the other episodes aren't really any better. All the same, the animation was so beautiful it hurt. The OP and ED are some of the best I've heard. Moment to moment, the writing is strong, but the plot is "things that could conceivably have happened between the scenes and yet have no bearing on the original scenes whatsoever." I didn't like it.