Review of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2009)

Now, this is going to start pretty pretentiously, but bear with me. I want to fight against the perception of the endless eight as being a bad thing. What is the purpose of art as opposed to the purpose of entertainment? Art is supposed to be challenging. This does not mean thematically challenging, as Art needed only to be thematically challenging then it would be indistinguishable from philosophy, but it has to be challenging in the sense that it should not be something easily digestible. But equally, you should find that overcoming the challenge the art sets for you drags you into the world of theart (or artist depending on the purpose of the show). And for that, the endless eight works absolutely spectacularly. We take the character of Yuuki, and, importantly for the movie, we feel her frustration. We see the same day, the same conversations, with miniscule differences over and over again, and we become frustrated. This was the point. The artist achieved their aim with surgical precision.

When Yuuki goes off the deep end in the film (the disappearance), not only do we intellectually understand why but the artist has forced us to experientially understand the reason. And so the challenging nature exists for a reason, and has a pay-off. Without the pay-off it would still be useful for understanding Yuuki's character somewhat, but we cannot consider a series like this as anything but the effect of all of its parts.

And if you disagree, then consider again what you gave the movie for this show and consider if it would be so high without the context of the previous two seasons (even if you skipped the endless eight). We all agree that we need to consider the context of the other media that was intended to be attached to a work, as surely we would not give the majority of a manga a 10/10 and then say well ok but volume three was a 6/10 because if it wasn't for the payoff in volume 4 it woulda been shit. No, we say the build-up was good because of how well it pays off! If it didn't pay off well then we would say yeah this whole build up was trash.

After the endless eight, we see the creation of the movie which was the FIRST EPISODE OF SEASON 1!
This is an immaculate show of what camera angles and sound can do for a show. The tension rises as we see Haruhi beat a helpless Mikuru over and over, and strange camera angles serve to keep the viewer on edge. Through all of this camera work, Haruhi comes off not as a quirky anime character but as a narcissistic sociopath. She is as dangerous as she is eminently hateable, and all of this serves us for that moment when finally Kyon snaps. Again, through all of this sound and camera work we feel what kyon feels. This is the genius of Haruhi Suzumiya, and while its present in the first season and in the movie, it is here where it is at its most challenging and most powerful.