Review of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2009)

After three years (of what seemed to be a long time of waiting) the second season of Suzumiya finally came out. What we weren't expecting was a troll from Kyoto Animations. But hey the message boards were extremely fun to go on when this show premiered. What made this Suzumiya season so "special" was that there was no announcement about it. One day I was surfing the web and people were screaming all over the message boards. "OMG NEW SUZUMIYA." I laughed and quickly scrolled down, until someone told me it was actually true. I was like, "WTF KYOTO ANIMATIONS WHAT." And behold a new seasonof Suzumiya was brought to the face of the earth. Of course it was bundled with the first season, so sometimes you had to wait like a month for the next episode. But at least we got something, right?

Which brings us to Suzumiya's second season's problem; Endless eight, which is basically the same episode eight different times with OMG DIFFERENT CLOTHES, OMG DIFFERENT YUKATAS, OMG DIFFERENT SWIMSUITS, AND OMG NEW ANIMATIONS! What disappointed me was that Kyoto Animations didn't skimp out on the budget for these eight episodes (and I'm proud of them for that). But it makes me feel like it was a waste of money, just animating the same thing over and over again. When they could have spent their budget elsewhere. I also feel bad for the voice actors, since they had to actually record it eight different times. I thought Kyoto Animations would record their voices once and then be like, "Okay, you guys go take a break for seven weeks. We'll call you when we get bored of trolling everyone."

It was tedious to watch each week of Suzumiya's EE to see if something would change. At least there was the fun thing of going on the message boards to see everyone's reactions. There are the people who will love Suzumiya, no matter what crap Kyoto Animations gives us. Then there are the people who rage and rage and blame the world for this torture. There are also the intelligent spectators, who very carefully planned out how many more episodes were left and were like, "Kyoto Animations is doing this, so we can understand how Yuki feels." And there were the trolls, they were the most interesting to see. One of my favorites was this youtube video about how Endless Eight will never end with Hitler. And another one was someone putting the broadcasting information and listed Endless Eight until 2012. Oh, I also like Kyon-kun, denwaaaaaaaa~

The other six episodes are actually quality episodes, five of them being Sighs and one being just a one-episode arc. Nothing could beat the Endless Eight arc in discussion though. Kyoto Animations kept the animations high quality and they were able to hire the voice actors to repeat the same lines again and again.

I don't know how I would feel if I was to marathon the entire show at once. I'd probably fall asleep or just stop watching the show overall. I guess this new season of Suzumiya was meant to be taken in slowly, instead of all at once, which most anime watchers tend to do. Since I was watching it while it aired, I was able to break away from watching it continuously and be able to discuss it with everyone online. (MyAnimeList forums were especially fun to visit during this time.)

Would I re-watch this? Ummm ...... no. I could barely make it through the first time. Would I tell my friends to watch this? Ummmm no ...... unless they were die-hard Suzumiya fans. It's very hard to recommend this, but for all you masochist out there I would tell you to watch all of Endless Eight twice, no three times. And everyone else can watch the first episode of Endless Eight, a random episode in between (I recommend the fifth repeat, since Izumi is wearing a speedo. lololololol!), and the last episode. So eight episodes all together for the whole series. Hey, that's almost as long as Endless Eight.