Thoughts on Haruhi Season 2
I have a lot of difficulty believing that the people who made the first season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya were in any way involved in the creation of the second. Watching the seven episodes that are out there right now might be one of the most painful things I've ever put myself through. Well, the first episode was alright. Then Endless Eight started.
Endless Eight feels very much like someone made the decision that anime fans will watch anything you put in front of them and as a social experiment wrote these episodes as a way to prove it. Now I've watched shows that fell off after their first season (I'm looking at you Tenchi), but never so drastically or so quickly. This is doubly bad because in what's become a sea of sameness and by the numbers storytelling Haruhi was different. It was better. It didn't treat the viewers like idiots. The characters, while they filled a lot of familiar storytelling roles felt fresh and exciting. Well all that looks to be over now (cue Alice in Chains) because someone on high does not fucking care. A story you could have told in one episode? Fuck that, we can get three or four hours out of this! It's good to know the Dragonball Z producers were able to find work again. The six episodes I inflicted on myself were like watching Groundhog Day, if Groundhog Day didn't have Bill Murray, wasn't funny and never had those scenes where the characters tried to do things DIFFERENTLY to escape the TRAP that they KNEW THEY WERE IN. Instead they keep doing things the same way and the animators continue to work through the same storyboards over and over again, making only costume changes to create the illusion that something different is going to happen. Since I haven't seen the ending I can't say how this is all going to end. I honestly don't know if there could be a big enough payoff for a six episode boredom experiment. Maybe Haruhi could get back with that band from last season and do some KISS covers, then they could show live footage of them blowing up Tokyo Tower for real. That might be enough.
Endless Eight feels very much like someone made the decision that anime fans will watch anything you put in front of them and as a social experiment wrote these episodes as a way to prove it. Now I've watched shows that fell off after their first season (I'm looking at you Tenchi), but never so drastically or so quickly. This is doubly bad because in what's become a sea of sameness and by the numbers storytelling Haruhi was different. It was better. It didn't treat the viewers like idiots. The characters, while they filled a lot of familiar storytelling roles felt fresh and exciting. Well all that looks to be over now (cue Alice in Chains) because someone on high does not fucking care. A story you could have told in one episode? Fuck that, we can get three or four hours out of this! It's good to know the Dragonball Z producers were able to find work again. The six episodes I inflicted on myself were like watching Groundhog Day, if Groundhog Day didn't have Bill Murray, wasn't funny and never had those scenes where the characters tried to do things DIFFERENTLY to escape the TRAP that they KNEW THEY WERE IN. Instead they keep doing things the same way and the animators continue to work through the same storyboards over and over again, making only costume changes to create the illusion that something different is going to happen. Since I haven't seen the ending I can't say how this is all going to end. I honestly don't know if there could be a big enough payoff for a six episode boredom experiment. Maybe Haruhi could get back with that band from last season and do some KISS covers, then they could show live footage of them blowing up Tokyo Tower for real. That might be enough.