Mostly anime

[meganbmoore]

I have now finished The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Eden of the East.  I have little to actually say about both, but both very much live up to their hype.  Also, thankfully, Haruhi watches just fine chronologically, but it's very easy to see how the dramatic bildup and reveals would work much better when viewed in a different order.  Now that I have the DVDs, I'll have to rewatch in the aired order.  I may also now have the first few light novels.  I understand thst there's a second season of Haruhi and a movie for Eden of the East.  Does anyone have opinions on those?

And Allison and Lillia has been licensed.  This makes me extremely happy.

Unrelated to anime:  I am still watching the Richard Todd Robin Hood series (I'm somewhere around ep 90 of 143) and a serf just appeared with a very familiar voice and I was all "You sound familiar.  You do not look familiar but you sound familiar!"  Andthen I eralized it was a way younger Hudson from Upstairs, Downstairs.

Comments

[branewurms]

Second season of Haruhi has 8. entire. episodes. of the same thing. I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean literally, they are the same episode, with tiny differences. Kyoani was overtly trolling.

[starlady]

If you liked Eden of the East the movies are definitely worth a watch. I haven't seen the second season of Haruhi, but I hear the light novels are fun.

[octopedingenue]

I really like the Haruhi light novels, which have an excellent translation with Kyon as sardonic unreliable narrator. I enjoyed the first anime, but the nonlinear stuff drove me NUTS since I'd read the novel first and knew what was going to happen.

[shewhohashope]

I stopped watching the second season of Suzumiya Haruhi after eight episodes of the same thing.

[royalarchivist]

There are some narrative missteps in the second season, IMO. Many of the episodes require knowledge of the first season, and not in the "just to know the characters and WTH they're doing" kind of knowledge, but as in direct sequels of first-season episodes that cannot stand alone. And then there are the Endless Eights...

I admit I watched all eight episodes of the Endless Eights arc. It... it wasn't easy, and I'm definitely a Haruhi apologist. I've heard Endless Eights is better in the light novels and I give KyoAni props for having the chutzpah to even attempt such a thing, but I'm not sure it really worked. And that's not to imply that they just re-used the same animation all eight episodes. There was a little bit of re-use, of course, but they actually re-did most of the scenes for every episode, showing the scenes from different angles or POVs or whatever. So, yeah, as an artistic endeavor it was really quite good, but as a narrative one it probably wasn't the best arc they could have chosen.

All the other episodes of the second season were pretty good but overall the second season cannot hold a candle to the first. There are some really good episodes in there but even the best of the second season are entirely too dependent on the first season. It's a fun romp, but I recommend watching the first one or two episodes of the Endless Eights and then skipping to the Eighth one to see how it resolves. There is nothing learned or revealed in 3-7 that truly justify slogging through them, unless you're an obsessed die-hard Haruhi fan. *koff*