Kyou, Nagato Yuki, Asahina Mikuru, Koizumi Itsuki
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Summary:
After the athletic festival in which the SOS Brigade wins a relay race thanks mostly to Yuki’s surprising speed, Haruhi sets her sights on the upcoming culture festival.
Fortunately, KyoAni didn’t try to pull something by airing another episode of Endless Eight or anything like that. They actually moved forward with the Sighs of Suzumiya Haruhi, which means showing how the Mikuru movie came to be. It was a decent set-up episode with, not surprisingly, a lot of Haruhi bossing everyone around along with Kyon’s snide comments, plus it started with a brief sports festival bit. Full writeup coming in a bit…
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Summary:
As Haruhi starts walking towards the exit, Kyon knows that he can’t let her leave, and he tries to desperately to think of something to stop her.
Let it be known that on the 6th of August, 2009, Endless Eight came to an end. It was a pretty good ending too; not worth sitting through all the repeats, but good on its own.
In other news, there was a nice Darker than Black 2 commercial with today’s episode of Basquash, and I’m pretty excited about it for October.
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Of course there was still no end, however there were actually a few small but arguably notable differences this week, iteration 15527. For one, Kyon actually tries saying “I love you” to himself after Itsuki suggests it during the stargazing scene. The déjà vu effect also felt more pronounced since there were a few times they’d show the same scene twice through Kyon’s eyes. It also seemed like they were skimping on the animation a little during the explanation scene given how there was over half a minute focused on just Itsuki’s watch. None of this made the episode worth watching, but like I said last week, I’m going to continue tuning in for completion’s sake and so that you folks who (probably wisely) stopped will know when to come back, assuming this arc hasn’t soured you entirely on the show. Regardless, here’s to hoping it ends at eight next week.
Nope, not this week either. Taking bets now on if you think next week (week eight) will actually be the final week of Endless Eight.
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Other than the usual clothes and stuff, I didn’t notice any particularly noteworthy differences to point out in iteration six (#15524 in the series itself). In fact, I even found myself starting to doze off several times because it was the same old, and I knew all the lines already. Being the completionist that I am though, I can’t not watch the episode just in case something does change or they do finally end it, so I’m resigned to the fact that I’ll have to sit through this at least one or twice more, if not five or ten. What still irks me is that they put in a full animation effort into each of these episodes, effort that could be used on episodes with new material. We could be an entire novel volume further by now, but no, more Endless Eight.
Another week, another iteration, and another non-ending. I was hoping that the rumor from a few weeks back was true and that this would all indeed be finally done this week, but alas, no go. So now we can look forward to probably two more weeks of this (for a true eight), or five more to last us all the way through August, or even nine or ten more if they plan on going with this all the way to the end of the season. But Kyoto Animation wouldn’t do that to us would they? 🙁
The whole thing with Yamamoto Yutaka’s apology this past weekend at Otakon and Kyoto Animation’s subsequent disowning statement (“These are the words of someone who has no relationship to our company”) didn’t exactly shed a positive light on the company either, so I’m not sure what to make of the situation anymore.
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Aside from what I mentioned earlier, I didn’t notice much that sets this iteration (#15521, which equals over 595 years as Kyon calculates) apart from the others. The brief conversation Kyon has with Yuki was done during the test of courage instead of at the batting center, and Kyon later doodles the number 8 on the completed list – I wonder if that’s a sign of how long this will go. I also thought I saw a few people in the background during the pool scene who resembled other characters from Kyoto Animation shows – specifically Nagisa and Ritsu – but those were distance shots where it’s hard to tell for sure, so it might have just been a coincidence. In any case, this’ll supposedly all end next week on the sixth Endless Eight episode, and while I of course will be watching, I’m not getting my hopes up.
So not only was Haruhi once again looped on Endless Eight, it even had a loop inside the episode. The shot you see above with Haruhi getting up to leave was repeated four times as Kyon tried to figure out what to do to stop her. The very end of the episode then wasted another 30 seconds on a ticking clock (with the camera turning with the second hand) which stopped right before midnight. Next week could be the final Endless Eight episode though, so maybe this’ll finally be over.
I did laugh though at this comment I saw on AnimeSuki’s forums: “It takes less time for Goku to summon a spirit bomb than it takes for this arc to end. ” 😀