Part 2 of our Kyoto Vacation chronicles ‘When Christmas Came to Otaku Town,’ and in this episode, we do an extremely deep-dive into the single craziest experiment ever attempted in commercial anime: The infamous ‘Endless Eight’ arc from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2. We will be talking about the rest of that show’s second season from 2009 in next week’s episode, but as we worked our way through these episodes, we realized the Endless Eight were something special, and needed a different approach. Often dismissed as “the same episode repeated eight times,” the Endless Eight is actually a collection of Kyoto Animation’s best directors independently tackling the same basic story, but with completely different animation, voice acting, and music, with a constantly varying tonal and thematic approach, and it makes for a fascinating, perspective-altering work of avant-garde art. To do it justice, we recorded once a day for eight days, watching each of the eight episodes individually and then discussing each at length before moving on to the next one. The result is one of the longest episodes we’ve ever recorded, but also one of the best – and if you haven’t dived into the full ‘Endless Eight’ experience before, we hope this episode makes for the perfect viewing companion. 

Enjoy, and come back next week as we review the rest of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2, in the story’s chronological order!

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:31

Intro: 0:01:31 – 0:07:29

Endless Eight I: 0:07:29 – 0:23:17

Endless Eight II: 0:23:17 – 0:43:29 

Endless Eight III: 0:43:29 – 1:19:20 

Eyecatch Break: 1:19:20 – 1:19:57

Endless Eight IV: 1:19:57 – 2:01:10

Endless Eight V: 2:01:10 – 2:41:24

Endless Eight VI: 2:41:24 – 3:10:09

Endless Eight VII: 3:10:09 – 3:40:42

Endless Eight VIII: 3:40:42 – 4:37:14

End Theme: 4:37:14 – 4:38:16 

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