(Revised-yet-again schedule here.)
Well, everyone was right that Endless Eight wasn’t over and has a part 2. But I’m guessing not many people thought it would fill three episodes.
Yep – the episode ends with Kyon trying to figure out how to solve the time loop (with Chekhov’s Homework just sitting there, too).
For the detractors who assume that KyoAni would just recycle animation for all three parts, Episode 3 actually used previous scenes drawn from different angles or with changed details – it is the same story essentially, but they definitely didn’t take the easy way.
Anyway, the story continues off Endless Eight I – they run through pretty much the same events again, with Kyon starting to deja his vu. The club sans Haruhi meet and the truth is revealed; they’ve been looping the last two weeks of August (15498 cycles and counting) because Haruhi isn’t completely satisfied by her summer.
With Season 2 having a pretty big focus on Nagato in general, she of course is one point of concern for Kyon, considering that she – being unaffected by time – has literally been through the two weeks 15000+ times.
KyoAni did a fair job contrasting the two episodes. The first was entirely slice-of-life, and the second showed that facade cracking to reveal the serious side of the plot. Overall, Season 2 is shaping up to be exactly what it should be: a continuation of all the comedy, drama, and general wackiness of Season 1. It’s not out to break new grounds, but the plodding of old grounds is doing quite well.
2009, June 26 at 12:14 am
Hmmmm…. according to my copy of the book, the 15,498th cycle was supposed to be the last one… oh KyoAni, throwing us a plot curveball…
2009, June 26 at 4:29 pm
Maybe I heard Nagato wrong… ^^;;
In any case, I don’t see how they can possibly stretch it beyond three episodes with the remaining plot material.
2009, June 28 at 9:12 pm
Excellent episode. Even though using 3 episodes for Endless Eight might be bad because people want to see as much adapted as possible, the two episodes so far are quite well done. I wonder how the third episode will look like.