In order to move forward, you must look back…

Alternate title: “How do you keep a Haruhi fan waiting three years?”

Since this is one of the three biggest holiday weeks of the year in Japan, there should be little to no news being revealed about Haruhi. I felt it was time to review over the past history with Haruhi since the original airing back in 2006 and the various stories about a second season and why the 2009 airing is NOT a second season. This will be a pretty long post, so apologizes in advance. The timeline goes as follows:

2005-Early 2006: Kadokawa gives the Haruhi series to Kyoto Animation to produce 14 episodes based on the first novel and some short stories from the Haruhi universe. Kyoto Animation chooses the seiyū and starts recording the audio for the series. This would be based on the 2006 copyright.

April 2nd, 2006: The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00 airs, creating confusion and intrigue as it was not the first episode chronologically. That would be the following episode. Fans were interested in what stories would come next and how each character was involved. The ending song “Hare Hare Yukai” becomes a global phenom overnight.

July 2nd, 2006: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya VI airs, closing the first airing of Haruhi with a bang and staring immediate speculation as to when the second season would start.

Kyoto Animation begins work on Kanon and Lucky Star, delaying the long-awaited “second season” with no notice:
July 7th, 2007: On the Haruhi website, a short 20 minute long security video loaded of two figures drawing symbols on the ground at a school; a reference to the story of “Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody.” No details on the second season were released, but a feature in Newtype stated “Suzumiya Haruhi Second Period decided.”

No further news was detailed until:
December 18th, 2007: The Haruhi website “vanished” and a java script popped up asking users to enter the “5 keys.”  When a user put in the correct answer, a still image was shown that features a scene of Yuki with text overlaid that stated that the second season was “cancelled” and that a new animation project was underway. This was given the 2007, 2008, 2009 copyright.

June 2008: A Newtype article on the new animation was released. Canned Dogs posted a translation of why the second season was canceled .
“The reason why they cancelled 2nd season and started “Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu new animation” instead was because they felt that they couldn’t just do a 2nd season and that they wanted to do a completely new “Haruhi” again. They’re still deciding on the concept for the new anime and how it’ll be like and having meetings for how the story will go.”

Time flew and on December 18th, 2008, the Haruhi website “vanished” again and the net animation of “The Melencholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan” and “Nyoron~Churuya-san” were shown. Was this the new style of animation mentioned before?

February 3rd, 2009: A “re-airing” of “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” was announced to start again in April.

February 13th, 2009: Instead of showing the Haruhi-chan and Churuya-san shorts, Kadokawa posts the infamous “Nice Boat” video. They do post the videos the following day, including a version with English subtitles (though the quality of said subtitles were not the best).

April 2nd, 2009 (3 years after the first episode aired): “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya I” aired in HD quality for the first time.  Surprisingly, the previews for the next episode are missing. The next day, Gigazine reports that the Teletama television studio was informed by Kadokawa that the “re-airing” would be 28 episodes long. Of course this sparks speculation.

May 17th, 2009: As the 8th episode in the “re-airing”, the first new animated footage of “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” since 2006 aired as the episode “Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody” started the 14 new episodes of 2009.

The episodes of Mysterique Sign and the Lone Island Syndrome followed until…
June 19th, 2009: For episode 12 in 2009, Endless Eight I aired with two things missing from the novel: the discovery of the loops and the ending. As we all know, Endless Eight continued for 8 straight weeks (aggravating tons of fans) and then the five episodes of Sigh aired, giving the 14 new episodes 13 straight weeks.

September 18th, 2009: For the first time since June, an older episode aired as “The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00″ was aired. The remaining 2006 episodes finished the 28 episodes mentioned, leaving the most-awaited animation still in doubt….

for about 1:15 while the infamous Hare Hare Yukai aired. Following the famous ED, a commercial for Minori Chihara’s DVD aired, and then…

As you all know, last month on December 18th, the website “vanished”, simply like it had before the past two years. (That was how I “knew” something would happen) Now we have confirmation that the series is simply a movie and one season of 28 episodes. The only thing left to wonder is “why would they not put Vanishment as the ’second season’?” The likely answer is quite simple: money. Kadokawa knew that Vanishment was the most popular novel left to animate, and once they were able to air it as a movie (most likely realized in 2007), they could make more money than airing it as a season on TV. The 2006 airing left out three stories before Vanishment. Kadowaka had one task left before screening the movie: air the remaining chronological stories.  One option was to leave out the episodes. That could not be achieved due to the events and how they impact the story as a whole (just look at Sigh IV and V). Some of the events in the stories post-Vanishment do mention the events during the novel and it is a HUGE influence in some of the following novels, so animating those by themselves can’t happen either.  So they were left with a big problem: they have the ability to produce a fantastic film that would bring in a ton of money, but they need to put out 7-8 episodes. By 2008, the memory of people who had watched the first airing would be spotty; they wouldn’t be able to remember the details of those episodes or perhaps didn’t have a chance to get the DVDs. They decided that, since the Vanishment arc was now going to be a movie, the official second season was “cancelled” and the new animation project was to re-animate those unaired stories and have the story shown in chronological order. (like the Yuki poster hints at)

One big hurdle remained: the episode total. By reshowing the original 14 episodes and adding in new ones, you have a total of 21-22 episodes (14 plus Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, Endless Eight I and II, and Sigh I-V or Endless Eight and Sigh I-VI), a little too short for a full two anime seasons (24-28 episodes). Side note: TV shows pay to be shown in certain timeslots in Japan, thus TV stations keep the shows on certain episode limits to maintain a normal programming schedule for the four seasons. They had 6 episodes of material to fill. The author had not released a novel since summer 2007, so getting new material was unlikely. Sigh could be extended to 6 episodes (it is a long novel afterall), but there was one final option: Endless Eight for 8 episodes. Not only would it match the title, but it was unheard of. In theory the idea is quite sound and appealing, but in execution the idea was a huge flop for most fans. They had been waiting for 3 years for new material and they get 8 episodes of the same thing?! Not to worry, once they hear about the film, they’ll return (and most have). Finally, the new episodes become BLR, Endless Eight I-VIII, and Sigh I-V (what most fans incorrectly call the “second season”). These form volumes 4 and 5 1/7-5 7/7 of the DVD releases (showing that they were meant to fit in the  total airing all along).

So Vanishment is set for a February 6th release in theatres and later a DVD release. There are rumors (with Haruhi, there are ALWAYS rumors) that the series will be released on Blu-Ray sometime, and likely the movie will have a DVD/BD release next fall. I expect we’ll see the releases once again in August, but I may be wrong (it is conjecture afterall). Now the past three years start to make some sense at why certain things were called certain things and not a “second season” afterall. Will there be a true second season? I think so, but I can’t guess at to when. Hope this wasn’t too long for you guys. If you have any more questions, post a comment and I’ll make sure to reply. Thanks for making it through such a long post!

Credit goes to: Anime News Network, Canned Dogs, and the various posters at the Animesuki Haruhi forum for all the information and some pictures for this post, especially Asacloth and Heming13 (who called Vanishment being a movie since July, just off on the date).

Update: I’ve posted the official timeline of the Haruhi novels in this post.

Tweet This Post

Related posts:

1. It’s only the usual scenery…Sigh
2. Time doesn’t flow continuously, it’s like a set of pages
3. An Endless Loop of DVDs!
4. New covers?! What a novel idea!
5. Sigh….Koizumi saves the day again!