Leave Haruhi alone! – Haruhi Suzumiya Season 2
Around the Internet I’ve been hearing a lot of backlash against the way Haruhi season 2 is being released. While I agree that it is a tease to force the very demanding, very loyal fan base to wait while the original episodes are being aired before they deliver the bulk of the new episodes I think it is better to look at this situation from the point of view of the writers and directors of the series. It’s not all about ratings or viral marketing and it’s easy for the audience to claim those factors for the prolonged roll out of the new season. But Kyoto Animations has the best interest of the content and the audience in mind.
As an anime fan it has been painful to watch good shows turn bad because the original source material doesn’t provide a good stopping place to wrap the series up. Fantastic shows like Claymore and Black Cat were ruined by an attempt to bring the series to a close due to time constraints. The new endings the writers of the anime came up with destroyed those series. Black Cat followed the manga, not exactly but fairly closely, up till about episode eighteen. After that point the writers needed a place to stop the series so a new arc was created in the style of Black Cat in order to give the show a satisfying climax. But it wasn’t satisfying. It was poorly written and felt like a step below the first half of the series in all respects. The plot felt rushed, the characters felt out of place, and it broke away from the themes and overarching story of the pervious eighteen episodes.
Claymore was even more extreme. The writers of the anime followed the Manga up to the very end. Then they inserted a final battle that did not resembled the previous fights in the show to give the anime one last big battle before the ending. The terrible endings of those shows inspired me to read the manga and I am enjoying both of them much more than what the adapted version offered because unlike the anime version they didn’t have to worry about the larger budget and bigger audience required to keep a television show running. Manga and novels aren’t limited to a set number of episodes in order to fill a season long block of time. The demands of television are not always good for creativity.
The other anime writing blunder I want to compare the new season of Haruhi to is the start of Season 2 of Code Geass. Looking forward to the anime I just wanted it to pick up at the cliffhanger it left off on. But that isn’t what happened. Season 1 ended, this is a minor spoiler, with the final battle as a loss for the black knights and Lalouch’s sister captured by an unknown woman. Season 2 opened with Lelouch back at school with a new younger brother. The reason for this stark difference is that they wanted to reboot the series for any potential new audience members who didn’t watch the first season. They had to reintroduce the premise, reintroduce the characters, and explain how the everything got to this point before they could resolve the hanging thread. Meanwhile, the audience who just wanted to see the story that stopped at season 1 were weighted down with unnecessary bloat. The series suffered because of this artificial need to rehash the premise.
I believe what Kyoto is trying to do is avoid pulling a blunder like Claymore, Black Cat and Code Geass. They are working the new episodes into the old ones and placing them in the proper chronological order. There is no rewriting to put them at the end of season one. There is no need to include footnotes with the second season DVD explaining to ignorant fans about the correct order the show needs to be watched. Replaying the original season after three years will allow a new audience to watch the show and enjoy it without sacrificing any time in the second season for reintroducing the characters, premise, or recapping the events that happened up to that point. In truth what they have done is, in a way, revolutionary. Haruhi is the first series that I know of which has put the content before the rules of television.
The original run of Haruhi also broke a few of these rules. The original run was fourteen episodes long. As a midseason show it should have conformed to the standard 12-13 episode limit. The show was played out of order with an extremely odd first episode that didn’t introduce any characters or the premise. In fact most people who stopped watching Haruhi stopped at the first episode. But even with all the risks that Kyoto took with Haruhi it was still successful. Proof that content will always triumph over form. It doesn’t matter how long or short a series is or how the story is presented. If the story is good the show will find an audience. If it remains good the audience will always come back.
So I beg you. I’m pleading with you Haruhi fans out there who are bitter with Kyoto Animation for how they are handling your precious show. It is in good hands. All they are asking for is a little patience.
