30 Day Anime Challenge – Day 30

Day 30: An Anime I wished never ended and continued on

Just like any other anime series, this anime challenge is at its last “episode” (heh) and somehow it just doesn’t seem fair. There are multiple shows which ended abruptly with open endings which can lead to a sequel or just ended right then and there because of either budget, time, or not much of the source material left.

I think most people will agree with me that the Haruhi franchise needs to be revived. The first season’s writing was tainted as new staff from Kyoto Animation worked on the second season. The season was actually nothing more but a re-airing of the first season with a few more episodes added – this includes the infamous Endless Eight arc which viewers have seen as a letdown.

The entire second season of the Haruhi anime series was basically useless and there wasn’t any new additions to the story other than a few episodes and that was just it.

It is such as waste how an interesting show like the Haruhi franchise hasn’t received the love it deserves. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya film has been deemed as a sort of apology from the studio to the fans for this letdown but that’s not satisfying enough. To be fair, the Disappearance arc shed light for character development in Kyon and Nagato but we really never got to a proper end for it.

In the anime series, the last episode was merely stale and didn’t end everything. There were more questions raised and still unanswered.

The light novel series (the source material) is, I believe, still on-going as I am writing this with the introduction of new foes from organizations against the Data Integration Thought Entity (Nagato’s group), the Organization (Koizumi), and Asahina’s group of time travelers.

I purchased a random volume of the manga series and as I read it, there were some new stuff rising up. I heard the light novel introduces a new female character who has the same godlike powers as Haruhi and is aware of it – coincidentally, she’s apparently Kyon’s friend.

The source material has so much content waiting to be made into an anime project and it is such a waste since it’s just being shelved.

I had hope when I saw the release of the spin-off anime series, The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, which was animated by studio Satelight. However, I realized that the source material was a manga spin-off series done by Puyo. Therefore, studio Satelight has no rights to make a third season of the Haruhi franchise.

All rights of the Haruhi franchise belongs to the Kyoto Animation studio but after looking through their roster of upcoming projects, it seems that having a third season of the Haruhi franchise is impossible.

The Haruhi franchise has made a big cultural impact of perception on anime, manga and otaku-culture in general that has steered the industry to where it is now.

Here I am, hoping that I am wrong and an anime project of the sorts does get green lit.