>>33037
Also, I liked the movie more, but was that speech about how he should selfishly put everybody in constant danger of being erased from existence because he enjoyed having his life be spiced up a bit supposed to be inspirational?

I genuinely can't imagine how you expected Hyouka to become a murder mystery. It's fine if these series just aren't for you, but I think the main issue is more that you set up expectations of the series being something that it clearly isn't.

>>33039
Well, in the case of Haruhi, there was a lot to set up my expectations. Haruhi advertised her club as being the place to go for supernatural problems. There was the whole fight between Nagato and Ryoko, Nagato's long exposition dump to Kyon, which was mysterious and atmospheric, and the computer virus episode. Lots of set-up, little delivery. With Hyouka, it was more my expectations from mystery novels. The first arc had a bit of an ominous tone and in one episode, the mc figures out a small crime case by himself, and then the tv shows a broadcast proving him right. I thought that was the direction things were going, even if it wouldn't be a murder case.

If it's supposed to clearly be a show about mostly mundane things, why have the extraordinary premise? It just feels like a gimmick. Hey, there's lot of cute girls, but wait, one girl is god, so it's different. The disappearance of Nagato is basically Haruhi without the gimmick.

>>33040
It's like if Light found the death note, used it once to confirm whether it's real, freaked out, and then the rest of it was slice of life high school fun. Maybe he'd use it once or twice more for dramatic flare without it really changing anything, and that's it. Ryuk would just be a mascot character. Then you're going to ask me why I was disappointed.

>>33041
Like the Hidimari death note cross over?

>>33042
Well, I guess so. Never actually finished Hidamari.

I would not say that it is necessarily an unpopular opinion, people are just sentimental about it because of the cultural relevance the series once held (to the point where people have rewatched it and gone into a deep depression over times passed). The series has also been the target of a particularly dedicated hatedom over the years, probably due to the massive success and popularity it once had. The supernatural themes it has are a "hook", I suppose as during that time especially there was a glut of high school themed series. I don't know if you're supposed to think too hard about stuff like this, your example with Hyouka gives me the impression you dont have much experience with LN and LN adaptation, which are at their core easy to consume throwaway pieces of entertainment that sometimes get way more popular than they should (the most egregious KyoAni series like this is Hibike Euphonium, which nobody seems to care about outside of shipping and fanart). I still fondly remember and have a positive opinion towards the Haruhi series, if not just for the Haruhiism boom era of the net.

Yeah it really didn't age well. Like others have said, for me it was a gateway into the world of anime. It was something you wouldn't see localized on foxkids, adultswim, or toonami at the time. It wasn't just something fresh and original, it was an introduction to a whole new world and Haruhi was the usher. It was hard not to view it with rose tinted glasses. I found in retrospect however, and upon rewatching it, that it's really nothing special. The production values were great for the time, but the random ep order comes across as a gimmick to cover how dull the proper order really is. ...and Haruhi herself is an obnoxious self centered manipulative nasty cunt, which makes the romance side of things a bit hard to swallow.

>>33044
>>33045
I get where you're coming from. I watched it around when it first came out and it was one of my first anime, not counting yugioh or whatever. I don't really like myself from that point in my life, so I'm especially critical of whatever I enjoyed back then. It's not like Haruhi had to be my gateway. I could have started with better things from the get-go, but maybe I wouldn't have even appreciated it. I read somewhere that Haruhi actually increased the number of light novel adaptations, which I at least think is a bad thing. There's only so many resources, and between manga and light novels adaptations, something has to be cut down. Most of the people who got in during the net boom are probably gone by now too. Difficult to say, but maybe Haruhi had a net negative effect on the medium. Season 2 and waiting for a season 3 that never came really left a sour taste in my mouth.

Post edited on 2nd Jul 2019, 4:40pm

I don't get why it was so popular. For me it was one of these things that were sort of alright but I would have forgotten about it the next week if others didn't write lots about it.

What I remember about Haruhi: there was a Haruhi and an alien girl with monotone voice and some other guys, probably. And they... did stuff at school I suppose? I dunno. Doesn't matter.
Fuck, there's one thing I won't forget though. That bullshit where a bunch of episodes was just the same goddamn shit every time. I wanted to scream at the screen, desperate for ANYTHING to happen but nothing ever did. I don't even remember what it was about. Just that it was so inhumanely boring I wished for people who came up with that brilliant idea to get H5N1.
Remember H5N1?

>>33047
>did stuff at school
They played baseball, performed a concert at the school festival, played a computer game, sat around when it was snowing, I think they went to the beach, and they went to an island to do an Agatha Christie parody or something. Also they made a student film. That's all I remember. Kyon took a walk through the park at one point too...

>>33044
I definitely agree that part of its legacy is its relative freshness at a time when CGDCT slice of life was pretty meager. Focusing only on the anime itself though, the comedy, character development (or lack thereof), and "moe"-ness doesn't quite measure up to some of the great SoLs that have been released since, to the point where I find it hard to see why people deem it a "must watch" in this category.

Perhaps the most compelling reason I can think of for watching the series is getting to the movie, which did manage to deliver on the character development and provide enough sustenance to hold the viewer's attention.

>>33046
>maybe Haruhi had a net negative effect on the medium
To expand upon this, how has the industry changed since Haruhi? I've seen people write the "moe scare" in the west is complete bullshit as only a few moe shows come out every season, but something had to have changed, right? One of the people working on Despera has said the production is taking forever because there isn't a place for it in the current industry.

>>33051
In my opinion, if you’re making something as niche as that project, just keep it/make it a manga. It will probably be better for it, and niche stuff like steampunk with old style drawings can be profitable and survive, there’s just too much money in anime for stuff without mass appeal or the insane upward mobility like the KyoAni LN adaptations.

>>33052
This seems like a defeatist attitude. Nothing can be done about it now, but things weren't always like this. Is there so much more money in Anime now than in the 90s? Texhnolyze came out in 2003. Don't know how well it did though. Personally, I don't enjoy manga as much as VNs and anime.

I actually avoided Haruhi when it came out due to all of the noise about it, and saw it much more recently, about 3 years ago. I thought it held up pretty well. It's very well directed and visually pleasing. There seems to be a lot of hangups over nothing unusual happening despite the outlandish premise, but I think that's part of the point, since the goal of most of the cast is to preserve Haruhi's normal everyday life.
>>33044
I really like Euphonium. The concert pieces are extremely good, and I like the growth that the main characters go through.

>>33051
I don't know for sure, but I would guess the main reason Despera isn't being made is because of difficulties finding staff to work on it. An anime I was looking forward to was even cancelled because of this. There are more anime productions per year resulting in there being less staff available for a project like this.

>>33055
Most of the time it's more interesting to see characters fail than succeed. This is definitely the case with Haruhi. I think a golden rule of story telling is that whenever characters have a goal, something has to go wrong in a way that has lasting consequences. That takes a hell of a lot more effort to write though. Maybe the premise of Haruhi had too many possibilities, but i'd pay a million dollars to see an Urobuchi version.
>>33056
The official statment is here.
>Thank you for worrying about Despera. In the case of Despera, it is not simply a matter of funds, but now it is in chaos of animation business in Japan.
>The old business model has collapsed, and the route to make independent planning as a commercial work has disappeared.
>That is a problem. But well, I will do something. Remember The Big O project had spend years and years to the project has been established.
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2018-03-21/yoshitoshi-abe-despera-anime-project-isnt-dead/.129307

>>33055
You have to admit that the vast majority of discussion and interest about isn’t because there’s a lot of brass connoisseurs in the anime fandom.

>>33058
Sure, but I also don't think most people who like Girls und Panzer build tank models. There's lots of other reasons one might like one of those series.
>>33057
>The old business model has collapsed, and the route to make independent planning as a commercial work has disappeared.
Makes sense.

京都アニメーション
https://twitter.com/kyoani/status/1212025823848521728?s=19
‏Thank you for everything you've done for us last year.
Best wishes for the New Year.
All the staff of Kyoto Animation
http://kyotoanimation.co.jp/en/

>>33826
Hopefully they'll install a proper sprinkler system...