Early Endless Eight Sales Indicators Poor

Although official sales figures for the Endless Eight DVDs are still forthcoming, early indicators seem to reinforce Kadokawa’s pessimism about the much-reviled arc’s market potential. In particular, Akihabara’s various anime-oriented stores have seen low sales, with one employee describing them as “mortal”. Whether or not this will translate into poor sales overall remains to be seen; however, it’s not looking very good at this point.

Despite this, Akiba’s shops still feature a wide variety of colorful Haruhi promotional material, some of it emphasizing the fanservice aspects of the E8 arc. The variety of swimsuit designs featured throughout E8 seems to be a particularly potent selling point. Pictures of a few of these displays can be found below. For a peek inside the actual DVD set itself, check out this post over on Cartoon Leap.

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Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya Ends

With it’s fifth and final episode airing earlier today, the Sighs of Haruhi Suzumiya arc (episodes 20-24 of the Haruhi re-airing, and episodes 10-14 of the “second season”) has come to an end. This arc’s claim to fame (or lack thereof) was how unremarkable it was, at least compared to the huge storm of controversy that Endless Eight generated. Fortunately, Sighs has been well-received by the fans; especially in the case of the last two episodes where, by all accounts, the art improved to “near season-1 levels”.

Select screenshots from the episode are posted below.

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Kadokawa Pessimistic About Endless Eight DVD Sales

It’s no secret that the fan reaction to Endless Eight has been highly negative. A Project Haruhi poll found that 69% of our readers hold a negative opinion of E8 (with 16% classifying it as “an absolute disaster” and 24% saying they didn’t even bother to finish watching the arc). Fans were further disappointed by E8’s ludicrously exorbitant DVD releases, which were priced at ¥6,930 (approximately $72 USD) apiece upon release. As a result of this atrocious marketing strategy, the E8 DVD releases all have very low user ratings on Amazon Japan, averaging around 1.5 stars.  Now, Kadokawa seems to be acknowledging that fans may be hesitant to spend hundreds of dollars to purchase a substandard Haruhi filler arc. The following text comes from an interview between Men’s Cyzo and an employee of the “Kadokawa Media Bureau”.

“Even in the company hardly anyone knows why it took eight repeated episodes spread across 4 DVDs with two episodes each in order to unravel the mystery thoroughly. We are aware of the fan reaction, but…”

When asked if the E8 DVD sales could match those of Season 1:

“Well… All that can be said is that it would be nice if they sell, wouldn’t it?”

Given that E8 aired late at night (which ensured low ratings and less advertising revenue), the fiscal success of the new Haruhi season likely rests on these DVD sales. Unfortunately, it seems even Kadokawa does not think their prospects are very good.

–Via Sankaku Complex (NSFW)