New Haruhi Season Confirmed as Rerun

TV listings have updated in preparation for the broadcast of the “new” season of the Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, revealing the first episode to be none other than the very familiar “Asahina Mikuru no Bouken Episode00”, which of course has already aired and is number one in the “broadcast” order.

The episode will broadcast at 2AM on the 8th of April; the schedule is visible here (note that this is a humdrum TV listings page and not some loudly trumpeted announcement, so the probability of date related shenanigans is rather low). It seems to be confirmed by multiple sources.

Desperate fans have immediately begun clutching at straws; the rumour that new episodes would be mixed in amongst the old, or added to the end, is the main hope. In fact, the notion that the next episode may turn out to be a new one seems to be one of the main incentives for viewing the broadcast…

One 2ch denizen points out that Newtype always collects new broadcasts into a summary page, and never places reruns amongst them. The imminent Haruhi broadcast has not been mentioned here, suggesting that the broadcast is indeed simply a repeat.

A look through the schedule also reveals the broadcast to have rather a restricted run for a major new series.

On a purely pragmatic level, it would make no sense to broadcast a “new” season mixed into the old whilst not actually informing the fan base that it was being broadcast, as most would likely never hear of it (with only a week to spare even more so), or would treat the entire broadcast as merely being a rerun.

On the other hand, an unscrupulous but effective tactic would be to cultivate the expectation of something new to be broadcast amongst the old in order to give some incentive for viewing an otherwise standard rerun.

With the sales of the two recently released Haruhi games having collapsed, it seems that the “Haruhi boom” will be well and truly finished should this broadcast not manage some new content.