Endless Eight

So in the Haruhi novels, there's period right before the new semester starts where Haruhi and co. are caught in an endless time loop of her own doing.
Basically she feels unfulfilled and keeps repeating the same day, I forget the final tally but it's something like 15,498 times.
This period of the novels is called Endless Eight (the eight being a sideways infinity sign.)
Kyoto Animation got the bright bright idea to animate this episode separately.
Eight fucking times.
Yes, eight episodes with the same plot, but completely redrawn over and over with different clothes, different timings, some different words.
In the end they can not figure out what is leaving Haruhi unfulfilled and the loop starts over.
Seven times.

Fans rebelled.
There are massive swirling rumors that the former director of Haruhi for S1, who left Kyoto Animation and made his own studio and worked on Kannagi, was let go because he refused to animate Endless Eight.
Everyone is livid.
A fan-made film from the USA that shows Kyon punching out Haruhi at the end of the episode and the earth exploding has caught on like wildfire on both sides of the Pacific.
People are wondering how the hell they expect to sell DVDs of basically 8 of the same episode.

Anyway, I didn't watch a single episode of Endless Eight until now, because I had read the novels and when I heard from friends that the episode had repeated once, I had a terrible terrible premonition of what Kyoto Animation would do.
I mean they had spent how many years jerking our chains around for season two, what would stop them from carrying out their trolls till the end?
Finally the eight episode aired, so I felt it was time to resume the show.
The thing is, I watched all eight episodes at once.
Someone on Niconico went to the trouble of tiling all eight episodes in a nice square and then starting them all simultaneously.
Turns out my friends weren't joking, they really did re-animate every single episode, there's not even a single reused frame of animation I bet.
The only things that synced timing wise between all the episodes was the ending theme.
Hell on episode five they wrapped up the episode early, then showed Kyon's ticking clock for thirty seconds just to trick people.
Only in the eighth, and last episode, did they dispense with the ending entirely and show the beginning of the next day.

So yeah, I feel caught up at least.