I will preface this saying I have also read most of the Light Novels.
I mean this completely unironically. I like weird shit like this so it was right up my alley. Having it last 8 episodes was one of the ballsiest artistic decisions ever made in any anime production ever and it pays off in spades. It makes Tatami Galaxy’s exploration of a time loop concept blush. This is probably one of the few instances where an anime fleshes out and explores a concept more thoroughly than its light novel source material. It legit bumps it up a number of points for me.
Honestly, I had a blast watching every single one of the episodes in that arc (and I still watch through all of them whenever I re-watch Haruhi). I get that it’s a highly contentious arc, but I genuinely do think it’s an amazing experience and genuinely manages to flesh out even minute character aspects and really puts you in the same headspace as Kyon and makes you understand Yuki that much more - essential for the Disappearance movie to have worked as well as it did.
If you’re really that blasted about “watching the same episode 8 times”, pick and choose, man - Watch 4 episodes, watch endless 8 8 times, watch 8 minutes of each episode in different 8 minute chunks. You will be losing a ton from the intended experience though.
Anime is such an interesting medium with endless possibilities. It’s really cool to see a series that actually took an artistic risk instead of having a more marketable by-the-books production that would no doubt make it more money. I don’t think something like it could release nowadays. The anime industry in the early 2000’s was a time of experimental “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” productions. Nowadays, with animation and marketing budgets ballooning, with production committees being much “safer” with their decisions, E8 will forever remain in its own class of interesting artistic endeavours that could only happen exactly when it did.
Honestly, with 90% of shows coming out nowadays being the exact same concepts copy-pasted, which every single season people throw themselves at loving, E8 even speaks to the state of the modern anime industry. Except E8 is an interesting unique artistic decision, while most shows nowadays are bland, safe, and with tropes and concepts you've seen explored with the shallowness of a dwarven kiddy pool time and time again (one could even say endlessly). I don’t wanna see anyone who has ever watched more than a single isekai show or VRMMO show or ecchi show or... talk shit about Endless Eight.
Other than that, it’s Haruhi. Good stuff. Characters are fun and have surprising depth. Each arc is (usually) a self-contained story that everyone can enjoy.
50 is average, btw. 80 is an amazing score.