I mean that's basically every looping story ever isn't it? you don't feel most characters struggle cause usually it's only one person who experience the loop, the difference here is the person who actually experience the loop isn't the POV character, but someone else.Most of the characters don't feel the frustration though because they aren't completely aware that they are looping at all. You aren't feeling what most of the characters are feeling, which is shock and then confusion on what to do. What the audience is feeling is pure annoyance, which is completely different. If the characters were actively trying to get out of the loop but failing, the desperation factor will likely work. However, that isn't the case.
The full range is that it was mostly the same with very little variations, that's what the arc basically did, every episode play slightly different with different clothes etc but its practically the sameThis argument only works with Nagato and I feel they failed still. Ok, they want you to understand what Nagato is feeling. But they didn't. Nagato went through highs and lows in regards to what she saw. You never get to see all the variations that Nagato saw. Instead you hear about them. They never showcase the times when the brigade takes a different job or does not go fishing. They never attempted to capture the full range of events that Nagato truly went through, which is integral to truly giving the whole picture.
Let's walk through another example of why this type of pacing is terrible. Imagine a story trying to establish that a character has a monotonous life. They won't show them waking up at 5, getting dressed, working for hours, going home, shitting on the toilet, making himself a sandwich, showering, brushing his teeth, and then going to sleep 7 times so you can really get it through your brain that this person lives a bland life. There's way to give you that information in so much less time. Time is important and there's a reason why films, shows, and books are always trimmed down. Sometimes certain elements aren't needed anymore and only serve to reinforce things that already established; thus, they are extraneous.
Nagato's desire to be human is already hinted at throughout the series. It's not even something that Endless Eight itself really pushed to prominence. It's not her arc. She bares no relevance at the end and her purpose really only serves to funnel information to characters. Nagato is a plot device that is required to give characters a push to do something. Her character is never shown to be cracking or wavering. She is shown to do the same thing 15,000+ times and her expression never wavers. You are reading into things if you think the show is actively trying to tell you she is screaming on the inside. If she was an active force in the story, this logic would work. Also, if a story is also pure setup, it fails as its own narrative.
And if we really needed us to feel pain in order for the payoff in the movie to work, I suggest filling the whole season with Endless Eight. Why not? That way the series will be a brilliant subversion of all that we know and serve as a scathing metacommentary that serves to expose laziness as the root of all evils. The characters' inability to act thinking there will always be more time results in an empty season and all the time being lost that could have been used for more adventures. That would really drive the point home. Brilliant!
Why is it only 8 episodes and not 10? 20? 30? If your logic is the name then you basically admit the arc is all flash and no substance.
That's the thing, we ASSUME that she never felt anything, she is an alien after all who barely shows emotions at all no matter the situation, we assume that she got out without being affected at all, it's not like it was her arc or anything so it most have been another weird thing she had to witness for barely +15000 , you can even think "oh wow we barely endured 8 loops and she endured +15000 no problem, she is amazing!"
As it turns out, it affected her after all, deeply.
saying "if an arc is a setup and don't work on it's own it must be a failure" doesn't make sense to me since you can apply this to most arcs in long running works, hell, even the Disappearance movie doesn't work on it's own either, you have to experience the series, so anything happen at the movie work since it change the status quo and shows us something very different, something that won't work if we didn't know what the status quo actually was, and how characters behaved in series proper, that's why it's so effective in the first place
In the end it was effective and memorable,nobody would care if it was some random episode, but getting to experience a tiny glimpse of the horror of getting caught into haruhi whims was something else, and seeing how many got tired and annoyed of it, i would say it actually succeeded in what it was trying to accomplish .
Also yeah they should have actually made +15000 episodes so we get the TRUE and authentic experience of E8, but the world is not ready for it yet.