The official Japanese website for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya television anime series has announced further details about the franchise's next anime project. In the spirit of the first anime series and the Haruhi Suzumiya science fiction comedy light novels that spawned the franchise, the announcement was made in a roundabout, cryptic manner.

On Tuesday, the site "disappeared" and began displaying a false error message that read, "The page cannot be found." A second message then appears over the first message; it states that a computer program is starting up and prompts the user for a password. If the user enters "K," "N," "S," "A," and "K" (the initials of the family names of the members of SOS brigade, the main characters in the series) into the password fields and selects the radio button to the right, a fake xterm terminal session opens. A series of messages from "YUKI.N" confirms that the key to the "emergency escape program" has been found and asks for a final confirmation before starting the program. If the user hits the enter key, a new page opens that shows the character Yuki and lists the production credits of the new series.

The page reveals that the previously announced second anime season of Haruhi Suzumiya has been "cancelled" and replaced with a new animation project. Yasuhiro Takemoto (Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid, Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, Lucky Star) will direct the new project, and Kyoto Animation will still be animating as it did for the first anime project. As in the previous anime project, the fictional "leader" of the new anime project is the character Haruhi Suzumiya herself. The "disappearance" of the website on December 18 at 4:00 a.m. (Japan Standard Time) is a reference to the pivotal date in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, the fourth volume in the light novel series and an apparent indication of which novel plot the new anime project will adapt. Bandai Entertainment finished its English-language release of the first anime project in November.