Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are Anime Series So Short These Days?
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writerpatrick
 Posts: 671 Location: Canada |
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This also helps explain why the return of Berserk and D.Gray-man were so short. It also explains why Naruto has been stretched past it's breaking point with filler. Once it's gone it will be hard for the producers to get approval for another long-running show.
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Aphasial
Exempt from Grammar Rules
Posts: 122 Location: San Diego, CA |
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We may have derided filler episodes (especially the most banal of them), but I think the Sailor Moon Crystal experience has shown us just how important they can be... It turns out, when you strip everything but the plot away from some of the 45-episode series, you end up losing a lot of the ineffable attachment you've had to the characters as such. It's not really "SoL" in the sense it's used nowadays, but a mixture of mythology and standalone evocative of The X-Files and plenty of other TV shows with longer story arcs. When *everything* has to be boiled into a fixed set of episodes, you're often making a miniseries instead of a serial and it completely alters the pacing. I've got to imagine that planned 24-36 episode stories would have greatly improved shows like Red Data Girl or No Game, No Life, just at random, over the unsatisfying things we ended up with. And a show like Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo at twice the speed probably wouldn't have been a success. Sure, stories could be boiled down into plot point after plot point, and yeah it's more efficient if you're just trying to get exposed to as many narratives as possible, but I'd argue that we do really lose something here when stories don't have the broader artistic freedom of a longer series expectation. |
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Triltaison
 Posts: 724 |
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Yeah, I definitely agree there. A lot of series in the last few years could really benefit from some filler exploring some of their characters (particularly with large casts). For instance, it really bothered me in Attack on Titan that they introduced characters as being the best of the best and then they were promptly killed the very first time we see them in action (and in the same episode they were introduced). It kind've lessens the impact in that sort of situation. Although I don't lament the absence of entire filler arcs, I do miss an episode here or there that adds to the universe as a whole. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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I have said that it may not have been what they had it mind, but I am sure the Dollfie Dream line are dolls and not figures. See the link above or maybe this one below 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While I would also like to hear the details of some of the most dysfunctional productions or see recreations of them in anime form, I imagine that the production committees in question would pay anything to make sure people don't hear those details and I wouldn't put it past them to blacklist any involved parties if they leak such information. @Top Gun In my experience, the ones who watch much of any anime as they air (outside Japan) like myself are the unusual ones. On the broader question of whether the shorter series are good or bad, it certainly helps when one is marathoning shows, especially when one is short on free time. Certainly in particular cases some shows could use more space and there is such a thing as good filler, I'm just not confident that fewer longer series with more filler would be more desirable overall than what we have. I wouldn't say it is better the way it is now, but rather it has different virtues. And as someone who watched Burn Notice to the end, nobahn has it pinned correctly. From what I remember, those who didn't watch it to the end weren't missing too much frankly. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I think some people are failing to make the distinction between shows planned to tell their entire story in 1 cour, and those that are nothing more than an advertisement. I like short shows as much as the next guy, but only if that short show ends in a way that is conclusive enough to not make the audience feel like they were just teased a product. I think that's a problem the industry is dealing with right now. There are WAY too many shows that are just advertisements. The production committee system has some benefits, certainly, but there are a lot of downsides as well. People say, "if it's successful, they'll order another season" or whatever, but that is rarely how it works. The Production Committee system is still incredibly inefficient and many times, not everyone on that committee wants more, even if the show was popular. Why would the book publisher care if their anime sold 10k+ discs? They don't actually care about the anime as a storytelling medium. It's just an ad for their book! And it did its job. I'd just really love to see the industry move away from that kind of thinking and production. It's those rare productions that are created to tell a story, first and foremost, that I would love to see more of.
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 3950 |
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Series are short because they cater to otaku who have the attention span of goldfish.
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Cptn_Taylor
Posts: 925 |
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Series are short because storytelling isn't the focus anymore. It's selling associated merchanise that's the fundamental thing. This is a by product of the fact that by and large anime has been kicked out of tv (japanese broadcast tv). It now only survives as 13 episodes advertisments for manga, figures, blu-rays, pillows to be shown late at night, or very very early in the morning. I worry that fans of anime have bought hook, line and sinker into the quantity is quality mantra. No, quantity is not a sign of quality. Most modern japanese anime short 13 episode series are shit. And this is across the spectrum. Slice of life series, science fiction series, mecha series. Choose your genre. They're all identical in that the storytelling aspect has gone out the window. And you're left with characters either infodumping for sake of infodumping, or just characters standing there 'cause they're cute. 13 episodes is barely enough for an oav. There was a reason most oav were derided back in day. And it wasn't because the animation was poor. They were derided because try as you might the story telling aspect was always botched. And the main reason for that was the very small number of episodes. For a tv series you need at a minimum 26 episodes. You can do a fully fleshed out story, with real character interactions and developments withing this framework. If it works out it is really a fulfilling experience for the audience. If it doesn't work out one can always blame the writers. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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This has been true about anime (heck, about most forms of media) since forever. How many shows from, say, 1979 were good, and how many were awful? Chances are, you mostly remember the good ones.
I'm willing to bet that a lot of fans of British comedy and sci fi would disagree with you. |
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Cptn_Taylor
Posts: 925 |
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I remember the good and bad shows. It seems the core of the issue escapes you. Short tv anime series do not have enough time to build and develop meaningful character interactions. They do not have enough time to deliver a fullfilling conclusion. Back in the day, you have a lot of bad /mediocre shows but you also had a lot of good series that delivered on the storytelling character interaction front. Nowadays this is simply impossible save for a handful of exceptions because of the short number of episodes.
Again the issue seems to escape you. British tv series are short, maybe 10 episodes. But one episode lasts 1 hour (that's like 3 anime episodes worth of running time). So a live British series has as much running time as a 30 episode anime series. Since most anime series theze days have 12 episodes, that's what a running time of 4 hours ? It's not enough time to carry out a coherent storyline, have meaningful characters doing meaningful things in an organic way. All you get is something that feels disjointed. Disconnected. A set of disjointed set pieces. That's modern anime in a nutshell. And it affects every genre. Nobody is safe from this disease. |
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
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You really have to go on a case by case basis. Some stories need 26 or more episodes, but some really don't (Looking at you, Orange). I would never add any episodes to Madoka and I would vehemently disagree with those who would contend it ditched storytelling to sell merchandise (those it was and still is still successful in doing the latter). And this season's planetarian did well with just five episodes, and frankly more episodes wouldn't have added all that much to the story. Yes some shows are little more than advertisements of the source or merchandise (though as the article says so were many of the longer ones of yesteryear sometimes blatantly), but I think saying all 13 episode shows (or shorter!) have utterly ditched storytelling for becoming glorified advertisements belies very shallow analysis and criticism of recent shows. I also agree with @BodaciousSpacePirate, though I would push back on Cptn_Taylor's framing them as excrement and rather go with average or maybe mediocre if you want to be more pessimistic. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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I agree with zrnzle500 regarding what Cptn_Taylor said.
Ideally, you would determine how many episodes were needed in order to tell the story you wanted to tell, then make it that many episodes. Some stories can be told in a few episodes, others need a whole bunch, but it is the story that determines that, not the economics of it. As I said, that (to me, anyway) is the ideal. I think that in the past, anime series kept somewhat closer to that ideal than they do today. It seems to me, as Cptn_Taylor said, that anime have become more about money and selling a product than about telling a good story -- and by "more", I mean "more than in the past". But it could be that I'm just seeing what I want to see in saying that. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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Fawlty Towers had 12 episodes at 28-36 minutes an episode. Spaced had 14 episodes at 25 minutes each. There were 24 30-minute Blackadder episodes across a period of seven years, 12 30-minute I'm Alan Partridge episodes, 18 25-minute Black Books episodes, 6 30-minute Snuff Box episodes, 6 25-minute Darkplace episodes... I guess I just don't understand "the issue", though. 
Is it possible that the types of stories that you enjoy just aren't represented by the new crop of shorter shows? For example, Votoms could never be done as an 13-episode series, but at the same time a story like Serial Experiments Lain really wouldn't have benefited from 12 more episodes. Perhaps you prefer the former to the latter? |
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zrnzle500
Posts: 3767 |
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^My experience reading a recent feature here on anime from 1986 and discussing it with some of the commenters on its thread suggest that a difference in the type of shows being made is behind some discontentment with recent anime from those who preferred anime of that era, though I can't speak for Cptn_Taylor.
And I can't really agree with Cptn_Taylor's contention that it is impossible to make a coherent storyline and have meaningful character development in 12 episodes (with 24 minutes an episode that clocks in at about 5 hours). If that is the case, even using his underestimate, (almost) all movies must be shit because because they are less than 4 hours, an absurd statement and standard on its face. If movies can tell a coherent story and have meaningful characters do meaningful things in less time than all but the shortest series, why does splitting this time into episodes suddenly make the task impossible? Certainly it means that writers need to be more economical with the story in their adaptations, and some will not do so successfully, but it is by no means impossible. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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I think some people are confused, anime has ALWAYS being an advertising medium, whether they are advertising toys, manga, games or itself (see disc or ticket sales).
What people fail to see is that for whatever reason (director/mangaka/LN writer wanted to reach to the "good part") some adaptions are rushed. But that has nothing to do with whether they were done in 2016 or 1996 with 6 or 52 episodes. IMO I prefer an adaption that tells a coherent story, even if it does not cover the complete source material. But that was quite a challenge (read as impossible) when you might have up to six episodes and the source material is 10+ volumes long. But there were some nice six episode OVAs nevertheless. Nowadays it is more feasible to do a self contained story with 10-13 episodes, but not all directors are good (or even interested in the source material) so there have always been excellent, average and abysmal adaptions (see the ending of the video girl ai OVA for some classic cringe worthy trainwreck). But all in all the anime world is richer than ever, specially if you compare it with the animated adaptions marvel and DC spew each year, those are scarce, rarely reach six or more episodes and most are easy to forget. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5920 |
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Which is strange since Marvel (Disney) makes episodic tv series whereas Warner Bros generally makes standalone straight to dvd adaptations of their comic books. And it's generally only forgettable to people who hate them....yet that doesn't apply to works like Teen Titans Go or Ultimate Spider-Man 
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There are Utena figurines, and then Utena dolls, like 
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