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Shelf Life - The RideBack Diaries

About that need to have a story no matter what:

In Robert McKee's legendary book Story, he points out that comedy is the one genre that doesn't need to put story as its highest priority. Well, a strong story, at least. Looney Tunes, for the most part, were a series of jokes wth some certain theme to each short. The Marx Brothers relied almost entirely on wordplay and slapstick to sustain audience attention. And as far as anime and manga goes, I can think of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo as a successful series without a need for a narrative at the forefront (though it's not so successful outside of Japan). John Kricfalusi (Ren and Stimpy) even considers story as a hindrance to animated works, though I personally feel that it's more of that pigeonholing.

I'd presume Dark Rabbit is NOT a comedy though, so it has no excuse. Well, I suppose pornography doesn't need plot either, and even though it's not pornography, it is apparently quite titillating to some people.

I will not deny that I fall into that circle on the Great Venn Diagram of Life. For some people it's soap operas, for others it's professional wrestling, but for me it's ecchi magical girlfriend anime.

I've heard certain fans say 'if you want a story, read a book!'

I agree with you there. Heavy Rain had a terrific (albeit tragic and horrifying) story and played on your emotions masterfully, but most of my sister's gaming students and friends just dismissed it out of hand. The now nearly extinct graphic adventure game was another that did some great storytelling, particularly Loom and the Monkey Island games. (Though not the fourth. That one kinda sucked.)

Princess_Irene wrote:

It is bizarre that people would say that story doesn't matter in anime or manga - I had one comment to that effect on one of my reviews.

Of course story does matter, but that doesn't mean that every anime or manga needs it. It's an asset, and not every show has to do everything.

It seems perfectly reasonable for someone to say they don't care about story in some forms of entertainment. If I go see a summer action flick, I don't think "you, know, this story has a lot of holes in it. It doesn't really paint a compelling picture of the struggles faced by that guy," I think "Wooo, that explosion was totally awesome!!!"

And I certainly didn't want a deep story that made me care about the characters when I was sending Lemmings to their horrible deaths back in the day.

My theory was that [the readers] just thought they cared about the action; but really, although they didn't know it, they cared very little about the action. The things that they really cared about, and that I cared about, were the creation of emotion through dialogue and description; the things they remembered, that haunted them, were not for example that a man got killed, but that in the moment of death he was trying to pick a paper clip up off the polished surface of a desk, and it kept slipping away from him, so that there was a look of strain of his face and his mouth was half opened in a kind of tormented grin, and the last thing in the world he thought about was death. He didn't even hear death knock at the door. That damn paper clip kept slipping away from his fingers and he just wouldnt push it to the edge of the desk and catch it as it fell.

Melanchthon wrote:

I will not deny that I fall into that circle on the Great Venn Diagram of Life. For some people it's soap operas, for others it's professional wrestling, but for me it's ecchi magical girlfriend anime.

For me it's terrible 80s movies - "The Pirate Movie," "Vibes," "Top Secret"....and even "Earth Girls Are Easy" on a bad day.

Mine would probably have to be Drama mixed with Action. And not just any kind of action, but big FIST-PUNCHING, FIREWORKS-FIRING, BODIES-FLYING, BUILDINGS-EXPLODING, CARS-FLIPPING, MANLY-SCREAMS action. The bigger, the more dramatic, the better (most of the time). I'm being vague here, because that accounts for several different things. Professional wrestling, stupid summer action flicks, hot-blooded Super Robot anime (not to say it doesn't have a story, but it isn't the story that's getting me up from my chair yelling to the high heavens along with the main character while pumping a fist... and I have done that several times).

Maybe otaku database shows fall into a creepy uncanny valley of narrative.

Are you sure that they didn't say "if you want a story, read the books". ItsuTen was a series of fantasy light novels from an established fantasy writer (who has written over 50 books in the genre) before it received this awful anime adaption.

You know when I watched the movie reviews by Redlettermedia on Machinima and they had comments like that from the viewers about their review with gems like "Maybe audiences don't want too much story distracting them or something".

Matt Owen, spokesperson for insurance firm Direct Line, which commissioned the study, said: “Our research shows that film lovers are very clear about what they like – and especially what they don’t like – with overly-complicated, lengthy movies being among the worst offenders.

Good column this week, Erin, I enjoyed it, but I wish you had mentioned, as has come out in the thread, that Rideback is yet another show with no ending!