Forum - View topicAnswerman - What Is The Purpose Of Recap Episodes?
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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Recap episodes occasionally do some good, unless the viewer has a super memory. I felt the ones in the Monogatari franchise and at the beginning of My Hero Academia season 2 were well-done and appropriately timed.
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ultimatehaki
Posts: 1090 |
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The Erased and Saga of Tanya the evil recaps were so painful to see and worse since we had to wait an extra week. Tanya was understandable at least since it's a new studio but there was no excuse for Erased.
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4074 |
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Wolf's Rain.... four clip episodes... in a row... I believe that's a state beyond "troubled". On its first DVD run, they were all on one disc and I just skipped it entirely.
Chobits has three clip shows sprinkled throughout its run and they were released on volume "seven of six". I remember thinking "I heard there were clip shows but I didn't see any. Oh, there's a volume 7; I wonder what's on it as the series was already finished?" I wasn't as lucky that time. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Which is why recaps constituted almost a third of the last-minute episodes Macross had to fill in at the last minute, when 23 episodes became 36. Maybe not as many recap episodes as Family Ties, but still. One example of the "Last minute throw-together" is were the three recap episodes we saw one season of Urusei Yatsura, two of them in a row, near the end of the season before Mamoru Oshii left the series, in eps. #93, 103 and 104. One recap near the end of the coeur break might be put down to a rushed schedule, but three in one season, and something's clearly stuck up the works. Also popular with little-kid shows with less viewer attention-span or regular viewership, and need occasional reminders of the more complicated plot setups and who our marketable characters are, as Sailor Moon and Samurai Pizza Cats were particular recap offenders. |
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Michael Andersson
Posts: 1 |
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Yeah recaps are usaually a huge pain do deal with, but through all my experiences i think the Re:Creator recap episode was one of the best ones i've seen. Yes it was a recap, but all those spoiler[comedic approaches, combined with new content and just really well made, how it makes kinda fun of the industry as a whole was great]
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ultimatehaki
Posts: 1090 |
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Re:Creators recap was one of the rare (if not only) example of it being planned since the beginning tho. |
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aifhak
Posts: 57 |
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There are a couple exceptions like already mentioned.
The recap episodes in Monogatari's 2nd season are an example and while I myself would argue they were a massive waste of time and noone should ever watch them, they handled it as good as possible. For the ones not being the biggest fans of the series: The 2nd series covered 6 volumes of the source materal over the span of a 2cour season. Or was supposed to. MAL has it as 26 episodes so I'll take it as that. The issue with that was that one of the vols was, from the point of the rests of the series, playing way in the future and would kind of spoil parts of the season if done in that order. In the end they decided to drop that one vol out of the broadcast and do it separately later on. That freed up 4 whole episodes and since they had 5 vols to cover they included a recap episode between each "arc" and they did indeed deliver the last arc that was cut out very quickly. They just didn't want to have it in the season at the time it was supposed to be. All in all not that messy of a situation and I'd even argue that there was some sense behind doing it that way for the TV adaptation but it clearly wasn't planned that way when they bought the TV slot. They didn't run into time issues or anything like that, just decided to deliver the series a bit differently. |
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rizuchan
 Posts: 974 Location: Kansas |
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I don't know if that's the same situation or not. Gundam Wing did the same thing. It was right before the ending so it almost seemed intentional on the one hand, on the other, they weren't done very well, so it seemed like there had to be budget issues or something. I guess my question is, if recap episodes are so damaging to the reputation of the show, why not just show a rerun or something else? US TV shows do this all the time when there are production issues without a huge stink, although TV shows in the US hardly have reliable schedules to begin with. It just seems like creating a recap is a waste of time and money, if it's not saving face at all. Usually there's got to be a voice over or something to keep it coherent, so there's gotta be a handful of staff that have to be pulled away from their hectic schedules to cobble it together. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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It's not just "face" pride, it's that shows are usually under contract to provide networks with a number of shows per season, vis the Macross example. If you're contracted for 23 episodes and your overworked studio can only deliver 20, that's a breach of contract. The show must go on, and it's better to throw three more bits of filler together to deliver something and keep the network happy, than get into any troubles that might persuade the network to drop the series. Reruns are usually substituted by the network at the last minute, for ex. if a show offends recent headlines and can't be aired that week even if it DID finish production. |
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Sheleigha
 Posts: 1671 |
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Wolf's Rain is the worst contender for this. I remember hearing something about production issues? Would explain why the real ending was done after several OVAs... which should've been part of the main tv series I wonder what did happen? |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2443 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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There's troubled productions that resort to recap episodes… and then there's Wake Up, Girls! New Chapter, where episode 7 resorted to 30 minutes of the live voice actresses just bullshitting in studio and eating tasty dishes on camera. What a disaster.
Crunchyroll didn't even bother to (or wasn't allowed to?) show it, just saying in a sidebar "Wake Up, Girls! New Chapter will take a break on November 20 before resuming the following week with Episode #8. Episode #7 does not affect the continuity of the story." Last edited by invalidname on Fri Dec 08, 2017 1:20 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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Nana's recap episodes were pretty neat. They coincided with the end of each story climax & had three of the more minor characters recap events & briefly muse on what it might mean going forward. Served as a nice break from the drama & a useful tone buffer between the rather heavy & serious way each arc ended, & the lighter & more comedic way they tended to start. Their timing makes me pretty sure they were planned, or they at least seemed that way as I remember them.
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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There are some pretty depressing disasters, indeed. And like Justin, my heart also wrenches whenever I see a production resort to one.
Just Because this season was one example. A real tragedy of a production, overall. Too much ambition can be blamed in that case, but it's still respectable. Hopefully they are able to bring everything together in the end. How many recaps(recap-esque episodes) do we have this season? Is it just Wake Up, Girls and Just Because? I've seen about 10 shows so far, but those are the only two I've caught with them. It's not a good sign to see multiple last-resort recaps in a single season, regardless. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1113 Location: Puget Sound |
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Just those two that I know of... and, IIRC, three re-cap or re-capesque eps last season. (Not counting re:Creators, which was a planned break.) If memory serves, I only recall hearing of 1 or so per season prior to that. |
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Zeino
Posts: 1098 |
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They weren't near the ending of the series but a bit past the half way point (Episodes 27 and 28 out of 49) And the reason is those episodes were to suppose to be about the origins of the five Gundam pilots but they couldn't fit them in due to disputes with the writers at the time and had no choice but to going with clip shows while the planned backstories got turned into a manga, Episode Zero. |
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