What this post is about
In many cases, I find that, for the sake of story progression, characters are thrown to the wayside or become unimportant. This is pretty boring, in my eyes, as a person who watches and reads things that oftentimes don’t even have much of a plot at all.
I simply love the banter.
I find that modern anime sometimes makes the mistake of cutting out filler (even the good kind) and killing our connection to the people who are supposed to make the story enjoyable.
There is a reason people (zoomers, veterans and everyone else) enjoy Dandadan as an example of both plot and good vibes.
I’ll share some good examples and some bad examples.
Examples
Good:
- Code Geass: Your revolutionaries attend school festivals and enjoy each other’s company. There is drama, crushes, relationships, fights and nearly everything else you would have in real life. This really boosts the immersion for the audience.
- Eureka Seven: You see the young heroes grow up and do things other than simply piloting a mecha and fighting the bad guys. This increases your emotional investment in the series.
- Early Bleach: You meet Ichigo’s entire family, Ishin, Karin, and Yuzu. You meet all of his friends, Don Kanonji, Kon, Kisuke, etc. You go to school with them and get to see their antics. This is what makes people care. If it was all fights, no one would have kept watching this series.
Not So Good:
- Code Geass Roze of the Recapture: The 12-episode runtime does not leave anywhere near enough time to explore the characters or gain an understanding of their personalities. They simply created a colorful cast of people who could’ve been fan favorites with beautiful designs then moved on.
- Solo Leveling (manhwa): After a while, pretty much all of the cast is thrown to the wayside and the manga becomes solely focused on the MC as he is the only one who can make a difference. Once again, this is frustrating because, if you’re going to create a diverse cast, why should you throw them away?
My Thoughts
In the old days, you had things like Naruto and Bleach that had YEARS worth of filler episodes with very little plot relevance that frustrated people quite a bit. This is understandable. However, I don’t think the issue with those episodes was they were filler but that there were far too many of them consecutively and that a good amount of them weren’t quality episodes.
But now it appears we are looking at an unfortunate overcorrection where, outside of series where this type of content is built in, like Dandadan, we don’t see as much content that is simply “good vibes” and we are forced to accept SUPERSERIOUS arc and ULTRASERIOUS arc consecutively.
I think this is bad for the vibes!
My Prediction
I have a very bold prediction of what will happen as a result of this. While I know the demographics of the anime community have changed heavily, and people may not have the same tastes as they used to, I believe some things are at least somewhat universal. I think it’s rare for people to not value wholesome and funny moments.
With this in mind, I believe that we will see a resurgence of anime like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Oregairu, Nagatoro, Uzaki, etc. I believe that, eventually, people will grow tired of simply watching the story move forward and not getting good vibes from their anime. They will then start watching a lot more school, comedy, romance, etc anime that isn’t plot focused at all but is more focused on good vibes and laughter.
But this is just my conspiracy theory.
anywho, signing off
mg10k