[ SECRET POST #6352 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6352 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 29 secrets from Secret Submission Post #908.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Clearly you’ve never watched a long running anime

[(Anonymous)]

Ranma ans Sailor Moon veteran here, moar filla pls!

+1

[(Anonymous)]

the term "filler episode" comes from long-running anime, it's an episode made solely to fill the TV airing schedule without catching up to the plotline of the manga it's based on. Actual filler sucks. It's pointless, derivative, and usually junk. See: even this season, this very month, One Piece is farting out flashbacks to Enies Lobby just in case the audience doesn't remember who Rob Lucci is. Because Oda took a health break and put the manga on hold for a month. That's it. That's the epitome of filler, and the whole reason OP is wrong wrong wrong.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

Regardless of the origin of the phrase, "filler episode" was being used in Western media as early as the 90s to describe episodes that didn't move the main storyline along. And it may have originally been restricted to the type of episode that you could completely ignore because it didn't add anything, but many fans these days apply the term to any character-driven episode that doesn't specifically move the main plotline forward.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

DA

So, make an argument for why some episodes are being unfairly labeled as filler when what they're doing is deepening the canon's portrayal of a particular character's personality or point of view or inner life. I'm sure like-minded fans who care about whichever character is being highlighted would love to have that.

But trying to recast all the episodes that do nothing except kill time as "actually not junk" by claiming filler is just an invalid term denigrates useful commentary (i.e. fans who want to just follow the through-line of the main story appreciate being able to skip the episodes they'd be bored by) without offering anything valuable.

I read Dragon Ball Z for a while as a manga, and the plotting was reasonable. As an anime, it was absolutely infamous for how much it strung people along and wasted their time. It's really only watchable if fandom knowledge helps you skip the filler. Beautiful animation, but absolutely cynical pacing. I love that fandom's assertive enough about story quality to NOT make people choose between watching a show (or even a season) from tip to tail or giving up on it entirely.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

Ehhhhhh.

In a broad, high-level sense, fandom discourse has gotten way too negative on episodes that don't advance the broader story arc even when they're quite good.

Pushing back on that by just saying that non-story episodes are good in a blanket sense is definitely imprecise *but* that is often the way that fandom discourse works - by making strong arguments, not by making nuanced ones. That's how the pendulum gets swinging back in the other direction.

And it is worth saying that episodes that don't advance the story can be really great, and the mindset that all episodes must advance the story is categorically wrong. The idea, and the expectation by fans, that all episodes advance the story is a pernicious and widespread fault in episodic storytelling right now.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

IMO, claiming that filler is good in opposition to people who say filler is bad is a simple argument, but that's not enough to make it convincing. And I don't want more shows spinning their wheels because fandom puts up with shit that is supposed to involve storytelling, but in fact rarely does. If you want stories that get into the inner life of different characters, I empathize, but I think you're better off praising that specific thing than "filler" in general, because there's no guarantee that stuff that doesn't advance the plot is going to do any of what you like to see, either.

Related point - Kishotenketsu is brilliant in terms of widening the field of what a story can be about beyond the western insistence on setting/conflict/resolution, and creating plots that focus on relationships and inner life and changes in perspective, instead of always being about power struggles of one sort or another. It might be more along the lines of what you're looking for.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt and I don't feel like all fans expect that all episodes advance the story, I feel like they expect that all episodes do something, whether that be advancing the story or deepening the relationships between characters or developing the lore of the world. I don't think many people enjoy episodes that do exactly nothing beyond filling time.

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

Surely you're exaggerating; One Piece is only 1100 episodes or so long /s

[(Anonymous)]

Yep! Bleach and Rurouni Kenshin come to mind.

[(Anonymous)]

yknow, I honestly found Bleach's filler arcs more compelling than the main story. It was the only time anyone did anything with the 52746824 side characters Kubo ignored, and honestly did them better than he ever could.