I’ve thought about it a bit, and it feels like just the word “filler” has become so poisoned that creators are afraid of being accused of including “filler” in their work.
Also pacing. Old anime feels like if it was adapting something it would almost be only 1-2 chapters of a manga (usually due to adapting while the manga was being made) and the switch from constant production to seasonal with year+ gaps meant they could actually just make concentrated sections that set better pacing.
As someone who watched Star Trek: The Next Generation last year for the first time, I kinda miss the existance of "bottle"-episodes, which to my understanding are episodes that due to budget-reasons was centered around close locations and sets (Thus no need to budget around scouting new locations, new props, etc.), and thus a lot of the episode was much more dependable on characterisized writing where "nothing" visually spectacularly happens outside the location, giving episodes such as "The Drumhead", which is essentially a court-room drama in the setting.
Granted, there still are these kind of episodes today; Brooklyn 99's "The Box" takes place entirely in the interrogation room (Outside of a few shots outside.) and has only 4 characters in it, yet is fantastic. However, B:99 and Star Trek are, to my understanding, much more episodic in its format, with its "adventure-of-the-week" or various other sitcom-elements. I have no doubt it is much more difficult to create bottle-episodes that has a much more linear storyline to tell that current television goes through, like how Breaking Bad's episode "The Fly" that takes place mainly entirely on the laboratory with just Walt and Jessie in it; fun characterization, but one that some viewers are less receptive for when they want to see continuation of the bigger plot going on instead of this low-stakes and slice-of-life situation.
It makes sense when you think about the revenue and distribution models that production companies rely on now. They want to make a show for a streaming service (either produced by one or produced to sell to one) so you want something eyecatching that will incentivise people to take out or maintain a subscription. A season made up of 24x45 minute episodes with a lower cost per episode was ideal when the primary source of revenue was advertising blocks on live Television, but it just doesn't make sense with the current distribution model.
One of the most consistent criticisms of Hazbin Hotel is it needs more than 8 episodes per season, it needs so called "filler" episodes of the gang just hanging out having character building moments. Give us a season 1 episode that's just Vaggie trying to find all of Angel's drugs with a B plot of Charlie drunk at Husk's bar and a C plot of Alastor and Nifty causing trouble in town that has nothing to do with the exorcists or the exterminations. It would have helped that show immensely.
Thing is, being from the UK I'm very much used to many shows having that many episodes per season or just episodes total for the entire series.
The distinction though is, most of the time that was because those productions are much smaller than something produced in America. Smaller budgets, smaller writing team, smaller cast, smaller crew size etc.
The Brit Show format was designed as a result of creative people making the most out of what they could get, if they could only get 6 episodes they were going to put their very best material into every one of those 6. What's motivating this recent 6-10 trend across the pond is something VERY different.
I've seen people call anything that doesn't move the plot forward as filler.
That shit pisses me off because most of the time what they call filler is actually really important character or world building moments.
Can't have characters bond or do anything other than move the plot forward. Fleshing out characters and the world? Fuck that we need to keep this shit moving!
God I hate it. A story and it's characters need to be able to "breathe" it can't always be moving forward.
I remember this kind of BS as far back as when Magi was still being serialized.
People called an arc "filler" cause it was a flashback!
Didn't matter if it explained the antagonist's motivation, revealed important plot points, or that it was a flashback of events that weren't shown before. I suspected these people were Naruto fans.
To me, the bar for filler was when Bleach needed to divert into a noncanon sidequest about boring vampires for 45 episodes straight IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE BIGGEST TWIST IN THE SERIES because Kubo couldn't write fast enough, and anything less than that I will call you a brainrotted Zoomer.
The idea of filler requires an understanding of seasonal, weekly television that the kids these days just cannot understand.
That's an extremely unfair and incorrect way of putting things. Kubo's pacing for the manga proper was fine and he took very few breaks. It wasn't his fault that the anime wasn't produced in seasons and that the producers couldn't plan their filler properly. The fault for that is completely at the anime production's feet.
You are right, and I did not mean to word it like I was ungrateful to Kubo. I meant more that the schedule and nature of TV at the time meant he could not possibly have written fast enough.
Kubo's style had large panels with individual action sequences drawn out meant that a properly paced episode adapted like 3-5 chapters per episode because of how much of it is just action and many panels being half a second of anime time.
Toei was trying for the longest time to adapt 1 chapter of One Piece to 1 episode and could kind of do it due to how dense a chapter of One Piece was but boy did it struggle.
At this point, I love the bounts in a Stockholm syndrome type way. Might be just because of the podcast group I listen to and their experience with the Bount arc.
A funny thing about the Bount arc is that a couple of the characters from it did actually stick around for the canon arcs. I was watching a reaction channel going through Bleach (skipping the filler arcs) and they were aware that these random new characters just showed up to a fight were filler characters, they made the observation that the state of the battle from when they joined to when they left was totally unchanged.
There was that one time when Bleach was about to fight Man-Bat, and the next episode was a fucking filler arc. The most forgettable one too it seems, because I have never seen anyone discuss that one at all.
Really, by itself filler is just anything that exists to fill up space and nothing more, like filling up half a bag of chips with air to make it look bigger.
By that definition, I would not apply that to character exploration or world building, because unless the story disregards or contradicts it later on, because it’s contributing to our understanding of the setting, our interpretation of the characters, adding to the weight of the accomplishments and failings, etc.
Even if it’s not “required” to follow the plot, it helps add to the impact when things happen and affect the world.
If you're talking about the 6 Tails, I think that filler was okay. It's right after Jiraiya's death, but before Naruto returns to the village and hears about it, so there's a decent bit of exploration of the relationship between a student and master. And then it has that tragic ending where the Jinchuriki gets ganked by the Nine Paths of Pain before he and the girl who loves him can run away together.
Naruto has a big problem with placing its filler in the right parts, but that and the real good 3 Tails arc were pretty great places to try and make anime-exclusive arcs
Naruto’s filler only really got bad after pain imo
Like they spend a season worth of episodes doing goofy adventures on a boat. Or having a whole flashback arc to Konoha 12 taking the Chunin exams in hidden sand right after Naruto and Sasuke almost die in a battle against Madara
Stuff like 3 tails or 12 guardians feels a lot more natural cause there’s space for it
Yeah, the 3 Tails was another good one. Not as good as 6 Tails, in my opinion, but Guren was a cool villain with a cool power and a cool redemption arc. Her, Yukimaru, and that mudman guy all running away and becoming a family was nice.
like filling up half a bag of chips with air to make it look bigger.
That's actually done for packaging reasons to keep things from breaking as much, plus it's not normal air it's nitrogen gas to act as a preservative. So that's actually a poor analogy.
By that definition, I would not apply that to character exploration or world building, because unless the story disregards or contradicts it later on, because it’s contributing to our understanding of the setting, our interpretation of the characters, adding to the weight of the accomplishments and failings, etc.
This is an imperfect definition because there are some really dumb ass interjections of filler that don't technically contradict the series, especially when it introduces itself as "I know it looks like this contradicts the story but here's the totally not bullshit reason why we're breaking the rules to include it."
Like that anime-only arc in Naruto where it turns out that Naruto and all the other children were actually best friends before the start of the series because there was another kid, Yota, sent to spy on the village that made friends with all of them, but then Yota erased all of their memories of it before leaving.
I'm always super mad whenever over half of FMA03 is labeled as filler, including its fucking endings. That's the extreme end of things though, and comparing it to the separate continuities akin to the various Batman animated series doesn't always seem to get through.
The Soul Eater anime is in a similar camp, though it doesn't go nearly as buck-wild with its original last half. Then there's the original Hellsing anime, which is just all original material after the Valentine Brothers.
I remember the term for a series like that used to be a gecko ending. Since it used to be pretty common for an anime to have an alternate ending back when they felt the need to finish it up, instead of waiting, when the manga wasn't finished yet.
You'd see it once in a blue moon with some other none anime stuff like the Scott Pilgrim movie as well. But, for whatever reason like a decade ago they got a lot more willing to just wait it out when a manga isn't finished so I think some younger people don't realize it used to be a lot more common so they just refer to it as filler instead.
I haven't heard anybody say that about FMA03 but I am now mad on your behalf.
Regardless of anybody's personal preferences between FMA03 and FMAB, FMA03 was never a 1-1 adaptation. There's this perception I've seen online (I think mainly from people who only watched Brotherhood) that FMA03 was a 1-1 adaptation until they ran out of manga to adapt and it was at that point it deviated, but that's just not the case. Even the parts of it that are adaptating the manga aren't slavish recreations. The writers were taking creative liberties with the material pretty much immediately.
I said it in a similar thread earlier this week about fellow arcs, but I really enjoyed those early episodes where they had the brothers exploring Amestris and doing small episodic adventures. I think they did a lot for world building and building the brothers, as well as some of the other characters like Hughes, personality and presence in the story.
I think it's funny that Pat is defending the concept of storytelling as being far more than just the A to B plot points when earlier in this same episode he was saying he regrets watching Battlestar Galactica because it had a bad ending.
Why do I get the feeling that this ostrich is more hated than some of Naruto's vilest villains?
Anyway, filler in its most objective sense is any scene that wasn't in the original, including straight padding. That said, my opinion is that filler can be good when it adds more to the setting and/or characters without contradicting canon or being particularly ill-fitting to the narrative. Especially with at least some minimal supervision by the creator.
One of my favourite TV episodes ever, “Free Churro” from Bojack Horseman is a filler episode, at least by that guy’s girlfriend’s definition. It’s roughly 25 minutes of near-uninterrupted monologuing at Bojack’s mother’s funeral, and it’s absolutely peak television.
Filler gets used as a pejorative sometimes, but filler can be great when done right.
Man the anime filler stuff makes me happy jojo didn't get a full complete anime til the early 2010s. Can you imagine a writer trying to come up with filler stand battle that matches Araki's random snapple facts of writing.
No anime filler episode will ever top Gintama re-using the one clip of the Yorozuya gang talking in their shop, in the middle of a big climactic fight in the “Yoshiwara in Flames” arc, with Gintoki saying that they’re going over-budget with these fight scenes.
The girlfriend in the email must really love this era of television where every show has become a miniseries of 6-8 episodes of nothing but plot progression that takes two years for each season
And yes, I don't like this new era. I want melanin vampires in X Files. I don't care about the actual plot.
To me, the concept of filler stopped mattering with Nisekoi. It was obvious that it was a slice of life manga and that was the primary focus of it, and the romance was just an inciting incident to get the cast together. However, people who only cared about the romance would then claim that the manga was 90% filler, even as the manga was making a point that its inciting incident didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. That's when I realized filler is just anything the person doesn't like.
That's only when the anime is a manga adaptation. Some notable exceptions include Dragon Ball Super, which has separate productions, or series that are based on light novels in which case the manga isn't the source material and may have its own deviations and filler.
If it's based on a light novel then it's same as with manga, it's original stories made so the anime doesn't get past the ongoing manga/light novel, if the anime is completely original it doesn't have filler and if it's adapting a complete story and they add original content I would it's not filler.
As for projects with simultaneous multiple productions like Patlabor, NGE and DBS, I dunno, but I'm leaning towards none of it being filler since they start from the same idea but are helmed by different creatives in most cases.
I remember people calling the episode in Steven Universe where they go to a concert as filler. I was surprised since it was my favorite episode and was character development for Pearl. That's when I started wondering if I knew what classified as filler.
Steven Universe is definitely one of the things that did a number on modern "filler" discourse. The godawful Steven Bomb format meant the rare episodes that pushed the story forward or revealed a piece of a mystery were treated like invaluable nuggets of gold, and everything else in the show had to be panned and sifted out, regardless of whether it was meaningful to the characters or themes.
Not to say the show didn't genuinely have severe problems with its pacing and focus sometimes, but the discourse would have been so much less feral if it just got to release like a normal show.
i had, like, a similar moment when it came to thinking about filler when thinking back on Steven Universe. i think whatever i felt about the show having filler was just misplaced disappointment about the whole Steven Bomb thing just kinda ruining the forward-moving energy that the story might've had if it aired more consistently.
The SU filler discourse wasn't helped by the StevenBomb release schedule. The fandom would spend months obsessing over fan theories about the larger plot only to get a drop of 5 episodes where 4 of them were about random goings on in the town and one that furthered the plot.
It's not that the townsfolk side adventures were actually filler (they often focused on character development and developing character dynamics) but it was easy to get lost in the weeds and become tunnel-visioned on the larger world building, core plot, and big reveals.
I imagine now would actually be the best time to get into the show for the first time, because you don't have to wait for any big content drops and you can just enjoy the show for what it is at your own pace.
I remember where Woolie wanted to watch Star Wars The Clone Wars. I think he asked for a list of which episodes are important to watch, because he believed that many are not important.
Star Wars is a Franchise where every story can seem irreverent at first, only to shockingly become VERY important later.
In the first season of Stand Alone Complex you had Stand Alone episodes which were, well, considered separate from the main narrative. Essentially filler. The main narrative episodes were Complex episodes.
The Stand Alone episodes however were absolutely necessary as they dealt with not just themes but also characters that all came together in the finale.
The second season Stand Alone episodes were much more separate though from that season's main narrative which is kind of disappointing in hind sight but it was still a great season.
Most gacha game dialogue feels like filler to me even when it is progressing the plot, especially in Mihoyo games.
A lot of gacha characters feel static and unchanging, like you're supposed to form an impression of them the moment you're introduced to them and that impression can never change. Every character exists to be someone's favorite who they will whale and buy merch for, so they all need to be the perfect version of whatever it is they represent at all times. And that makes for some really boring stories and character interactions where no one can ever meaningfully develop or reveal new things about themselves.
I'd rather go back and rewatch the Naruto filler episode where Naruto is on a boat and eats some mushrooms and learns to do the mushroom-rasengan than sit through any canon quest from Genshin Impact where the only people who learn anything are stock NPCs who only exist to highlight how much more perfect the playable characters are compared to them.
Honestly, Trails is a series I love because it has so much stuff one could consider "filler". Every NPC has constantly changing dialogue, the cast and characters comment on the world all the time, and all of that isn't important to the critical path. I just love being in this world and many others and I don't get the hate for when things are taking it slow.
Depending on who you ask filler is either superfluous non-canonnical content made to fill a time slot or any moment in which an action scene, plot twist or character death isn't actively happening on screen.
One of my favorite shows of all time is arguably nothing but "filler" for the first five seasons, nearly a third of the entire show's run.
That being Red vs Blue. In the iconic words of Church, "all they ever do is stand around and talk." But if they didn't do that, then everything else about the show falls apart. Because otherwise you'd never care about any of the characters.
I remember watching a YouTube reaction video of the Reds and Blues fighting Tex, the dude loved it. But when the guy went to watch the first season, he just kinda shrugged. Because it didn't have any "hype" moments. And I think that's another aspect to this whole discussion that is worth bringing up. Even if it's not filler if something plot related isn't cool or exciting enough, people just ignore it.
It's deeply ironic that I actually prefer when RvB was still about a bunch of chucklefucks in a box canyon over even the most well animated fight scenes from Monty Oum (no disrespect)
To me their "fights" were better when they had to be animated by them getting the Xbox controllers out and awkwardly having to do it by hand, it was janky but charming and so was the series before then
I hear what they’re saying and in terms of Japanese anime where they’re adapting from a source material, but are you really gonna look me in the eye and tell me that every episode of Supernatural (especially the later seasons) was vital character development and they weren’t spinning the wheels to fill out a pre-budgeted 22 episode season?
I fell off MHA around Gentle, but iirc, there was only like…4 episodes that were of anime original content (the reporter with the camera quirk and the tea lady in the exam), so if your bar is “anime original content ala Garlic Jr saga or Waking the Dragons”, then to the point I stopped, MHA had very little “filler”
I haven't caught up in MHA in a couple of seasons, but the way it used to work is that there'd be an anime only episode at the start of each new Season to reintroduce the characters again before diving back into the series proper.
Pretty much every townie episode was criticized as being "filler" when it should be obvious to anyone with a 4th grade reading comprehension should be able to tell you why those episodes have value and tie into the themes of the show.
His mom literally gave up her life so he could bounce back and forth between doing space shit and hanging out with Onion and you call it filler.
I’ve thought about it a bit, and it feels like just the word “filler” has become so poisoned that creators are afraid of being accused of including “filler” in their work.
That might be partially why so many shows only have 6-10 episodes per season now
Could also be a budget thing in regards to anime. It’s easier to make 10 GOOD looking episodes than spread your budget out for 20+.
Also pacing. Old anime feels like if it was adapting something it would almost be only 1-2 chapters of a manga (usually due to adapting while the manga was being made) and the switch from constant production to seasonal with year+ gaps meant they could actually just make concentrated sections that set better pacing.
As someone who watched Star Trek: The Next Generation last year for the first time, I kinda miss the existance of "bottle"-episodes, which to my understanding are episodes that due to budget-reasons was centered around close locations and sets (Thus no need to budget around scouting new locations, new props, etc.), and thus a lot of the episode was much more dependable on characterisized writing where "nothing" visually spectacularly happens outside the location, giving episodes such as "The Drumhead", which is essentially a court-room drama in the setting.
Granted, there still are these kind of episodes today; Brooklyn 99's "The Box" takes place entirely in the interrogation room (Outside of a few shots outside.) and has only 4 characters in it, yet is fantastic. However, B:99 and Star Trek are, to my understanding, much more episodic in its format, with its "adventure-of-the-week" or various other sitcom-elements. I have no doubt it is much more difficult to create bottle-episodes that has a much more linear storyline to tell that current television goes through, like how Breaking Bad's episode "The Fly" that takes place mainly entirely on the laboratory with just Walt and Jessie in it; fun characterization, but one that some viewers are less receptive for when they want to see continuation of the bigger plot going on instead of this low-stakes and slice-of-life situation.
It makes sense when you think about the revenue and distribution models that production companies rely on now. They want to make a show for a streaming service (either produced by one or produced to sell to one) so you want something eyecatching that will incentivise people to take out or maintain a subscription. A season made up of 24x45 minute episodes with a lower cost per episode was ideal when the primary source of revenue was advertising blocks on live Television, but it just doesn't make sense with the current distribution model.
One of the most consistent criticisms of Hazbin Hotel is it needs more than 8 episodes per season, it needs so called "filler" episodes of the gang just hanging out having character building moments. Give us a season 1 episode that's just Vaggie trying to find all of Angel's drugs with a B plot of Charlie drunk at Husk's bar and a C plot of Alastor and Nifty causing trouble in town that has nothing to do with the exorcists or the exterminations. It would have helped that show immensely.
I’m surprised that’s what it’s criticized for and not the eye-searing artstyle and character designs.
Thing is, being from the UK I'm very much used to many shows having that many episodes per season or just episodes total for the entire series.
The distinction though is, most of the time that was because those productions are much smaller than something produced in America. Smaller budgets, smaller writing team, smaller cast, smaller crew size etc.
The Brit Show format was designed as a result of creative people making the most out of what they could get, if they could only get 6 episodes they were going to put their very best material into every one of those 6. What's motivating this recent 6-10 trend across the pond is something VERY different.
6-10? Isn't it 10-13?
I don't see that many 6 episode anime.
I mean shows in general
Ah, right. Live-action stuff. Got it!
I've seen people call anything that doesn't move the plot forward as filler.
That shit pisses me off because most of the time what they call filler is actually really important character or world building moments.
Can't have characters bond or do anything other than move the plot forward. Fleshing out characters and the world? Fuck that we need to keep this shit moving!
God I hate it. A story and it's characters need to be able to "breathe" it can't always be moving forward.
I remember this kind of BS as far back as when Magi was still being serialized.
People called an arc "filler" cause it was a flashback!
Didn't matter if it explained the antagonist's motivation, revealed important plot points, or that it was a flashback of events that weren't shown before. I suspected these people were Naruto fans.
To me, the bar for filler was when Bleach needed to divert into a noncanon sidequest about boring vampires for 45 episodes straight IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE BIGGEST TWIST IN THE SERIES because Kubo couldn't write fast enough, and anything less than that I will call you a brainrotted Zoomer.
The idea of filler requires an understanding of seasonal, weekly television that the kids these days just cannot understand.
That's an extremely unfair and incorrect way of putting things. Kubo's pacing for the manga proper was fine and he took very few breaks. It wasn't his fault that the anime wasn't produced in seasons and that the producers couldn't plan their filler properly. The fault for that is completely at the anime production's feet.
You are right, and I did not mean to word it like I was ungrateful to Kubo. I meant more that the schedule and nature of TV at the time meant he could not possibly have written fast enough.
Kubo's style had large panels with individual action sequences drawn out meant that a properly paced episode adapted like 3-5 chapters per episode because of how much of it is just action and many panels being half a second of anime time.
Toei was trying for the longest time to adapt 1 chapter of One Piece to 1 episode and could kind of do it due to how dense a chapter of One Piece was but boy did it struggle.
At this point, I love the bounts in a Stockholm syndrome type way. Might be just because of the podcast group I listen to and their experience with the Bount arc.
Was it Chugging Bleach?
But of course. I'm in a love/hate relationship with Jin Kariya.
A funny thing about the Bount arc is that a couple of the characters from it did actually stick around for the canon arcs. I was watching a reaction channel going through Bleach (skipping the filler arcs) and they were aware that these random new characters just showed up to a fight were filler characters, they made the observation that the state of the battle from when they joined to when they left was totally unchanged.
There was that one time when Bleach was about to fight Man-Bat, and the next episode was a fucking filler arc. The most forgettable one too it seems, because I have never seen anyone discuss that one at all.
Really, by itself filler is just anything that exists to fill up space and nothing more, like filling up half a bag of chips with air to make it look bigger.
By that definition, I would not apply that to character exploration or world building, because unless the story disregards or contradicts it later on, because it’s contributing to our understanding of the setting, our interpretation of the characters, adding to the weight of the accomplishments and failings, etc.
Even if it’s not “required” to follow the plot, it helps add to the impact when things happen and affect the world.
Naruto does this with one of the jinchuriki iirc (idr if it's good or not tho)
If you're talking about the 6 Tails, I think that filler was okay. It's right after Jiraiya's death, but before Naruto returns to the village and hears about it, so there's a decent bit of exploration of the relationship between a student and master. And then it has that tragic ending where the Jinchuriki gets ganked by the Nine Paths of Pain before he and the girl who loves him can run away together.
Naruto has a big problem with placing its filler in the right parts, but that and the real good 3 Tails arc were pretty great places to try and make anime-exclusive arcs
Naruto’s filler only really got bad after pain imo
Like they spend a season worth of episodes doing goofy adventures on a boat. Or having a whole flashback arc to Konoha 12 taking the Chunin exams in hidden sand right after Naruto and Sasuke almost die in a battle against Madara
Stuff like 3 tails or 12 guardians feels a lot more natural cause there’s space for it
Yeah, the 3 Tails was another good one. Not as good as 6 Tails, in my opinion, but Guren was a cool villain with a cool power and a cool redemption arc. Her, Yukimaru, and that mudman guy all running away and becoming a family was nice.
That's actually done for packaging reasons to keep things from breaking as much, plus it's not normal air it's nitrogen gas to act as a preservative. So that's actually a poor analogy.
This is an imperfect definition because there are some really dumb ass interjections of filler that don't technically contradict the series, especially when it introduces itself as "I know it looks like this contradicts the story but here's the totally not bullshit reason why we're breaking the rules to include it."
Like that anime-only arc in Naruto where it turns out that Naruto and all the other children were actually best friends before the start of the series because there was another kid, Yota, sent to spy on the village that made friends with all of them, but then Yota erased all of their memories of it before leaving.
Just godawful.
I'm always super mad whenever over half of FMA03 is labeled as filler, including its fucking endings. That's the extreme end of things though, and comparing it to the separate continuities akin to the various Batman animated series doesn't always seem to get through.
The Soul Eater anime is in a similar camp, though it doesn't go nearly as buck-wild with its original last half. Then there's the original Hellsing anime, which is just all original material after the Valentine Brothers.
I remember the term for a series like that used to be a gecko ending. Since it used to be pretty common for an anime to have an alternate ending back when they felt the need to finish it up, instead of waiting, when the manga wasn't finished yet.
You'd see it once in a blue moon with some other none anime stuff like the Scott Pilgrim movie as well. But, for whatever reason like a decade ago they got a lot more willing to just wait it out when a manga isn't finished so I think some younger people don't realize it used to be a lot more common so they just refer to it as filler instead.
I haven't heard anybody say that about FMA03 but I am now mad on your behalf.
Regardless of anybody's personal preferences between FMA03 and FMAB, FMA03 was never a 1-1 adaptation. There's this perception I've seen online (I think mainly from people who only watched Brotherhood) that FMA03 was a 1-1 adaptation until they ran out of manga to adapt and it was at that point it deviated, but that's just not the case. Even the parts of it that are adaptating the manga aren't slavish recreations. The writers were taking creative liberties with the material pretty much immediately.
I said it in a similar thread earlier this week about fellow arcs, but I really enjoyed those early episodes where they had the brothers exploring Amestris and doing small episodic adventures. I think they did a lot for world building and building the brothers, as well as some of the other characters like Hughes, personality and presence in the story.
People say language evolves. But why is evolution just assigning a negative connotation to a word? A goon is and always will be a henchman!
I really don’t see why we need to go past gintama’s very simple explanation
I think it's funny that Pat is defending the concept of storytelling as being far more than just the A to B plot points when earlier in this same episode he was saying he regrets watching Battlestar Galactica because it had a bad ending.
That's different even by the metric of the argument the ending is what the plot is supposed to be leading up to, even the stuff accused to be "filler"
Why do I get the feeling that this ostrich is more hated than some of Naruto's vilest villains?
Anyway, filler in its most objective sense is any scene that wasn't in the original, including straight padding. That said, my opinion is that filler can be good when it adds more to the setting and/or characters without contradicting canon or being particularly ill-fitting to the narrative. Especially with at least some minimal supervision by the creator.
Here's hoping jjk has some filler sequences just so we can flesh out character interactions more
One of my favourite TV episodes ever, “Free Churro” from Bojack Horseman is a filler episode, at least by that guy’s girlfriend’s definition. It’s roughly 25 minutes of near-uninterrupted monologuing at Bojack’s mother’s funeral, and it’s absolutely peak television.
Filler gets used as a pejorative sometimes, but filler can be great when done right.
Episodes I personally don't like.
Glad we got that cleared up.
Man the anime filler stuff makes me happy jojo didn't get a full complete anime til the early 2010s. Can you imagine a writer trying to come up with filler stand battle that matches Araki's random snapple facts of writing.
Technically, 3/4 of Gintama could probably be considered filler
No anime filler episode will ever top Gintama re-using the one clip of the Yorozuya gang talking in their shop, in the middle of a big climactic fight in the “Yoshiwara in Flames” arc, with Gintoki saying that they’re going over-budget with these fight scenes.
The girlfriend in the email must really love this era of television where every show has become a miniseries of 6-8 episodes of nothing but plot progression that takes two years for each season
And yes, I don't like this new era. I want melanin vampires in X Files. I don't care about the actual plot.
To me, the concept of filler stopped mattering with Nisekoi. It was obvious that it was a slice of life manga and that was the primary focus of it, and the romance was just an inciting incident to get the cast together. However, people who only cared about the romance would then claim that the manga was 90% filler, even as the manga was making a point that its inciting incident didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. That's when I realized filler is just anything the person doesn't like.
When it comes to anime it's stuff not in manga.
That's only when the anime is a manga adaptation. Some notable exceptions include Dragon Ball Super, which has separate productions, or series that are based on light novels in which case the manga isn't the source material and may have its own deviations and filler.
If it's based on a light novel then it's same as with manga, it's original stories made so the anime doesn't get past the ongoing manga/light novel, if the anime is completely original it doesn't have filler and if it's adapting a complete story and they add original content I would it's not filler.
As for projects with simultaneous multiple productions like Patlabor, NGE and DBS, I dunno, but I'm leaning towards none of it being filler since they start from the same idea but are helmed by different creatives in most cases.
I remember people calling the episode in Steven Universe where they go to a concert as filler. I was surprised since it was my favorite episode and was character development for Pearl. That's when I started wondering if I knew what classified as filler.
Steven Universe is definitely one of the things that did a number on modern "filler" discourse. The godawful Steven Bomb format meant the rare episodes that pushed the story forward or revealed a piece of a mystery were treated like invaluable nuggets of gold, and everything else in the show had to be panned and sifted out, regardless of whether it was meaningful to the characters or themes.
Not to say the show didn't genuinely have severe problems with its pacing and focus sometimes, but the discourse would have been so much less feral if it just got to release like a normal show.
Steven bomb being proto-batch drops of the streaming age.
i had, like, a similar moment when it came to thinking about filler when thinking back on Steven Universe. i think whatever i felt about the show having filler was just misplaced disappointment about the whole Steven Bomb thing just kinda ruining the forward-moving energy that the story might've had if it aired more consistently.
The SU filler discourse wasn't helped by the StevenBomb release schedule. The fandom would spend months obsessing over fan theories about the larger plot only to get a drop of 5 episodes where 4 of them were about random goings on in the town and one that furthered the plot.
It's not that the townsfolk side adventures were actually filler (they often focused on character development and developing character dynamics) but it was easy to get lost in the weeds and become tunnel-visioned on the larger world building, core plot, and big reveals.
I imagine now would actually be the best time to get into the show for the first time, because you don't have to wait for any big content drops and you can just enjoy the show for what it is at your own pace.
And most of them weren't that good.
I remember where Woolie wanted to watch Star Wars The Clone Wars. I think he asked for a list of which episodes are important to watch, because he believed that many are not important.
Star Wars is a Franchise where every story can seem irreverent at first, only to shockingly become VERY important later.
In the first season of Stand Alone Complex you had Stand Alone episodes which were, well, considered separate from the main narrative. Essentially filler. The main narrative episodes were Complex episodes.
The Stand Alone episodes however were absolutely necessary as they dealt with not just themes but also characters that all came together in the finale.
The second season Stand Alone episodes were much more separate though from that season's main narrative which is kind of disappointing in hind sight but it was still a great season.
Most gacha game dialogue feels like filler to me even when it is progressing the plot, especially in Mihoyo games.
A lot of gacha characters feel static and unchanging, like you're supposed to form an impression of them the moment you're introduced to them and that impression can never change. Every character exists to be someone's favorite who they will whale and buy merch for, so they all need to be the perfect version of whatever it is they represent at all times. And that makes for some really boring stories and character interactions where no one can ever meaningfully develop or reveal new things about themselves.
I'd rather go back and rewatch the Naruto filler episode where Naruto is on a boat and eats some mushrooms and learns to do the mushroom-rasengan than sit through any canon quest from Genshin Impact where the only people who learn anything are stock NPCs who only exist to highlight how much more perfect the playable characters are compared to them.
Oh shit it’s the ninja ostrich!
The ninjostrich.
Honestly, Trails is a series I love because it has so much stuff one could consider "filler". Every NPC has constantly changing dialogue, the cast and characters comment on the world all the time, and all of that isn't important to the critical path. I just love being in this world and many others and I don't get the hate for when things are taking it slow.
The journey is what matters.
Depending on who you ask filler is either superfluous non-canonnical content made to fill a time slot or any moment in which an action scene, plot twist or character death isn't actively happening on screen.
One of my favorite shows of all time is arguably nothing but "filler" for the first five seasons, nearly a third of the entire show's run.
That being Red vs Blue. In the iconic words of Church, "all they ever do is stand around and talk." But if they didn't do that, then everything else about the show falls apart. Because otherwise you'd never care about any of the characters.
I remember watching a YouTube reaction video of the Reds and Blues fighting Tex, the dude loved it. But when the guy went to watch the first season, he just kinda shrugged. Because it didn't have any "hype" moments. And I think that's another aspect to this whole discussion that is worth bringing up. Even if it's not filler if something plot related isn't cool or exciting enough, people just ignore it.
It's deeply ironic that I actually prefer when RvB was still about a bunch of chucklefucks in a box canyon over even the most well animated fight scenes from Monty Oum (no disrespect)
To me their "fights" were better when they had to be animated by them getting the Xbox controllers out and awkwardly having to do it by hand, it was janky but charming and so was the series before then
I like the middle ground they reached with Seasons 11-13. Where most of the action was in game but choreographed much better.
I'd highly recommend checking those seasons if you haven't. Closer to Blood Gulch in tone but with an overarching plot to keep it focused.
Not even "hit the back" Pat?
Well, Paige will, at least.
I hear what they’re saying and in terms of Japanese anime where they’re adapting from a source material, but are you really gonna look me in the eye and tell me that every episode of Supernatural (especially the later seasons) was vital character development and they weren’t spinning the wheels to fill out a pre-budgeted 22 episode season?
When the episode starts and a new girl / old man character is talking about an important fish in some nearby body of water
I fell off MHA around Gentle, but iirc, there was only like…4 episodes that were of anime original content (the reporter with the camera quirk and the tea lady in the exam), so if your bar is “anime original content ala Garlic Jr saga or Waking the Dragons”, then to the point I stopped, MHA had very little “filler”
Yeah MHA did the vast majority of its anime-only content as separate movies.
I haven't caught up in MHA in a couple of seasons, but the way it used to work is that there'd be an anime only episode at the start of each new Season to reintroduce the characters again before diving back into the series proper.
Steven Universe got hit with this hard.
Pretty much every townie episode was criticized as being "filler" when it should be obvious to anyone with a 4th grade reading comprehension should be able to tell you why those episodes have value and tie into the themes of the show.
His mom literally gave up her life so he could bounce back and forth between doing space shit and hanging out with Onion and you call it filler.