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Infodumping in Anime?
I was listening to the latest ANNCast and the final question they answer (about 54 minutes in) is about how infodump-ey anime has become, but I honestly have no idea what they're on about since they give absolutely no instances of this.
They go on to mention it's a common LN adaptation issue but from my experience with even the worst LN material (Accel World and Sword Art Online), not even they commit the crime of infodump.
I admit there are explanations in them, but without explanation it would just be random people doing random stuff that makes no sense and I'd have even less care for watching.
Apparently this is a wide-spread trend too, but if it were I'm sure the final episodes of something like Symphogear would have been seven minutes of the girls and Phine explaining how their new gear works.
Can anybody provide an actual viewpoint on this. With examples and comparisons with earlier anime or honestly, anything at all?
Comments
Look at popular shonen like Bleach and Naruto, where there's massive infodumps all the time to pad out chapters.
I don't think anime has become more infodumpy, but only because it reached critical mass decades ago. There's a tendency, I find, for anime to generally tell rather than show. Sometimes it's a matter of there being less than enough time in an episode or season to cover something properly, sometimes it has to be sheer laziness.
Classic example: Dragonball Z. There's a lot of asspull special moves in that series, so we often end up with a side character's exposition concerning what they know about said move rather than actually understanding its relevance ourselves. And usually there's some overblown reaction to it, especially a kind of whimper or gasp of disbelief. But that's just cover-up, really, because we're still getting the information as exposition rather than as something shown to us through visual and aural means.
The opposite? Check out how you can tell what Darth Vader's feeling in the original Star Wars films, despite the fact that he's wearing a mask and may or may not have dialogue. The camera angle, posture, body language, music and context tell us everything we need to know, communicating without or in synchronicity with the spoken word.
I remember an episode of Hunter X Hunter (2011) where somebody explained how Gon took advantage of his opponent's inability to attack after accelerating his jet-propelled wheelchair so suddenly, and I basically thought: we just saw what happened. Why do you need to tell us this?
Are infodumps with character introductions relevant here too?
Good anime.
I meant um... things not major mediocre to sorta good shonen?
Trends in relevant things that aren't serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump, gravitating towards Late-Night and such.
Sadly, I can even point to Accel World for this one. Even before Noumi loses Brain Burst, when Black Vise leaves him and he continues to act sly/cool, you can watch as his entire body language change, even in a huge black mass body with no face at all (Yes, his in-burst face is eventually shown, but the body language as Black Vise leaves speaks for itself).
Anything beyond "Character name, what I can plausibly know about this guy, appropriate information in this situation" counts.
Is this infodumping partly because anime often has settings and premises that are notably farther from real life than, say, your average live-action TV show, and thus the writers think they need to describe the setting to the audience in lots of words?
They didn't really elaborate on that stuff, but I'm still looking for evidence of a general trend towards infodumping outside of shonen.
Plus I don't think a setting/premise would be a good excuse, at all, to justify infodumping in a visual medium.
Example; AKB0048's first episode (we could even expand this to first three episodes) spends little to no time explaining it's premise.
In fact, 0048's interesting backstory is created by inklings alone. Chieri is rich and her father owns a company that makes DES mechs, Orine is poor and works in a factory, the girls may or may not come from what is left of original earth (or a British colony planet), all of these things gleaned from small points in the show.
Something I don't get is when fight scenes have somebody say things like "he couldn't hit back because he lost his balance" or "he dodged the attack by yadda yadda" when we can clearly see what's happening.
I haven't really seen that happen outside of WSJ/morning-evening shonen. I think it's usually done to pad out a fight.
Speaking of, isn't it weird that shonen will typically overexplain what people are doing in a fight but not even Sunday morning shoujo does it (ie. Smile Precure)?
I mean, Accel World is one of the most battle heavy shows I've seen recently and they only explain what they're doing if someone asks.
Shonen have to pad out their episodes to create enough content to fill chapters/episodes.
Shonen also has to explain things because their target audience is little children.
Man, the only people in Australia I've met who watch Naruto and the like are in their mid-late teens.
Smile Precure/Shoujo in General is for adults then? :P
Even anime that (tries to?) tackle (quasi?)mature themes can suffer from this, though. For all the ultraviolence and latent feminine homoeroticism that laces Claymore, for instance, it sure has a way of being shonen during fight scenes.
Well, Shoujo in general doesn't have a lot of fighting going on. As for precure, it does have a non-negligible adult male fandom, and they are generally the guys that buy DVDs.
I don't know if having a lot of info in your show is inherently a bad thing, depends on how it's presented (good example: Serial Experiments Lain, particularly "Infonography").
Claymore ran in Monthly Shonen Jump.
Precure has a fight every single episode, though.
So general consensus is that there is no trend towards infodumping in modern late-night anime, right?
I wouldn't know, not having seen one in a while. I do remember (from about a year ago) that characters used to state their feelings and thoughts all the time (either outright or through inner monologue), but I don't know if that's what's being called "infodumping" and I wouldn't say it's a trend because anime has (in general) always being as subtle as a cow launcher.
Didn't Inuyasha have the habit of making characters describe out loud what they're seeing, even though the audience can see it as well?
Inuyasha was Dora The Explorer?
I can't really remember anything specific but I think it was stuff like "oh no, it's doing something dangerous", and so on. TV Tropes calls that "narrating the obvious".
^^ U.N. Owen was Dora???
Anyway, related: I am reminded every episode of Fresh! Precure that the bad guys are trying to fill the damn gauge. Was the show a once-a-week show? If so then it's justified.
It was a once a week Sunday morning kids show.
???
Someone needs to play more Touhou.
And/or read more Agatha Christie.
I thought you were my twin, fourteenwings! How do you not know
whowhat U.N. Owen is?And Then There Were None! Totally forgot that existed.
I forgot to synchronize this morning, accept my dearest apologies!
Aren't like... most TV shows (anime included) once-a-week shows?
Unless you mean something else?
That's what I figured.
Most shows are. I wish there were more cartoons that are not so episodic.