IJBM: 1-cour (11~13 episodes) series are too short to tell a very satisfying story.

glennmagusharvey

You know that feeling sometimes when you've been somewhere, known someone, or done something for a long time now, and you look back to how it was when you first started, and you notice how different it felt at the beginning?  Especially the way you know people and places.  And you have, like, more superficial impressions being replaced by deeper meanings, and such?

It's hard to get that sort of change from a 1-cour series.

fourteenwings

This is wrong.

In fact, I prefer original anime to be one cour long because whatever points are meant to come across do. I mean, having like seventy characters and ninety setting details cannot make a satisfying story.

glennmagusharvey

12 episodes is enough to give me a glimpse into the life of a setting.

It's not long enough to let me see that setting and its characters change, unless that change is told in compressed form.  24 episodes would be far more effective.

Naas_Human

IJBM: generalizations

fourteenwings

It's not long enough to let me see that setting and its characters change,

Since when does the setting need to change to tell an effective story?

Look, the least like... myopic way I can rationalize what you're asking for is that you want a specific kind of show. So find and watch those shows? And make sure they're two cour or something?

Noimporta

That's just one type of story. LoTGH couldn't be told in one, two or even four cours (Hell, even at 110 episodes, I still think the resolution was rushed).  The house of small cubes, on the other hand, is perfect at <20 minutes. A large, dynamic setting, with a vast cast of changing characters are not mandatory (not even necessarily preferrable) to tell a good story.

glennmagusharvey

fourteenwings wrote: »

It's not long enough to let me see that setting and its characters change,

Since when does the setting need to change to tell an effective story?

Look, the least like... myopic way I can rationalize what you're asking for is that you want a specific kind of show. So find and watch those shows? And make sure they're two cour or something?

The setting doesn't need to change, but one's understanding of the setting frequently does.

Noimporta wrote: »

That's just one type of story. LoTGH couldn't be told in one, two or even four cours (Hell, even at 110 episodes, I still think the resolution was rushed).  The house of small cubes, on the other hand, is perfect at <20 minutes. A large, dynamic setting, with a vast cast of changing characters are not mandatory (not even necessarily preferrable) to tell a good story.

Very true; some stories really are best told in a short time.  Another great example is The Half-Broken Music Box, which clocks in at about 30 minutes.

That said, you two are right, this is a certain kind of story.  Not sure what to call it, but it's a kind of story that first allows the audience to get to know the characters and the setting, and get comfortable with them, and then (after some time) starts exposing them to change, and chronicling the results.  In contrast, shorter stories like House in Small Cubes give more of a snippet of a view into an event or experience -- a deeply moving and meaningful one, but a snippet nonetheless.  Half-Broken Music Box is a bit longer and able to show more, because of its length and its relatively realistic/modern setting, thus giving it more downtime for setting details to sink in and be changed and paced accordingly, but it still feels like a relativly small window into the life of the main character.

And to be fair, one-cour series don't necessarily suck.  It varies.

* Stratos 4 - 1-cour first season was good, though for full effectiveness it depended on being accompanied by its second season, which actually rounds out the story.
* Rocket Girls - effective in 1 cour.  Roughly contains two arcs, actually, which is a testament to good storytelling.
* Stellvia - first and only season is 2 cours, but they roughly break up into 1-cour arcs.  The two don't exactly stand alone though.
* Nanoha - both of the first two seasons are effective in 1 cour each.  (Third season is 2 cours.)
* Uta~Kata - a bit tight, but the pacing works due to the fact that they are presented as twelve situational snippets themselves, and are bound by obligation to the twelve orbs on the charm.
* Umi Monogatari - effective in 1 cour.
* Rinne no Lagrange - I felt the first season was effective in 1 cour, and surprisingly actually did in fact use the "snippet" model of storytelling, as lots of unusual and weird things just sort of happened and the audience were left to digest it -- but they certainly had time to do so and it was paced well.  (AFAIK @fourteenwings considers this to be inseparable from its second season, and thus an isolated assessment of the first season wouldn't be meaningful.)
* Symphogear - first season was a bit oddly paced, with some mood whiplash, but doesn't feel like it was too quick.  If anything, it thrived on pushing through lots of action, rather than introspection.
* Tower of Druaga - satisfying story in 1 cour, but needs its (also 1 cour) sequel to actually finalize it.  Also a bit of a weird case since it spent half the first cour goofing off with episodes that are mainly comedic, and then got serious several episodes in.  My friend says that the ending of the second season/cour felt rushed, though I felt it was fine.
* Soukou no Strain - very tightly paced in 1 cour but also very effectively done.
* Sands of Destruction - sort of a crappy plot overall, though it certainly did give lots of chance to introduce the audience to the setting, suggesting that pacing wasn't the issue.
* Leviathan the Last Defense - decently enjoyable in 1 cour, but not exactly a series with in-depth story emphasis.
* Sora no Woto - Decently paced 1 cour, though ending feels incomplete.
* Madoka Magica - feels rushed in 1 cour.  Perhaps the exposition heaviness could be relieved by better pacing that allowed for more showing rather than telling?
* Chaika - first season (1 cour) is effective, though again it requires its sequel season to tell a full story (in 2 cours, the ending allegedly having been rushed though I haven't seen it myself).
* Atelier Escha & Logy - quite enjoyable, but still feels rushed in 1 cour, as lots of details about how things work are left out, and just presented in semi-montage-ish fashion.  To be fair, it is based on a full-length console JRPG.

MadassAlex

I prefer series to be in one "cour" (in quotation marks because I have no idea where that terminology came from and wasn't in use last time I regularly watched anime). This is because I err towards utilitarianism in most things. That doesn't have to come at the expense of art or expression, and in fact I think it shouldn't, but longer stories give themselves more opportunities to mess things up or lose themselves in trivialities. 

One of my favourite examples of the "short and sweet" effect is Sword of the Stranger, an animated feature of roughly 90 minutes about a boy and his dog who hire a ronin to take them to a medicine man, who might have a hope of healing the boy's injured dog. Unknown to either, Chinese agents of the Ming Emperor prowl the countryside in search of a youth with holy blood, which may contain the key to immortality. Among the Chinese agents is a large Westerner with pale hair, blue eyes, and a taste for stretching his authority. 

In those 90 minutes or so, the feature does a remarkable job of explaining what it is to be a ronin, what it is to follow an imperial authority, the differences between Chinese and Japanese allegiances, and why none of these things matter to the Westerner. It discusses the realities of wealth, fear, power, and makes a guess or two as to why some people fight those forces. Superficially, it's a historical fiction about secret Chinese infiltration into feudal Japanese politics; in practice, it's a discussion of what makes a rebel, and why even just one or two can be important. 

After all, it is titled Sword of the Stranger. Why name a story after the bound weapon of a dishonoured warrior? 

glennmagusharvey

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cour

Anyway, I think that longer stories can have more chance to get stuck on trivialities too long, but they can also give more of a view into the characters' lives and the setting.

That said now I'm vaguely interested in watching Sword of the Stranger just because you say it has effective storytelling.

MadassAlex

Longer stories with more developed settings can be pretty great, for sure, but consider how often this ends up backfiring. In many cases, those longer stories end up in repetitious cycles. Bleach is a great example, in my opinion; I found the first two arcs to be interesting, fun, and charming. It then proceeded to follow the Dragonball Z pattern where newer, more powerful threats ended up emerging, each with a less convincing connection to the previous arc. Watching Dragonball Z without any background information already makes the overt suggestion that it was meant to end with the Freiza Saga, as that contains Goku's whole character arc -- from his discovery as a strange child during the original show to his ascendance during the final battle with Freiza, the weaponiser of the Saiyan species. I realise this is much more common with series intended for younger audiences who are very much looking for longer stories that continue to escalate, but even more "mature" works become fatigued. I find Berserk to be a work of borderline genius, but even I've found its longevity to be tiresome in some respects. 

In contrast, shorter works are forced to come to their focal, dramatic climaxes more quickly. They don't have the room to explore each element and shade of their characters or settings, so they have to choose what is most truly relevant. Side stories that come to dead ends are less prevalent. Check out A Song of Ice and Fire/A Game of Thrones; numerous characters simply die, leaving their plotlines unresolved. On top of that, some of the remaining characters that might have resolved those stories also die, removing any potential for certain resolutions or character interactions. This often just ends in purposeless disappointment for the audiences -- after all, what was the point if Joffrey never got his dramatic comeuppance at the end of a hero's sword? I know A Game of Thrones is trying to be "realistic", but you know how my perspective might find that a bit incongruous when the series' swordplay is highly questionable. 

Mind you, I have no particular problem with a two cour series as such. We're talking 22-26 episodes in such a case, which is still pretty well contained and to the point. What I'm getting at here is that I think any story only needs to be as long as is strictly required. And one can achieve great results from a hybrid approach, where multiple disconnected stories take place in one setting. Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are a great example; there are recurring characters, themes, and even elements of recurring plots, but each book is also its own standalone entity that can be enjoyed with or without the other entries. My overall point is that stories should be as long as they need to be, but no longer, with just the content required to explain what is purposeful for the authors and pleasurable for the audience.

(Sorry that I am still so wordy.) 

JHM

Pretty much everything Alex just said, although I would argue that the verisimilitude in Game of Thrones is primarily in non-technical areas—although the show does an excellent job in the linguistics department. But that's entirely beside the main point that stories should be the length that they require to be told well and no more or less, ideally.