Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
IJBM: 1-cour (11~13 episodes) series are too short to tell a very satisfying story.
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.
It's hard to get that sort of change from a 1-cour series.
Comments
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.