I recently had a discussion (instead of the usual argument) with my friend and writing partner. We were discussing the differences in pacing of shows; I was paying close attention to Supernatural v. Darker Than Black because they both are pretty episodic in the early going and get to the big, overarching plot as they move along in the series. For those of you who don't know, both Darker Than Black and Supernatural's first season overarching plot episodes happen throughout the series.
My biggest qualm with American TV, I've now found, is not with length, but with pacing. I thought, for the longest time, that it was length. But I've gotten into One Piece, Naruto, BLEACH, and Fairy Tail, all of which are really, really long. And I watched the entirety of American shows like Lost and House and The Office, albiet at a week-to-week basis after, at most, four seasons being complete. What keeps me from starting a show is the length because I have to commit myself to that. I know that it's going to be good, but it's a big time investment. With anime, I can (usually) just watch 11-14 or 24-26 episodes and be done with the series. It's a big thing for me to be able to finish a series in some sort of reasonable time table. Of course, sometimes school and work and my life take over my anime watching, but I try to finish most anime series within a month. If I don't, then it's something like One Piece.
But the pacing of a show like Supernatural just bores me, from a storytelling perspective. In the first four episodes of the series, all that had happened was everything in the pilot and some guy, in episode four, that had been in contact with Dean and Sam's father. But, the thing is, Darker Than Black's first four stories, technically the first eight episodes, there are arguably fewer hints of the overarching plot of the series compared to Supernatural, but I like it more. Neither of us could definitively explain this phenomenon. Now, we both hypothosize that it's because anime focuses more on the plot elements than does American TV. In episode two and episode three of Supernatural, we learned nothing about the characters, nothing about the world, and nothing about the overarching plot. But in Darker Than Black, we learn about the world, we learn about contractors, about moratoriums, about the characters themselves; the point is that we're learning something. I think that's really it.
But he argues that we need these episodic, one-off, fun episodes in order to build up to the main plot. He said, "If I get to keep seeing those characters every week, I'm okay with sitting through mediocre stories until the writers break out their big guns. American TV is like an investment. I watched Lost since it first started airing. When it hit its 3rd season, it started to really, really suck. I was so ready to give up on the show altogether. And then when the fourth season came along, the feeling I got, knowing that all my patience and faith in the show finally paid off, it was indescribable. It's utterly amazing to see a good show become great." But for me, I have to wade through those crappy episodes. It's like watching filler of BLEACH, but instead of starting at episode 64, it starts at episode two. And that's just ridiculous. To make your fans wade through something that's just not very good is bad writing and I don't know why I should keep watching these filler episodes, even if it gets better, if that's all they are: filler.
Again, we differ in the opinion of endings. For me, an anime allows me to get invested in these characters and love them over the course of their short-lived series. Granted, some of the most emotional moments in anime have been from Clannad (47 episodes), One Piece (662 chapters and counting), and Fairy Tail (124 episodes and counting). Those are long series and I got invested in those characters. But even for something like Cowboy Bebop or Samurai Champloo or BECK or even Usagi Drop, I felt for those characters and I loved them so much. But he said, "I'm not ready to say goodbye to those characters, and all of a sudden they're just whisked away in a rush ending." See, from my perspective, as long as an attachment is grown for characters, whether the series be 11 episodes or 100+ episodes, the ending will only depend on the writing. I can be just as emotionally invested in characters in an 11 episodes series as I can be in a 100+ episode series and, if they theoretically had the same ending, they would have the same impact with me.
Let's look specifically at the Buffy ending, both the season five ending and the series ending. Joss Whedon has this thing where he kills of, like, every character when a series is ending. So at the end of season five, Buffy dies. And at the end of the series, multiple people die including Anya and Spike, among others who I don't remember. But I knew that the series was going to continue, so I didn't feel anything for Buffy's death. I know that the people viewing it as it was airing didn't know whether it was going to keep going or not, but I did. And Spike's death didn't hit me because I knew he was going to be in later seasons of Angel. So these deaths aren't hitting me hard. But in One Piece, watching the Going Merry be sunk by the Straw Hats hit me. It hit me really hard. The ship of these pirates made me care more about it than Whedon did either with his main character's death or her love interest's death. Thanks Eiichiro Oda.
But back to pacing for a moment. Buffy's pacing in season four and season five was, frankly, bad. They had finally hit a stride in what they were doing with the latter half of season three (or so I'm told; I skipped over seasons one and two and skipped through season three WITHOUT DISTINCTION!). But for the next two seasons, they did the exact same thing they did in season three. Which was putting some fun, episodic things in the early going while advancing the overarching season story through the latter half (it's funny because I just did that with my prose on a much smaller scale. I'm not going to make you sit through almost 11 hours of TV to get to the beef after all. Only two sentences). In season six and season seven, they finally got into a groove and did interesting things throughout the season, mixing fun, episodic episodes and overarching plot episodes. But the early going of seasons three and four was not...It was just boring. I basically forced myself to watch that because I knew it was going to get better. But I digress.
What I really want out of an ending is not something that I can write about. It's some intangible, indescribable feeling you get where you don't know what your next move is going to be. For him, it was Lost. For me, several things in recent memory: Gurren Lagann, Clannad, and Chihayafuru come to mind immediately. I remember after I finished Gurren Lagann, I got up, walked to the bathroom, and had no idea what I was doing there since I didn't have to go to the bathroom. After Clannad, I just laid in bed mindlessly watching ESPN. After Chihayafuru, I think I actually had something I had to do. But, if I was given time for reflection, I would have reflected the hell out of that show.
But those endings are built up from something. For me, it's a constant reminder of the overarching plot. It can't just be a one-off line of "Hey we're looking for our dad." like in Supernatural. It has to be something substantial happening. For him, those episodic or one-off episodes build up to the overarching plot perfectly because it gives him time to invest in those characters and learn to love him. But those episodic episodes just don't do it for me. They're filler. I'm learning nothing about these characters, which doesn't make me love them more, and I learn nothing about the plot, which just makes me dislike it more.
Neither of us are right or wrong (but he's more wrong and I'm more right). It boils down to what we've grown up on, and I've grown up on anime. And in anime, they oftentimes get right to the beef of the story (unless you're called Dragonball Z). But American TV like to sit on their hands and wait until the audience really, really wants some beef before revealing it. Sometimes it works (Lost, Fringe) and sometimes it doesn't (Buffy, Supernatural). And, granted, anime isn't perfect either. They have their fair share of bad or rushed endings (Soul Eater, BECK). It's a matter of personal opinion.
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