Konnichiwa from the depths of textbooks! It’s been a while since I’ve put anything up here. I’d say something about all the exams and homework I’ve had, going into my junior year, but everyone knows that’s a lame excuse.

But on to the topic of today’s post. I’ve been doing some thinking (with all 1.6 volts of my potato-sized brain), particularly about why some anime work and why some don’t. My biggest complaint about a lot of shows I finish and don’t like are that they felt rushed, and that it should have had 12 more episodes. But looking back on my repertoire, a lot of my favorite shows were 12 episodes or less. So obviously, the curse of 1-cour isn’t impossible to overcome. Hell, Yamamoto Yutaka himself, who I’m poking fun at in my title, stated at NDK that failing to tell a story in 12 episodes is the writer’s fault, not the block’s.

Why can some shows succeed in a mere 4-5 hours of animation while others flop? Is 24 episodes always better than 12? How about 50?

Donning the guise of Captain Freaking Obvious for a second here, the most important difference between 12 episodes and 24 episodes is, well, 12 episodes. That’s a lot of extra time a show could be using. Time to flesh out a character, or establish a universe, or build up to an important scene. And if you think about it, 12 episodes really isn’t much time to do any of that. No wonder producers always complain about getting only 12 episodes. There’s no way to tell a story in that much time, right?

To illustrate how wrong that last point can be, I bring up a packaging box even more compact than a 1-cour series – films. Most anime films are between 100 and 120 minutes, which are barely 6 episodes worth of time. If quality really is directly proportional to length, movies should be the lowest tier on the scale. But they’re not. Somehow, movies are able to tell a story from scratch in the time it takes for your laundry to dry. How they get away with that, I found while reading a review of an anime movie some time ago.

Anime typically have 3 goals. One: create a unique, rich universe to build in. Two: create a complex, dynamic cast of characters that live in this universe. Three: create a believable, compelling story that drives the anime forward. To be completely honest, I think there’s a minimum amount of time needed to do all three of these things, and 12 episodes is not it, let alone an hour and a half while Windows updates itself. How do movies do it? It’s remarkably simple, but initially unthinkable. They cheat a little. They skip a step.

The easiest step to skip, really, is the “complex, dynamic character cast” part. Ideally, the characters are flawed to begin with, and slowly develop over the course of the anime. But there simply isn’t time for that in a movie. The answer? Make them likeable to start. If they’re not such terrible people to begin with, it’s easier to forgive them for not changing all that much. And indeed, this is what most movies do. When’s the last time you watched a good anime movie where you hated the main character? Or his sidekick, or his love interest, or his Modern Japanese teacher? If they present a cast that’s loveable at face value, they can establish them quickly and expend all of their time to telling the story they need to tell.

The point of it all is, the reason anime movies are usually successful is that under such an extreme time crunch, their priorities become painfully obvious. They only explore their core themes because there physically isn’t time to do anything more. They’re forced to pick a specific focus that all 100 minutes must be devoted to. If they can do that one thing well, everything else just needs to be “adequate.”

So ironically, the 12-episode series actually gets something of a disservice from the additional 3-4 hours it gets over the movie. It’s just long enough, and drawn out over 3 months, that the writers begin to feel they can do it all, that they can really create the series as they see it in their heads. But really, it’s not. 12 episodes still isn’t enough time to pursue all 3 goals. To be successful, the 1-cour series needs to find its focus which it will bet everything on. Do too much, and you get a half-baked cake that just feels like it could have been.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look at a few examples of 1-cour series I felt were successful, and a few that weren’t.

Successful 1-Cour Series

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

TM 8.0 came out in Summer 2009, and was actually only 11 episodes. It tells the story of a woman, a little girl, and her younger brother trying to make it home after an earthquake devastates Tokyo. It’s a realistic anime (maybe a bit…too realistic now), without any real supernatural elements, and it takes place in present day. That’s one step skipped – world creating. We’re already familiar with the real world, so TM 8.0 doesn’t have to explain to us how gravity and magnets work. Furthermore, the story is relatively simple. An earthquake rips through Japan, the cast is trying to go home. A perfectly reasonable goal without any need for ulterior motives and surprising twists. And really, the plot only exists for the show’s real point – the characters. Similar to Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, main heroine Onozawa Mirai is initially a disgruntled, spoiled little girl who develops into a mature and responsible adult (albeit still underage). The characters drive everything in this show, and they’re so well-defined and believable that the lackluster plot becomes somewhat irrelevant – by definition, it doesn’t need to be consistent and amazing.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Ok, I’m not going to introduce this show. If you haven’t seen it yet, go watch it. Right now.

On the opposite side of the coin from the last show, Madoka’s strengths lie in the world it creates. The rules, the morality, and the struggling every Puella Magi must deal with. And it’s all so well-crafted that the writers could well have dropped in any 5 characters from their reject bucket and the show still would have probably succeeded. Now, you might be thinking “Hey, fuck you Chris, the characters were awesome and they’re why I watched this show. Don’t you call them vanilla reject characters.” And that’s where the real genius of this show lies. It cheats. Twice. Not only does it decide not to create a unique, complex cast, the premise and universe is so well done it gets one anyway. And subsequently, their haxxed cast drives a compelling plot forward. Just like Kyuubey, PMMM gets something for nothing. But that’s a post for another day.

The Tatami Galaxy

TTG aired in Spring 2010, and chronicles the (repeated) attempts of a eager new college freshman to achieve his fabled “rose-colored campus life.” Some may remember it as my favorite anime of 2010, and it earned its place there.

TTG seems to be quite aware of the fact it’s only 1-cour (and again, only 11 episodes), and so instead of making those 11 episodes feel rushed and crammed, it makes them feel like an eternity. It almost feels like the writers thought 1-cour was too long for their anime. Indeed, its plot is nothing grandiose or complex – in fact, it’s so simple, it’s told in one episode, and is then retold 8 more times before finally concluding. And every time it’s retold, the characters, who are really just doing the same thing every time, somehow become more vivid and loveable. It’s what I love about this show -it appears to lollygag and waste its time when really, it’s using every minute to build the characters for the ending.

Not-So-Successful 1-Cour Series

Angel Beats!

Another series from Spring 2010, Angel Beats! focused on a peculiar “purgatory” for people who had died with regrets. Angry dead people spend their time being students at an eternal high school until they felt better about themselves. Apparently, only high school students ever die with regrets.

Despite my somewhat sarcastic summary, I really liked the idea of this show (#4 on my top 7 last year). It’s the most frustrating recent failure that comes to mind, and it’s an iconic example of what happens when you try to do too much with 12 episodes. AB! had it all – comedy, drama, tragic backstory, conspiracy theories, romance, and a 5-man band. Not to mention it probably has the single largest character cast I’ve ever seen in a 1-cour series. With so much on its agenda, it’s no wonder so many people found it rushed, cheesy, and emotionally manipulative (well, maybe that last one’s just the writer). To be honest, Key’s strong point all these years has been sympathetic characters and good soundtracks. Full-season Kanon (2006) and 2-season Clannad were able to do more, but with only 12 episodes to work with, AB! really needed to spend all its time fleshing out a (smaller) character cast.

Fractale

AKA the Show that Saved Anime, Fractale tells the story of a boy named Clain who lives in a Brave New World-esque dystopian society, where everyone is controlled by nanomachines and Windows updates. He meets two strange girls, Phryne and Nessa, who seem to be at the heart of the matter, along with an Amish resistance movement that somehow figured out airships before modern medicine.

Anime-saving jokes aside, Fractale was not a bad anime. But it created a rather fantastical setting from scratch and tried to push some heavy philosophical ideas concerning world views and clashing, incomplete perspectives. I actually think Fractale would have done better as a light novel series, where the writer would have the time to really put the imagery and philosophy into blocks of text. But it was an 11-episode anime, and as pretty much everyone could agree, Fractale could have used a few more. Fractale‘s coolest point was its setting, where hive-mind futuristic space-tech fought against individualistic steampunk terrorism, and if it just played off of that with some standard shounen-y characters, it probably would have been pretty good (ala Star Wars). I appreciate Yamamoto’s intellectual approach, but deeply rooted political/theological warring, the ironic meaninglessness of it all, human nature’s inability to handle deification, and the true meaning of happiness is not something you cover in three and a half hours. Or maybe my mind is simply too plebian to understand Fractale. Yeah, that’s probably it. Never mind, Fractale is anime of the year for reasons I cannot comprehend. Yamamoto-sama is a misunderstood genius.

Yumekui Merry

Airing in Winter 2011, Yumekui Merry revolves around Fujiwara Yumeji, who has the odd ability to see the nature of other people’s dreams. He meets a strange girl named Merry Nightmare, an inhabitant of the world of dreams who is trying to make her way back to her home. There’s something about some baddies from the dream world trying to take over the real world by stealing people’s dreams. Ok, I didn’t pay that much attention.

For the majority of the anime, I don’t think Yumekui Merry knew what it wanted to be. There’s slice of life, action, and comedy all kind of mashed up in there without any real direction. As a result, the SoL feels contrived, the action is boring, and the comedy gets crickets. Certain important scenes felt hollow and underwhelming, and not everything actually gets resolved in the end. The animation was pretty good, and the music was adequate, but anime isn’t an art show. It’s a storytelling medium. And in the end, I didn’t know what story Yumekui Merry wanted to tell me. I feel like JC Staff knew from the start that it wouldn’t have enough time to finish, and so was afraid to go too deep into anything. Unlike the other shows, Yumekui Merry doesn’t evoke from me a sense of frustration, but indifference. I’m sure it had potential. I just don’t know where.

All of the 1-cour series I liked have one thing in common: they excel in just one respect. And because of that, they don’t need anything else to succeed. With a strong enough character cast, the plot and setting just need to hold them up. With a strong enough setting, even bland characters can interact with their environment in fantastical ways, and the plot writes itself. And with a strong enough plot, the characters and setting will define themselves as need be to make the plot work. If an anime only needs to establish one element, it doesn’t need to waste any of its precious 12 episodes on side projects.

Similarly, all of the 1-cour series I didn’t like had the exact opposite thing in common: they tried to do everything. They tried to be the 24-episode series in half the time. It’s like trying to take 30 credits a semester in college to get done faster. You’ll just fail everything, your GPA will go down the shitter, you’ll end up wasting time rather than saving it, and you’ll be miserable to boot. Either take your time and get your degree in 4 years like everyone else, or specialize by going to a technical school and learn just what you need to. Either way will succeed, but 30 credits a semester will not.

12 episodes is enough to tell a story, but it requires a finesse that unfortunately seems to escape writers from time to time. Anyone who’s ever tried creating something, from literature to music to games, has gone through the painful experience of failing to meet one’s own expectations. We want to create something amazing, unique, and memorable, and we assume the only path to success is to make it complex and painstakingly detailed. But virtually nothing’s praised for “doing it all.” Good video games focus on specific elements of gameplay. Good music revolves around a central theme. Good anime tells you one good story. And you don’t need 500 episodes to do that.