Forum - View topicGimmicky anime? Messing with the narrative.
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Wu Ming
Posts: 113 |
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Um, first, did i us the word Gimmicky correctly?
Anyway, we all know that production studios are always trying to find an edge or a draw or a pull to get people to watch their shows. One method is playing around with the narrative of a story. We all kind of expect an intro, a lot of story, and a conclusion. But in recent years we've seen more and more attempts to try and "shake things up." Attempts to play with the audiences sense of perception or chronology. So what gimmicks have you noticed? I can name a couple of the top of my head. Oh, and yes this thread is full of spoilers. 1.) Berserk is perhaps the earliest example with the First episode aired being the Last episode in the story. It forced the viewers to watch the whole series trying to figure out how it got to that point in the first episode. 2.) Haruhi Suzumiya utilizes a ton of methods. Airing the First Season completely out of order. Airing the 2nd Season Inside of a Run of the First Season. Repeating the same episode, again, and again, and again. Although this is a potential sign of "jumping the shark." Either way, one has to hand it to the studio. For better or for worse, they are trying. 3.) Gai Rei Zero case is a most interesting one. Imagine taking in a giant marketing campaign adding a cast of completely new characters to an existing franchise creating a whole team dynamic.... ...and completely obliterating those characters within the first episode. Letting the 2nd episode pick up as a prequel to the existing franchise and introducing characters that fans already know. I think their the only anime to try this "bait and switch" move. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18461 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Um, no, this is actually a fairly common literary device, and not just in anime. There are several other series I can think of which start with part or all of the final episode airing first and then flash back to explain how the series got to that point, and I seriously doubt Berserk was to do it. (Jinki: Extend is one that immediately springs to mind on this - and it toys with its chronological ordering in other ways, too - but I know there are others.) And you can't have a serious conversation on this without mentioning Boogiepop Phantom. Its episodes not only don't necessary happen in chronological order, but they also jump back and forth between multiple timelines within the same episode, overlap with each other in such a way that they sometimes show alternate angles on scenes which happened in other episodes, and even play out one episode backwards. Baccano! also deserves mention, as it simultaneously tells its story in three separate but interrelated timelines - and that's not counting a flashback to crucial events which happened two hundred years earlier. |
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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Claymore was one. First showing us Clare's present, midway her past and lastly her future.
But it worked out just fine, and I didn't feel forced to watch it at all. Anime like this seems to be really rare and I recall watching another, but I can't remember the name. I remember they purposively messed up the broadcast order (up to the episode I watched, the whole anime story was merely this writer's creation, if I'm right). |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Given your involvement in the When the Seagulls Cry thread (man that red is annoying), I thought you would mention it. While there is a central narrative, the way it is presented is all screwed up. I really can't go into detail without having to haul out the spoiler tags, but needless to say the show is not an easy one to follow.
Bakemonogatari and Master Keaton are other shows which jump straight into things, preferring to keep the backstory for later. And Victory Gundam jumps right into a three-episode story arc. Only with the fourth episode do we learn how and why a thirteen-year-old ended up piloting the titular Gundam. Ultimately, explaining the backstory during the show instead of at the start of it is pretty common; I could list plenty of other shows that do it (Gungrave, Trigun, Escaflowne and Gasaraki for example), but I won't. Oh, wait . . . . . . |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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Yeah, the one for Berserk was totally invented by brilliant Japanese people. Never used before at all, ever. They're not gimmicks, they're called devices and they're used for the exact reason you postulated, they make the story more interesting by letting you in on what's going to happen. The story then can be what led up to that point through following the series of events. For Haruhi season 2, the endless eight crap was just a bunch of trolling on all sides, with the losers ended up being the otaku who no only watched it, but also buy it. Hidamari Sketch is also completely out of order, not like it matters. Touka Gettan is completely backwards, and the use of flashback is one of the most common ways to tell a long story, with the present only being a small portion at the beginning and end. Frankenstein, unfortunately, is one of the best examples of doing that multiple times. |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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How about Interstella 5555, which was basically what looks like one giant AMV set to Daft Punk's Discovery album with Leiji Matsumoto doing the anime part of it? Not a single line of dialogue, great watch anyway.
Otaku no Video had two segments that switched back and forth during the show: an animated story about how a guy becomes addicted to anime and how it affects his life and random live action comedic interviews with people who have taken the anime thing a bit too far. They're both hilarious segments and they switch on and off every 5 minutes or so. The animated part ends in just ridiculousness and the live action parts are along the lines of "it's sad because it's true". Cromartie High School jumps around everywhere from the source manga, in the anime, we have characters with major lines speak before they're even introduced in the show and then the stories it takes from the manga, especially early on, are just from all over the place, not to mention the OP showing things that happen in the manga only and Kamiyama telling the reader twice to go read the manga if you want to know what happened (to be fair, the manga actually does tell you), and even if it doesn't tell you to read the manga, I can assure you that certain parts of the OP will make more sense. |
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Wu Ming
Posts: 113 |
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Yikes, it seems i've hit a collective nerve. But then again it is probably my fault since i did not explain myself well enough. I do know that placing the ending of a story up front is a literary device thats been utilized for quite some time. Its actually used quite a lot in a favorite genre of mine, 1930s American pulp detective novels. I was under the impression however that Berserk was the first anime to actually do the deed. But since it isn't i have to wonder who did it first? |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24170 |
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Divergence Eve's first eppie actually falls near the end in terms of chronological order of events. It's kind of a terrible series anyway for a number of different reasons, and for me, this decision was one of them. I had no idea when I first watched it that it was deliberately out of order and much the way I feel Episode 000 of TMoHS is a terrible introduction to that series, I feel the same about the "first" episode of DE. All it does is confuse the hell out of you (although that's business as usual with DE).
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7584 Location: Wales |
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There was an anime that aired in recent years, the name of which escapes me, that was apparently run completely in reverse order (I wouldn't know first hand as the first episode or two confused me so much I gave up).
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egoist
Posts: 7762 |
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Here's the anime I was talking about, Touka Gettan.
After watching like 10 episodes I didn't understand it at all so I gave up. |
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nightjuan
 Posts: 1473 |
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I'd say Umineko no Naku Koro ni immediately comes to mind, for the previously mentioned reasons, and to a lesser extent Higurashi no Naku Koro ni would also qualify although it's also quite possible to enjoy the series on a purely superficial or straightforward level.
I tried watching Touka Gettan once but, while the show looked interesting enough, even knowing that the whole thing was supposed to be airing backwards didn't exactly make it any easier to understand. I wonder if it would make more sense the other way around. Shin Mazinger began with an episode that threw you right into the middle of the action without explaining anything and combining events from different parts of the series, which immediately turned off a lot of people, but subsequently went back and told its story in a much more conventional manner. The first episode of Code Geass, in one of its earlier drafts, was supposed to begin with a flash-forward to the season finale but that idea didn't survive later revisions. I believe this gimmick was actually used later for the direct-to-video compilation feature Black Rebellion though. Last edited by nightjuan on Sat Sep 26, 2009 11:56 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 7584 Location: Wales |
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egoist: I believe Touka Gettan was the one I was thinking of also.
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eyeresist
 Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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I think that "interesting" episode order (2nd last ep shown first) was a decision of the US distributors, not the original creators. It was probably done so viewers would realise there's more to the show than bizarre fanservice. On a related topic, in anime/manga it's common to see entire episodes of flashback to before the beginning of the narrative. Something I don't think I've seen in Western media. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24170 |
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Not so sure about that, eyeresist. The ANN encyclopedia entry for DE shows that Mission 2 was the first episode in the broadcast order (Mission 1 is eppie 12).
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Ktimene's Lover
 Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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Messing with how the story is supposed to go is how anime can be so entertaining. I agree with Haruhi out of sequence episodes being frustrating.
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